Autistic Uncle Toms

Whose Planet Is It Anyway? has moved to Blogger. To read this article on the new site, click here.

Historically, the bootlickers known as "Uncle Toms" were black people in the United States who didn't believe their race deserved equality and who actively obstructed civil rights efforts. They did so for various reasons: profit, fear of change, and belief in their own inferiority. Toadies like that can still be found, unfortunately, in the autistic community today.

Autism Industry Shills: These stinking traitors are the worst of the Autistic Uncle Toms. They are paid to endorse behavioral treatments or so-called wonder drugs. Some of these quislings even have an ownership interest in the company they're shilling for. Usually, their spiel goes something like this: "When I was a small child, that horrible plague, autism, had me in its devastating grip. But my parents loved me enough to go deeply into debt to pay for Joe Schmoe's Wonderful Miraculous Horse-Manure Autism Cure. If they hadn't, I would be a hopeless vegetable in an institution now, sitting in a corner and staring blankly out the window all day long." Et cetera. Ad nauseam.

Make no mistake about it, these slimeballs know exactly what they're doing. They're very well aware that they are still autistic and that there is no such thing as a cure. They gulp down anti-anxiety meds by the bucketful to ensure that they won't jeopardize their endorsement contract by having an inconvenient twitch or tic in public. For them, it's all about the money. They don't care how much harm they're doing to vulnerable families. They ought to be lined up against a wall and shot, but in lieu thereof, they can all kiss my autistic ass.

The Learned-Helplessness Brigade: These people are truly pathetic. They have been called weirdos and dummies all their lives, and deep down, they believe that's what they are. They cling to their autism diagnosis like it's a security blanket that protects them from ever having to take responsibility to improve their lives. They reflexively oppose any efforts by autistic activists to raise the issue of employment discrimination because they fear that they will lose their disability payments if other autistic people get jobs. They will grovel at the feet of any bureaucrat who can give them a benefit check, pat them sweetly on their incompetent little heads, and reassure them that they're not to blame for any of their failures because their poor defective brains weren't capable of anything better.

I will excuse this group from kissing my ass because they've all gotten so used to abject groveling that they probably would enjoy it.

The Psychology-Obsessed: These twits ought to be locked in a birdcage, squawking for a cracker. They memorize every scrap of autism research they can find, no matter how inconsistent or full of stereotyped assumptions it may be, and dutifully parrot it back on discussion forums everywhere. They analyze their every thought and action in terms of the official DSM criteria, which they accept as unquestioningly as if it were Holy Writ. If the DSM is updated, no problem, they just update their self-image to match! They can't even take a crap without finding some sort of behavioral symptom in their crapping routine.

Now this would just be a harmless quirk if they could keep their big yaps shut, but naturally they feel compelled to share their brilliant knowledge with the world. They troll merrily away on the aspie boards, interrupting serious discussions of civil rights and social prejudice with comments on Dr. C. Rackpot's latest theory of severe mental dysfunction. (Which often contradicts last week's theory, but hey, nobody's perfect.) If an unwary newbie disagrees, they'll fire back a snippy remark along the lines of, "Obviously you're incapable of understanding my point because of your cognitive processing impairments." Then they wonder why nobody responds to their posts.

This group can also be excused from kissing my bodacious booty. I wouldn't let their nasty keyboard-pecking beaks anywhere near me. About the only thing I'd do with them is wring their scrawny feathery necks and turn them into cat food.