Now it’s autism denial
Sigh. Laurie Penny pretends not to know that some autistic people can’t function independently in order to defend people who trans autistic children and adolescents.
Watching lifts open and close for hours on end isn’t being “interested in lifts.” LP is despicable.
“allistic” is a damn meme term; it’s worse than “cis”. Fucking hate normies lying about autistic people.
Try caring for an autistic child. Except it wouldn’t be fair to the child to let LP, or anyone like her, care for such an autistic child. LP doesn’t appear to understand what autism is.
LP is welcome to have a conversation with my son. However, gender identity is a particular kind of religion, and not even direct evidence of non-agency would convince her. My son is a good kid, but unable to care for himself.
There’s a real problem with how the concept of neural normalcy is being erased by the concept of “neurodivergency”. Quite like how the concept of binary sex is being erased by the gender-benders, come to think of it.
I saw on Facebook that a person with and actual diagnosed DSD was kicked out of a DSD group because he insisted on DSDs being biological, not “identity”, and not appropriately described as “intersex”. How dare he bring biology into the issue.
There are a number of people who self-diagnose as autistic or mildly autistic or “on the spectrum”. With ADHD being examined as possibly belonging to the autism spectrum, I’d expect that people who self-diagnose with ADHD to start self-diagnosing at autistic as well. It’s yet another way to become “special” and to complain about the “ableist” or whatever other people.
(I grant that sometimes self-diagnosis is the best way to go for inexpensive insight. But that requires that it not be used in this way, as a means to claim victimhood or feigned solidarity.)
(FWIW, I was psychiatrically diagnosed with ADHD as an adult, and I’ve self-diagnosed with mild autism, which I think has helped me understand my own behavior and thought patterns, not for any other reason.)
I’m glad I’m not the only one who finds LP’s take revolting.
I have read that one fairly common characteristic of autistic children and teens is a tendency to focus obsessively on a goal or interest, becoming distressed and insistent when thwarted.
If I claimed there was a condition which manifested itself through a stubborn conviction that it was very important and needed to be addressed RIGHT NOW — and discovered that over 30% of those who were presumed to have this condition were autistic — it would be in my best interest to claim that autistics with the condition were in no way exhibiting symptoms of autism, but just had the condition.
Or perhaps I’d exploit the connection. I’ve come across Genderists making a case that transgenderism is probably a physical condition associated with whatever’s causing autism. Evidence: the correlation.
Autism is a real condition.
Unhappiness with societal expectations is a real condition, and is common in autistic people.
‘Trans’ is a fake diagnosis with terrible ‘treatments’ meted out to anyone ‘diagnosed’ with it.
I feel confident in saying the above, as an autistic woman who fell for the notion of ‘trans’, because (if one didn’t look too closely) its proponents seemed to be pushing an evidence-based explanation for my inability to fit in.
The fact is that we should change society’s expectations, not the bodies of people who can’t fit in.
I dunno, I just got handed a giant folder of magazine clippings when I turned 18 then was introduced to the term “Asperger’s syndrome”.
Turned out that’s why I was in therapy as a kid too…
Even if they are as able as non-autistic children and teens to make appropriate medical decisions (and many of them aren’t), I don’t even accept the hypothesis that children and teens are capable of making this sort of life-changing irreversible decision. I’m not sure how many adults could make such a decision wisely, and I’m pretty sure those who are still developing are in a poor state.
So even if they DID have the same ability to make this decision, that ability is very low, and for most kids, probably close to zero.
I honestly wonder if LP and her ilk support child marriage. After all, it’s theoretically ~easier~ to end a bad marriage than it is to walk back trans medical interventions. If a fourteen year old is ready and able to decide to go under the knife for life-altering surgery, surely they should also be able to commit to a lifetime commitment, yeah?
I don’t think the issue is ‘agency’. That word is often (and here) used to weaponise a condition or characteristic. The issue is that many autistic people are especially vulnerable to manipulation. I know two young men (21 and 23) who are relatively mildly autistic. Both are able to lead fairly independent lives. They work, they have social lives, they drive, albeit all with limitations.
But they are also both very suggestible. One is prone to conspiracy theories of all kinds. They appeal very strongly to him. He seeks them out and he’s easily sucked in. The other has great difficulty in understanding the world around him – events global and local – in ways other than how he believes they affect him personally and directly.
If these men didn’t have a strong support system, they would be very vulnerable to the cultish nature of the gender identity movement. Agency isn’t an issue; differences in processing events and motives are.
Penny’s use of ‘agency’ here is pure ableism: she’s using the understandable fear of offending or hurting people with a condition to push an ideology. She’s using people with autism as props. She’s the ableist.
@Freemage:
I’m sure she does given the correct cultural context, or at least will waffle when non-whites do it.
Freemage, it helps us remember the pedo connections of the trans movement when we hear people like LP speak of children’s “agency.” If children have agency to choose to have themselves chemically or physically castrated, then they have agency to consent to sex with adults. Monica Helms (ne Jason Hogge), who created the flag, stated that the pink and blue on that flag represent children.
My wife fell for me because I could beat her at chess. It’s not a surprise our son is autistic. He has gone through obsessions with a number of things, and one of them was the idea that he was really a girl. Autistic people have a marked tendency to fall into obsessions and cults. Transgenderism is a cult that explains not fitting in, has coopted authority figures, and has defense scripts built in. Our son desisted, but they don’t all. Transgenderism is the most powerful threat to autistic children today; it’s going through them like genocide.
Oh god. That’s horrifying.
Ophelia, as a parent having your child fall into the transgender cult provokes a kind of profound grief for which it’s very hard to find support. My son’s adolescence was harder for me than my own. He’s safe now.
And we are both doing our best to support other parents and children wrestling with the same hydra.
Papito, I’m glad to hear you came through it. I hope I can see it through as well.
I can only imagine.
These are autobiographies of two autistic people. They give some insight into what their world is like.
https://www.amazon.com/Born-Blue-Day-Extraordinary-Autistic/dp/1416549013
https://www.amazon.com/Nobody-Nowhere-Remarkable-Autobiography-Autistic/dp/1853027189
I was struck by the degree to which these people can seem like functioning adults, and yet have major–potentially catastrophic–deficits. Two examples.
Donna Williams is visiting a strange city. She’s on the bus to the airport to get her return flight. She starts talking to a woman on the bus. The woman hears that she is visiting and says, “Oh, you must see the botanical gardens!” And off she goes, away from airport, to see the botanical gardens. (Someone else on the bus realized that she was going the wrong way and got her headed back to airport.)
Daniel Tammet was interviewed on NPR. I’m listening to the interview, and he’s fluent, and well spoken, and engaging. I’m not doubting his diagnosis, but I’m not hearing the crushing disability, either. Then the interviewer asks him what situations are difficult for him, and he says the beach. The interviewer asks why the beach, and he sighs, and says, “Ohhh…so many pebbles to be sorted; so many grains of sand that have to be counted…”
[…] yes – the “difference” approach. That explains why Laurie Penny got so indignant the other day when Ted Kuhner talked about autism as a severe disorder as opposed to Just Being […]