Autism rights movement: Encyclopedia II - Autism rights movement - Controversy

Autism rights movement - Controversy

Autism rights movement - Criticism

The movement has been criticized, mostly by parents of autistic children who believe the goals of the movement will not help their own children. There are some critics of the movement who still support some of the movement's goals despite opposing other goals.

Critics of the movement argue that the autistic spectrum people in the movement are high functioning and/or Asperger's and that they have the ability to communicate. Lenny Schafer, for example, argues that those in the movement have Asperger's not autism, and believes if they would change every use of autism with Asperger's the movement might make sense ^[34]. They argue that low functioning autistic people do not have the ability to communicate at all, but that the movement's activists clearly have the ability to write eloquently, and they believe that those who have no ability to speak at all are likely to want or need very different things from those who can communicate. Bobby Newman said in an issue of the Schafer Autism Report that he believes that those without basic skills of self-care would not want those who are capable of communication to speak on their behalf.

The anonymous website Autism: A Debilitating Disease, Not a Culture argues that the movement's goals of understanding autistic people and changing the world to accommodate them is not enough because understanding will not end self-injury in autistic people and will not teach them to communicate [35].

Some critics of the movement believe Michelle Dawson played an important role in the Auton case in the Supreme Court of Canada in 2004 and is responsible for Canadian children not receiving applied behavioral analysis, which is considered an important therepy by the people who make this criticism; these critics believe ABA has been scientifically proven to be effective and gives autistic children the best chance of success in adulthood. Some critics also fear that the movement will prevent other autistic children from receiving treatment.

Kit Weintraub said, "I am afraid of this movement" ^[36] and has said she would like to change her son's quirkiness because it prevents him from making friends ^[37]. She says, "It's no fun being different" ^[38].

Some critics argue that only the opinions of autism professionals are valid, and not the opinion of autistic activists, because they argue that it is those who are experts in a field who can study a disorder, not those who have the disorder.

Autism rights movement - Responses from the movement

The autism rights movement has responded to its critics.

Autistics.Org says that they receive e-mails from parents of autistic children, saying that the parents claim their own children are different and have more difficulties than them. The people at Autistics.Org argue that when the parents describe their children's difficulties, they are describing the children to have difficulties that range from very similar to their own difficulties that they had as children, to very similar to their current difficulties as adults [39].

Activists in the movement have responded to criticisms that say they are high functioning or Asperger's by saying that some of them have been called low functioning as children by professionals, some of them can write but have no oral speech, and that some of them have periods of time where any form of communication is impossible.

In an article titled History of ANI, Jim Sinclair, who has also been target of similar criticism from very early on, goes into detail about "the politics of opposition to self-advocacy". He notes, for example, that a common tactic is denying that "the persons mounting the challenge are really members of the group to which they claim membership". Sinclair illustrates the point with an analogy regarding Frederick Douglass, a nineteenth-century African American who became a well-known abolitionist writer and speaker. Douglass was after some time suspected of being an impostor because he was well spoken and educated, so he did not fit the stereotype of black slaves.

A.M. Baggs who has been published in the Autism Information Library responded to Bobby Newman's argument by saying that she was once in the situation Newman describes and would have wanted activists to stop her from receiving treatment she felt was harmful [40].

Autistics.Org has responded to Kit Weintraub's wish to remove her son's quirkiness so that he will make friends by saying that when someone is bullied or ostracized for a quality, it is because of people who are intolerant and not the fault of people who are different [41].

The claim that autistic activists cannot claim expertise in autism has sometimes been countered by autistic activists by saying that doctors once believed homosexuality was a disorder when it in fact was not, and they claim from this that today's doctors may be making the same mistake with autism. Homosexuality was dropped from the DSM in 1973 mostly due to activism [42]. Furthermore, autistic advocates such as Michelle Dawson are, in fact, experts in autism and some autistic people have degrees in psychology. Some argue that given the perseverative traits of many autistics, it is not far fetched to suppose that some of them have acquired expert-level knowledge in the area.

Further responses of the movement can be summarized as follows:

• The critics' position is tautological: They claim autistic persons cannot communicate and therefore don't have a voice. If they learn to communicate, they are no longer autistic by definition, and therefore are not allowed to speak on behalf of autistics.
• The critics' responses consist mostly of ad hominem and straw man attacks [43], a basic lack of understanding about autism, and anecdotal accounts about scientifically dubious "recoveries". They have not addressed the challenges to behavioral interventions in any meaningful way.
• It is not true that all autistic advocates are diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome. Some of the most outspoken ones are autistic.
• Critics should abstain from attempting to diagnose over the internet.
• The prognosis of autism is notoriously unpredictable. Autistic activists ask, why should parents assume that their 3 or 4 year old child will behave the same way at age 30? They have also argued there are no indications that the so-called autism epidemic is anything more than mass hysteria, and that all the "miracle cures" (which are not scientifically validated) are all but mass delusion.
• Being able to communicate well in writing is not inconsistent with a diagnosis of autism.
• Autism does not disappear the moment a person learns to communicate. Successfully teaching to communicate is not the same as "curing" autism.
• Parents should consider that one day their autistic children will grow up and could very well join the autistic rights movement.
• Parents should take into account the self-esteem of their autistic children. Activists ask, is it better to teach these children that they have a neurological disease requiring intensive behavioral training to correct, or that they have unique and special neurology they should cherish and accept for what it is?
• Some of the critics' own children have apparently learned to communicate already, so their position is confusing because they argue that the writing abilities of autistic activists is evidence that they are fundamentally higher functioning than the children of the critics.
• Autistic individuals are usually very sensitive. When their diagnosis (or even a self-diagnosis) is questioned, they usually find that insulting, abusive and cruel.

Autism rights movement - Ongoing debate

The debate is ongoing and critics have responded to the autism rights movement's responses to their original criticisms, and the autism rights movement has responded to those.

Autism rights movement - Criticism within the movement

Within the movement there can be disagreements. Some autistics would prefer autism to be seen as a disability instead of a disease, meaning that it would have a status similar to blindness or deafness. Analogies to deaf culture have been cited. The concern is that calling for autism to be viewed as simply a way of being or as a minority group (much like gay and lesbian persons) would take away from the alleged needs some autistics have for aid and assistance.

Joel Smith has criticized the movement because he says that there are some within the movement who only want to include certain subgroups of autistic people in the autistic community and that some in the movement are insulting to neurotypicals [44].

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Controversy", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki