Just a quick note—check out Ames’s live blogging of David Kirby’s appearance in New York. The talk contains some of the usual gems, and also a few surprises, such as (if reported correctly) that homosexuals are sick but can’t admit it.
More Kirby nonsense
Comments
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also a few surprises, such as (if reported correctly) that homosexuals are sick but can’t admit it.
That would be very odd. Kirby has written about gay issues for a long time, and even was on the staff of OutWeek.
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It did seem rather out of character, so perhaps it was a misquote, although his reporting on vaccines is so inconsistent, that it’s hard to know what he does or does not believe.
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The full quote from Kirby was:
“Gay people dont like to hear that they are sick… they feel that theyre just different. I know a lot of adults with autism that feel that way. I question whether their autism is the very same disorder as the kids I write about in my book.”
I don’t think he meant to imply homosexuality was a disease, I think it was just a very clumsy and poor way of saying that we should respect autistic people.
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Hey Pal! Thanks for the plug :-). The quote is direct, I promise it’s not a misquote. But it does seem inconsistent, and in fact struck me as something he didn’t *mean* to say. As in, he struggled through that entire paragraph of his speech, and it wouldn’t shock me if he just rather embarrassingly misspoke.
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Yes, I agree (as I said above). To me it seems like he meant to say that some autism sufferers don’t consider themselves to be “sick”,and then made a poor analogy to homosexuals who take issue with being wrongly accused of being “sick”. He’s a knobhead, but I don’t think he’s a homophobe based on that remark.
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I know a lot of adults with autism that feel that way. I question whether their autism is the very same disorder as the kids I write about in my book.
There is a legitimate question buried in there: does more than one form of autism exist? What differentiates someone with mild aspergers from someone with severe autism leading to complete lack of verbal and social ability? Does autism remit with time (as in the “adults who don’t think that they’re sick” versus “kids I write about” distinction.)
It is my impression that Aspergers improves with time, at least functionally (i.e. people with AS learn the social conventions by rote, act much less strange as adults than they did as children) but that’s based largely on anecdote. Does anyone know if it’s been formally studied?
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Re: Dianne: “There is a legitimate question buried in there: does more than one form of autism exist?”
Possibly, but I don’t think he’s interested in asking that question at looking at the talk notes. It seems to me that he’s actually just trying to play a cheap trick using circular logic. He artificially defines a new category of “special” autism based on the cases in question, and then lo-and-behold he can correlate that category to the cases.
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I know a lot of adults with autism that feel that way. I question whether their autism is the very same disorder as the kids I write about in my book.
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Yes, I agree (as I said above). To me it seems like he meant to say that some autism sufferers don’t consider themselves to be “sick”,and then made a poor analogy to homosexuals who take issue with being wrongly accused of being “sick”. He’s a knobhead, but I don’t think he’s a homophobe based on that remark.
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