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Disordered subculture
Sep. 21st, 2008 11:59 amSo, it's a week since the time the YMCA promised they'd call me. The Village People didn't know what they were talking about. The YMCA is not fun to stay at. Not if they take this long to get back to me.
Meanwhile, in order to kill time, and because Coach Maddy keeps saying I haven't 'accepted' my asperger's diagnosis, whatever that means, I joined this forum for people with Asperger's and Autism, called "Wrong Planet". I don't really like this site. It's too big, and too full of the same kind of stupidity so prevalent on regular forums. The irony here is that it's a forum for people with autism and Asperger's syndrome, and people like us generally prefer smaller groups. But this site is huge and it's typically 'aspie' of me not to like that. Then again, it could also be culture shock. There's this whole 'aspie' subculture going on here that I guess I don't really get. Of course, it could also just be me being pissed off at all the people who say that 'neurotypicals' (people without disorders) are mean/stupid/shallow/sheep. I mean, jeez, way to insult my entire family, my friends and my mentors and teachers.
So on Wednesday I went to see Coach Maddy and I explained my plight to her, and she pointed me in the direction of Giant Steps, where I might perhaps volunteer. Giant Steps is a non-profit organisation for autism which has its headquarters a few blocks away from my house. They've got a school for autistic kids with a waiting list of 600 people. So I checked out their site, and their home page had this to say about their students:
"...ces enfants tout en éclats de vie et de talents, frappés d'un invisible mal, qui voudrait les retenir captifs, l'autisme... Tout gain fait reculer l'autisme. Des petits pas, mais contre un tel ennemi, des pas de Géant..."
>: ( Not cool, people. I'm not possessed or held prisoner by my Asperger's. Autism isn't some evil monster you have to vanquish, it's just a name for a collection of my qualities and quirks. It's part of who I am. Get rid of it, and you get rid of many of the things that make me ME. HELP ME, by all means, but don't think of me as a victim.
The rest of the site seems okay, though. Their methods include behavior therapy, music therapy, games therapy, speech therapy. It all seems quite benign, except for that offensive home page.
I'm new to this whole aspie subculture thing, but it's hard to ignore all the press it has been getting lately, mostly about a conflict between freaked parents who only see the downsides to autism and autistic adults who are pissed off that the aforementioned freaked parents think of them as damaged, empty soulless husks. Largely, I've had very little support for my disorders until recently, so I'd been looking at this conflict from the sidelines. It didn't affect ME. Now it does. This place is three blocks away from my house!! O_o
Now, the question is: should I volunteer for this organisation anyway and try to fight this kind of thinking from within, by being a good role model for the children and showing the adults and parents what's what, or should I boycott it?
Meanwhile, in order to kill time, and because Coach Maddy keeps saying I haven't 'accepted' my asperger's diagnosis, whatever that means, I joined this forum for people with Asperger's and Autism, called "Wrong Planet". I don't really like this site. It's too big, and too full of the same kind of stupidity so prevalent on regular forums. The irony here is that it's a forum for people with autism and Asperger's syndrome, and people like us generally prefer smaller groups. But this site is huge and it's typically 'aspie' of me not to like that. Then again, it could also be culture shock. There's this whole 'aspie' subculture going on here that I guess I don't really get. Of course, it could also just be me being pissed off at all the people who say that 'neurotypicals' (people without disorders) are mean/stupid/shallow/sheep. I mean, jeez, way to insult my entire family, my friends and my mentors and teachers.
So on Wednesday I went to see Coach Maddy and I explained my plight to her, and she pointed me in the direction of Giant Steps, where I might perhaps volunteer. Giant Steps is a non-profit organisation for autism which has its headquarters a few blocks away from my house. They've got a school for autistic kids with a waiting list of 600 people. So I checked out their site, and their home page had this to say about their students:
"...ces enfants tout en éclats de vie et de talents, frappés d'un invisible mal, qui voudrait les retenir captifs, l'autisme... Tout gain fait reculer l'autisme. Des petits pas, mais contre un tel ennemi, des pas de Géant..."
>: ( Not cool, people. I'm not possessed or held prisoner by my Asperger's. Autism isn't some evil monster you have to vanquish, it's just a name for a collection of my qualities and quirks. It's part of who I am. Get rid of it, and you get rid of many of the things that make me ME. HELP ME, by all means, but don't think of me as a victim.
The rest of the site seems okay, though. Their methods include behavior therapy, music therapy, games therapy, speech therapy. It all seems quite benign, except for that offensive home page.
I'm new to this whole aspie subculture thing, but it's hard to ignore all the press it has been getting lately, mostly about a conflict between freaked parents who only see the downsides to autism and autistic adults who are pissed off that the aforementioned freaked parents think of them as damaged, empty soulless husks. Largely, I've had very little support for my disorders until recently, so I'd been looking at this conflict from the sidelines. It didn't affect ME. Now it does. This place is three blocks away from my house!! O_o
Now, the question is: should I volunteer for this organisation anyway and try to fight this kind of thinking from within, by being a good role model for the children and showing the adults and parents what's what, or should I boycott it?
