[QUOTE=Sarahfeena]
I am absolutely astounded that you linked to a website that claims that a bunch of famous people, including Al Gore, have autism or autistic traits, as if it were some kind of proof of the functioning capability of autistic people, and neither you nor the website gives any citations or proof of any kind that these folks are autistic. How, exactly, have these “Neurodiversity activists” compiled this list?
[/QUOTE]
That is just one of many lists, but I would say associating genius and autism began in 1999 when newspaper and magazine articles associating Bill Gates and Einstein started to appear, and when the Irish autism expert Professor Michael Fitzgerald began to study famous historical people whom he claims had Aspergers syndrome: Ludwig Wittgenstein, Sir Keith Joseph, Eamon de Valera, Lewis Carroll and William Butler, 21 famous writers, philosophers, musicians and painters including George Orwell, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Andy Warhol, Herman Melville, Simone Weil, Ludwig van Beethoven, Vincent van Gogh, Enoch Powell, Stanley Kubrick, Aldous Huxley, Sir Isaac Newton, Alfred Kinsey, Patricia Highsmith, William James Sidis, Robert Walser, Joy Adamson, Kurt Gödel, Robert Emmet, Pádraig Pearse, Éamon de Valera, Robert Boyle, William Rowan Hamilton, Daisy Bates, WB Yeats, James Joyce and Samuel Beckett
Professor Michael Fitzgerald:
“Asperger’s syndrome swings from very high-IQ people like Isaac Newton, President Eamon de Valera, Samuel Beckett, James Joyce, and Einstein, to much lower IQs and much less talented people.”
So it would appear that around that time an Asperger’s spectrum was introduced.
Here’s another article, from the BBC. BBC NEWS | UK | Magazine | What Asperger's syndrome has done for us
Are you aware that 2002 Nobel Prizewinner Vernon Smith has also been diagnosed with Aspergers, and speaks against treatment and cure?
1999 was when people began hearing about autism and genius, and started diagnosing themselves with Aspergers. Like this person, and then, without a diagnosis, they join other online autistics to speak against treatment, therapy and possible cure for Autism.
Frank Klein became another autism advocate at 29, after reading an article in The New York Times magazine, ‘The Little Professor Syndrome’ which he said, “explained everything”. He then set up his “Asperger’s Advocacy” website which he later changed to “Autism Advocacy” when he said he realized he was more High Functioning than an Aspie. Amongst other articles, such as, “Don’t Cure Autism Now!” and “The Truth of The Myth of The Lack of Autism Recovery”, he wrote ”“Autism, Genius and Greatness” ”.
These are some of the people who layed the foundations of the Neurodiversity Movement.
