AGXStarseed
Well-Known Member
(Not written by me)
LAST week Lauri Love, a 31-year-old from England, learned in court he could be extradited to the US to face charges over alleged computer hacking (Plea to stop hacker Lauri Love’s extradition to US fails, The National, September 17).
The story made news in part because Love has Asperger’s Syndrome, one of many variations of autism.
Love can appeal and it’s to be hoped that a more enlightened view may prevail, but some media coverage of his case doesn’t leave one all that optimistic.
That’s not to tar all media coverage with the same brush – The National, The Guardian, The Telegraph and The Independent all described Mr Love as “having” Asperger’s, which, given the difficulty of explaining this complex condition seems fair enough.
However, Radio Scotland, in their news bulletins, chose to describe Mr Love as “suffering” from Asperger’s Syndrome.
I doubt Radio Scotland's reporting is Mr Love’s number one concern right now, but it’s important to challenge use of language like this as part of the wider campaign against the stigmatisation.
“Suffering” is not a neutral word. The Google definition is: “the state of undergoing pain, distress, or hardship”.
All of those experiences are all too readily available to autistic people – the National Autistic Society estimates that 40 per cent of people diagnosed as autistic also develop anxiety disorders – but they are not definitions of autism itself.
The “normal” world is never going to go out of its way to accommodate neurologically atypical people, but it’s not necessary to marginalise them by broadcasting to the nation that a man diagnosed with Asperger’s is, de facto, suffering.
As the parent of a kid who was diagnosed with Asperger’s some 10 years ago, I appreciate I may be overly touchy on this subject.
But the issue isn’t really how prickly I am, it’s what sort of country we want to live in.
If we’re all to be more or less the same, with the different to be pitied, patronised and packed off out of sight, let’s order in the North Korean uniforms and have done with it.
I’d prefer us to be able to be who we are, within reasonable limits, without having society’s finger pointing at us and deciding we must be suffering because we are different.
Is anyone labelled as “suffering” from being artistic? Were he alive, Van Gogh might put his hand up at this point, but society as a whole wouldn’t. Or as “suffering” from being athletic?
The Olympics would suggest otherwise, and the Paralympics show us how effective inclusion and dropping pejorative expressions can be in empowering some disabled people, the sporting ones at least, to achieve to a level unthinkable in the 1970s when I was growing up.
BBC Scotland is plainly not on a campaign to stigmatise autism. But that’s what their reporting did last week, no matter how unconsciously.
Mr Love is doubtless suffering from the ongoing court case; he will probably be suffering from things we know nothing of in his private life; but he shouldn’t be depicted as “suffering” from who he is.
Below-the-line comments in many newspapers reflected hostility to Mr Love, suggesting a level of ignorance of autism which will need a lot of effort to eradicate.
Part of that effort will be to understand that years of raising awareness and understanding can be eroded by casually reinforcing the message of the 1970s, that being different is not a good thing.
Surely, in the new Scotland we are trying to build, we can be better than that.
Andy Steel, address supplied
SOURCE: http://www.thenational.scot/comment...-who-has-aspergers-is-suffering-from-it.22590
LAST week Lauri Love, a 31-year-old from England, learned in court he could be extradited to the US to face charges over alleged computer hacking (Plea to stop hacker Lauri Love’s extradition to US fails, The National, September 17).
The story made news in part because Love has Asperger’s Syndrome, one of many variations of autism.
Love can appeal and it’s to be hoped that a more enlightened view may prevail, but some media coverage of his case doesn’t leave one all that optimistic.
That’s not to tar all media coverage with the same brush – The National, The Guardian, The Telegraph and The Independent all described Mr Love as “having” Asperger’s, which, given the difficulty of explaining this complex condition seems fair enough.
However, Radio Scotland, in their news bulletins, chose to describe Mr Love as “suffering” from Asperger’s Syndrome.
I doubt Radio Scotland's reporting is Mr Love’s number one concern right now, but it’s important to challenge use of language like this as part of the wider campaign against the stigmatisation.
“Suffering” is not a neutral word. The Google definition is: “the state of undergoing pain, distress, or hardship”.
All of those experiences are all too readily available to autistic people – the National Autistic Society estimates that 40 per cent of people diagnosed as autistic also develop anxiety disorders – but they are not definitions of autism itself.
The “normal” world is never going to go out of its way to accommodate neurologically atypical people, but it’s not necessary to marginalise them by broadcasting to the nation that a man diagnosed with Asperger’s is, de facto, suffering.
As the parent of a kid who was diagnosed with Asperger’s some 10 years ago, I appreciate I may be overly touchy on this subject.
But the issue isn’t really how prickly I am, it’s what sort of country we want to live in.
If we’re all to be more or less the same, with the different to be pitied, patronised and packed off out of sight, let’s order in the North Korean uniforms and have done with it.
I’d prefer us to be able to be who we are, within reasonable limits, without having society’s finger pointing at us and deciding we must be suffering because we are different.
Is anyone labelled as “suffering” from being artistic? Were he alive, Van Gogh might put his hand up at this point, but society as a whole wouldn’t. Or as “suffering” from being athletic?
The Olympics would suggest otherwise, and the Paralympics show us how effective inclusion and dropping pejorative expressions can be in empowering some disabled people, the sporting ones at least, to achieve to a level unthinkable in the 1970s when I was growing up.
BBC Scotland is plainly not on a campaign to stigmatise autism. But that’s what their reporting did last week, no matter how unconsciously.
Mr Love is doubtless suffering from the ongoing court case; he will probably be suffering from things we know nothing of in his private life; but he shouldn’t be depicted as “suffering” from who he is.
Below-the-line comments in many newspapers reflected hostility to Mr Love, suggesting a level of ignorance of autism which will need a lot of effort to eradicate.
Part of that effort will be to understand that years of raising awareness and understanding can be eroded by casually reinforcing the message of the 1970s, that being different is not a good thing.
Surely, in the new Scotland we are trying to build, we can be better than that.
Andy Steel, address supplied
SOURCE: http://www.thenational.scot/comment...-who-has-aspergers-is-suffering-from-it.22590
