Wednesday, April 2, 2008

Worldwide autism awareness day

It's worldwide autism awareness day. I thought this wired magazine article on autism and this blog post by a psychiatrist were the most helpful on the topic. They are related to the video below. About halfway through this women explains how this is her language.



The quote from wired I found a good challenge was this:
The YouTube post, she says, was a political statement, designed to call attention to people's tendency to underestimate autistics. It wasn't her first video post, but this one took off. "When the number of viewers began to climb, I got scared out of my mind," Baggs says. As the hit count neared 100,000, her blog was flooded. At 200,000, scientists were inviting her to visit their labs. By 300,000, the TV people came calling, hearts warmed by the story of a young woman's fiery spirit and the rare glimpse into what has long been regarded as the solitary imprisonment of the autistic mind. "I've said a million times that I'm not trapped in my own world,'" Baggs says. "Yet what do most of these news stories lead with? Saying exactly that."

3 comments:

Casdok said...

As my son dosnt speak Amanda Baggs has taught me so much.
Thank you for posting this today.

titration said...

You are welcome. It's pretty powerful I think.

Anonymous said...

My goodness... this is a very powerful video. Not just speaking about autism and challenging myths about it. But her understanding of personhood touches me like none other. She's amazing.