I see the neurodiversity movement has a new crusade to get amazon to ban the sale of a book they find offensive. The book is entitled how to prevent autism, some of the most vicious fighting words from their viewpoint. They believe that no person has a right to prevent any person from existing or from being the person they were born to be. They've started a change.org petition which at last count has approximately 2,600 signatures. Amazon has apparently given them a positive response claiming they will look into the claim which is very concerning to me.
I believe this is censorship and that is wrong. They've managed to bully the government to say they will stop combating autism. They managed to bully autism speaks into giving up their statement that they want to prevent autism.
If I could prevent a child from being handicapped I would certainly do it and I would hope that any parent or medical professional would do the same and I'm not talking about abortion of prenatal fetuses.
I doubt very much that the book's author Dara Berger would be able to prevent her daughter or other children that she might have from becoming autistic, so it is something they should not even worry about.
Some people have stated that I'm just as bad as the other side in terms of my blogging. There are some neurodiversity proponents who would claim some people on the other side are just as bad and do things like this.
On the second point, I must concede they would not be wrong. About a year and a half ago, shortly after "neurotribes" was published, a group of rabid anti-vaxxers protested to Amazon, and the print edition of Steve Silberman's tome was put in abeyance and Amazon would not sell it for a brief time. But finally, they internally investigated the fact and could not find a basis for discontinuing the sale and reinstated it. The anti-vaxxers were wrong to do this. However, two wrongs don't make a right (though two Wrights did create a wrong with the way autism speaks turned out :)).
As low a personal opinion as I have of Steve Silberman and the book Neurotribes and its horrible message, I would never ask Amazon or anyone else not to sell the book or say that it should be banned. As low a personal opinion I have of Silberman and other adherents of the neurodiversity movement, I would never advocate denying their freedom of expression to publish what they want in a book as long as they don't libel anyone.
It's a sad day that neurodiversity may actually succeed in bullying amazon and other entities into censoring free expression. Yes, the same goes for the anti-vaxers as well.
I can only hope this behavior stops on both sides of the aisle.
Addendum: I guess the first amendment only applies to government stopping publication of things and free speech, so I was mistaken when I said that these neurodiversity individuals were stomping on first amendment rights, so I've made corrections to the original blog post.
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The latest flammable comment from pro-autism activists or subscribers
Wow. Just wow. Is this asshat Seeing Things That Are Not There retarded? Or is Seeing Things That Are Not There you just that full of hate towards autistic people that they cannot see even the slightest logical inference?
I mean... apparently, now, being autistic is the same thing as being a gangster. What the fukk? I think we need to amend our proposed Autism Civil Rights Act so we can drag Seeing Things That Are Not There in front of real gangsters and tell said gangsters what he has said about them.
I knew that Seeing Things That Are Not There was going to pull a false equivalence out of their asshole at some point, but **WOW**, jesus this is a doozy. I suppose next he is going to proclaim being autistic to be the same thing as having AIDS.
And curebies wonder why we want to make everything they do with regard to us illegal?
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