Comment by nailer
14 hours ago
I didn’t realise until other people replied to you that you weren’t using dehumanising sarcastically.
There is nothing dehumanising about acknowledging the existence of the profoundly autistic.
14 hours ago
I didn’t realise until other people replied to you that you weren’t using dehumanising sarcastically.
There is nothing dehumanising about acknowledging the existence of the profoundly autistic.
He's not "acknowledging their existence" though, he listed a series of very typically human activities and experiences, and then said autistic people don't get to experience them due to their innate differences.
First of all that is false, because even profoundly autistic people do the things he said they don't do.
Secondly, it's dehumanizing because the reason he lied (yes what he said was a lie) was so that the listener would feel sorry for autistic people, and would thereby support Kennedy to do whatever he wants to them to restore their humanity, whether that be a registry, concentration camps (or as he calls them, "wellness farms") or whatever else he has planned.
Most profoundly autistic people don’t go the bathroom unassisted, or pay their own taxes. That’s true.
> Kennedy to do whatever he wants to them to restore their humanity, whether that be a registry, concentration camps (or as he calls them, "wellness farms") or whatever else he has planned.
Wild conspiracy theories help nobody, and also harm autistic people.
> Most profoundly autistic people don’t go the bathroom unassisted, or pay their own taxes. That’s true.
As long as you define "ability to go to bathroom and pay taxes" as profound autism, that's true. But as I said, autism is a spectrum -- there is no such thing as "profoundly autistic". That's not a thing. You're again trying to make a dichotomy, and this is a misconception both you and Kennedy share.
> Wild conspiracy theories help nobody, and also harm autistic people.
We are at the point where it's no longer wild. They are literally planning a database, and planning "wellness farms", and using dehumanizing language to talk about the worth of autistic people within society. I'm really glad that for you, these concerns autistic people have about these plans are esoteric and "wild", but for the people they are targeting with registries and camps, we cannot afford to be so flippant.
No one else is going to advocate or look out for autistic people, so we have to do it ourselves, and if that means people think we are overreacting so be it. We're used to being told that anyway.