interesting enough for you to make a career out of parodying it.
You know what’s boring? Your rendition of me, Amanda.
You expressed a grave fear of ‘being second’ and now I understand all too well why. Perhaps if you didn’t try so hared with all the goofy looping and sidewinder attempts to cram my 43 years into your 27, didn’t go so far as to claim things that are just out of your era, requiring one to have been born when I was, etc etc, perhaps if people didn’t just look at you and know ‘that’s not auti8sm’ perhaps if you hadn’t made such a study of autism, found it (and mine in particular) to be so fascinating…
You know what? I’ve read all of one and one chapter’s worth of books about ‘autism’ if you can call it that… I read the Tony Attwood Asperger’s book (from back to front) in 45 minutes during the ride home from my neuropychiatrist I had in Battle creek. I read one chapter of Donna Williams “Nobody Nowhere” and was instantly taken back to recaling my 2 weeks of ‘bipolar dosider’ following the university (and oddly, no one ever confused that ‘bipolar disorder’ with autism, go figure).
Autism is not that amazing to me. Now my height (which you even attempted to mislead people you are as shsrt as me… talk about ludicrous and ridiculous), now that’s more amazing. So are my very small hands as I am very small boned and my fingers that would wear a size three ring can get themselves around a ‘three quarter sized guitar’ easily enough… but I guess you’d have to have something of that ‘1 in 500 fine motor control’ like I do to play.
Oddly, people don’t seem to question my state of being autistic, but they certainly do your’s.
i’ve never been diagnosed with ‘factitious disorder’ either… you’d think in all these years in the Midwest, somebody would have strayed from the course with me, and at my typing my sister (an RN the middle and the one ‘normal’ of the three of us) went on a mission even to see if I am ‘really autistic’ and while you hold up MITs ‘chats’ with you as some sort of badge of honor, I’ve been the the U of M, John Hopkins, others, seen by real experts to verify it, simply because I ‘started typing’ as far as ‘if people tell you they can see autism they have something to sell you’ me thinks amanda has no autism to appear in research (yeah where you look at a cup and your mother’s face, etc I was a part of some of those).
I don’t get all the questioning, people don’t look at me and just ‘sense’ there is something relay ‘remiss’ in this picture like they do you and I don’t have anything to sell (but you sure seem to), and I’ve been long -reverified as who I am with no mystical ‘confusions’ about it such as you’ve had, and my ‘story’ stays the same.
Droopy,
As someone who’s been processed by the institutional system, and seen other people processed who are much further down the “food chain” of psychiatric medicine (often I was mistaken for a counselor instead of a patient) all I can say is – I can picture what you must have gone through, and what it must have felt like. You have my sympathies.
and there is no secret autism ‘language’ no secret handshake and all that crap. I can tolerate get along with and ‘read’ autistic about as well (or not) as I can any others, we bear no mystical mind reading abilities and if a bona-fide autistic offend my senses (having been in enough classrooms institutions etc) with their own particular behaviors, I am that much less likely to get along. Autism is not a secret society, nor is it a party, not a group effort in fact, you can cut the trendy club and 'ESP" crap and most of all, you can stop making sentences about ‘autistics’ 'autistics this and autistics that" you wouldn’t know and you don’t speak for me and you cant say you speak for nonverbal autistics who aren’t the Mr Ed Talking Horse Fluke of Autism, so please, cut with the globalizations and the ‘ambassador of autism’ crap. I am autistic and even I have enough sense and have no desire to do something like that.
I have a voice (courtesy of my dynawrite) and with it I can tell you, you don’t speak for me, and I deeply resent attempts to do so. I deeply resent you using my life as your means to do so. Don’t take advantage of those who don’t have a voice just because they can’t tell you as clearly as I can what they feel about what you do. Don’t assume you speak for them either, and don’t use my life to attempt it.
in answer to:
“Why would I need to seek out people artificially similar…”
People with factitious, munchausen and schizophrenia commonly do it, Amanda. You’ve been formally diagnosed with two of those.
‘they all hairpull’ like half these mystery ‘autitics’ decided they ‘thought in pictures’ after Reading Temple Grandin’s book “Thinking in Pictures” you sit around swapping “stims” one of your best friends wanted to ‘go see what rattling streetsigns’ was like and wanted to ‘borrow’ this ‘stim’ for her own (Natalia), you all do it habitually. Amanda you give leadership, and your drones are happy to pipe up on your website and act accordingly ‘act the part of autism’
when I was still ‘on the inside’ and ‘allowed access’ the the real ‘guts and meat’ of the way the lot of you *really talk (such as on Second Life and the countless autism chats on IRC I attended, including the one your Tconsik hosted on her own server), I saw and I know what its like, and I have the memory for it, the one you only wish you had. oh and I have brain damage (but you already know that as you manage to claim ‘lock stock and barrel’ nearly every other medical anomaly/disability I have.) Somehow I think you got on SSI for schizophrenia at the age of 19 when you now claim you ‘attended a university’ neatly swapping around the order of events in your life (trying to claim an autism DX at 14 rather than attendance at Simon Rock, pushing back the academia to the first ‘diagnosis’ you could get once in Vermont.)
There are a number of frauds out there, and you know it (you regularly questioned a number of them to me, myself, Khalan, others).
You however, are the only one who directly went to such extreme lengths and used me as your template to go far and wide in successfully misleading the public and the media.
Your youtube video shows you doing it with just one finger. How do you hit the shift key? What is you error rate?
I ask because I am a two finger typist, with a high error rate. One of your longer posts would take me about 15 minutes to produce, and another 3-5 to correct.
Your video also shows you typing without looking. Do you look to see that what you have written is accurate? Do you make corrections? if so, are you looking at the screen while doing so?
You know what’s interesting? When I googled “touch typing”, all the hits were about the normal 8-finger method. I couldn’t find a single reference to ambagg’s magical 1-finger, no-look method. None. Not even relating to autism. (Aside from this one, of course.)
Wow, I thought you were talking to me in good faith, rather than taking the worst possible interpretation of what I could write. I don’t think I own or command my friends, or make them into copies of myself. I was noting the oddity that someone would think I was trying to be a copy of them, when there are people who are much more similar to me than she is and are still not copies of me. I think you’re the one who missed my point.
You took from my description of my toys as my friends (the fact that you play with toys and have even made some measure to pick up a few to attempt to match mine, those that aren’t entirely older than your entire being) to describe objects as your friends at one time, did you not? Is there not a blog entry on your website claiming its a good thing, a term of endearment to say love somebody like an object?
Of all the autistic people I have been around, no one would confuse any of us, or one with another, we all managed to be quite unique from one another in our natural states, so how is it Amanda, that you bear so much 'striking resemblence to me in story (as carefuly rewritten), abilities and disabilites?
Also, please expand on how the generic being ‘not normal’ magically tr4anslates into being ‘severely autistic’ from 19 onward. questionably anecdotally ‘not normal’ isn’t on the DSM list of autism criterion nor does it begin to suggest you ever were autistic.
The list of my genetic abnormalities is listed on my brith records. I was diagnosed as severely autistic first by a local smalltown family doctor – go figure. Evidently he wasn’t aware you had to be a ‘doctor who knows about autism’ and he managed to get the precursory education on such things that doctors get in their training – even such as it was in the mid 1960-'s.
That I am autistic was further confirmed in a neighboring larger city facility (which my mother has insured I have proper location and dates for).
The Midwest is not seen as the center of progressiveness the way California is, and I find it pretty incredulous that you managed to avoid any doctors with any working general MD knowledge of it in your entire childhood travels, whkch took place in the 1980’s. I would think if somehow California general MDs need their licensure questioned based on this consistant ‘oversight’ of your ‘autism’ that at least the introduction of the movie “Rainman” in 1988 surely would have made them more aware as it did the rest of the world and somebody profesional, MD type, would have ‘noticed’ your ‘severe autism’ then.
Incidentally ‘eager to please’ and ‘attentoin-seeking’ as well as ‘manipulative’ (of the sort you’ve struggled all your life by your own steady died of posts including to present on your blogsite, not the ‘grabbing to use hands type’) seem to be hallmarks of your life’s issues, but are NOT hallmarks of autism, in fact it is safe to say that the lack thereof of these traits is pretty core to ‘the stuff autism is made of’ (many parents, including my own when I was little, would have been thrilled at any ‘attention-seeking’ or 'eagerness to please). Igts odd that you have struggled with these impressions of you being made (by professionals, inER settings even etc) all of your life, and evidently continue to struggle with.
Suggestion: Stop trying to ‘redefine autism’ so it includes you. It doesn’t.
AS for ‘typing without looking’ not so impressive, look at the movie again, she keeps one hand constant as her reference point. I can type in the dark in my friend John’s car, type with one hand faster than most, etc etc, and I am losing eyesight (unrelated point unless the University of Michigan can’t locate cause and solution for me) I will be typing ‘without looking’ and with whatever digits I choose as I do now, whenever the need arises. The questionable 'FC boy looking skyward expose (was it on Dateline? 20/20) years ago depected a boy with no
reference point at all, no leaning or holding the keyboard elsewhere, etc.
As for my incontinence? Thanks for the gratuitious attempt to explain mine, but autism (or at veyr least extreme sensory issues which you have also 'adapted. there is little you haven’t) play a significant part and aren’t necessarily all attributable to my TBI/brainstem cyt. To put it simply, one of the things my doctor writes for my prescription incontinence supplies (as the supply requires detailed explanations then set about picking the right products for me based on that) is simply ‘lack of awareness’
Is also very convenient of you to now retract your stated abilities to match mine "loss of fine motor skills’ etc, so I guess you won’t be taking me up on my challenge to take that little puzzle block test or my YouTube typing challenge, or my aural memory recall challenge then? since you now ‘had but lost’ these?
How about the language discerning capability, the (family trait of ours that my ‘asperger walking’ brother is linquistally gifted enough for the government to have sent him to the Presidio of Monterrey to become fluent in over 21 languages) ‘milestone missed’? My ability to tell one musical note (childsplay to me) from another, one frequency from another, being as quoted ‘capable of having a career in sonics’ at 43 and you at 27 you SHOULD have some sort of albeit very mild advantage on me at these now (providing you do in fact, have these abilities), or will they conveniently wane as well?
How come its entitled ‘neurodiversity’ but you talk about how we’re all ‘so much the same’ when queried about our ‘striking similarities’ and what about the incident where you yourself talked about a "Marty’ who was found to be less than truthful in a display of 'autism bearing ‘striking similarities’ to ‘your’ life?
If a person chose to feign autism, decided at a late date in their life to have ‘late onset severe autism’ and to create such a facade, how would we know the difference between that situation, and yours?
Why did you question if I was a ‘fake’ (my blog, started in 2005 was up to the point of my posting images of me rattling streetsigns at that time) at seeing my website?
You were unable to demonstrate to me that the people you listed had ‘so much more in common with you’ and gthe question isn’t whether someone is a ‘copy of you’ but why it is you seem to be copying others, namely me. Why is it anytime you become aware of a ‘juicy good autism atttribute’ from anyone actually, you arbitrarily adopt it and claim it for your own (see the tammet synaesia bit on your website for a more recent acquisition’ from another ‘in the auti8sm community’).
I’m also still waiting for an answer on how you could learn of the stress levels all of this has caused me and have no empathy or regret on your radar whatsoever (be careful you don’t want to play to the ‘lack of empathy in autism’ stereo type in responding or in your total total lack thereof).
What really freaked me out was when I had neck issues, and not 72 hours later (was more like less than 48 hours) you had a nice embellished post about this complete with “PT” on your blog. Given as I had only discussed this on my telephone and in my living room (with my friend John) its then I unplugged my telephone from the wall.
and what is the difference between your written ‘echolalia’ that you describe at length several times on your blog (and attempted to explain to me when we were communicating as an explanation for all the ‘me too’ acquisitions and warned me that you tend to take from others, verbatim, as part of your ‘language learning’), and plagiarism? Please elaborate on the difference. Maybe your friend Anne Bevington can tell us, even though her law speciality seems to be Real Estate/Wills and that sort of things and nothing of the sort you seem to be using her for, perhaps, like doctors have a ‘working knowledge’ of autism, perhaps law school provides a similar sort of ‘working knowledge’ of such things as ‘experience/written echolalia’ vs ‘plagiarism,’ and she can provide and enlighten on the distinction between the two?
You all need to take this fight off this board. We generally don’t allow arguments over off-board or real-life behavior here, and that goes double when people want to play Internet Detective and prove/disprove the veracity of one’s online persona.
I’m closing this thread. Please don’t start any more on the topic of Amanda Baggs.
“I thought that when I first read about autism, too. It explained everything, but it also seemed ‘pretentious’ as you said, to believe that I was autistic in any way. **Now I have an official diagnosis **(which doesn’t necessarily mean much) **of atypical autism (pdd-nos) **and am in contact with other people who are similar.” (alt.support.autism - March 16 1999)
No I don’t “get the idea”. Autistic Disorder is severe Autism and it is impossible to miss. Asperger’s Syndrome is higher-functioning autism.
So you got the “Autistic Disorder” diagnosis to get help with living skills - to “get services”? You didn’t get it because you ‘fit’ the criteria before that? Is that right? Would I be right in saying that it was your functioning ability caused by other problems not related to autism that led you to your “Autistic Disorder” diagnosis?
Why didn’t the autism specialist diagnose you?
What do you mean, “the oral diagnosis was always autism”? Atypical autism is an ASD, but it is not Autism. If it were the same as Autism, it wouldn’t be necessary to have a PDD-NOS category.
At the time, you were working with autistic children at your special school, and I find it very hard to believe that nobody recognised that you had severe, moderate, or even high-functioning autism. If you had been behaving as you do in your “In My Language” You tube video at that time, I believe that the teachers at the special school and your psychiatrists, would have realized that you had severe autism, and not paranoid schizophrenia.
It seems strange that you wrote about being fascinated by the behaviour of one non-verbal severely autistic girl who was about your age, then 17, (you know, the one with “the body language so much more expressive than most people’s” who “tried to bury her face in the pastry dough” and smiled and bounced when you made squeaking noises.) and three years later you became mute and started behaving in peculiar ways. Did she used to do a “Happy Dance” like yours?
“I’m also a psych major.” (alt.lefthanders Apr 19** 1998**)
"Many children (mostly autistic) at my school use those picture card things. Everything in the room is labeled with them, and they have schedule boards with velcro on them to attach the pictures. When they want to do something, they point to the picture (often with a lot of coaxing). My school’s pretty neat actually. It’s special-ed for ages 7?-22. There are maybe forty students, of all kinds of problems (I’m in the high-functioning class, recovering from schizophrenia). I get to work with one of the autistic girls once a week, and I really enjoy it. I want to do things like that professionally, eventually. Once I get out of this school and back to college… "(Dec 7 1997)
Sounds to me like you were enjoying yourself, and you weren’t being influenced by other people.
Why do you tell horrific stories of your abuse as an autistic child, and the abuse of autistic children when your only contact with said children seems to have been at this special school when you were 17?
“I did most things early (including talk) by my parents say they were told I took** slightly longer than norma**l with the toilet training.” (alt.support.autism, Dec 10 1998)
Putting the cat on the keyboard aside, that isn’t the impression you give: http://www.cnn.com/2007/HEALTH/02/21/autism.amanda/index.html Living with autism in a world made for others
February 22, 2007
"Amanda Baggs has severe autism. She didn’t cry when she was born. She had to be taught how to nurse. As a little girl, she rocked her head back and forth but could speak. As she grew, she would go longer and longer without speaking, until her spoken language disappeared altogether.
She slowly learned how to type. Now, she relies on her computer or a voice synthesizer linked to a keyboard to interact with people. According to Hollander, “You might think that these individuals are mentally retarded or have no verbal skills, but in fact, they’re not mentally retarded. They really understand what is going on and if they utilize a communication device, they can really communicate what they are thinking and feeling.” http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/viewArticle.asp?articleID=31329 Putting autism on trial: an interview with Amanda Baggs by autistic author Donna Williams
"Amanda Baggs shot to notoriety after pictures of her caused controversy on an autistic pride website. After she produced a You Tube video featuring herself typing her communication, she featured on US TV and her video was seen by over a 1/4 of a million viewers, inspiring functionally non-verbal people with autism and their families around the globe. "
Bio: I am a 26-year-old autistic woman. I don’t use functioning labels or believe in them. When given the choices above though,** the only one I’ve had officially on paper was “low functioning**”. "
Presumably, this was the friend you met at the John Hopkins Center for Talented Youth , “nerd camp”. From what I have read, you lent her your copy of the Tao Te Ching and discussed conformity vs non-conformity with her. Is that right?
Do you imagine other 12-year-olds with ‘Autistic Disorder - low functioning’ can live away from home and attend classes for gifted students at universities, have high level discussions with their friends, and read and understand the Tao Te Ching?
What is disconcerting is that you did not respond to the rest of my message:
"Why do you persist in giving the impression that you were a low-functioning, non-verbal, incontinent, institutionalized child subjected to horrific autism treatments and constant abuse, and say that you learned to communicate at the age of nine…? You have perpetuated these myths about yourself on CNN, in your interview with Donna Williams, and in your numerous You tube videos .
You know that there are thousands upon thousands of people all over the world who believe that you have always looked and behaved the way you do, and that as a child you had severe autism, and that you have severe autism now. Some are parents of children with the same diagnosis who now, having listened to you, believe that given time, acceptance of their condition and love, their children will be able to function and communicate as you do. You are not being honest with them.
Amanda, You are a danger to our children. Please STOP!"
Here is an example of a response you gave to a parent’s question:
Q: "Amanda, my daughter, Taylor, 12 years old, is severely autistic and non-verbal. How old were you when you taught yourself to type and is there a way I can try to teach Taylor to type? She uses a tech-speak device with pictures at school, but I really want to carry on a conversation with her and tell her how much I love her and want to make her life better and easier for her to understand. " Julie Zuelsdorff, Merrill, Wisconsin
“BAGGS: I was 9 years old when I started, and it was through a typing tutor program on the computers at school. It had a cat on it, which made me automatically interested. Some people need more physical assistance learning typing than I did (lots of autistic people will never be 10-finger touch-typists but can still type), and some might need assistance developing the literacy skills to write. Others might really need an alternate form of communication altogether. If you read the book “Autism and the Myth of the Person Alone,” you can find the stories of several different autistic people with varying degrees of speech and typing skill (but all of whom type independently), who learned to type in different ways.”
Here is an example of “Autistic Disorder - Low Functioning” in a girl of 13. It is not an example of " a healthy variation in neurological hardwiring".
