‘I am not a puzzle, I am a person’

By Elizabeth Svoboda in Salon.com:

A growing group of advocates say people with autism should be valued and celebrated for their uniqueness, not aggressively treated in hopes that they will become “normal.”

Proponents are skeptical of therapies that force people with autism to behave like typical peers, whom they call “neurotypicals,” and say therapists should instead focus on helping them deal more effectively with the non-autistic world.

… the rhetoric [used by autism advocates] is often as strident as anything out of the deaf-pride movement. Some autistic people even use the pejorative term “curebie” to refer to people who hope for a cure for the condition. Organizations like Autism Network International view efforts to cure autism as similar to misguided efforts to cure homosexuality and left-handedness.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 30th, 2009 at 3:25 pm and is filed under NOT2BEMISSED, advocacy, autism, behavior, normal, public attitudes, therapy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.