How an autistic writer changed the way novelist David Mitchell sees his own son
I&#x27;m autistic and this passage is disturbing to me:<p>&quot;It upended many of the ... sort of inherited pieces of wisdom that I thought I knew about autism. For example, that people with autism can&#x27;t emote, or that they don&#x27;t have emotions, or they can&#x27;t imagine that they&#x27;re inside the head of someone else. And also, that they don&#x27;t have imaginations, or don&#x27;t aspire to other areas of life more than a day-to-day survival. Naoki, even when he was writing as a 13-year-old ... seemed, internally, to be as fully-functioning and as capable of — if not enjoying life, aspiring to enjoy life — as a neurotypical child. So this made all the difference for us.&quot;<p>Our basic humanity is a revelation to people, even our parents, and they have to learn about it from books when we&#x27;re right there.  I swear that a lot of the clinical language around autism is normal people projecting.  I mean, think of the terrible things he admitted believing about his own son, and tell me that&#x27;s not a theory-of-mind or empathy impairment.<p>I&#x27;ve never thought, &quot;Gee, normal people are different than me.  They must be robots unlike myself, the real human being.&quot;  There&#x27;s obviously someone IN there, also in animals.  People don&#x27;t actually have a hard time thinking that their nonverbal animals are people, but they have a hard time thinking nonverbal people are people.<p>Really stop and think how fucked up it is for the stigma to be THAT dehumanizing.  Try dating when people believe this stuff about you.<p>While people are going around assuming I don&#x27;t have a mind, they also get to cause me a great deal of sensory discomfort, totally oblivious to the fact that they&#x27;re doing it.  Hooray for you, loud motorcycle guy!  Nice lawn, asshole with a leaf blower!<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;wearelikeyourchild.blogspot.nl&#x2F;2017&#x2F;02&#x2F;sometimes-its-not-me-its-you.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;wearelikeyourchild.blogspot.nl&#x2F;2017&#x2F;02&#x2F;sometimes-its-...</a><p>If you read a passage like the one I quoted and it&#x27;s a revelation to you, you should NOT pat yourself on the back for feeling aware and tolerant.  You should feel ashamed for having spent your whole life until that moment making autistic people&#x27;s lives shitty.  And you should resolve to learn compassion for all sentient beings and meditate to make the world suffer less.<p>I appreciate the guy for his honesty that I could quote him to make a point.  I think the reporter already decided it was a feel-good story, so they didn&#x27;t probe into darker aspects of Autism Parents.<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;thesubjectsupposedtoknow.us&#x2F;at-the-mercy-of-imbeciles-comments-on-aba&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;thesubjectsupposedtoknow.us&#x2F;at-the-mercy-of-imbeciles...</a><p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;thesubjectsupposedtoknow.us&#x2F;lacanian-psychoanalysis-aba-and-the-children-who-wont-speak&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;thesubjectsupposedtoknow.us&#x2F;lacanian-psychoanalysis-a...</a><p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;thesubjectsupposedtoknow.us&#x2F;this-is-autism-awful-bitch-abuses-child-on-tv-audience-suggests-circus-or-concentration-camp-for-him&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;thesubjectsupposedtoknow.us&#x2F;this-is-autism-awful-bitc...</a><p>The fact that normal people can watch CHILD ABUSE and not understand that it&#x27;s child abuse is much worse than me being blunt about describing the reality of why autism sucks, which is normal people.<p>I don&#x27;t think normal people should feel good about autism right now.  Why don&#x27;t we just get rid of vaccination to prevent people like me from being born?  That&#x27;s pretty normal.  It&#x27;s not like eugenics is a new idea.  Everybody knows Asperger cherry-picked the patients he reported and described them that way so the Nazis wouldn&#x27;t kill them, right? (See Neurotribes)<p>They sterilized 2 of my great aunts for epilepsy.  Both later committed suicide.  Normal people did that, and it&#x27;s normal to think that way now.<p>Something nobody ever thinks about:  if this guy didn&#x27;t understand his son was sentient for a long stretch of time before reading an autism autobiography, do you think maybe that contributed to his son&#x27;s problems with mentalization and emotion regulation?  Do you think that&#x27;s a little bit invalidating, which when it happens chronically gives people borderline personality disorder, which makes people injure themselves?  I REALLY question what&#x27;s autism and what&#x27;s the effect of normal people having autistic children.<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;thesubjectsupposedtoknow.us&#x2F;imagine-if-1-in-68-children-born-to-white-families-were-black&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;thesubjectsupposedtoknow.us&#x2F;imagine-if-1-in-68-childr...</a><p>Anyone can read online about why autistic adults think the standard treatment, ABA, is abusive.  That&#x27;s the not-feel-good part of &quot;neurodiversity.&quot;<p>After years of &quot;treatment&quot; and talking about their kids in front of them like they&#x27;re not there, parents then turn around and blame AUTISM and direct funds to prevention instead of doing anything to improve my life and the lives of people worse off than me.  In fact, they&#x27;re extremely hostile and dismissive of autistic adults, which is the world they&#x27;re creating for their children.  Other people have said this before me, for years.<p>Even more unpleasant truth: bullying and dehumanization are necessary features of capitalism, and it&#x27;s white men&#x27;s fault more than anyone else&#x27;s.<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;thesubjectsupposedtoknow.us&#x2F;slave-owners-thought-free-market-capitalism-was-a-humanitarian-outrage&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;thesubjectsupposedtoknow.us&#x2F;slave-owners-thought-free...</a><p>Feel bad about autism today. Thanks.