You’re okay – as long as you aren’t labeled retarded…
August 10th, 2006I continue to see a very distressing trend among the autistic community. Basically, it’s okay if you’re autistic, so long as you aren’t labeled as mentally retarded. If you are…well, then you are someone to pity, to feel sorry for, and who has less to offer the world. Often, you’re the type of person who should be cured or aborted.
One of my autistic friends has told me that she couldn’t bear the thought of having a kid that is labeled as mentally retarded. She would see that as a good reason to abort the child, because it would spare the child the miserable life he would have if he was born. She’s against abortion of autistic children on the basis of autism, however.
Others take pride in their autism and say things like, “We’re not retarded. We have a lot to offer” – as if people diagnosed as mentally retarded do not have a lot to offer. (sadly many truly believe they don’t, just as many believe someone who’s not a “team player” doesn’t have anything to offer)
People diagnosed with mental retardation, like people diagnosed with autism, have a developmental disability. For the same reason that autistic people, with their “deficits” in social skills, executive function, and communication are valuable, people who have “deficits” in areas other than the ones we have are also valuable. There are differences, yes, but there are always differences between people.
People diagnosed with mental retardation want the same thing that autistics without that label want – a society that accommodates their differences without making value judgments about their worth. They don’t want to be seen as defective and broken anymore than we do.
But for some reason, it’s okay to see them as defective and broken. After all, “everyone” agrees about that. “Society” has taught us that it’s sad when someone scores lower on some standardized test, and that they should receive pity and that we should hope for a cure one day.
It’s unfortunate that autistic people often don’t see that these are the same things others say about us, and these things are just as invalid when applied to people other than us.
This is a very important idea to bring up.
There is also the fact that a significant portion of those labeled “low-functioning autistic” have a dual dx of mental retardation, so those who feel that only autistics should be protected but not the “retarded” are forgetting that fact. In other words, it’s not always an either/or argument.
I saw a sickening comment on You Tube the other day. It was a short clip of someone alleged to be autistic doing some kind of stimmy walk down the sidewalk. An aspie wrote this in response to the clip:
Stargate123 wrote:
“shut the fuck up, everyone. except TrenzorZ. i enjoy things that make fun of LOW LEVEL autistics. i am i a HIGH LEVEL (aspergers) autistics,
but i enjoy making fun of the levels below me. especially because stupid gets on my nerves. my bus ride to school involves an autistic so dumb it makes this one look like a genius. if u look at my gaian profile, u can see that i REALLY hate stupid people.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CjOXLBo650
We need to acknowledge that autism is a form of socio-linguistic retardation, at least, and there’s nothing wrong with that. In any group of people, there will always be those who fall below the lowest percentile in any skill. This is used, culturally, as an excuse to marginalize people, but there’s no justification for that.
Stargate123’s comment is horrible, assuming it’s serious. Probably a young kid made that comment.
Absolutely RIGHT! It’s important to review how also, prenatal testing has effected the down’s syndrome community in relation to the autism argument.
Good post. Neurodiversity doesn’t mean much unless it includes everyone. “Mentally retarded” is a meaningless label anyway because it all depends on what skills are being tested and where the cutoff line is. Any one of us could be labeled as retarded tomorrow if they started using a different test and/or changed the score necessary to qualify as normal.
I recently read that in Canada, about 30 years ago, there was a sudden increase in the budget for special ed and mentally disabled adults. Because there weren’t enough qualifying applicants to use all the money, the officials changed the definition of mental retardation from below the third standard deviation to below the second. More people got services, but a half million or so people instantly became “retarded.”
BTW, thanks for the kind words in your last post.
Hi Joseph, I just looked up his profile, and he’s 18. It’s probably enough to know better, at least in terms of the meanness of it. If you click on his profile and then click “send a message” anyone can try to reach him and explain how hurtful that comment was, and how self-hating he is being, and why it’s wrong to post such things, and how many of those “stupid people” he hates are reading what he has written.
Re: mental retardation and autism, my thought after reading abfh’s post was that so long as IQ testing keeps being used on autistics, the MR diagnoses will continue to remain higher than they probably should.
Soemtimes the only diagnosis is asshole, despite of any “comorbitdities” and I see where that dx fits in these comments anyway.
Right now I feel physically retarded, no there ain’t no such commonplace socio-linguistic usage, but I just coined it in that my physical capabilities are somewhat behind “en retard” beign as I am recovering from an operation .
I am in no wise socio linguistically retarded however cos in that respect my ignition, if not even my cognition, is advanced, and my cogs in gear, even if the petrol ain’t getting through. (yep motoring metaphors don’t you love em)
mental retardation is as much a construction as anything else, not an accurate descriptor of anything at all, because it is just another statistical euphemism for not normal, but then what is normal, who is ever right on the top of the bell curve and no usual divertification (or whatever the correct socio-linguistic boreficated ficative is for that)
Oh I have missed my blogs in hospital, its a bloody boring environment if nothing else, even though one can excercise graveyard humour as one is wheeled of f to be the surgeons plaything.
I hope your recovery goes well, Larry. I’m sure many of us miss your linguistic creativity when you’re not blogging!
I’ve noticed also that whilst there’s a lot of prejudice towards both autistic and non-autistic people diagnosed with “learning difficulties” and “low IQ scores”, it’s often expressed differently.
With “intellectually disabled” non-autistic people, there’s a growing attitude of “Well, people with low IQs are inferior, but autistics with low IQs aren’t, because they really have high IQs and just can’t express it. But those other people are useless.” And a lot of people think that this is very progressive and whatnot because it acknowledges that many people understand more than they can express, whilst ignoring all of the ableism and assumptions in it.
With “intellectually disabled” autistic people, the expression of it tends to be along the lines of “They’re making US look bad! I’m not like that!” I’ve heard the same argument used as to why people like me (who appear “low functioning”, have no or little speech, are disabled in other ways in addition to being autistic, etc) should not be “representing” the autistic community, ever.
The current international autistic community, as a whole, does not seem to value inclusion and diversity very much. It also tends to isolate itself from disability rights movements and disability communities (and disability communities often exclude certain groups of people too, so this isn’t necessarily a criticism of one particular group). This kind of bigotry seems to be a facet of that.
Just been reading my DSA assesment, and reading that it does not paint a very good picture of me, i’d be tempted to think that the person portrayed the degree of difficulty understanding both text and speech as in that report were not a very likely candidate for university success.
As for my criticisms of the disabled movement, I think the sacred Cows. Oliver, Finkelstein et al, need to understand a little postmodernity and realise that the way they have constructed the current social model may be a useful polemic, but very anglo centric nonetheless and not at all inclusive of autism and though it is accurate the underlying way it is put together is flawed because it is still pejorative and discriminatory in its linguistic roots.
No these varios communities need to interact some more and lern from each other.
I see a lot of trend moving away from “just autism” and making autism more a symptom than a sole condition. More specifically, it seems a particular combined set of symptoms with a theme of repitition, senses, neurological wiring, communication etc. If it has any or more of the above, and there are several other areas with similar pieces of any of the above, it is “autistic”. It simply means what it means. Mental retardation seems about as arbitrary. Asperger Syndrome has reencapsulated autism into a condition almost. It could be LKS minus severe seizures for a lot of people even though it is considered rare. I don’t mind the medicalization of autistics so much but I do mind the general attitude as a result of any “medicalization”. It seems there are several socially annoying things that most people find annoying. ie: the excessive sympathy that is even more annoying to an autistic getting a bunch of various labels. I’ll happily go to either extreme, either I’ll deny all labels and just say I have “John’s Syndrome” or I’ll go ahead and try to as accurately as I can take a bunch of labels that halfway fit and wear them for everyone so everyone can see just how useless some of them are. It’s ok though I think to use a label as a way of helping out groups of people who are consistently abused. Personally, I don’t have much use for them. My life is fine without too much else going on but I do like to help and understand/learn about this. Pardon the little bit of rambling here.
shock people with this one (it’s been working for me):
“see that guy over there? the (retard, autistic, spastic, cripple, drooling whatever the local slang of horror is…..)
” All his processing power has been diverted to that secret 90% area of the brain that “normal” people can’t use.
“he’s one of God’s webcams”
I referenced this post in my latest essay:
http://www.autiemomspeaksout.wordpress.com
I can’t figure out which blogs I reference get pingbacks and which don’t. I guess it’s done by manual setting.
As I mom of 2 boys with neurodevelopmental disabilities, my first exposure to disability ‘bigotry’ was when I watched the movie about wheelchair rugby and one of the players exclaimed how he wasn’t “retarded” like it somehow ranked him higher. I worked briefly for a wheelchair athletic nonprofit and was mortified when a newspaper printed a quote from old literature and said that I was the one who said it. It related to the basketball team being mostly comprised of cognitively age appropriate players, and for the life of me I had no idea what that had to do with the article or the team. No one understood why I was offended that my name was tied to the remark. Anyhow, I thought I was all alone out here because I’m not looking for a “cure” for my kids, just support. I guess there’s a fine line between “supporting” and “fixing” … And, while we aren’t on the spectrum exactly, I seriously doubt that either me or my husband are “neurotypical.” I’m not even sure what “neurotypical” is? But whatever, we’re people as are our kids.