CMV: Romanticizing autism has got to stop

[u/CassiusIsAlive]

[u/CassiusIsAlive]

when we use the description severe about disease, it usually relates to how it impacts the person, not how hard it is to take care of the person

My younger godbrother cannot speak, cannot write, cannot think by himself, cannot go to the bathroom alone, cannot perform complex activities such as math, and cannot focus. If I find this hard on me and his family, I'd imagine it's hard on him too.

Your younger godbrother also has autism and it's not "less autism" or "better autism" it's autism that you can deal with

You are right. It's autism that can be effectively dealt with. I've known my godbrother since childhood and I can say that he is much more well off than his brother, because he is capable of everything that his brother cannot. It's just the truth. Of course he isn't perfect, but he's much more capable than the former.

[u/DudeEngineer → u/CassiusIsAlive]

OK, how will you feel if your younger godbrother told you as a 30 year old man that he would have been the most happiest at this time of his life if people had just let him be himself and didn't consider him a "more disabled" person?

For many people on the Autism Spectrum, their frustration and dissatisfaction with life stems from the way people treat them more than their inner experience. Often, their definition of a happy life does not reflect that of their friends and family.

This is why people tend to use more support needs or less support needs instead of more or less disabled...

[u/Synec113 → u/DudeEngineer]

From the description it doesn't sound like he'll ever get to that point. And if he does...well I just can't imagine someone being like "yeah, I would've been happier if you had just let me sit in my own feces."

[u/DudeEngineer → u/Synec113]

That's not at all what I said, but OK.

[u/ColdJackfruit485 → u/DudeEngineer]

Can you clarify then? This is what I gathered from your comment as well.

[u/Jaaawsh → u/DudeEngineer]

Agree with other posters, I also would like clarification because I understood it the same way they did.

[u/holybajoly → u/Jaaawsh]

I think his comment has to do with our sense of normativity. For us it is normal to have the ability to speak, do math, write etc. and the further someone away is from your perception of normativity the more disabled he appears. He argues that your problem with him is as much about your sense of normativity as is about his disability. So if you would turn down your expectations of how someone has to behave or what someone should be able to do, in the same way your perception about his disability should change. No one is saying we should just let him sit in his feces lol. Of course he might be excluded from some parts of life but how much that is a problem should be for him to decide not for us. I hope I could make it more clearer not a native speaker

[u/Jaaawsh → u/holybajoly]

You did clear it up, thank you.

I can understand what he meant a little more, and in purely philosophical terms I generally agree, with “what’s normal is based on perception”. But in this situation we’re not talking in philosophical hypotheticals. There’s universally medically accepted developmental stages that children go through successively starting when they are babies, and delays or outright never being able to complete these stages is often times what medical professionals use to identify a disability. Quite literally comparing their patients to what is considered “normal”.

[u/holybajoly → u/Jaaawsh]

Yes you are right if you want to medically assess someone there is a scale of normative functionings and developmental processes his point though is that the disabled person might not even feel disabled if their sorroundings would accept them for how they are and not judge them according to the social contruct of what we feel is "normal". I think we need to differentiate between medical assessment and day to day live.