Read my latest flash, Venison, at 52|250.

I don’t usually post videos, but I simply cannot stop watching this.

Via

Yet another ill-considered and biased ABC story on autism (once again failing to quote any actual autists and manifesting a pro-cure slant) actually contains an interesting and telling anecdote about a child diagnosed with PDD-NOS:

“The doctor initially dismissed it,” said Dahlen, but a year later Arik unexplainably got on all fours on the examining room floor and began meowing loudly like a cat.

“Suddenly the doctor was overexcited and said, ‘Why didn’t you talk to me about this earlier?’” said Dahlen. “Clearly this was not normal for a child.”

Based on the rest of the text, it appears that the child was around three-years old when this occurred.  Now, I wasn’t aware that it was unusual for small children to imitate animals, even at socially inappropriate moments, but I’m hardly an expert on what’s normal.  What I find more interesting, however, is that such a small thing became the trigger for a “diagnosis”– that is, for labeling someone as “diseased”, since that’s what the medical establishment believes to be true of those of us on the autistic spectrum.  I would hope that the sheer absurdity of that would be obvious even to those who usually accept the medical model.  And while this is just one example, it does illustrate on what a tenuous basis we whose minds operate in an unusual way are pathologized.

Incidentally, I recognize some of myself in this anecdote.  I don’t suddenly interrupt my classes by meowing loudly (unless the students are sleeping and need to be shocked awake), but then I’m not a three-year old child.  (Those of us on the autistic spectrum do develop.)  I do, however, immediately engage in conversation with cats on meeting them.  I talk to them (I’m convinced that they do understand), and I also make some clumsy attempts to engage in their native forms of communication.  I’m perfectly aware that this may seem strange to those around me– though I usually don’t think about this at the time– and, frankly, I don’t care.