Comments on: Them’s Fighting Words

By: Provocative, Harsh, Upsetting: The “Ransom Notes” Ad Campaign

Provocative, Harsh, Upsetting: The “Ransom Notes” Ad Campaign — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 07:29:59 +0000

[...] is any publicity necessarily good publicity? Is the “Ransom Notes” campaign so full of fighting words, the image it portrays of autism and the other conditions so “harsh and upsetting,” [...]

By: Autism Vox » Autism Vox joins the IAN

Autism Vox » Autism Vox joins the IAN — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 16:24:57 +0000

[...] “treatments,” and “cure” are “fighting words” in the autism community and I am curious about the response to the IAN, which I have indeed [...]

By: Autism Vox » Autism and Metaphor

Autism Vox » Autism and Metaphor — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 04:08:51 +0000

[...] To use autism as a metaphor of something else—-of the human condition in the post-modern early 21st century—tells us, Waltz suggests, something about the culture that we live in, but not necessarily about what autism really is—-what it really means to be autistic. Further, to describe autism in metaphors—-as a “nightmare” or “train wreck,” and even an “epidemic,” and an autistic person as a “stolen child” or changeling—is alike a way of distancing oneself from knowing what autism is, by only referring to autistic persons in language, in figures of speech and analogies, that refer back to something else and other than an actual autistic person. To paraphrase Susan Sontag in Illness and Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors (2001), autism is “not a metaphor” and, as Sontag writes, …..the most truthful way of regarding illness—-and the healthiest way of being ill—is one most purified of, most resistant to, metaphoric thinking. (p. 3) [...]

By: Kristina Chew, PhD

Kristina Chew, PhD — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 00:29:30 +0000

Maybe “ogre” too……

By: Rochelle

Rochelle — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 22:01:18 +0000

I suppose we can add “monster” to this list of words now…

By: Left Brain/Right Brain » Shades Of Grey

Left Brain/Right Brain » Shades Of Grey — Tue, 19 Sep 2006 11:53:07 +0000

[...] should be never more true when we consider using poorly chosen, stigmatising words to describe people. Kathleen’s petition regarding Boyd Haley’s poor choice of words is a case in point. I like to think my petition regarding Autism Speaks poor presentation and supporting justifications is also a case in point. Certainly the 800+ signatures Kathleen has received so far and the 500+ I have received bear testament that there are a lot of people out there who are very very tired of these dangerous words (Kristina calls them ‘fighting words‘) and the people who want to carry on using them to describe people. [...]

By: Autism Vox » ‘Early’ ‘Intervention’

Autism Vox » ‘Early’ ‘Intervention’ — Sun, 10 Sep 2006 19:27:27 +0000

[...] The term “early intervention,” while not a fighting word,” has come to seem not only misleading, but even depressing to me. The term suggests that there is only a very brief “window” — before one’s autistic child turns three — to do as much as possible (read: everything you hear about from the internet, other parents, “experts,” books, TV, someone’s friend who is a social worker). Or, if one “misses” the three-year-old “cutoff,” the next age to be aimed at is five years old, with the hope/goal that one’s child will be able to attend kindergarten and not need special education. (Too, some will object to the notion of “intervening” and “treating” autism.) [...]

By: Autism Vox

Autism Vox — Sat, 12 Aug 2006 22:00:20 +0000

[...] Recovery is a fighting word in autism circles. Recovery from autism is a big business, in the form of treatments (biomedical, educational, and otherwise) that parents constantly encounter. But rather than noting, as Adams does, that recovery from autism is “different from recovery from everything else,” my thought in being the mother of an autistic child for the past nine years is that “recovery from autism” is not the question that needs to be asked or researched. But how to teach my son to live a good life and to the best of his potential—-those are questions I ask myself everyday, and try to do the best with. Add to: August 12th, 2006 | Permalink | No Comments » [...]

By: Autism Vox » Dateline Special on the “cure” of chelation

Autism Vox » Dateline Special on the “cure” of chelation — Wed, 28 Jun 2006 14:46:05 +0000

[...] Definitely true; my husband and I never, ever give up. But there seems to be an equation here between “curing” child of autism and “something good” happening for those “cured” children with autism. “Cure” is a fighting word in the autism community and I am not comfortable with the Dateline special’s suggestion that only by “curing” an autistic child (like Charlie) of autism can “something good” happen for him. [...]

By: Autism Vox » Weapons of Autistic Destruction: Violent Words and Violent Deeds

Tue, 23 May 2006 21:51:44 +0000

[...] ……….. I am having a very hard time finishing this post whose vocabulary of more than fighting words–violence, weapons, killing, murder, violence–keeps making me (as it should) shiver. The death of a autistic child at her autism mother’s hands is terrifying even to think about for me, being an autism mother of an autistic child. My mind keeps turning to–frivolously to some, perhaps—Greek mythology, to Greek tragedy, to Agamemnon who allows his daughter Iphigeneia to be sacrificed so that the Greek ships can sail to Troy, in revenge for which his wife Klytemnestra murders him in his bath after he returns home from the war. [...]