diverse language forbidden

Paul Wady is an activist + writer on autism who does an Edinburgh Fringe show on it annually. I have seen a lot of the silly radical language politics he describes going on for several years + getting ever purgier + more factionally radicalised. Today Paul shared on social media:
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An ethos has been invented in which the term Neurodiversity Movement means people who reject and ignore the severely disabled and autistic, and won't hear anything negative said about being on the spectrum. Which is of course absurd. This seems to be something we have to address daily.

It was invented by people with different motives such as Anti Vaxxers, ABA practitioners and people who hate being autistic. Also people who just plain hate being. Finally a certain BE CURED OR BE DAMNED attitude?

I might also venture to describe them as 'Wannabe NT's'.

Assertion of this definition of the term, invariably takes the form of people ignoring anyone trying to reason or debate with them and just going around in circles. Saying her and over that they are right. It's not sane.

If you meet anyone on social media who ignores what you say and just replies any way they want, for example when you describe the loose umbrella term autism as anything but a disorder and that's that - you can predict what you get back. It's a disorder and that's that. No amount of reason seems to get through. But the bizarre thing is, they must understand what you are trying to tell them.

Personally I see it all as relative and you have to have the conditions/symptoms of disability to be disabled rather than one condition that always means you are.

So thank you to everyone doing this. Without such facist eugenicist attitudes, I would not have been able to so clearly define my ideas and attitudes in the field of self advocacy. Keep up the good work - because people can spot when someone does not listen to reason or have the ability to engage in a rational dialogue.

12 Feb 2020

common sense asserting of your fair place socially could get you criminalised

www.change.org/p/uk-government-house-of-parliament-uk-prime-minister-reform-of-protection-from-harassment-1997-act-stop-the-wrongful-criminalisation-of-individuals-with-conditions-that-affect-social-understanding?recruiter=69061609&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=share_facebook_responsive&utm_term=des-lg-no_src-no_msg&fb_ref=Default A petition by ASSGO on the law on harrassment passed in 1997 after a media panic about stalking.

We need to be careful that able autistics have a normal citizen's capacity and hence not to lump all autistics together with learning disability and mental health in arguments about lack of insight into an action's social effects. Some actions are totally fair and logical and fall foul of PC. So I'm not wholly happy with the petition's wording. But have signed because it is an important civil liberty point for all autistics to prevent logical fair sensible actions of assertion of fair place in society, from getting classed as harrassment because a malicious person unfairly has a stronger social influence and power base.

For we already live in a time when it has become logically impossible for straight men to take any step at all towards acquiring a partner because absolutely any such action can count as an offence of sexual harrassment and get us into trouble. This at the same time as music and TV still peer pressurise for partnering. A total mixed message in the culture, saying to all straight men: we assume you have failed or are suffering unless you do something which we might charge you with harrassment if you do.

As I wrote in my submission to parliament's enquiry on loneliness: "The correct awareness of safety for women and ending a sex object view of them has led to the opposite swing of a PC presumption against men in every boundary colliding situation. Men now perceive, that in any dispute over accidental social or physical collisions, whoever actually caused them, we are the ones who are more politically convenient to blame. This has gender unequal impacts on safety of acceptance to be in social spaces, hence to feel secure in them, hence on exclusion and loneliness."

This is a strong reason why the petition is right.

Maurice Frank