The "C" Word: Common Cause in Spite of Conflicting Perspectives

I have always wanted to help my son with the things he finds challenging (speech for example). My son has had years of various therapies - speech, OT, etc. I will continue to help him whenever I can. I am his mum and that's what mum's do. He turns 14 tomorrow and a while back I came to understand that he is who he is and I love him and that if he was changed in some way (cured? recovered?) then he would not be him. I could not cope with that. There are things my younger son also finds challenging (he is a typically developing, very bright child) and I try to help him where I can as well. I also would not want him to be other than who he is. It is my belief that autism is a way of being/experiencing the world - different to the experience of many others but not wrong or something that needs fixing. Like Temple Grandin has spoken about - people with autism are into the details, and you want someone like that designing the planes we fly in or the cars we drive. My son has an intellectual disability and will never design a plane (I'd be the first refusing to board it if he did!) but he sees the very first flower on our tomato vines, and the slug crawling across the window, and the piece of string trapped in the wheel of the shoppping trolley, and the light reflecting on the ceiling, and the drops of rain falling in the puddle, and the spider web between two trees, and the dust bunny under the bed, and the sparkle of glitter in the concrete on a sunny day ..... and my life would be so bereft without him and the things he shows me.

I'm an adult with autism. I personally don't see why anyone wouldn't want to find a cure. My life has been tough from the beginning. Basically non-verbal and non-potty trained until the second grade, i've never had an actual friend. I can't really connect with anyone. I was so socially inept that when I got out of college I couldn't get a job because I couldn't do an interview. (despite having graduated Magna Cum Laude) I wound up homeless for awhile.

Cure? Heck yes! I wouldn't inflict this upon my worst enemy.

I think the article sums it up nicely. I think peoples view of 'cure' depends on the severity of the problem. Why not find a cure, but not mandate it and make it optional.

I am an adult on the Spectrum along with many others. I claim nothing special about myself. I have not obtained 4.0 GPA averages. I did not learn violin in the womb, nor can I paint with my hair. I am pretty good with factoring numbers in to primes, and I can communicate with a degree of eloquence when I try. Yet, the label of "genius" would be far from what I would put upon myself. I do not claim any special skills.

My reason why I do not wish to be "cured" is really rather simple, having nothing really to do with special skills or being some kind of "next step." Whether we argue that Asperger is genetic or environmental, it is what I am at this point. Too much of my personality is invested in who and what I am. A cure would be an external manifestation of change. I want my personal changes to be internal, and not external.

I agree with Frank S about job discrimination. He has the right to feel as he does. I also graduated Cum Laude and with honors. I also experience job discrimination of a very horrendous kind. I stimmed in public when growing up, even as a teenager. Yet, I must be honest and maintain that who I am is not going to change with some kind of cure. And, a "cure" will probably imply eugenics. That would be unacceptable.

So, I humbly vote "anti-cure," a position I have come to after long thought and deliberation, including some waffling on the matter. All the best.

The C-word is about changing something from a state to another, which in many cases can be right. But for a such change to be accepted it should only be accomplish when the person who are going to change accept it. Parents may sure have many challenges with one who is so much different than themself, but this do not legalize to do something with it without a clear consent from the person with autism. If that happens it may rightly be called both oppression and adultism. The war between those who want a cure and those who are against it, or in a better way the political continuum of autism, excist cause of the fact that some people experience oppression.

The origin of the C-word have started in what autism is perceived as. From an unhealthy state on one side to a human evolutionary thing on the other hand. In research, all of the perspectives may be taken into account if something valid can be produced. As for me, as the Aspie, social scientist and against cure I am, the perspectives of postmodernism and autism have interested me.

When one reading through ordinary psychological theory about autism, it is proposed as a different in human minds which make the human with it impaired in the society and also sometimes a problem for the society. On the other hand if one reading critical philosophy, autism appear more as a threat against neoliberalism and market than a problem in itself, where the autists are deeply connected with the nature of analytic a priori when it is expected that they are deeply connected with the market. What the human are expected to be in connection with have changed in time. Before modernism they was often expected to be in connection with religious elements, in the modernism the science and enlightment won over the religion as the expected connection. And so the market came. The rising of autism started primary in the postmodernism, and one have to ask oneself why it didnt arise earlier. It may have been cause of the expected connection in society was more fitted for autists also in the past times and wasnt seen as a really problem at all.

With this in mind, it cannot be stated that a cure is what is to be searched for. Doing so will dismiss important scientifically traditions and skilled train of science. The society may need a cure as well as the autist, or maybe the first case of cure should be pointed toward the world in itself. An agreement between those for and against a cure should not happen, since this means that some will get more influence of the written truth than the other, and the important work done by each part will be interrupted. This is not about not understanding both perspective, but it is about positioning oneself.

So for me the C-word is something I will work against as long as I live, cause the need of autists on this planet is higher than ever before.

I learned how to function to various degrees, as do most higher functioning autistics with late diagnosis.

I am not cured, I am still autistic.

Can I cure you of your urge to go hang out with a group of your friends?