Why do they think autism is some sort of horror story where kids suffer in agony or something?
Autism Speaks played a huuuge part in making that the dominant narrative about autism for the past 20 years or so.
In the 00s (maybe early 10s?) one of the videos they made for parents of newly diagnosed children had a parent talking about how she was considering driving off a bridge to kill herself and her autistic child, but didn’t because her non-autistic child was also in the car. This was presented as totally normal and just a way to prepare for how an autistic child will ruin your life.
Autism Speaks is disgusting. What an awful organization. I wish more people knew that.
I had no idea that existed. Wtf
Malicious misinformation is nothing new I guess.
But, there must be ways to manage the ill effects of Autism. Parents can talk to experts, instead dealing with it on their own.
I get what you’re saying, and caretakers certainly deserve support, even (especially!) when they’re talking about wanting to kill their own child, even if for no other reason than the child’s safety.
IMO Autism Speaks’ biggest issue is that their money comes from marketing autism as a horrible disease that affects only or primarily children, which only increases stigma against autistic people of all ages. They also have the problem of having no autistic members involved in a meaningful capacity in the organization, and AFAIK the only autistic member of their board of directors left because they were essentially ignored. That absolutely flies in the face of decades of disability advocacy, where a common refrain is “nothing about us without us.”
TL;DR: caretakers deserve support but Autism Speaks is super awful.
very sane behaviour regarding your child.
When that kind of parents how their autistic child is very difficult and that it keeps getting worse I am always feeling like : Karen, only 10 % of your kid issues are caused by his autism, the 90% are 100% because you treat him like shit and he is turbo-traumatized
Suicide is one of the top three causes of death for autistic people. The other two are heart disease and epilepsy complications, and on average we die under 50 years of age.
What they don’t understand though is that the suicide part isn’t caused by autism. It’s caused by people being horrible to each other. Or in other words: people with autism die because people without it make living hell for them.
Yes, but that’s not due to autism, that’s due to the way society treats autistic people.
that’s due to the way society treats autistic people.
So when is that going to change
I’d love to know.
My daughter has it, and I’d say about 5-10 years ago it changed. The amount of acceptance is so much higher than it used to be. Obviously we need work, but hell in my city there are special times at both grocery stores and movie theatres for neuro-diverse people. The difference to a decade ago is extreme.
It’s beginning to change in the academic world. The deficit model is falling for the difference/diversity paradigm.
no
actually everyone treat others like shit. But what NT have is a much stronger upport circle and fewer difference.
By fewer difference I mean that you cant pick on someone that everyone around him does : A boss can’t really bully a NT for using implicite dicourse when all of their collegues does the exact same, they would immediately realise something is wrong. The average NT knowing jackshit about autism, it can be easy to trick them into thinking that ND should “just make an effort” to understand implicite discourse.
That’s sad part, we are technically all targeted with the same amount of flak so if you are slightly out of cover, you get blasted away
actually everyone treat others like shit.
That’s simply not true.
that might be an exageration but that is surprisingly common
supposedly
Do tell us your theory.
no thanks, but if youve got some proof id be happy to read it
So you don’t have any idea why so many people on the spectrum commit suicide but you don’t think it’s the way they’re regularly mistreated?
i think that the mistreatment of folks with autism is not enough to explain to have this high of a suicide rate, and that autism does just make life harder to deal with, regardless of discrimination
It’s also the 2nd leading cause of death for 2SLGBTQ+ youth:
The Trevor Project’s 2022 National Survey on LGBTQ Youth Mental Health found that 45% of LGBTQ youth seriously considered attempting suicide in the past year, including more than half of transgender and nonbinary youth.
So there’s a lot more suffering in general for anyone basically not white, straight, (and depending on circumstances, male). Autism isn’t a death sentence. While people with severe autism struggle a lot more than most, they can have very good fulfilling lives. Source: My daughter (23) has (moderate) autism and her best friend (23) has severe.
can add the healthy for white and straight if you’re in the USA. Also just methodologically poc are faced with very different risk with racially motivated crimes and the fact that ethnic getthoisation create strong social support structures will help curb suicidal tendencies.
Even if the struggles can be similar, the supplementary problem with LGBTQ+, is loneliness. There are actually very few of them, so finding people like you that understand your struggles is very difficult. That really hit me when I talked for the first time with people leading association supporting LGBTQ, most of the work is reaching out to people to tell them they are not alone
It’s a mix of the ABA industry, early researchers and socio-environmental issues.
Early researchers cultivate the myth of the normative human. Autists were an altered version of human that has to be corrected. If a human wasn’t corrected to match the norm, it could not be happy in life and will suffer it’s entire life.
So autists have to be corrected (we know it’s false) to be happy whatever the means. It ended with electric shock and others stuffs seen during WW2. This is how ABA was created. It relies on the fears of autists not being happy until they are corrected.
ABA, PBT and all the others acronyms has built an industry worth a lot of money. They finance more research on the field with huge standard, COI and consent issues among others. They need to keep the fear in the population to keep the business up.
The third is the new way to see autism. The struggles of autists are mostly socio-environmental. It means that issues aren’t the person and autism. It’s a lack of acceptance of the diversity by the neurological majority. It implies discrimination, patronizing, and violence against autists.
Early researchers cultivate the myth of the normative human.
We are still there with mental illness. People have this idea that there are “normal” people and those who require therapy, as if there is a single person on earth that didn’t come out of their childhood with some level of trauma.
Well actually not that much. Two things. First, some trauma can be dealt with thanks to your support circle. Second, the thing is our experience of others is never representative of the overall society. You could look at my social circle and claim it as an argument. But that is not taking in account that my circle is small and not made of average people.
Lastly. Everyone suffered a cold once, they were not damned, not everyone is constantly sick. Though you wouldn’t say there is no difference between sick and healthy people. Still everyone will go to the doctor once. In my country that is this approach much closer to physiological medicine that mental health professional promote.
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Taking a quick look at the comments I see we’re back to 2000s autism speaks bullshit.
Autistic people aren’t suffering unless you’re putting them in a system that treats them as subhuman.
Autistic people aren’t suffering unless you’re putting them in a system that treats them as subhuman.
Ah, I see you’re familiar with society as well.
I mean, let’s face it, I’ve seen one meme where autism is described as a condition where everyone else around them has a disorder where they say things they don’t mean, where they don’t care about structure, fail to focus strictly on singular topics, have unreliable memories, drop weird hints and stare creepily into eyeballs. And the people with autism are the ones with the disorder, because there are way more of the others.
Well well well, just look at any job and watch how people are treated.
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Autistic people aren’t suffering unless you’re putting them in a system that treats them as subhuman.
While that is true for many of us, it’s not true for all of us. But I’m still sure most of us still like being alive, so i’m not disagreeing with the sentiment behind your argument.
Yes most autistic people shouldn’t suffer if we dismantle the oppressive societal constructs and stigma around the condition and treat them as human.
Most people shouldn’t suffer if we break down the social constructs and stigma around them, from race, gender and sex, class, and many other factors.
Antinatalism is not about selectively culling autistic people. It is about the realization that society sucks and the societal constructs we have are likely to increase suffering and so we shouldn’t have kids anymore until those issues are resolved.
I am gay, and a racial minority, and an antinatalist. I would hate to have a child knowing they would likely have to face racial discrimination just as much as I do not find it moral to have a child because they may be gay, or autistic, or gender nonconforming, or poor. All those things would likely increase their suffering.
But I wouldn’t mind adopting any of those kids, even an autistic child, because live people are people and deserve love and compassion. Antinatalism is about the non-alive children that don’t exist and the stance that they shouldn’t ever come to be, no matter what they end up being because in our current world, live likely won’t be easy, they would likely contribute to the global environment crisis, and will likely increase the suffering in the world. And also they cannot consent to being forced into existence.
I would hate to have a child knowing they would likely have to face racial discrimination
Yep easier to die than dealing with the problem and, you know trying to do something. You know thank god everyone before us choose that instead of striving for social progress, that’s precisely why society has been steadily progressing towards amelioration for at the VERY least the past 500 years.
I do not find it moral to have a child because they may be gay, or autistic, or gender nonconforming, or poor
So… that, my friend, is turbo-eugenics. Yes, because you finding it immoral to have kids because they could be those things means that, if you had a mean to have kids, without those risks it would at least be less immoral. Oh and before you start to find excuse : making every argument for something and just saying at the end that it is bad is not being against something.
I’m not speaking for autistic people here, but I am speaking as parent to two children (now adults) on the spectrum.
Autistic children do not ruin your life and do not have ruined lives themselves. As with all parenting, sometimes things are very, very difficult and sometimes things are very, very easy. This isn’t unique to raising a neurodiverse child, this is just parenting. The unique challenges that parenting a neurodiverse child brings are 99% of the time caused by how society thinks these children/adults are and assumptions about whats best for them without actually asking them rather than any sort of intrinsic issue caused by their autism or ADHD or any other neurological difference. For the remaining 1% of the time, you just do your best.
The narrative that neurological difference, in particular autism, ruins lives has, in its modern form, been with us since Andrew Wakefield first perpetuated his fraudulent claims of vaccine damage causing autism. It was spread by antivaxx/autism activist parent groups like Jenny McCarthy’s Generation Rescue and the truly despicable people at Autism Speaks. These are the people who’ve ruined lives.
I like you. I have 2 autistic kids (still kids) and one neurotypical kid. There is no difference in raising them. Every kid has their unique challenges. I never raise my children differently unless it requires it.
Agreed! I am also super grateful for the unique experiences autism has provided our family (a trip to the fan museum and carwash show, among others).
Tell me more about this car wash show…ヾ(⌐■_■)ノ♪
The International Carwash Show happens each year in Las Vegas. It is all sorts of people in the industry: owners, manufacturers, services etc. Everyone was so nice. They even let us walk through the carwash equipment when it was turned on!
Are you certain your adult children don’t resent being born with autism?
Because I put on a hella front for my mom. Just throwing that out there.
I’m not naive (or arrogant) enough to think I know everything my kids are thinking and neither am I suggesting their lives are 100% perfect but all of them (on the spectrum or not) are all pretty forthright, confident adults. When they were teens they of course went through some shit related to their being autistic, but none of that was because they were autistic, it was down to how other people/situations made them feel because they were autistic. I’m as sure as any parent can ever be that I’ve never detected any kind of prolonged resentment or unhappiness at the fact of their autism.
We never taught them that ‘autism is a superpower’ because it isn’t. Sometimes it has advantages and sometimes there are disadvantages and describing someone elses life as superpowered puts an unrealistic expectation of happiness and accomplishment on them. By the same token, neither are their lives a ruin and my life as their parent most certainly wasn’t ruined.
it was down to how other people/situations made them feel because they were autistic.
That’s a meaningless distinction. The end result is identical.
It would be foolhardy to say that you–an assumed neurotypical person–need to be close, personal friends with everyone in your life. You select your friends–and they select you–based on how well you fit each other. The fundamental problem is that autistic people, broadly speaking, don’t fit with neurotypical people. A high-functioning autistic person will eventually realize that, and realize just how utterly alone they are in life. They will realize that the people they think of as friends will never think of them as a friend. Their social circle, if they’re lucky, might consist of a small handful of people with overlapping interests, but are not an actual social support network.
I discovered this in 2014 when I failed to complete a suicide, and lost 95% of the people I believed were friends.
I am functional on a surface level. I have a job, I’m mostly self-sufficient, I’m married to someone that is also likely neurodivergent after having been in an abusive relationship for over a decade. I’ve noticed that the less able we are to mask, the more our social circle contracts. We can not reasonably expect that people will life us, or include us in their social circles.
I disagree, its not in my opinion a meaningless distinction at all. A difficulty in cognition might prevent a person from reading War And Peace. Thats a direct result of having a learning disability. Someone with a visual disability who cannot access audio books or braille versions of War And Peace is not being affected by their disability but by the fact an accessible version is not available.
You might argue the end result is the same - an inability to read War And Peace - but the point is that for the person with a visual disability the situation is fixable if society is prepared to make the effort.
In regards to your situation you’ve had terrible experiences but they are not down to the fact youre autistic, they’re down to the fact your NT ‘friends’ weren’t really friends at all. I’m sorry they let you down but I’m pretty sure I could find similar stories where nobody in the story was autistic.
Autism is a disability. A person with an IQ of 50 simply isn’t going to be able to understand War and Peace; you can’t dumb the book down sufficiently for someone to understand if they’re going to struggle all their life to be able to put on shoes that lace instead of using Velcro. People with dyslexia can listen to audiobooks; there’s no audiobook version of deep, fulfilling friendships and social support networks, because people on the autistic spectrum are going to have a hard time offering neurotypical people the what they need. A person that’s on the autism spectrum is never going to be able to have social interactions in the same way that neurotypical people can, and those social interactions are necessary to being able to function in society. Some people on the spectrum may be able to appear normal on a surface level and will be able to get by, but it’s fucking exhausting. People that have the misfortune to be lower functioning than I am may not be able to mask effectively at all.
That’s without even getting into constrained interests, difficulty with coordination and forming positive habits–I still struggle to remember to brush my teeth daily in my middle age–or executive dysfunction.
I never claimed autism wasn’t a disability. The fact that autistic people are disabled in some ways isn’t in question. But its neither just a disability or - like all disabilities - something that isn’t disabling by virtue of the world its part of rather than its intrinsic nature.
For example, you say an autistic person cannot experience social interaction in the same way as a non autistic person. True. But the non autistic person can, with very little adjustment, be aware of that. My kids have good relationships with NT friends and whilst they might not experience them in the same way as NT friendships, they still find them fulfilling.
Those people are likely your kids’ best friends. Your kids are likely not their best friends.
Aside from marrying someone that is also neurodivergent, it is unlikely that your children will ever be the best friend of another person. They may be the friend that offers the most help, the person that always shows up to the party with lots of food and a keg, the ones that are always there with tape, boxes, and a truck when someone needs to pack up and move, the one with a spare couch when someone needs a place to stay for a couple days. …But not the best friend. If they’re very, very lucky, they’ll end up married to someone else that is also neurodivergent; otherwise, they may end up married to someone that is neurotypical, and will be taken advantage of and/or abused by their partner for their entire life.
That’s what you’re missing.
Social interactions end up being lopsided, and can never be anything but.
The fundamental problem is that autistic people, broadly speaking, don’t fit with neurotypical people. A high-functioning autistic person will eventually realize that, and realize just how utterly alone they are in life. They will realize that the people they think of as friends will never think of them as a friend.
First, I’m sorry for what you’ve been through. But from my personal experience, I know that I have three friends who have autism and/or ADHD. In each case, I did not know this until they told me. If I can’t even know who is autistic without them telling me, how can I treat them differently?
Now I understand that it is possible that some behaviours of mine could make my autistic friends uncomfortable, while not affecting my other friends. But if I am doing something like that, it is out of ignorance rather than malice, and I would of course adjust my behaviour if asked to.
So I don’t get why you think autistic people ‘don’t fit with neurotypical people’. I have friends who speak other languages, and autism is also, in a sense, speaking a different ‘body language’. With some effort, we should be able to improve communication.
The fact that you just aren’t understanding what I’m saying is demonstrating my point. You aren’t able to understand my point of view, and think that everything can just be solved by people working harder. It’s the same kind of belief that says that depressed and anxious people can be cured by just thinking happy thoughts and touching grass.
Can you be more specific? Why cannot autistic people fit in with others? Is it that others recognise them as being different and exclude them? Or is it that there are differences in the way we speak or behave that make you uncomfortable? And if it is the latter, what in particular should we change?
Yes 95% of your friends aren’t your best friends. They have their own struggle and hardships to deal with. So yes, in your situation both side needed to focus on themselves.
Lastly before being worried about the general population not including you in their social circles, did you ask yourself why you would be in their circles ? Because you were colleagues ? Or neighbour. I also am in a situation were I have virtually no friends and it fucking hurts. Loneliness fucking hurts, it ache the minds and psychology its among the worst pain I ever felt.
Though in the past years I’ve looked not for others but for things that passionated me first. And there I found people which liked me and that I liked. Some people are wildly different than me, others are likeminded but we connected. I don’t know my classmates but I have a few friends among my martial arts club. And I am not unhappy of the lack of connexion I have with my class, I don’t think we’d really fit. Despite the social constructs that claims a student’s first circle must be his class, I don’t, and its fine, I just look elsewhere for people, in place where I fit.
sounds like you resent your mom
How dare you say that to someone with autism about their own experiences? Seems like you’re just inflammatory and an asshole.
hi, i am in fact someone else with autism (undiscovered for 30+ years, it was quite a find) but also with a physical birth defect, which was very much defining and way more impactful.
“didn’t ask being born” is a trend most people go through at some point, especially in lower classes, where life itself is a struggle if not outright suffering. but who else can you blame for your existence if not your parents?
this is a pain point, which can not be ignored forever. “put on a front” only works until it doesnt anymore, and its better to talk about it instead of waiting until someone snapped. resenting and rebelling against parents is part of growing up, no matter the mental or physical condition.
but no one is really at fault, personally, everyone did their best they could at the time, and the best everyone can do is help each other.
From personal experience, the ability of people in the spectrum to feel happiness depends entirely on whether their parents were willing to make adjustments to see their children feel well. Most will want their child to be just like every other one and will damage them deeply in the pursuit of that.
An autistic life isn’t a ruined life.
just popping in to say I love being alive and I’m thankful for my parents keeping me! I made friends with a seagull today. couldn’t have done that if I was never born. fuck yeah!
I honestly can’t tell if this is sarcasm.
You’re in the right place then
unfortunately, I get that a lot. I’m just kind of a weird dude.
Is reasonable to assume people wouldn’t be that sarcastic in a place like this imo.
peak autism board exchange
I made friends with a seagull today.
I need more details about this.
This
That… is a dangerous skill Seagulls are embodiement of pure chaos, be careful with such power
Experience has shown me that the people who are thankful for their life is in the minority compared to the people who suffer their life.
That sucks
I have seen people behave in all sorts of ways
people who suffer their life have a need to express it. People who are fine don’t. Simple survivor bias
ITT: people advocating eugenics on themselves. I hate it. I hate seeing it. And stuff like this is psychologically destructive to read for me.
If people here don’t like others with similar traits to them advocating that their life and perspective is not valuable and that they should hate it and wish no-one new experience it, I recommend avoiding this thread - even moreso if you have suicidal tendencies. It was very upsetting for me ;-;, even though I personally have no intent to have kids.
frfr, it’s so fucking tragic.
I went 36 years without even knowing. Corporate greed has done more to ruin my life than my mental illnesses have.
Same. Out of all my lost jobs, only two can be proven (by me only of course) to be because of some autistic trait I have.
While I don’t value my own life as much as I should, I know I have value to others, and most of that is due to my traits. In fact, I’m starting a job today that wants me specifically because of those traits. I never thought I’d work again.
I have saved dozens of kitten lives, who go on to make their new human’s life better.
I used to hate myself. I’ve learned to embrace the way I am and couldn’t imagine being any other way. The people whose lives I have made a positive impact on would agree. I don’t have to rule the world, but my household is efficient because of me.
Eugenics isn’t the answer. I’d bet if we had the right resources available, none of the people in this thread would say that. Everyone deserves a chance at a good life. Corporate greed is the reason we don’t have those resources.
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As someone on the spectrum its ridiculous to say there life ruined first off its a spectrum so who knows how server there condition is and they can learn to live with help
The people that want to restrict reproduction are acting like eugenicists? I’m shocked. This is my shocked face.
Antinatalism says nothing about restricting reproduction, it is just the principle that people should abstain from reproduction. Going about that by forced sterilization, coercion, abuse, or eugenics would be bad for obvious reasons.
it is just the principle that people should abstain from reproduction.
Which is griping about reproduction followed by trying to shame people when they don’t take the same principled stand. And a quick visit over to the sub shows a few people taking principled stands for themselves and a whole lot blackpilled edgelord “I hate breeders” horseshit. And sure enough there’s a different post on the top page ranting about parents with disabilities having kids. Which sounds like… what?
The people that have hard opinions about reproduction are acting like eugenicists in that sub.
A philosophy is different from a Reddit page.
You are right, the reddit page is only a reflect of the people who follows it. Somehow r/Stoicism doesn’t have post shaming, harassing people and promting eugenics.
first post on r/Stoicism today : ““It can only ruin your life if it ruins your character”, so what do you do if you compromise your character?” basically a philosphical question First post today on r/Antinatalism : “To think there are people in constant chronic pain and people still add more people to this torture” considering the right call about a particular neurological disease is to bully pregnant women
not what antinatalist says
Going about that by forced sterilization, coercion, abuse, or eugenics would be bad for obvious reasons
Yeah an Mein Kampf is a book. The thing is that if antinatalism would genuinely improve the world it means it does have the goal to be implemented in all of society. This mean you’re gonna need to set a standard through rules and to enforce them. Those are the means.
Oh and if Antinatalism think having children is already bad, it clearly present having disabled children as worse
it clearly present having disabled children as worse
What makes you think that? Antinatalism is just a blanket statement of “its best to not reproduce”. We don’t discriminate that statement to any certain type of individual.
so now it is not a philosophy anymore ? Antinatalism is not just the term for people who don’t want children. It is a political philosophy, with authors, books and currents aiming at answering certain societal problem like overpopulation, overconsumption, discrimination and human suffering. It is a philosophy blaming natalism for many if not most of the problem Antinatalism claim to solve.
Oh and “What make me think that ?”, I don’t know ? this very post and the overall vocabulary used by antinatalist when they spoke of disabled children.
Remember antinatalism is a solution to human suffering, and as you can’t deny disabled children suffer a lot more, Antinatalism is therefore more involved.
Why is this subreddit full of idiots? They are misrepresenting antinatalism so fucking hard.
I know it’s not your point but this isn’t reddit
Yes.
I don’t have ASD but I have ADHD, and based on my experience I think it’s extremely fair to see knowingly inflicting upon another living being a disability that causes great pain and suffering throughout their entire life, as fucked up and immoral
It’s like pugs and pitbulls, many people can agree in the thought “why are we intentionally creating more canines with terrible disabilities which badly hurt them for the rest of their life?”, so why is it so bad when the same logic is applied to humans?
I think it’s dumb to describe it as “eugenics”, considering that’s a term almost entirely associated in the modern day with Nazism, forced imprisonment/torture/forced sterilization of certain groups, and racist beliefs. Wheras this seems concerned with wanting people to not suffer nearly as much after they’re born, so they’re expressing how they’re upset that people chose to create a new life with more suffering than average when there’s tons of equally good alternatives, and I think that’s pretty different than flat out promoting genocide…
What’s wrong with adoption anyways? It’s pretty selfish to bring a new life into this world for your own personal satisfaction when you could literally just take a child who’s already out there suffering and make them not suffer for no extra loss.
I find it stupid that they describe it as “ruined lives” though. Especially for the parents, like wtf just be a good parent? It’s not like most parents have a kid with no difficult challenges to face whatsoever. When you become a parent you sign up to being exposed to any and every possibility that could come from a kid. If you become a parent and then go “woe is me, I didn’t expect autism so I can’t deal with this, don’t blame me for not parenting correctly” then you shouldn’t have become a parent. The only way parents can “ruin” their own lives is if they’re a shitty parent, which unfortunately a majority of people are…
disability that causes great pain and suffering throughout their entire life
Motherfucker what are you talking about? I am literally just here to vibe, it’s the fault of the current system for refusing to support any kind of variety. Autism isn’t fucking osteoporosis, I’m not in pain, I’m just fucking different.
Autistic people aren’t suffering unless you’re putting them in a system which refuses to treat them as anything other than subhuman.
Remind me when we’re not going to be in a system which refuses to treat disabled people properly? We live in a world built against disabled people. That is NOT going to change soon. We are corporatist and in most of the first world the right-wing is on the rise. Look at Italy, look at most of western Europe actually. Look how much attention people like DeSantis got before blowing it, and how popular it is to hate on groups like disabled more than it has ever been in recent years – shit it only getting worse. Why bring an innocent kid into that?
Besides, neurodevolopmental disorders in many people can objectively just inflict suffering completely detached from the “system”. I’ve seen them firsthand with both myself and friends with ASD. Especially socially. Obviously won’t apply to every mentally disabled person, but it’s extremely high likelihood – I meet almost entirely people with ASD and/or ADHD who feel extremely lonely and can’t find comfort socially.
Even with treatment ADHD fucks me and many others over in ways completely unrelated to the system. Friends with ASD describe it similarly, especially when ASD doesn’t have as many options in terms of treatment compared to ADHD. When it comes to ADHD, I can’t enjoy myself with hobbies or the satisfaction of my productivity as a person without such a disorder can, I can’t find happiness in my own hobbies if I can’t do them, and I spend many days being upset that I can’t make myself do the stuff I want to do even if I have medication. I can say with confidence I would 100% be happier if I was born in the same circumstances but without ADHD. And this is an extremely common sentiment for neurodevelopmental disorders, you can see it all over the thread.
I do great socially, I just don’t have a lot of friends my age I guess, most of my friends are at least 5-6 years older than me, but I grew up mostly around adults because the neighborhood I grew up in (and still live in) did not have many kids.
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First of all, unlike disorders, everyone has the same chances when it comes to what sex their kids will be – being a woman doesn’t make you more likely to have a girl (obviously). Meanwhile people with disorders have a VERY HIGH likelihood of passing them down to their kids. Some LGBT is partially genetic, although things like environment and whether you’re ND play a much greater role.
Secondly, being LGBT or a woman in most first world countries isn’t comparable to being disabled – and LGBT rights/equality are extremely high in more civilized places like Amsterdam – but to answer your question:
No, I wouldn’t want to have a girl in this society, or anything before it – I mean to be honest I wouldn’t want any children, but I think women in this age are still seen by the people who have the power in this society as targets/objects. I don’t want to subject my child to all the disadvantages and potential horrors caused just by being a woman.
For LGBT it’s more complicated – there are places which you’ll get a life-ruining amount of bias because you’re gay or ace or trans, and there are places which you will be mostly accepted and you’ll not face nearly the amount of discrimination as most people with Autism or ADHD would. I wouldn’t intentionally have an ultra gay kid if I were for some reason permanently stuck in an extremely hateful part of the south. But if I lived in a mostly liberal or leftist city that’s known for being LGBT-friendly? Then it doesn’t matter.
That’s the discrimination difference. If you’re gay, there’s plenty of places that don’t care. Plus it doesn’t affect your daily functioning or your workflow or whatever. But if you have a mid case of ADHD or Autism, then that will be held against you practically everywhere by a majority of people. Of course, societal interactions aren’t the only difference.
And what’s the good in “society might eventually change for the better” if society’s like that now? Should I subject my kid to suffering in the present just because it “might eventually get better maybe” with no guarantee as to a ‘when’, ‘how’, or even an ‘if’? I’d gladly sacrifice myself to advance the rights of NDs, but I won’t sacrifice a possible child who can’t even consent to it.
If you see your suffering kid’s existence as “an act of spite” against a dysfunctional system… I can’t deny that sounds pretty immoral to me. I’m not here to insult you, but the way I see it is: the present is the way it is, I’m not going to sacrifice an unconsenting child just to spite the system or as a “well they want us gone, i’m not gonna give them what they want”. It’s not heroic, it’s not brave, it’s not honourable. The kid certainly isn’t going to feel honor when he’s being completely fucked over by society. (to quote “All Quiet on the Western Front” – “Honor? My son died in the war, and he doesn’t feel any honor!”)
It’s immoral – giving birth (a completely selfish act) to a child where you KNOW they have an atypically high likelihood of having something that will most likely cause them a lot of suffering in life.
I see the argument “a lot of blind people like existence so knowingly giving someone a disability isn’t bad” with the same weight as “it’s cold outside a lot of days so global warming isn’t a problem”. Like sure? It’s not like everyone who’s Autistic or ADHD or has a terminal illness or has down syndrome or bipolar or depressed is going to hate their life. But you, by willingly giving someone those things, are giving them something that most often absolutely fucks people over in ways uncomprehendable to people without disabilities. It doesn’t matter if it’s not guaranteed to make you unhappy, you are taking a large inherent risk.
Also, as a sidenote, the rhetoric that Autism/ADHD aren’t disabilities is harmful. Just because something isn’t disabling to you doesn’t mean it’s not a disability as a whole. Disabilities are a spectrum just like everything else, you as a person can have a physical disability like MS and still function fine for example. But that doesn’t stop it from being a disability, a disorder, whatever. Much like how having a viral infection but it not showing any symptoms doesn’t mean it’s not a virus – it’s just not affecting you as much as it does others.
Being a person with a disability doesn’t necessarily have to mean you’re a disabled person – you can use “disabled” to mean impaired functioning (e.g. if you’re wheelchair bound and it gets in the way of your daily life) rather than just to mean that you have a disability. But many times, I would say the majority of times, neurodivergence is actually disabling in a way other than via “the system”.
Anecdotally, my autistic friends emphasize how much torture light and especially sounds are, have pretty fucked food sensitivities (so do I, but because of ADHD), they get terrible burnout, etc. And they’re ““high functioning”” (high/low functioning are dehumanizing/reductive terms imo which is why it’s in double quotes). Of course, one of my friends actually gets an advantage from their ASD, which is they can hyperfocus on stuff for a looong time, but then they get burnout for months to years and never touch it again.
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As an autistic person (diagnosed by an actual professsional, not by tiktok), I must say I am happy existing lol
My life can be pretty miserable sometimes but it is 100% not caused by autism and if anything, I’d say the autism helps.
Same. It’s 100% society and not being too receptive and accommodating to people with “disabilities” (which i don’t see autism as).
True, but life is gud ngl
This is the case. One thing is treating all humans with respect, and another is knowingly contributing to someone having a more difficult life. You can love the ones who already exist without passing on your genetic nonsense to new ones.
I have ASD and ADHD, generally pretty happy to be here.
Autism is a spectrum and most of us are perfectly functional, happy, productive people.
It’s nothing like pugs or pitbulls, frankly that’s kind of offensive. You’re likening us to a genetic mistake. Most of the time I find myself wondering why the neurotypicals are so goddamn dysfunctional.
Who the fuck do you think you are too suggest that I, and many of my friends, shouldn’t exist?
You’re describing eugenics, call it what it is. It’s not my fault you have shitty bedfellows.
Lmao everything you say is clearly purely out of hatred. Why do you value the life of a dog so much less than the life of a human to call them “genetic mistakes”?
And who said that you and your friends shouldn’t exist? Certainly not me. You’re likening “maybe it’s a bad idea to knowingly create someone with a disability with a high likelihood of fucking someone over in life” to “i wish you and all your friends were dead and didn’t exist”.
It’s actually pretty offensive to imply to the large portion of people who have their lives negatively affected by ADHD and ASD that it’s not all that bad and they should suck it up and stop wishing they didn’t have it. Clearly a lot of people in this thread disagree with you, those who have mental disorders including ASD.
Just because you were lucky and don’t suffer much or even at all, means that it’s fine that many (and in my experience most) other people affected by the disorder suffer? That’s extremely selfish.
It is not describing eugenics. You are just saying emotionally charged words to try to make whatever you disagree with look worse. I could call what you believe in “sadism” and it’d have the same validity.
I believe it’s bad to intentionally give a child bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, mood disorders, personality disorders, etc. because those can all cause extreme pain even if it doesn’t seem like a problem when you’re younger. I’m sure you’d agree that it’s immoral to willingly afflict someone with that. But you draw the line at neurodevelopmental disorders for some reason?
In this case you already exist. You only get the right to exist after you do exist, or we would have to discuss the rights of inexistent people, and that would be very confusing
- I am autistic and have ADHD and I still prefer having been born to the alternative thank you very much!
- Comparing the intentional breeding of universaly harmful traits in dogs to taking a slightly higher risk of ASD which is rarely harmful is quite a stretch.
- Without autistic people many great things wouldn’t exist today. I would argue that without the special interests and hyperfocus of neurodiverse people a lot of scientce and engineering wouldn’t have happened or at least a lot later.
- While ASD and ADHD are often percieved as harmful, they are rarely only harmful and often bring special talent or at least a unique perspective.
The entire “your ADHD is a superpower” rhetoric is extremely harmful to people who have ADHD and generally leads to the struggles of ADHD not being taken seriously. I don’t have a “gift” or a “superpower”, I have a disability…
ADHD has many, MANY objectively bad things about it, and extremely few “good” things. I’d say the only thing that’s positive that comes out of my ADHD is that I have a lot of interests, but even that is a problem in and of itself because it makes me divide my attention between many different things and never complete any of them… ADHD comes with a ton of executive dysfunction and self-regulation problems that tend to fuck you up a lot in life.
The hyperfocus is hardly a benefit considering it generally causes you to waste a ton of time on things that shouldn’t get that much time, and even not considering that I’d say any benefit of hyperfocus is heavily outweighed by just being able to do anything at any time without having to constantly fight yourself over it, since you’d get so much more done. I find that people with both a good amount of Autism and some ADHD do a lot better than people who just have ADHD when it comes to these things, because the ASD can take actual advantage of the hyperfocus, but that’s something a lot of people with ADHD do NOT have…
Also if someone was never born, they wouldn’t know nor care that they weren’t born since they never existed. There’s literally 0 downside to not being born. Any sort of idea that you’d hate to not have been born or that you would prefer to be born than not to be is a purely irrational thought considering that.
And yes, there are people with ASD and ADHD and depression and whatever that live lives that they like. That’s not the point. The point is that the disorders do cause an objective amount of suffering that is higher than those without, especially in this society, and in many cases the suffering causes a lot of harm to the person, so intentionally taking a high chance of that happening to your kid is immoral. I don’t want to intentionally harm my kid, you shouldn’t either.
Btw, it’s not a “slightly higher risk” you are giving your kid like 9x the odds of having ASD if you yourself have ASD. And if you have ADHD you are almost guaranteeing that your kid also has ADHD.
I don’t consider ADHD a superpower and I struggle with executive dysfunction every single day. I would love to be able to understand other people and their non verbal or indirect communication better. On the other hand I love the fact that my personal combination of disabilities has allowed me to learn to extremely quickly research enough of any given topic to have relevant discussions with experts. My widespread intereste allowed me to learn a huge variety of facts most of which are useless most of the time but many of which were surprisingly useful at least one time in my life. My bad working memory forced me to learn to use general principles to get useful results based on very little information and to quickly distill the most relevant information out of heaps of text. Nearly every single strenght I have is literally the flip-side of one of my weaknesses. On the whole I would say that while my ADHD and ASD have clearly made my life more challenging on the whole those challenges helped me become the person I am. I recognize that not everyone is as lucky as I am in that regard but i"m quite sure there are others who are even more lucky than me many of which won’t even suspect they are neurodivergent, just as I didn’t a few years ago. So I think your perception of the “objective” ammount of neurodivergent suffering may be squewed because only people who suffer at least a bit have reason to get a diagnosis.
It kind of sounds like you’re saying these parents should have predicted their 3 twins would end up with autism. Which, you know, would be…deeply stupid
I would assume that one or both of the parents have ASD if all 3 of their kids have ASD. I would hope that kind of stuff would be clarified when taking the guy’s sperm, but who knows in some countries like the US right. It could be recessive genes, or something environmental like smoking/drinking while pregnant though
I don’t know. I hate the fact that I was born autistic. Unlike a lot of autistic people, I refuse to think of it as some kind of ‘superpower’ or positive thing.
I was born defective. I’m literally a broken human who doesn’t function correctly.
I know that I sure as hell wish I wasn’t born, and whilst I’m sure those mothers are going to do a great job with their children, I also don’t think that I should have children at the risk of passing it down and letting another person suffer the way I have.
We think similarly. Autism makes life difficult. I think scanning for defective genes early in pregnancy is worthwhile to avoid life destroying issues.
Of course autism has a scale of sorts, you can still live somewhat normally, but it sure as hell doesn’t feel beneficial
You can’t check genes to determine whether people will have a fulfilling and interesting life or whether they are some point will wish they weren’t born. You can only make horrifying filtering based on crude guesses, also known as eugenics.
My life is hard, therefore I am okay with eugenics
Yeah righto, mate. Sucks for you, but maybe we should just make life easier for the disabled instead of preventing us from existing entirely. Just a thought.
If you were never born then no harm no foul. Nobody is suggesting purging the living.
Yeah sure, but when people single out particular demographics as being somehow less deserving of life, people within those demographics who don’t hate their lives tend to get pissy about it for some reason. Go figure.
You are so, so privileged in this regard, you know that right?
It’s like insane the amount of luck you have to be in your position in life where you are autistic and happy and supported and capable of interacting with the world and rich enough to enjoy it.
It’s wonderful you and the others in this thread like you are so privileged. You are rare and that is special and I’m genuinely very glad you all had a chance to exist.
But I have to ask: why do you get to override the views and beliefs of those in the autistic community who are not as privileged as you? You don’t speak for us, just as we don’t/can’t for you. We’re not advocating for eugenics or telling anyone how to live their lives. All we’ve done is talk about ethics and not procreated.
So many of us with autism struggle immensly our whole lives, the world around us is so overwhelming, many of us cannot communicate efficiently or at all, and many of us are isolated, vulnerable to abuse and/or have been abused.
Why are you so angry with us for sharing with our autistic community that our lives are so difficult that we wouldn’t want to have children who would suffer far worse that we have?Maybe you can’t comprehend this? Idk. Maybe you think we’re too autistic and retarded to have our own voice and make decisions about our own bodies?
This instance on us needing to happily want to add more overwhelmed and suicidal offspring to the already overwhelmed suicidal world around us, is creepy.
It really is great that you are young and privileged and hopefull enough to want to make the world a better place because you have so much faith for humanity changing and everything, but we’re kinda running out of time for all that now.
Potential offspring will suffer worse than any of us ever have as climate collapse and resource depletion, and not to mention the global rise in fascism, economic collapse (and potentially ww3) and all happening and escalating in the very real near future.But you keep protesting and doing your social activism work though, I hope it works out for you and you succeed in making having autism easier for people like you and all your children, and you all enjoy the few decades we all have left before the food and water run out and the planet becomes to hot and unstable for human life.
You do you. And let us do our thing please.It’s like insane the amount of luck you have to be in your position in life where you are autistic and happy and supported and capable of interacting with the world and rich enough to enjoy it.
Autism is a spectrum, not a binary. It is likely that the vast majority of autistic people lead lives that are, for want of a better word, ‘normal’.
Of course, it could also be that all people are autistic to some extent.
Yeah, I am very privileged in a lot of ways. I understand that much, and am extremely grateful for it. I also understand that my opinions are at least in part derived from my privileged personal experience. You’re absolutely right in that I cannot speak to the experience of someone who lacks the support I have. I just think that of the billions whose lives are less privileged than my own, many would nevertheless consider their lives to be worth living. I find it tragic when some don’t, but I don’t think that that is necessarily a universally held opinion by the underprivileged.
I just have to ask: why do you insist on putting questions to me that have false premises? Nowhere in this thread have I said that mine is the universal Autistic^TM view, and yet you ask me why I feel I have the right to override people’s opinions. Hell, I don’t think anyone else in this thread has argued that there is any obligation to procreate. On the contrary, I have seen people people making the universal claim that autistic lives are especially not worth living and making the prescriptive claim that autists should not reproduce. That is a eugenicist argument.
So you and all the other’s in this thread who have been actively insulting and angry and putting words like ‘eugenics’ in our mouths to shut us down, and calling us stupid, mentally ill, edgelords and psychopaths etc.
You don’t think you’ve been overriding our views as members of the autistic community? Or claiming we are wrong and dangerously mentally unsound for holding them? And you haven’t seen anyone advocating for this topic to be banned on social media so we can no longer discuss it?..
Your opinion that autistic people with antinatalist views are advocating eugenics, is so full of logical fallacies I felt like a dick writing them all out (I can put them back if you want tho, I’m just trying not to be too offensive here).
Most people who hear about antinatalism assume stupid shit and get angry and start with the character insults and accusations of racism and eugenics, and about how antinatalism means wanting to mass murder and segregate society.
And most people, like you, refuse to listen when it’s explained.
Antinatalists are individuals who have independantly chosen not to procreate for the shared ethical reason of reducing suffering.
I doubt most antinatalists are even aware of the term, they’re just people who have looked at the world around them and chosen not to add to it because it’s awful.
And yeah, as a person with basic empathy It’s really hard to look at the world and not feel sad when you learn people willingly procreate with debilitating hereditary conditions and are knowingly bringing potential suffering into the world for purely selfish reasons.
This is not a world ANYONE should be looking at and wanting to bring more life into, autistic or not.
Talking about it being upsetting and unethical isn’t advocating for eugenics.
Antinatalists, autistic or otherwise, aren’t forcing anyone to do anything, and talking about our feelings isn’t hurting anyone unless folk like you decide to assume nasty shit about us and be rude.
Antinatalists having this conversation somewhere you can see it, are not some eugenist plot to harm people with a sterility causing memetic virus, nor is it some wild attempt at converting the masses into ‘’“genetic purity”" by forcing idiots like you to call us names because you won’t fucking read what we’re even actually saying but you’re convinced we’re evil.
I genuinely doubt most antinatalists even really talk about this anywhere but online in antinatalist spaces, and when it comes up on other forums like it has here. It’s not exactly light conversation to have irl when most people react like they have here, or worse.
.
And forgive me if this is a false equivalency but if you believe antinatalism is stupid and we’re all crazy eugenicists for not passing down our suffering, but apparently don’t believe we should instead be popping out kids like bunnies and gurning about how great everything is,
what do you want from us instead then?To just not fucking talk about it?
(Sorry, I failed at not being offensive. I’m too tired to care much right now though tbh but if it’s any consolation, it’s really not personal, I’m just tired, hate most people, and trying to finish this before i go to bed)
There are people who suggest that, though
maybe we should just make life easier for the disabled
So when is that gonna happen
Believe it or not, some people are actually working on that instead of just giving up on the world ever improving.
Realistically, either when we start organizing, protesting and fighting, or when the current system is buried underground.
I don’t know how autism affects your life but I can speak for myself and I know it can be tough, executive dysfuntion has been beating my ass hard for a few years at this point.
Still, I do not think I’m broken because of it, years of conditioning by a society that doesn’t give a shit about us and want us to do as much or more than everyone else while also laughing at us really fucks me up, even while being aware of these expectations and lack of structural support.
Also, I wouldn’t consider myself really me without the special interests and obsessions I had throughout my life and the ways I have talked and expressed it.
What I have just said most likely won’t change anything in your life, but I just wanted to aknowledge how hard it can be while also showing a little bit of what makes me happy about my experience being autistic. I hope for the best for you, friend.
What I have just said most likely won’t change anything in your life
You’re wrong, you just helped me a little with self acceptance, something I struggle with a lot. So thank you, friend.
😊
I feel like everyone in this thread are arguing two different things. “My neurodivergence has made my life hell and I wish I never existed in the first place” and “you can live a fullfilling life with neurodivergence” aren’t conflicting concepts to me.
Right there with you
Big same, yet when I got old and stopped caring about anything, and started paying more attention to others than my own problems, I started to notice autistic tendencies in almost everyone I have interacted with. Even people that bully or hate on autistic people. The hyperfixation on negative things or on really awful views on people and the world is always strong in those ones, paired with other weird brain shit like complexes coupled with total denial and inability to accept that they are wrong. I’ve been feeling like everyone is autistic and there is just more axes to the spectrum than I had been told in the past. Like rather than a point on a line, it’s a coordinate in a cube. The most central ones are ‘neurotypical’ and it moves outward in all directions in 3d space.
On a side note neroatypical/nerotypical as a term kinda pisses me off because I swear it’s more typical for people to be neuroatypical than what is considered neurotypical. People just think they are ‘normal’ but they are wrong. And it’s not lesbians or vaccines, if anything its the forever chemicals and microplastics that these evil fucking corpos have been pumping into us and the world and we are only going to see more and more autism, and only the ultra wealthy will be able to call themselves normal while the rest of us will be considered defective.
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I think antinatalism is a really interesting philosophy. But it falls apart as soon as you discriminate - It is fair to question the ethics of reproduction, but as soon as you discriminate you end up in eugenics territory. This subreddit is really hostile sadly. there is a lot of ableism under the disguise of antinatalism
True antinatalism would say everyone should not have kids, regardless of anything. Of course nobody is enforcing this so it’s a kinda do whatever but maybe think twice before having kids.
The antinatalism subreddit (and similar groups elsewhere) is one of the most toxic places on the internet. It just reeks of hatred, and worse yet, treats that hatred as some sort of virtue.
Go live your life however you want, kids or no. But grouping up to talk shit about children or people who start families is just gross.
They can’t, they have to tell the world how better they are because they didn’t finish inside.
“It’s not a toxic stew of depression and misanthropy guys, it’s a totally valid belief system!”
This isn’t the first time I’ve seen it here or on reddit either, and it’s honestly sad.
These groups always seem like doomers who have ingested so much negativity that they’ve developed depression. Either that, or they’re taking the loooong way to just telling their moms that they don’t want to start a family.
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It’s great that they aren’t procreating then.
I lurked for a while there, and the most horrible realisation is that many had children, they just regretted so much. Those kids are fucked
That’s really sad.
And it also has the same energy as your divorced uncles telling you their theories about how “marriage is horrible”
That’s… why they’re there.
That isn’t a dunk lol
I have this theory that negative affinity groups (a term I made up for groups based on antipathy for something or someone) have a tendency towards toxic behavior. When you gain connection and social clout for dunking on someone or something, there’s very little incentive to be fair to them or show any kind of nuance.
Contrast with groups with affirmative goals or a defined object of interest. The positive groups can measure progress towards their goals or new and interesting perspectives on their objects.
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Antinatalism is a more deranged branch of eugenics. It’s not simply “promoting eugenics” it’s a belief that giving birth is the greatest evil one can inflict upon a child and the world at large.
That they’d clearly see us as subhuman isn’t surprising given that they at best want our entire species to voluntarily go extinct. Their entire worldview is best summed up as gentle genocide is good.
It’s like these people have forgotten there are people with different set of beliefs than their own.
No matter how justified your beliefs are, you cannot impose them on others. This is true for religions and this is true for every single ideological stance out there.
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They’re nuts, for sure.
It’s also ridiculously cruel to create a consciousness knowing it’ll die.
Unless you are religious and believe in eternal torment after death, death isn’t cruel, it’s simply an end to life, a permanent return to nonexistence no more or less cruel than having never been born.
Additionally, while they aren’t exactly wrong in that going from nonexistence to existence results in an infinite increase in potential for suffering, that holds true for joy/happiness/pleasure.
Imo bringing someone into being is not cruel nor wonderful, not moral nor immoral. It simply is.
This is the only good logical argument I’ve heard against it and I’m on board. People get too emotional talking about this and antinatalists generally approach this from a point of logic.
Most of the arguments I’ve seen so far are from sheltered first world people that have never suffered. They almost believe it’s a choice or that depression is just being really sad.
They deny that depression can come up from actual consistently repeated experiences that someone can have no control over.
The fact that most people on planet earth are suffering is what drives the idea. If your consciousness randomly hopped to the next person born on earth, would you want to live that life?
It’s also ridiculously cruel to create a consciousness knowing it’ll die.
No, it isn’t. There, now we’re on equal rhetorical footing unless you’d like to support that incredibly bold statement with … anything? A link? A train of thought?
What is the alternative? Giving up on humanity existing?
We can’t change that this how life exists in our reality.
