Check-out My Aspie Article In Critical Animal Studies

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I am an Apsie animal rights activist. I have posted before in the past. Please check-out my new article in Critical Animal Studies, an interdisciplinary peer reviewed academic journal for the animal ethics feild and allied disciplines.

My article is entitled "From Marginal Cases to Linked Oppressions: Reframing The Conflict Between The Autistic Pride Movement and the Animal Rights Movement."

It has relevance to previous past discussion on Wrong Planet.

You can download your free copy, by Googling, "Journal of Critical Animal Studies," and can download either in Word or Acrobat format. Be sure also to check-out the Editor's Introduction, which gives a one-paragraph commentary of my article.

Feedback welcome! Be sure to let me know on Wrong Planet, what you liked about it, what you would like to see more of in the future. Please let me know! Thanks very much!

If I understand correctly, you basically make the argument that autistic people are able to empathize with animals better than neurotypical people because autistic people think more like animals. Correct? I'm going to ponder this some more...

Btw, there is a word that you use repeatedly, "libratory." As in:

"Unquestioningly, nonhuman animals receive at least some libratory benefits from my existence."

According to multiple dictionaries, libration (the noun form) is an astrophysics term that describes an ocillation in a satellite's orbit. I don't understand your usage of this word.

Edit: Oh okay, I see now that you probably meant "liberatory."

Last edited by carzak on 05 May 2010, 2:19 am, edited 1 time in total.

I'm curious as to what your definition is of "non-human animals." Is it limited to vertebrates, or do insects and worms deserve equal treatment to the cute, furry ones, and even humans? If not, that would seem to be "speciesist," something you object to.

I can't help but notice the bias evident throughout the paper. There are some bold, emotionally-charged assertions made with no effort to provide balance. Involving yourself personally in your arguments and giving your own opinion also contributes to that. Actually, you come off as holding a grudge against neurotypical people, with the paper serving to rationalize it.

I agree with the objections expressed here (and despite your attempt to defend against them, the rest of the paper speaks louder):

"In advocating and defending this version of linked oppressions, I have received three main objections: that I stereotype neurotypicals (Sinclair, personal conversation), that I scapegoat neurotypicals (Sinclair, personal communication) and that I invalidate the neurotypical perspective."

OEDS online:
libratory, a. Having a motion like that of the beam of a balance; oscillatory.
liberatory, a. rare = LIBERATIVE.
liberative, a. That liberates or favours liberation.

I guess you are correct, carzak, although context might affect the intended meaning.

I'd be more inclined to look at the article if I had a link to go to, rather than having to google for some random hit.

PS. Downloaded the pdf, couldn't wade through the first paragraph of the introduction (where the word "vermal" is invented, for no discernable purpose), looked at the end of the document, to find the garbled reference to "Tell PETA to Stop Exploiting the Autistic Community", written by someone other than Ari, on some website called www.planet.net, rather than wrongplanet.

What I read was nonsense Goose.

You need to consider the fact that research shows when it comes to ethics and morality, non-Autistic people do not use internally driven, consistent, complete, binary etc logic, but rather their gut feeling. Rationalizations come after the fact. To what extent Autistic people do the same is less well researched, but that fact that so many do well with maths and computers kind of indicates to me that consistent binary logic is not exactly foreign to our brains.

Evidently, everything is contained within nature and nothing whatsoever is divorced from it, and if Singer claims animals cannot reason but can suffer then he is clearly not contending that rationality is necessary to the capacity to suffer.

By the way, the DSM most certainly does highlight the fact that people with Aspergers Syndrome tend to be more social than those with Autistic Disorder, describing them as comparatively "active but odd" in terms of social engagement.

Animal rights originations such as Peta and ALF is one of my special interests. I always get flack for it but I don't care. People often ask if I like animals better than people the answer is YES. I get asked this by my stupid brother which I hate anyway. I could care less about people and the things they do to innocent creatures make me dislike humans even more. Until vivisection and animal testing is abolished 100% I will continue to hate humans.

People get upset when I suggest we use criminals such as sex offenders and terrorists for experiments. They say it's wrong because animals are not self aware and do not have the same intelligence as a human but that's like saying it's okay to experiment on an infant or ret*d person.

My other brother is a doctor and if he pulls any stunts, I will disown him and that is a PROMISE. He's really the only one who gets my love for meerkats and is quite fond of dogs so if he does participate in some weird experiment it will be on a cold day in Hell...I hope. None of my family really understand how I feel about animals and as a child I was told there was something wrong with me because I didn't feel that were are superior to animals and I used to feel bad and think there was something wrong with me but now I don't care. I love my bearded dragon more than anyone or anything and if people don't like that they can go jump in a lake.

People have been nothing but mean to me for the most part. I could trust a pride of wild lions more than I could ever trust another human being. Maybe I am biased because I just hate people so much. I could care less about people. I felt nothing on September 11th but when a meerkat dies in a documentary (and the stupid bastard filmmakers could have prevented it) I never get over it. Anyway, if people wanted me to care so much about other people, they should have been a little nicer to me as a kid or at least get me out of the abusive environment I was in. It's too late and the damage has been done, I will never be able to trust another human being 100%.

I'm a PETA member with ALF affiliations myself, and I have to say, I don't know that Auties THINK more like animals, but in my (entirely-anecdotal) experience, they definitely seem to have more empathy for them than NT's as a whole. I've encountered more animal rights activists and vegetarians on this forum than any others I visit, even those of a green/leftist stripe.

I never had much empathy for humans even as a little kid and when I was finally starting to learn, I was abused. Temple Grandin says her ability to understand cattle is no superpower but just because autistic people and animals have similar thinking patterns. I've seen people who claim to "love" animals do some things that I thought were traumatic such as tying down a bull on a mechanical thing just to trim it's hooves. I think I will make an easy target in vet school because they are jealous of me. I've known some pretty nasty vets and vet students on TV are so arrogant and cocky. If I ever got a scholarship to Cornell (supposedly the creme de la creme of vet schools), I will turn it down because I have a feeling everyone it's just a bunch of snobby rich kids who have egos bigger than the state of Texas and the professors are the same. It's going to be hard enough to fight for my accommodations so I shouldn't have to deal with adult bullies either. I often had suggestions on how to get an animal to do something or why it was doing something and was often right. I thought it was just common sense but apparently Dr. Doolittle wasn't an NT.