We Seem To Be Experiencing Technical Problems

And you thought they couldn’t get more evil

As the sibling of an autistic person, I felt it was my duty to do these things to show my support for her and others like her.
Here’s the thing, though: Many autistic people don’t actually want a cure.
More heartbreakingly, I didn’t realize that my own sister felt that way, too – that as I was proudly marching to help her, she was right there silently wishing that I wasn’t.

What about the autistic people who do want a cure?

For late night viewing I recommend Midway on HBO. Very well done and gripping.

Evil: The ‘field’ of those pushing cures for autism is full of charlatans and quacks taking advantage of desperate parents wanting their autistic child to be ‘normal’ – and recognise and love their parents as persons, not objects. In the 40 years I worked with over 2000 autistic people in some professional capacity I met many families who literally roamed the world looking for cures. For instance a father who wished to obtain government funds to take his son to Switzerland so the lad could be injected in the brain stem with human foetal [fetal for those in the US colonies] cells to ‘cure’ him. Then there are those relying on [unproven] and sometimes dangerous dietary cures as well as treatments to eliminate toxicity caused by heavy metals. ‘Chelation’ is one such treatment. Resorting to exorcism by various ministers of religion is not uncommon. Quite a number of children have died during rigorous exorcisms to drive out the devil supposedly in us who are autistic. Two of my female clients were subject to exorcism by Catholic priests. The exorcisms didn’t help them, but my strict behavioural approach applied consistently by carers and teachers allowed the girls to operate in a tight structure and function well.
I don’t want to be cured, nor does my brother – finding out I was autistic after trying to be ‘normal’ for most of my life was a relief, though I know some autistic people, wanting to participate in and enjoy so called ‘normal’ society without becoming severely anxious, wish they weren’t autistic. However there are no cures for autism just like there are no cures for intellectual impairment. Some autistics are born autistic and autism can be traced down family lines as is the case with my brother and me. Children born totally blind can become autistic through a complex process relating to the development in such children of object permanence: the rate of autism in such children in the 1970s was about 20%. Now a way of intervening [preventing] in early infancy is used thanks to the Dane Lilli Nielsen. Others become autistic through acquired brain injury, e.g. severe anoxia at birth or ingesting lead in very early childhood in two of my clients. The brain is so complex as to defeat those who seek cures. Lastly about 70% of autistics are intellectually disabled and those with IQs under about FSIQ 60 simply cannot understand that they are different as they have little capacity for insight and abstract thought and reasoning is beyond them. It is common to see such children being placed in mainstream schools by their grieving parents who want their children to become normal. Those children have a miserable time and often have to have a permanent aide assigned to baby-sit them as such normal social settings are too complex for them. Move them to a special setting and they thrive in the tighter structure.
So who wants and needs we who are autistic cured – and why? Whose choice is it? There is often a high, even pathological, level of co-dependence between parent[s] and their autistic children; separation of autistic child from the primary carer [not always the mother] is often difficult to attain: we hear “my autistic child needs ME!”
[Do remember that up to the early 1980s very smart, but odd, autistic children were often diagnosed as childhood schizophrenics. In fact the old residential institutions were full of autistics who were often diagnosed and treated as ‘undifferentiated schizophrenics.]

David, for relaxing late-night listening I recommend P. D. Q. Bach’s Hansel and Gretel and Ted and Alice.

The times I feel most masculine are, like, when I’m wearing heels and in full make-up.
The times I feel most depressed are, like, when I inadvertently encounter the blatherings of dumb self-absorbed bints.

Wasn’t it obvious that this was satire?
Fake but accurate.

G’day RC. You would know that the ability to empathise spontaneously as part of important and fulfilling interaction with others is largely absent in autistics; we are logical creatures. In essence autistics lack that ability to feel, i.e. naturally read the feelings/emotions of the majority and return ‘sentiment’ in kind and appreciate and value such sentiment. [I avoid gushy, emotional people as I cannot cope with their sentimentality; it overwhelms me.] Autistics must be taught and learn to act as though they do care. Hence Temple Grandin talking about having 40 hours of manners lessons each week as she grew up so she would act politely towards others having been taught and internalised the rules of society. [Note the word ‘act’.] One of my little lads [age 9] of average IQ said to his mother one day “I love you Mummy … but I don’t know what love feels like.” [Nor do I.] This lad had been taught the correct script to follow in relation to his mother and others, but had no understanding of ‘love’ as a feeling between and in relation to others. In essence we [from a pure autistic perspective] know and relate to other people as objects. This is why a young autistic child, perhaps wanting an ice cream from the fridge, may simply lead his mother-object to the fridge simply using her as a tool without engaging his mother socially. This is called instrumental use of other people. For parents having a child who treats them as an object/tool is undoubtedly traumatic, especially if they are grieving for the loss of the normal child they so much expected to have. I know, but can never understand, that parents desperately want their children to love them/engage emotionally with them. This object relating is one reason why we have two ‘faces’. In public we learn to present in an acceptable way tiring as it is – Temple Grandin’s manners – but in private we drop the act and just exist as we are. we do not miss people socially; absence does not make the heart grow fonder. We do value people through what they can do if we have interest in what they are doing. In other words some common interest. If the common interest is terminated, then we no longer engage that person. They are no longer of use and thus interest. Again this is instrumental use of others.
I’m sorry the hyphen confused you. Getting parents to understand how autistics think and understand others is an uphill battle as the notion that their autistic child understands people and the world of sentimental people completely differently is terribly confronting to them. Parents, desperate to be loved, seek cures to make their autistic child ‘normal’ and love them but an autistic child is normal in him-/her-self. I’ve lost count over the years of how many parents have told me that I as an autistic and a professional in education/behaviour management with autistics don’t know anything about autism and that their child has a special kind of autism. Love is truly blind.

‘Tis done. Stand down red alert.

Watch Lupin with Omar Sy.
Added to my list, thanks.

Speaking of which…
Always remember that anybody can call themselves a “therapist” and there are lots of crackpot organizations that will give you a piece of paper attesting to that.

If anyone’s getting aroused by this thread, I’m summoning a constable.
For the love of God, show some mercy. Anything but The Hay Wain again.

And so, we can arrive at a situation in which merely declining to participate in someone else’s psychodrama is construed as an act of “violence” and a basis for screeching and rage. When in fact the person actually threatening the violence, against themselves, is the one whose psychodrama is unenticing and impossible to satisfy.
That.
And the current solution seems to be for the mentally ill to hold the rest of the world hostage with emotional blackmail. Even repeating the lies is not enough – one must repeat them convincingly. For some, the loudest, it’s never convincingly enough. Impossible to satisfy sums up the situation.

Even repeating the lies is not enough – one must repeat them convincingly.
And as noted in the thread following this, the people of whom such demands are made, and whose bewilderment or hesitation may result in hysterical indignation and fits of temper, have no way of being sure which of the various phenomena bundled under the category of ‘trans’ they’re actually faced with. It may be someone with gender dysphoria; it may be an autogynephilic man, an attention-seeking fetishist, as seen here, or some other opportunist bedlamite. And how one might respond, how indulgent one might be, could very much depend on which it is.

In essence we [from a pure autistic perspective] know and relate to other people as objects. […] This is called instrumental use of other people.
There’s another word for that: sociopathy. It’s one of the reasons so many BPDs (sociopathy is also a cluster B disorder) claim to be autistic; superficially the symptoms are similar and it’s easier to get sympathy.
we can arrive at a situation in which merely declining to participate in someone else’s psychodrama is construed as an act of “violence” and a basis for screeching and rage
It’s not a rabid dog’s fault that it’s rabid; that doesn’t make it any safer to be around. The correct response to any dysmorphic is “No, you’re not a woman. Get help.”

I have had multiple separate guests walk around my home turning off all the lights without asking.
Heh. Is it a décor issue?

The correct response to any dysmorphic is “No, you’re not a woman. Get help.”
It’s been interesting to see just how readily some people will abandon psychological realism. And then to see where that gets them.

Does that make me a bad person?
No. Have a drink. And a packet of chocolate biscuits.

Vintage commie bollocks from the Grauniad: “Isn’t it more likely that the orcs, who live in dire poverty, actually support Sauron because he represents the liberal forces of science and industrialisation, in the face of a brutally oppressive conservative social order?”
This illustrates how commies can support even the most genocidal regime as long as it’s nominally socialist.

I thought orcs were smallish whales. How are they “living in poverty”?

@ DR: “There’s another word for that: sociopathy. It’s one of the reasons so many BPDs (sociopathy is also a cluster B disorder) claim to be autistic; superficially the symptoms are similar and it’s easier to get sympathy.”
Over 20 years ago I met an autistic man called Lindsay, a few years older than I, who had been employed by a family to give interim day care to their 11 year old severely autistic and intellectually disabled [estimated FSIQ 30] boy who had been removed from his special school due to extreme and frequent violence. I was preparing an intensive behaviour program to try go gain some real control before he grew too big to safely handle without drugs – he’s over 6 feet tall now. Lindsay explained he had read the rationale of my proposed program and asked how I could know so much about autism and autistics that was not in text books. I explained that my professional colleagues in the disability service had suggested I was autistic and I had been in the field for over 20 years. [Shortly after I underwent a formal assessment and the diagnosis was confirmed.] Lindsay then asked ‘what’s the difference between an autistic and a sociopath?’ My answer was that neither has a conscience ‘of the heart’, but an autistic does not care to deliberately harm others for harm’s sake whereas a sociopath likes to hurt others and is empowered by hurting them. [One has to care personally about others to either love or hate them and that requires the ability to empathise.] Of course autistic people can and do harm to others – I bear many scars inflicted by autistics and have lost a disc out of my spine due to having to intervene in a large woman’s violent rage – but the primary purpose of autistic violence is not to harm for harm’s sake and gain personal satisfaction, even enjoyment. When autistics are violent in action it’s usually due to high anxiety and them seeking to escape to safety: flight or fight to escape.
As for “… so many BPDs (sociopathy is also a cluster B disorder) claim to be autistic” I suspect you’re correct. I have been puzzled over the years by people facing charges for criminal acts towards others in circumstances that don’t seem to fit with being truly autistic, yet they played the autistic ‘card’ in court. One extreme example of misdiagnosis was the mass murderer Martin Bryant in Tasmania in 1996. Soon after he killed 35 people the popular press was claiming he was autistic [Asperger’s Syndrome]. He’s not. He’s a low IQ [FSIQ 64] man who clearly displayed serious indicators of conduct disorder from early childhood and who liked hurting others. It was not a surprise when his full forensic psychiatric report was eventually posted on an Australian autism site. The report clearly refuted any notion he was autistic and Australian autistics did not want to be tainted by association with a mass murderer.

Orc lives matter!
“Orc” is American slang for “vicious urban thug”. Is it ever used that way in the UK?

Thanks, David.

Can’t speak for anyone else, but Sonkitten wants a cure. Imagine spending your life in a country where you don’t understand the language and customs and can’t learn them no matter how long you live there. That’s autism. He has struggled mightily to talk as much as he can and the social niceties are still mostly over his head, and probably always will be.

@ Princess Cutekitten: I understand what you’re saying and it applies to a greater or lesser degree to all of us who are autistic. I frequently misunderstand what is said to me by others [unless they give me a full context] and have to seek clarification. I also don’t recognise people I actually know when they turn up in different settings. I don’t understand most informal or colloquial utterances by others. I always miss the point of a joke including when the joke is about me. I often find what I say or write is misconstrued/misunderstood because I operate ‘on the lines’ so to speak, never ‘between the lines’. That’s why my posts are very detailed and explicit. It’s also a reflection of how I think in relation to others: always highly analytical. I have presented hundreds of lectures on autism/behaviour to very large audiences with great confidence – but that’s work – but cannot and will not enter any social setting unless I am forced to do so and then only in company with some-one I trust who can help me stay grounded. Even then I leave as soon as I can as my anxiety rises toward complete terror as the busy settings, noise, visual stimulation, etc. overwhelms me. In such settings I quickly reach the point where the voices of people speaking to me blend with the background noise, I experience a sensation of vertigo and must leave.
One of the fundamentals issues for us is that we really cannot understand how the minds of the majority operate. Again this is where our lack of the ability to empathise, i.e. read the emotions of others, is an issue as all NT behaviour including communication is coloured by and accompanied by emotional messages which we either miss altogether or misread. Either way we get into strife for being rude or thoughtless at best. I was asked by a professional colleague what was the most significant result of being formally diagnosed. My immediate response was that it meant I wasn’t the evil, bad mannered, anti-social pig many people considered me to be. I was just an autistic doing my best.
There is, of course, no cure, but training in social skills and how to present is very important. As a young teacher I was hopeless in presentation [and thus class control] to/with my students. I made myself practise in front of a large mirror at home over many months and, copying the effective teachers I had seen and heard, practised how to stand, how to look and gesture. [I hate eye contact with others, but taught myself to look at the eyes of others by practising in the mirror looking at my own eyes.] I also used a tape recorder to practise the sorts of verbal instructions I might use when teaching. Then I would listen to the recordings and repeat the process over and over until I got wording, inflection, volume, speed right. I learned to act the role of a teacher. I also was lucky that my father was a radio/TV personality, very pedantic, who demanded we present and speak in a formal manner at all times and corrected us when we mis-spoke.
Being on the outside of NT society looking in, but unable to join in confidently and also safely was initially a confusing disappointment, but I – my brother is the same – am much happier simply being Me now retired on my farm.
Jim

@Daniel Ream – I just want to tell you I appreciate the concise and clear distinctions you make about these terms, here and in the previous thread, and on many earlier occasions too. It’s most helpful — I generalize from my own experience: you’ve helped me out of a number of tangled thinks (not a typo). Thank you.