When can we start suing neurotypicals for prejudice and discrimination every time they talk about the value of friendship and that it is a bad thing to spend most of your life by yourself? :p

This comment also allows me to clarify a couple things (which inevitably happens once I write a long, rambling post — I keep thinking of things I should have mentioned). I like the way you put it about maturing with age! Autistic kids become autistic adults; inevitably we mature, we compensate.

Additionally, I do think there’s a big difference between helping autistic kids to lead happy, fulfilling lives vs. trying to make autistic kids into non-autistic kids.

The thing that bothers me about Rogers’ statement on functioning, or just on the whole ideological conception of functioning — she verbatim said that she wanted “less disability and more functioning.” This plays into the notion that disabled people cannot function, as if there’s some sort of existing bar graph that displays functioning going up as disability goes down. (It assumes that disability is some static, linear phenomenon, and it likewise very problematically assumes that functioning is empirical, concrete, and antithetical to disability, as opposed to functioning being normative and socially constructed. Functioning centers nondisabled people as ideal and reduces disabled people to, well, nothing positive — and certainly not valued members of a community or society.)

I’m rambling again.

Thanks for your note about the photo — it’s actually a photo of me and my cousin. I’m guessing that one of our parents told him to try and get me to face the camera. (Though I might be wrong.)

What is wikimania? Sounds interesting!

http://distractible.org/2010/07/28/arbitrary-normality/

He came to quite a different conclusion than Rogers and Davis.

Though some things were not quite so different: for example, he mentioned “as their function increases, they reveal a sense of humour”.

(Like cheese, crackers and wine; we mature with age!)

Have been most interested in the conference since you and Benzion tweeted about it last month.

The title reminded me very much of a Glenn Doman book. (of the How to increase your baby’s intelligence type).

As for the picture, I think both children are cute.

I also think the boy holding the girl’s chin is … violating. I do not know if he means harm. The boy’s smile is direct, and the girl’s eyes are lovely.

In the interim, I “went to” Wikimania in Poland. Some of the keynotes were 45-60 minutes: I mostly listened to the ordinary speeches. Those three days were great.

Her keynote was also about two hours long — which, in my mind, is one hella long keynote. But that might be the norm for professional/social science-y types? (I’m not sure. My scholarly home is the humanities.)

I’m glad you were able to use my suggestion–and, of course, you brought up so much more than I’d considered!

Good luck!

I agree with you about Holliday-Willey. One reason I suggested it is that it seems to be one of the most frequently-mentioned memoirs, certainly in regards to the Asperger’s label in particular. Unfortunately, most of the most popular books tend to be of that mold. Another popular one, though I really, really dislike this one for reasons which aren’t entirely rational, is John Elder Robison’s “Look Me in the Eye.” Again, it’s quite medical model.

Also: thank you thank you thank you for the book suggestions. I’ve been debating about Holliday-Willey’s book… because it struck me, like you say about autie-biography trends, as a book that often matches up major life events to bullet points in diagnostic manuals. I might be acting too harsh, though; what I might do is see if there are one or two chapters that I can assign by themselves.

I’d forgotten about Paradiz’s book, and will definitely add that one. And for some reason, I wasn’t aware that Tim Page wrote a book! I remember his essay by the same name appearing in the New Yorker some years back. I’ll have to check out the book.

Some memoirs you don’t have on your list that I like include Valerie Paradiz (Elijah’s Cup), Tim Page (Parallel Play), and to a lesser extent, Liane Holliday-Wiley (Pretending to Be Normal). I think Tim Page’s work is especially interesting and rare in the realm of autie-biography. It’s typical for autistic memoirists to constantly explain their lives in terms of the DSM criteria and common scientific ideas/stereotypes about autism. Page just tells his story, and when doing so runs the risk of people accusing him of not being really autistic (as many Amazon reviewers do). It’s really quite interesting and raises some interesting questions about authority and credibility that you’ve been talking about in the comments. Page was also very nice when I met him at an event several months ago.