What they say

I have seen it happen often enough to regard it as a pattern.

People who characterise themselves as parents of autistic children, who appear to regard autism as a debilitating disease to be cured, or a form of poisoning to be cleansed of. They say autistic self-advocates, people who advocate for neurodiversity, they characterise those people as "high-functioning Asperger's" who get through life fine and don't need other than the usual assistance everyone gets, characterised as wanting to trumpet themselves splendid untroubled individuals equal or superior to the rest of humanity. They say that these advocates, in their drive to present themselves as just fine are stomping over the parents' children getting access to services, treatment and cures all as part of their selfish self-aggrandisement.

What do they say? They say wrong, for one. Many autistic advocates are not those who would be diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome. Many are not verbal, or not always. Many need carers or some similar arrangement. Many, as they have pointed out, are no different in diagnostic status and outward appearance from the children these parents say they are speaking for. So they're not right, when they say those things.

What do they say? They characterise people who do or could have a diagnosis of Asperger's Syndrome as people who are just fine. People who are utterly unconnected from 'real autism' and who do not experience any problems worth calling 'serious'.

So what they do, in order to protect their children from these people who are advocating that their children (as a subset of neurodiverse people) deserve consideration, access, recognition as valid people, support and all those nifty things, what they do is contribute to a discourse and public atmosphere which makes it harder for people to gain access to support or being taken seriously.

In trying to say "Stop telling me chelating (and other 'treatments') is useless, stop telling me my child is fine and does not need to be un-broken" they end up saying "Shut up. You don't even need or want access / services / accommodation, you have no right to an opinion or to be taken seriously about issues that affect you."

I've written and deleted a lot of concluding paragraphs for this post, mainly because I found all the constructions I attempted to be suggestive that one of those expressions is more or less of a problem than the other. Then I noticed my "In trying to say [...] they end up saying [...]" construction could be read also as implying a progression of reprehensibility. This paragraph is for explicitly disclaiming that meaning.

Venting

So you're participating in a thread where your main argument is that being a cis heterosexual man who is interested only in cis women and not ever in trans women, and that this is perfectly fine because it is your orientation...

... and then someone says, incidental to her actual argument, that given what you've expressed in that thread, probably most trans women wouldn't be interested in you anyway - you actually have the gall to call that an ad hominem? So you think it is just peachy to repeat at length that you only want cis women and trans women who don't disclose are being immoral and deceptive, but if anyone suggests that trans women might find that attitude offensively unattractive, you claim you're being subjected to an unfair personal attack?

Try getting a sense of proportion before the next time you have an urge to reiterate the beliefs that get trans people murdered.

And all these cis people, feminist and otherwise who have such a problem with the possibility that maybe you'll accidentally have sex with a trans person and feel violated, then perhaps what you should do is confess up-front to everyone you want to flirt with that you would be bothered by them being trans. There's a better chance you'll find kindred spirits than someone carrying icky trans cooties, bah.

[because don't click on links which outrage auntysarah]