Monday, June 28, 2010

autrick or treat

This week is a redletter week in the world of neurodiversity and anti-cure. This is the week that the famous autrick (ooops I mean autreat) annual conference is held. I wrote about this two months ago You can see from the preceding link that some of the most august individuals in the neurodiversity movement, such as Morton Gernsbacher, her offspring Drew Goldsmith and Amanda Baggs, and Ari Ne'eman and Jim Sinclair and others will be giving presentations.

I see from updates on facebook and other places that a few other individuals I had not mentioned before will be attending this neurodiversity preachathon (thanks and a tip of the gadfly hat to Roger Kulp for coming up with that term) such as the well known hatemonger Clay Adams, Not to mention Alex Plank who is well known for his slipshod journalism on that stellar website Wrong Planet and is also known for claiming that most autistics don't want to be cured without providing any evidence or consulting me, Roger Kulp, Jake Crosby, Stephanie Keil or Oliver Canby and JediKnight and numerous others who long for a cure for this affliction. Apparently Phil Gluyas could not make it from Australia to complete the roster of some of the more stellar neurodiversitites in attendance.

Another member of the spectrum who will likely not be in attendance this year is "Droopy" who claims that one of the presenters, Amanda Baggs, copied her life. Though your humble blogger would never attend this unsavory conclave, Droopy has in fact tried to register for this event. She has not been allowed to attend, the belief of the ANI folks that she would be disruptive and cause trouble. I won't be a judge of whether or not Droopy should be allowed to attend.

Another alternative, would be to steal some of Ari Ne'eman's and ASAN's thunder and organize a demonstration outside of ANI with placards and give neurodiversity a taste of the medicine that they have foisted upon autism speaks. Those of us who are pro-cure don't have the capital and abilities to do these things as Ne'eman and his pals do, apparently. Particularly travelling to Pennsylvania where the autrick is being held.

Of course if ANI had a few million dollars in their coffers that they were not discussing, but wanted to dole out to some worthy cause, hopefully those of us wearing the white hats would be too ethical to accept it. The same can't be said of the ND crowd who have accepted half a million dollars from an organization who they claim wants to engage in genocide against them.

Of course the bright side is that ND conferences are few and far between. They have still not acquired the capital to have conferences in the same vein as the biomed groups, such as the infamous autism one conference and the unlocking autism conferences and other big conferences. So they can't afford to pay the speaking fees that quasi superstars like Stephen Shore can generate. Oh well, ND, better luck next year.

12 comments:

Jake Crosby said...

And as you know, Stephen Shore was at Autism One this year. I met him there.

Autismo said...

Mr Mitchell,

I apologised for leaving a comment here, but I cannot find an email address for you.

If you are willing to provide an assurance that you will not generally censor comments and declare publicly when a comment has not been approved/deleted on the relevant post, we would remove the advisory graphic from your listing on the Autismo Hub.

It would greatly enhance your credibility.

Jake Crosby said...

We "antivaxers" are the one and only ones in the autism community advancing public health and medical science, not you, not the neurodiversity sideshow, nor Alison Singer's tobacco science foundation.

Larry Arnold PhD FRSA said...

First of all I would not consider Autreat as a "neurodiversity" conference, and I personally would have some misgivings about attending myself, not to do with the philosophy so much as the organisation.

You all miss the point, which is "horses for courses"

You wouldn't get a fan of Dogtanian and the three musketeers going to a star trek convention "(or would you?)

What is wrong with people of a like persuasion holding conferences for people of a like persuasion. How many republicans expect not to be thrown out of a democratic convention?

Anyway it is enough that the UK equivalent of Autism speaks is paying people like me effectively to speak against them at a conference they sponsored. Now that is progress.

jonathan said...

What is wrong with people of a like persuasion holding conferences for people of a like persuasion

Gee guess there is nothing wrong with a Mafia Don convention or a KKK convention or American Nazi Party convention either. They are throwing a conference for and by people of like persuasion.

Anyway it is enough that the UK equivalent of Autism speaks is paying people like me effectively to speak against them at a conference they sponsored. Now that is progress.

If Autism speaks is stupid enough to donate half a million bucks to Laurent Mottron, then I suppose the UK equivalent could be stupid enough to pay you to speak about neurodiversity and the social model of disability and the country of the blind analogy too.

Kent Adams said...

"What is wrong with people of a like persuasion holding conferences for people of a like persuasion. "

Nothing as long as they describe their event as people gathering to discuss things they all agree on. That's not what Autreat advertises, it advertises itself as autistic friendly with no disclaimer that its only autistic friendly for autistic people that think alike or that phony up like Ms. Baggs. Unless of course its a conference of minstrels who like to get together to ban real autistic people like Shelley, force her to produce papers, accept her application, then reject her last minute and then spread lies about her as some sort of violent person. Mr. Sinclair is a liar of the first order and I proved it on ABFH's blog when he could not argue his way out of his decision and blamed it on some sort of policy directive. No, Autreat is not for autistic people, its for people that like to visit echo chambers.

Kent Adams said...

By the way Jonathan, Larry the Scared, shouldn't be allowed to post comments on your blog if he isn't going to allow us, you and me, to post comments on his. Tit for Tat. Larry has rejected a few of my comments simply because he was uncomfortable addressing the questions I posed. I certainly never attacked him like he did you here.

Socrates said...

Didn't the Elf get widespread support from the Gang when people demanded she produce her papers?

Then why was such a demand made of Shelly, by Autreat?

Is this the Type Specimen of hypocrisy?

Autreat/ANI has become a clique with Jim, Ari and Amanda as its Trinity.

Larry Arnold PhD FRSA said...

Nobody should have to produce there papers (reminds me of the old war movies "ihre papiere bitte" when the POW was trying to escape.

Onus probandi should be upon the accuser to prove beyond reasonable doubt that the defendant is not guilty of autism m'lud.

I have not seen enough evidence in either case.

I do have a problem with Autreat, one I have expressed to Jim Sinclair directly, which is that he treats it effectively as a fiefdom. It' xyr right of course, being as xe does have legal proprietorship, but I do not believe it is either just, equitable or sustainable.

I rest my case.

BTW my blog is also a fiefdom, but one under scrutiny from powerful forces. I cannot reproduce anything there that has the slightest suggestion of libel else I will face disciplinary proceedings.

Anonymous said...

well I guess now we can all really finally put the whole Amanda Baggs fiasco to rest because Amanda's got

a video 'note from her mother' saying so (with captioning!)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9ISrTDmryI

0.o

Kent Adams said...

"a video 'note from her mother' saying so (with captioning!"

This is in response to my challenge of Ms. Baggs on her blog and her mothers comments. Now that her mother has interjected herself, we shall see. I know for a fact she was not diagnosed as autistic at 14 because I have her logs from the internet.

I understand how a parent wants to support their child, especially one with significant emotional and psychological challenges. However, what her mother is doing is enabling the disease.

If you are truly something, whether it is autistic or Down Syndrome, an artist or whatever, you have comfort in knowing the truth. One does not feel the need to constantly "prove" who they are. I suspect that if I said Amanda wasn't born in California, she wouldn't feel the need to defend the fact she was born in California. She would just say, yay, I was born in California and it really doesn't matter what you think and that would be pretty much the end of it. However, when you are pretending to be something, and have your identity tied up in that something, and it is important for your well being and stability, you will defend it. Parents will often help their children in whatever it is as long as it helps their stability and happiness. However, we as parents, must not enable a disease in our children. The fact that comments have been disabled on this video of hers, speaks volumes about Amanda's ability to be self aware and of the importance to protect the emotions and feelings of others.

I've noticed this pattern of Amanda's. When she is challenged, she is immature in her response. I challenged the authenticity of her mothers comments on her blog. Two weeks later, she posts a video. Shelley challenged her diagnosis 2 years ago. Within weeks she produced a diagnosis dated from 2005. This is the reaction attempts of someone desperate to prove they are who they say they are. If you are who you say you are, you don't care, especially so for autistic people.

Anonymous said...

Who honestly cares about Autreat? Anyone interested in meeting a bunch of other autistic people could always seek them out elsewhere within their local area.

Oh wait....I forgot! They can't initiate and maintain normal conversations with other people in person so their solution is simple to solve: Meet others who they believe are EXACTLY like themselves!