Yet another attempt by neurodiversity to bring back Bettelheim

I have been told by at least a couple of members of the neurodiversity movement who have links to the autism hub (hub of hate would be a much more apt name), and whom Kathleen Seidel* has deemed as members in good standing, that the reason for my problems is not a neurologic impairment that incapacitates me but rather that I had a mean domineering mother who taught me to hate myself. It was because of her attitudes that I have all of these problems and unhappiness. They have gone even farther than this calling my mother "a witch" "a shrew" and a "yapping bitch" claiming that because I never happen to mention my dad in my posts that he must have been driven off by her.

Does any of this sound familiar to anyone? No, probably not. It does to me however, because I actually lived through the Bettelheim era as a toddler and small child in the late 1950s and 1960s. I spent approximately ten years in psychoanalysis and had to hear about how my parents went to paint our new house and neglected me and this is what caused my problems. I had to hear about how they happened to let me see my sister naked (my sister is three years younger and the onset of the autism happened around the time she was born) that I noticed she lacked something I had (I think most readers can guess what this is) and that I believed they had cut hers off and that I had worried my parents would cut mine off.

My mother had to hear this shit and it was psychologically damaging to her also. Sometimes she would actually break down and cry during her meetings with my psychoanalyst when she would hear this stuff. The fringe cult of neurodiversity which has done absolutely nothing to benefit persons with autism and related disorders yet has caused immense harm and damage to those on the spectrum and their families has done another thing and that is attempt to bring back this era that I and my parents actually lived through.

It seems that the hub has yet two new additions to their merry band of hate mongers that they have added to their hub of bigotry. two august bloggers who call themselves Turner and Kowalski These two allege (in an apparently intentionally incoherent rant) that parents of autistic children who wish a cure for their children and are unhappy about their child's autism are like members of the Ku Klux Klan who are forced to raise black children.

This type of drivel is read by young impressionable people who are unhappy with being autistic because it has made their life difficult and admittedly they themselves have faced discrimination in the past from society which has caused them to be embittered. I see that the teenage ingenue "sadder but wiser girl" who in the past has compared me to a Jew that helped Nazis kill other Jews in the past has weighed in:

Wow. That was quite a rant. I had to read it thrice to understand it, what with all the fucks and the color switching. But it was very accurate. The Autism Speaks people do sometimes remind me of KKK members forced to raise black children. About the Godwin’s Law thing, you didn’t even mention the Holocaust, but this situation strangely is comparable to the Nazis spreading hate speech about Jews.

Neurodiversity claims they want to make autistics have a good image, but we seem from posts such as Kowalksi and Turner have written and the impression they have made on a minor child, it would seem neurodiversity and the autism hub only tarnish the image of persons with autism and make us look spiteful and hateful and bigoted.

Dave Seidel: If you happen to read this. You are not doing autistics and their families favors by linking blogs that spew out this hateful crap. But it figures, as you really know nothing about autism except having a couple of quirky kids.

The ND movement has been getting more press and media attention. They have been getting more power and they even conned autism speaks into donating half a million dollars to their cause.

When Andrew Solomon's article about Ari Ne'eman and the rest of the ND movement came out, Lenny Schaeffer was quoted as urging Solomon not to write about these people because of the harm they do. I must respectfully disagree with Mr. Schaeffer. I hope the ND's continue to get even more media publicity. I hope more people will write about them. As they become well known people will read the autism hub and read insane blogs such as Kowalski and Turner's odditorial board and they will get bad publicity and most sane people will realize what a scam the whole ND movement is.

*Addendum: I have been informed by Dave Seidel that his wife, Kathleen, has no role in actually running the hub, and the Seidels do not unilaterally decide who can or can't join, but this is done by mutual consensus of hub members. Therefore I have edited the content of the original post putting a * by Kathleen's name in the first entry, striking out a reference to her in two other entries and addressing my comment originally directed to both Kathleen and Dave solely to Dave as an administrator of the hub. Regardless of how members are chosen to be listed by the hub, as at least one of the hub administrators I feel he bears at least some responsibility for the content of blogs that are linked to the hub. Since he refuses to justify his actions to me and won't denounce the Kowalski and Turner post, I believe I can still hold him complicit with the posting of the idea that parents who wish to cure their autistic children are akin to members of the KKK who are forced to raise black children.