Debilitating Infection

Today I'd like to talk about the ways that a terrible disease is being allowed to threaten a great deal of the world's citizens.

This dis ease is perpetrated and maintained by the worst type of infection. The problem is that it infects that which is our most powerful weapon that allows us to build our immune system as well as the part of us that is the most vulnerable. That part that I'm speaking of is our attitude.

This virus infects the consciousness of the individual and spreads to the collective consciousness of our entire culture. This horrible virus is best described as ablism. Fortunatly there is treatment available and maybe even a cure. However, protection as well as early detection will create everyones best defense.

The effect that it has had on the human race has created more death and destruction than anything else. The bad methods of defense that have been devised to destroy it have allowed it to mutate again and again.

One of the best methods of ensuring a strong defense is to understand how and where ablism is present.

One of the ways ablism is now being presented is by the attempt to cure autism. Denied accessability for peoples needs and the denial of their rights that defines how many people determine a person's quality of life are some of the more subtle ways this virus uses to infect people's attitudes. However, the result is always the same. It is claimed that since difference cannot be cured, fixed or accomidated appropriatly, it must be elliminated.

Ablism needs a specific environment in order to create its most damaging effects. These are the early detection signs to watch for:

1)Hope must be created and then eliminated. This happens with several steps:

A)The differences of autism must be medicalized in order to encourage people to invest hope and money into the cure.

B)Behaviors are pathologised in order to blame either the autistic person (which can be seen as justification of their torture) or the parents (which can lead them to feeling guilt and shame and then more willing to eliminate the problem).

2)Once hope has been diminished, the debilitating force of ablism is spread by two powerful forces that attack autistics in similar ways to how it has accomplished its descrimination of many other types of people.

A)More narrow types of standardized tests are created. This works to ensure that the public will view that any ability that is not seen as normal must instead be the sign of inability. This inability is seen to tax, and therefore burden the rest of society.

B)The dreaded agism is always a powerful agent and affects everyone. With autism it seems to create the perfect division for this problem to spread. If people can truly believe that there is a limited amount of resources that must be divided between accomidations for the younger people and accomodations for older people,all age groups will be seen by each other as a threat TO each other. Once people are pitted against each other in this way, the compassion that drives ALL accomidation in the first place is then replaced by strife and arguing between people who could and should learn from each other and work together.
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However, there is hope. Most carriers of this disorder are not aware that they are infected. You don't need to anger most carriers, but you can let them know the signs of the disorder and how to turn it around.

Help them understand that the problem lies in the attitude and that the circumstances that cause peoples problems stem from that attitude.

Question any and all treatments. Question ribbons, question what is done in the name of awareness, and question what is done in the name of research. Work toward creating adaptations for what are considered disabilities and be very careful of how behaviors are determined by some to be pathological or medical issues.

THIS is true awareness and together we can work toward real and positive change.