A reader left a comment here last night that I want to scream from the rooftops, paint on a billboard, put on the side of a city bus and fly on a banner behind a plane. Comment: The parents I know of so-called low functioning children are getting sick and tired of their beautiful amazing awesome kids being used as pitiful and pathetic examples of how awful and intolerable autism is. This is NOT about where a person is on the spectrum. ALL autistic people deserve to be respected, heard, and treated as FULLY HUMAN. We need to be mindful of THAT. As (another reader) said - there can be nothing worse than being viewed as absent - that applies equally to ALL autistic people regardless of how severely they are affected. In fact, the more severely affected an autistic person is (the more their ability to communicate in conventional ways is affected), the more vulnerable they are to abuse and mistreatment by society as a DIRECT RESULT of the fear mongering rhetoric of Autism Speaks - because how will they report it, and who will even CARE about the mistreatment of an empty, burdensome, not-even-real shell of a person. This is about human dignity and respect - and that is a UNIVERSAL right, not a right of only the so-called high-functioning. *** None of this is about where people fall on the spectrum. There is no mystical line where severity of condition (be it the challenges of Autism or otherwise) trumps the right to human dignity. EVER. Thank you for this, Caitlyn. It needs to be heard. This is not about high vs low. It never was. Its about dignity.
Posted on: Sun, 17 Nov 2013 20:53:09 +0000
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