Tag Archives: advocacy

A Response To Wolf Wolfensberger

Extended Interview from Wolf Wolfensberger on Disability Studies

I am realizing that I feel Wolf Wolfensberger is partially correct about something important that a lot of disabled people don’t want to acknowledge. I am para-phrasing; People with disabilities for the most part should leave advocacy to non disabled people until disabled people can separate their grievances from their advocacy. 

As a disabled person myself, this has happened to me a lot through the years.  As an advocate, disabled and non disabled people have to be impartial. By being impartial, every advocate needs to be open to both disabled and non-disabled perspectives.

I feel Wolf was right and wrong. As a disabled person, I can become impaired due to my emotions, which can affect my ability to advocate a particular issue. Can anyone relate to this?

I have noticed some ppl who are supposed to be family advocates fail as advocates because they either feel for the family members or the disabled person. This is due to the family advocates’ impairments from their emotions. So Wolf is right in that sense. He is wrong in another sense because disabled people can learn to advocate with experience and learn how to separate their emotions from their job as advocates, just as non-disabled ppl can.

Families and agencies misconsrue the ideas Wolf Wolfensberger said, which is why many in the disability community are so angry with what Wolf said.

I feel this way also because in my observations with agencies who serve the disability community, too often when the disabled person from the agency advocates, the agency only supports them with the agency’s advocacy.

Outrage about what others do to people on the Spectrum

An article from Port St. Lucie, Florida followed by the link below makes anyone on the Spectrum like myself in total outrage.

http://www.tcpalm.com/news/2008/may/24/30gtteacher-lets-students-vote-out-classmate-5/

The article states that a kindergarten student at an  elementary school in Port St. Lucie, Florida voted out a  child  from the class.  Just because a child is being diagnosed on the Spectrum or had already been diagnosed on the Spectrum in this case Asperger Syndrome, doesn’t mean that the child (or Adult) is excluded from a class (or any adult functions that include organizations, jobs, …) This is an outrageous thing that a teacher performed this in their class.

Every child has the right to learn and be themselves and teachers have to learn to be patient with their students as well as anybody who finds that they can not handle a person on the spectrum whether it is a situation like a classroom with students, jobs, organizations, families, etc.  Everybody has to be as forthright understanding and patient with the Spectrumite who could be having problems with many different aspects of their life including sensory integration, being interested in other people and other subjects that don’t pertain to their special interest, depression from being the lonely one out, anxiety about not knowing how to proceed in social situations so they tend to act out, and being absorbed in their obsessions, etc.

What more can Neurotypical people do?

Understand what Aspies, Auties, and anyone else on the spectrum is like. Learn from us what drives us to anxiety.

I hope that this child and his family gets the last laugh in life.

Anyway, anyone who figures to laugh, tease, or ostracize a child (or adult like myself) because we are on the spectrum and try and influence others to do the same have no right to do that.  The eternal one made us better than that, he made us to help other people who are struggling with certain issues in life and to get everybody back on their feet if we can.  We try to do this, but sometimes it is very hard to since sometimes its too late.

I hope this little boy named Alex does not feel traumatized from this situation too much and gets the last laugh.

This all boils down to the fact that Neurotypicals, all NT’s, need to live with the utmost patience and care for people on this world learning about how different people live.  An Aspie like myself lives in ways far different than a simple Neurotypical person.

Neurotypical people live in a way that they see fit as a world of NT’s only, when that is not the case. That is why some NT’s feel that Autism is caused by VACCINES as Time magazine put on their cover this week. That is a complete a total fabrication and no body should be influenced that VACCINES cause Autism, Aspergers, etc.

BECAUSE this is a GENETIC DISORDER caused by genes.  Vaccines do not alter anything in the brain to cause people to be on the Autism Spectrum.

Look at the World History as we know it!  People on the Spectrum have existed for centuries.  We just have not accepted it until 1994 when the DSM IV first came out.  But, as soon as people saw it on the DSM they insisted it must be an epidemic, but that is not true.

We just have been accepting it and becoming more aware of it from that fact.

The facts show it and the facts reveal that this is Genetic ONLY!!!

Anyway, thanks to this teacher, this child is probably traumatized that he can’t go to the school that he wanted to learn at.   Also, many other Spectrumites lived traumatizing events too and that is an outrage as well not from something like this, but due to bulleying.

In some instances this can be considered bulleying and influencing students to not like a particular student.

Take it easy,

out, J