The New York Times Motherlode Blog carries a letter from a woman criticizing a harsh characterization of autism that had appeared earlier in a guest post in that space.

Sarah, who says she has Asperger’s syndrome, writes that the post entitled “The Unvarnished Reality of Autism” failed to acknowledge the perspective of people who have autism and view their lives as worthwhile. “I feel personally quite hurt by the choice to publish such hateful speech about raising an autistic child,” she said.

An excerpt:

Your blog entry represented autistic people as monsters who cause life to be a “nightmare” for those around us. We are blamed for our parents’ depression, marriage problems, and feelings of humiliation and social isolation.

… Most autistic adults consider autism/Asperger’s Syndrome as something which is *part of us,* not something which we can separate from ourselves. When parents say that “autism” ruins their lives, we interpret it as meaning, “you being the way you are is ruining our lives. We would prefer you to be someone else.”

Autistic adult Jim Sinclair has written eloquently on the subject of parents who mourn for their autistic children. Sinclair says:

“You didn’t lose a child to autism. You lost a child because the child you waited for never came into existence. That isn’t the fault of the autistic child who does exist, and it shouldn’t be our burden. We need and deserve families who can see us and value us for ourselves, not families whose vision of us is obscured by the ghosts of children who never lived. Grieve if you must, for your own lost dreams. But don’t mourn for us. We are alive. We are real. And we’re here waiting for you.”

This entry was posted on Friday, July 24th, 2009 at 2:41 pm and is filed under autism, discrimination, language, media, public attitudes, stigma. 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.