I want to comment on the “cure for autism” topic. For someone who is only mildly autistic, the idea that someone else might want you cured can be offensive. You think of autism as part of who you are, and you love who you are. But think about that autistic person on the other end of the spectrum who cannot talk, interact with others, or ever live on their own. Can you understand why they (or their loved ones) would want a cure? Autism, for them, is not just part of their personality—it’s a detriment to their life. If we could cure that person and allow them to actually thrive, isn’t that a good thing?
I’ll be totally honest. I know a few autistic people, including my own cousin and a few close friends (one diagnosed, one not but him and our friends would bet money on it).
Autism is an explanation, it is not an excuse. Might sound harsh, but let me explain.
People are often too keen just to let shit slide because someone is autistic, but often that presents problems. People with autism (or more specifically ASD), can be rigidly affixed to one point of view, unable to understand others, become irate or irrational when things are different or unusual to them, be unable to understand social cues or situations and cause issues in them as a result.
This is perfectly fine. It is a condition and people must respect and understand it.
But it is not an excuse and people shouldn’t have to put up with it. If someone with autism is not fitting into a social situation, through no fault of their own, people shouldn’t just have to roll with it and have it ruin everyone’s time (which I have witnessed).
Furthermore, people don’t seem to understand the correlation vs causation factor. I mentioned this just tonight, but a very high proportion of incels (look it up) have ASD. Again, an explanation, not an excuse. Most people with autism do not act like this, but a lot of those who do have autism. It is therefore perfectly fine to call people out on such behaviour and not let them use their condition as an excuse, but to tar all people with autism as potentially falling down the same rabbit hole, is not good.
where is this hate coming from ? A general ignorance on what autistic truly entails
a lot of people will not know the difference between anti-social and asocial means, and they will usually use antisocial to mean ungregarious, but anti social basically means immorally mean, or amorally mean (basically … not accurately)
and many people, especially many americans, are not very literate or knowledgeable on mental illnesses, or conditions like autism. I don’t know if autism is a mental illness
Emblematic of this can be seen with the “vaccines cause autism” movement of ignorance.
A non insignificant number of autists are awkward when it comes to social interactions, an anecdotally noticeable number of autists will display “quirks” I don’t know if I’m using the term non offensively but I want to stress I don’t mean to. Some will display behaviors that could be interpreted as mean. Hence the various forms of stigma
Some people dont even understand that it’s a spectrum. A lot of people, ignorant people, will just stigmatize people for having mental illnesses.
A lot of people can’t make the difference between schyzophrenia and DID (dissociative identity disorder) or even “psychopathy” (i.e if they hear someone is schyzophrenic, these ignorant people will think that it means schyzophrenics are inherently bad or serial killers)
I think it all goes back to ignorance and a lack of sympathy/compassion.
I’m not going to comment on whether it’s supposed to be cure, if we should or not, I don’t even know if autism is a disease or even if there exist neural patterns that can be noticed in autists of certain types.
Don’t despair, don’t think of yourself any less if you’re autistic, the real people to be deplored are those ignorant incompassionate people with too much ego and little heart.
Society is so disconnected with the impact and meaning of the word that they forget how they’re used or how hurtful they can be. “Jealous” and “literally” had different meanings in the dictionary before ignorant people used those to mean envious and figuratively
I hope this explanation is suitable to you, I wish you well
Im guessing it comes mostly from Karens.
Idiots