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Whose Planet Is It Anyway? has moved to Blogger.
To read this article on the new site, click here.
While browsing the Internet for autistic pride sites, I came across
a godawful site that was advertising some cutesy medication timer intended for gadget-loving aspies. A testimonial allegedly
written by a parent of a young adult aspie cheerily declared, "When its alarm goes off, he has fun taking his medication or
vitamins now and can take pride in his compliance and extra independence!"
It was enough to make me want to look for a good supplier of barf
bags. Anybody out there reading this page who takes pride in being a compliant pill-gulping drone and feels extra independent
because of it? I didn't think so.
Of course, advertisements like that aren't even meant to be seen
by aspies. Such products are marketed exclusively to parents. It's part of a double-barreled bullshit attack by
the autism industry, in which parents are first misled into believing that their children are hopelessly mentally defective,
then barraged with promises that buying the right products and services can lead to "extra independence." In this context,
"extra independence" means a lifetime of passively consuming the autism industry's wares while causing minimal nuisance to
one's parents by reason of one's existence.
This despicable marketing strategy includes the recent efforts by
the autism industry to paint the neurodiversity movement as some sort of major radical threat to the right of parents to make
decisions for their underage children. It's a ridiculous accusation made by a calculating, amoral industry that sees
a major threat to its own profits in the possibility that some parents may insist on treating their autistic children as healthy,
capable human beings. Far from being anti-parent, a large number of neurodiversity activists are in fact parents, including
Kathleen Seidel of Neurodiversity.com, Amy Nelson of Aspies for Freedom, Bonnie Ventura of Aspergian Pride, and Kevin Leitch of Left Brain/Right Brain. Such parents are seeking to end prejudice and discrimination against autistic families.
The accusation of interference with parents' decision-making is
particularly ironic when you consider the extent of the autism industry's relentless assault on vulnerable families.
Its entire business model is designed to coerce parents into making panicky and uninformed decisions. Ugly personal
attacks are routinely made against parents who are unwilling to blindly jump on the bandwagon of "early intervention" through
behavioral therapy, special diets, medication, chelation for purported mercury poisoning, or whatever the latest whacko fad
happens to be. Kathleen Seidel describes the vicious abuse of parents by quack treatment faddists in Evidence of Venom.
The autism industry's greatest crime against families is that it
intentionally seeks to destroy parents' joy and pride in their young children. To ensure a steady supply of new customers,
autism is described in the most negative terms imaginable, with the goal of convincing parents that their child is a pathetic,
defective sufferer whose birth has blighted the family. The success of this propaganda is measured in how thoroughly
all semblance of a happy family life has been extinguished.
And then these filthy slimebuckets have the incredible chutzpah
to accuse civil rights activists of interfering with parents.
They can take their quack treatments and medication timers and shove
'em where the sun don't shine.
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