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I don't have ASD but I have ADHD, and based on my experience I think it's extremely fair to see knowingly inflicting upon another living being a disability that causes great pain and suffering throughout their entire life, as fucked up and immoral
It's like pugs and pitbulls, many people can agree in the thought "why are we intentionally creating more canines with terrible disabilities which badly hurt them for the rest of their life?", so why is it so bad when the same logic is applied to humans?
I think it's dumb to describe it as "eugenics", considering that's a term almost entirely associated in the modern day with Nazism, forced imprisonment/torture/forced sterilization of certain groups, and racist beliefs. Wheras this seems concerned with wanting people to not suffer nearly as much after they're born, so they're expressing how they're upset that people chose to create a new life with more suffering than average when there's tons of equally good alternatives, and I think that's pretty different than flat out promoting genocide...
What's wrong with adoption anyways? It's pretty selfish to bring a new life into this world for your own personal satisfaction when you could literally just take a child who's already out there suffering and make them not suffer for no extra loss.
I find it stupid that they describe it as "ruined lives" though. Especially for the parents, like wtf just be a good parent? It's not like most parents have a kid with no difficult challenges to face whatsoever. When you become a parent you sign up to being exposed to any and every possibility that could come from a kid. If you become a parent and then go "woe is me, I didn't expect autism so I can't deal with this, don't blame me for not parenting correctly" then you shouldn't have become a parent. The only way parents can "ruin" their own lives is if they're a shitty parent, which unfortunately a majority of people are...
disability that causes great pain and suffering throughout their entire life
Motherfucker what are you talking about? I am literally just here to vibe, it's the fault of the current system for refusing to support any kind of variety. Autism isn't fucking osteoporosis, I'm not in pain, I'm just fucking different.
Autistic people aren't suffering unless you're putting them in a system which refuses to treat them as anything other than subhuman.
Remind me when we're not going to be in a system which refuses to treat disabled people properly? We live in a world built against disabled people. That is NOT going to change soon. We are corporatist and in most of the first world the right-wing is on the rise. Look at Italy, look at most of western Europe actually. Look how much attention people like DeSantis got before blowing it, and how popular it is to hate on groups like disabled more than it has ever been in recent years – shit it only getting worse. Why bring an innocent kid into that?
Besides, neurodevolopmental disorders in many people can objectively just inflict suffering completely detached from the "system". I've seen them firsthand with both myself and friends with ASD. Especially socially. Obviously won't apply to every mentally disabled person, but it's extremely high likelihood – I meet almost entirely people with ASD and/or ADHD who feel extremely lonely and can't find comfort socially.
Even with treatment ADHD fucks me and many others over in ways completely unrelated to the system. Friends with ASD describe it similarly, especially when ASD doesn't have as many options in terms of treatment compared to ADHD. When it comes to ADHD, I can't enjoy myself with hobbies or the satisfaction of my productivity as a person without such a disorder can, I can't find happiness in my own hobbies if I can't do them, and I spend many days being upset that I can't make myself do the stuff I want to do even if I have medication. I can say with confidence I would 100% be happier if I was born in the same circumstances but without ADHD. And this is an extremely common sentiment for neurodevelopmental disorders, you can see it all over the thread.
I do great socially, I just don't have a lot of friends my age I guess, most of my friends are at least 5-6 years older than me, but I grew up mostly around adults because the neighborhood I grew up in (and still live in) did not have many kids.
"Remind me when we're not going be in a system which refuses to treat X properly" is honestly, uh. Your other arguments are honestly strongly tied to neurodivergency being a spectrum and thus outside of my personal experience to speak on one way or another, but I just can't abide by this one. The system is fundamentally stacked against women and the LGBTQ+ community as well. Should people stop having girls as children, as some countries have actively attempted for cultural reasons? Should people continue searching for "the gay gene" as they have historically in order to eliminate homosexuality? Should one want to bring an "innocent kid" into existence fearing walking alone at night, or fearing being beaten to death if they visit the wrong place? Oppression is NOT an argument against the existence of a group, regardless of all else. And said oppression is the exact reason why eugenics is coming to mind for people in the first place. Because this line of logic basically posits that if it's harder to live as a minority, one should simply get rid of minorities entirely.
I'm sure plenty of people would be happier if they were born straight or white as well. But how much of that is inherent, and how much of that is a product of the system? Even if you consider neurodivergency to be actively disabling, being blind is a disability and many blind people still find joy and pride in their existence, even to the point of spurning the idea of a cure.
And heck, I'm clinically depressed. Without active medication, it can be very easy to slip into the idea that it'd hurt a lot less if I simply wasn't here. That because of my neurodivergency among other issues, I can never accomplish anything. Sometimes even with medication, I still feel that way. But somehow, posts like this actually steel my resolve to fight that. Because your argument basically pointed out that at least some of the voices telling every neurodivergent person that they're a failure aren't ours. And however seemingly futile the action is, that means there's something to rebel against. And there's nothing like existing as an act of spite to help keep one going, at least a little.
First of all, unlike disorders, everyone has the same chances when it comes to what sex their kids will be – being a woman doesn't make you more likely to have a girl (obviously). Meanwhile people with disorders have a VERY HIGH likelihood of passing them down to their kids. Some LGBT is partially genetic, although things like environment and whether you're ND play a much greater role.
Secondly, being LGBT or a woman in most first world countries isn't comparable to being disabled – and LGBT rights/equality are extremely high in more civilized places like Amsterdam – but to answer your question:
No, I wouldn't want to have a girl in this society, or anything before it – I mean to be honest I wouldn't want any children, but I think women in this age are still seen by the people who have the power in this society as targets/objects. I don't want to subject my child to all the disadvantages and potential horrors caused just by being a woman.
For LGBT it's more complicated – there are places which you'll get a life-ruining amount of bias because you're gay or ace or trans, and there are places which you will be mostly accepted and you'll not face nearly the amount of discrimination as most people with Autism or ADHD would. I wouldn't intentionally have an ultra gay kid if I were for some reason permanently stuck in an extremely hateful part of the south. But if I lived in a mostly liberal or leftist city that's known for being LGBT-friendly? Then it doesn't matter.
That's the discrimination difference. If you're gay, there's plenty of places that don't care. Plus it doesn't affect your daily functioning or your workflow or whatever. But if you have a mid case of ADHD or Autism, then that will be held against you practically everywhere by a majority of people. Of course, societal interactions aren't the only difference.
And what's the good in "society might eventually change for the better" if society's like that now? Should I subject my kid to suffering in the present just because it "might eventually get better maybe" with no guarantee as to a 'when', 'how', or even an 'if'? I'd gladly sacrifice myself to advance the rights of NDs, but I won't sacrifice a possible child who can't even consent to it.
If you see your suffering kid's existence as "an act of spite" against a dysfunctional system... I can't deny that sounds pretty immoral to me. I'm not here to insult you, but the way I see it is: the present is the way it is, I'm not going to sacrifice an unconsenting child just to spite the system or as a "well they want us gone, i'm not gonna give them what they want". It's not heroic, it's not brave, it's not honourable. The kid certainly isn't going to feel honor when he's being completely fucked over by society. (to quote "All Quiet on the Western Front" – "Honor? My son died in the war, and he doesn’t feel any honor!")
It's immoral – giving birth (a completely selfish act) to a child where you KNOW they have an atypically high likelihood of having something that will most likely cause them a lot of suffering in life.
I see the argument "a lot of blind people like existence so knowingly giving someone a disability isn't bad" with the same weight as "it's cold outside a lot of days so global warming isn't a problem". Like sure? It's not like everyone who's Autistic or ADHD or has a terminal illness or has down syndrome or bipolar or depressed is going to hate their life. But you, by willingly giving someone those things, are giving them something that most often absolutely fucks people over in ways uncomprehendable to people without disabilities. It doesn't matter if it's not guaranteed to make you unhappy, you are taking a large inherent risk.
Also, as a sidenote, the rhetoric that Autism/ADHD aren't disabilities is harmful. Just because something isn't disabling to you doesn't mean it's not a disability as a whole. Disabilities are a spectrum just like everything else, you as a person can have a physical disability like MS and still function fine for example. But that doesn't stop it from being a disability, a disorder, whatever. Much like how having a viral infection but it not showing any symptoms doesn't mean it's not a virus – it's just not affecting you as much as it does others.
Being a person with a disability doesn't necessarily have to mean you're a disabled person – you can use "disabled" to mean impaired functioning (e.g. if you're wheelchair bound and it gets in the way of your daily life) rather than just to mean that you have a disability. But many times, I would say the majority of times, neurodivergence is actually disabling in a way other than via "the system".
Anecdotally, my autistic friends emphasize how much torture light and especially sounds are, have pretty fucked food sensitivities (so do I, but because of ADHD), they get terrible burnout, etc. And they're ""high functioning"" (high/low functioning are dehumanizing/reductive terms imo which is why it's in double quotes). Of course, one of my friends actually gets an advantage from their ASD, which is they can hyperfocus on stuff for a looong time, but then they get burnout for months to years and never touch it again.
Well if it makes you feel better, I don't plan to have children. I don't feel physically nor emotionally capable of it, and even if I was, I'd vastly prefer to simply adopt. I was simply speaking for myself on that last part, because if life is that cruel to the point that children shouldn't be born like me (be it as neurodivergent, a woman, or ace, considering the above), then why should I exist either? Because I refuse to go out without clawing at the system first.
Nor do I have anything to say on your experiences, because again, as autism is a spectrum I can't speak on them in an educated fashion. Not that I'm not tempted to, and actually did somewhat against my own better wisdom in a post I deleted (among other things I quickly regretted). But ultimately I can't speak on when one thinks a life equivalent to theirs is "fair" to live, merely when an argument for such is too broad.
Let's take workplace struggles. So does sexual harassment not count as disrupting workflow? Or the fact that women are observably taken less seriously than men and verbally abused more? What about transgender people who are outed in the workplace against their will, or can't get their deadname changed on their paperwork? What about gender and racial pay disparity? What about people who have their applications rejected for having "ethnic" names? Do you think autistic people are the only ones to ever struggle with a job for reasons outside their own control? And this is in the "good" countries. In the "bad" countries, autistic people aren't the ones who have to worry about being killed for loving the wrong person or not wearing a hat.
Also, out of curiosity, have you talked to your friends about how you think they shouldn't have children? What have they said on it?
Well if it makes you feel better, I'm not planning to have kids, certainly not giving birth, and was merely speaking to my own continued existence on that last part rather than anyone else's. After all, if autistic existence is so terrible that children should never be born with it, then why should I still be alive? Because perhaps, just perhaps, there's still something I can do about it other than simply go away, regardless of if anyone wants me to or not.
If I had a child, it would be out of love, not hate. But I feel neither physically nor emotionally responsible enough for the task, nor do I feel desperate enough to carry on my own genes to not try to give that love to someone that already exists and was abandoned by those who should have cared for them instead of some new wholecloth being instead. But I don't see the point in spiting people who feel different, either.
The truth is, people suffer. And the argument about location can be offered conversely. You generally won't get killed for being autistic, at least not at this specific moment in history, but you can be in many places for being gay or for not conforming to repressive social norms as a woman. And even in places where they aren't, is your workflow not sabotaged by being sexually harassed? Is someone's workflow not disrupted by being unwillingly outed as transgender in the workplace, or by the staff refusing to change paperwork from their deadname? Do women not statistically get paid less for the same jobs as men? Do women not also get their workflow disrupted by being taken observably less seriously and getting verbally abused more while doing the same jobs as men? Do resumes not get rejected for having names that "sound foreign?"
And even if you got rid of all that, people aren't going to stop suffering. Even if every autistic child, every LGBTQ child, every child from every local minority and every little girl were prevented from existing, humanity would still find new ways to segregate and torment whatever little remained. And for that matter, that behavior is mirrored in the animal kingdom as well. Short of wiping life itself clean, it's not really possible to prevent suffering. And at that point, aren't you just causing the most suffering of all?
And yet. Humanity is special because of the capacity to recognize that the status quo is wrong, and to iterate upon it. 100 years ago, the acceptance seen towards women and the LGBTQ+ community in "the good" places was nonexistent. 200 years ago, overt and public ownership of other human beings as cattle was seen as a social norm. Braille is put up for the blind, subtitles for the deaf, ramps and automatic doors for the paralyzed. There was a time when being gay was diagnosed as a mental disorder, and if women were insubordinate they were diagnosed with the mental disorder of hysteria and lobotomized. And yet? Some people decided, stubbornly, that the solution wasn't to keep tolerating the status quo.
Not to say that autism cannot be more of a burden than most other things depending on the person. Again, it's a spectrum. It's not for me to speak on how it feels to be someone else. But the fact that it's a spectrum also means that there's no line. At what point does a person have the "right" genes to carry a child? At what point is it "fair?" Because clearly people who are "carriers" are a no-go as well in your books, and a huge chunk of the global population is autistic. And if you count every person who has at least one disability or allergy or genetic disease or general disadvantage in society, that's just about every genetic line at that point outright. Human genetics is inherently flawed. So is the only answer to engineer humanity to be perfect, then? And if so, what defines "perfection?" Work productivity in a late-stage capitalist society?
For my part, I wholeheartedly agree with your decision to not have children as well. But it's not because you're autistic. There are billions of people on this planet, and it's no one's responsibility to keep that number ticking up. Having a child should be the choice of someone who believes that the world is worth living in for that child. To lack that and still press on would be an act of cruelty to parent and child alike.
Although I do wonder. Have you talked with your friends about how you feel about autistic individuals having children to your friends? How do they feel? Do they agree that they wish they'd never been born, as you do?
As an autistic person (diagnosed by an actual professsional, not by tiktok), I must say I am happy existing lol
My life can be pretty miserable sometimes but it is 100% not caused by autism and if anything, I'd say the autism helps.
True, but life is gud ngl
Same. It's 100% society and not being too receptive and accommodating to people with "disabilities" (which i don't see autism as).
This is the case. One thing is treating all humans with respect, and another is knowingly contributing to someone having a more difficult life. You can love the ones who already exist without passing on your genetic nonsense to new ones.
So people who are more likely to get cancer shouldn't reproduce? What about people with asthma?
What about people lower on the socioeconomic scale?
If you follow your logic even a few steps it's gonna get real eugenics-y real fast.
I never attempted to lay out guidelines. As an general time I think anyone who rolls the dice when they can pass on a condition is horribly selfish and lacking in empathy.
But one of your points... why should someone who can't afford a child have a child? It's pretty valid to say that if my current position makes it so my kids would suffer a lot (which, in a corporatist society especially in the US, being very poor unfortunately generally causes immense pains in life) that it'd be immoral for me to create kids and then inflict that same issue upon them without them even being able to consent to it.
I can't afford to continue college, and I can't get a scholarship or anything to help – my ADHD was the main factor in me doing poorly in school even though I made A's on almost every assignment/test given to me (I just didn't do most of the assignments). I can't afford housing. I had a seizure just randomly a few weeks ago and now I have USD$80K in medical bills (I can get that reduced a bit, but no way I can pay it off).
I am poor. There is 0 chance that I'm forcing all this stuff on a child, including the ADHD part. No doubt I would at least do good at getting treatment and helping the child with their ADHD completely unlike my parents did (I wasn't diagnosed until 19 even though it was very obvious I had ADHD and my teachers even told them I probably have ADHD), but especially my flavour of ADHD is clearly not something that I want to pass down to kids in this society. And I'm pretty sick of people treating mental disorders like they're somehow not nearly as serious as physical/physiological disorders.
If we lived in a socialist society where everyone is treated perfectly like they should be treated, then sure – having a disability wouldn't be so bad. Even in that case I'd still find it immoral if I made kids that would have as equally terrible of a time just trying to enjoy their own hobbies and work as me. It's like the biggest fun and life and it feels it's been ripped out of my hands, I don't want my kids to deal with that.
And once again, there are still plenty of unadopted kids out there who would otherwise be suffering if they weren't adopted. I think just having kids at all rather than adopting when that's the case is immoral, irregardless of if you're disabled or not.
Also I see a big difference in the cancer part and Autism/ADHD/bipolar/etc. since if your parent or parents have, for example ADHD, it's almost certain that it will be passed down (like 90-99% chance). That kind of chance of passing down is definitely not the case when it comes to cancer. Like 60% (or more) of people get cancer in their lifetimes anyways so it's pretty likely you'll get cancer regardless.
Also cancer is something that can be taken out (if not found late), neurodivergence is not. And cancer doesn't affect you your whole life, while mental disorders do.
I have ASD and ADHD, generally pretty happy to be here.
Autism is a spectrum and most of us are perfectly functional, happy, productive people.
It's nothing like pugs or pitbulls, frankly that's kind of offensive. You're likening us to a genetic mistake. Most of the time I find myself wondering why the neurotypicals are so goddamn dysfunctional.
Who the fuck do you think you are too suggest that I, and many of my friends, shouldn't exist?
You're describing eugenics, call it what it is. It's not my fault you have shitty bedfellows.
Lmao everything you say is clearly purely out of hatred. Why do you value the life of a dog so much less than the life of a human to call them "genetic mistakes"?
And who said that you and your friends shouldn't exist? Certainly not me. You're likening "maybe it's a bad idea to knowingly create someone with a disability with a high likelihood of fucking someone over in life" to "i wish you and all your friends were dead and didn't exist".
It's actually pretty offensive to imply to the large portion of people who have their lives negatively affected by ADHD and ASD that it's not all that bad and they should suck it up and stop wishing they didn't have it. Clearly a lot of people in this thread disagree with you, those who have mental disorders including ASD.
Just because you were lucky and don't suffer much or even at all, means that it's fine that many (and in my experience most) other people affected by the disorder suffer? That's extremely selfish.
It is not describing eugenics. You are just saying emotionally charged words to try to make whatever you disagree with look worse. I could call what you believe in "sadism" and it'd have the same validity.
I believe it's bad to intentionally give a child bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, mood disorders, personality disorders, etc. because those can all cause extreme pain even if it doesn't seem like a problem when you're younger. I'm sure you'd agree that it's immoral to willingly afflict someone with that. But you draw the line at neurodevelopmental disorders for some reason?
In this case you already exist. You only get the right to exist after you do exist, or we would have to discuss the rights of inexistent people, and that would be very confusing
- I am autistic and have ADHD and I still prefer having been born to the alternative thank you very much!
- Comparing the intentional breeding of universaly harmful traits in dogs to taking a slightly higher risk of ASD which is rarely harmful is quite a stretch.
- Without autistic people many great things wouldn't exist today. I would argue that without the special interests and hyperfocus of neurodiverse people a lot of scientce and engineering wouldn't have happened or at least a lot later.
- While ASD and ADHD are often percieved as harmful, they are rarely only harmful and often bring special talent or at least a unique perspective.
The entire "your ADHD is a superpower" rhetoric is extremely harmful to people who have ADHD and generally leads to the struggles of ADHD not being taken seriously. I don't have a "gift" or a "superpower", I have a disability...
ADHD has many, MANY objectively bad things about it, and extremely few "good" things. I'd say the only thing that's positive that comes out of my ADHD is that I have a lot of interests, but even that is a problem in and of itself because it makes me divide my attention between many different things and never complete any of them... ADHD comes with a ton of executive dysfunction and self-regulation problems that tend to fuck you up a lot in life.
The hyperfocus is hardly a benefit considering it generally causes you to waste a ton of time on things that shouldn't get that much time, and even not considering that I'd say any benefit of hyperfocus is heavily outweighed by just being able to do anything at any time without having to constantly fight yourself over it, since you'd get so much more done. I find that people with both a good amount of Autism and some ADHD do a lot better than people who just have ADHD when it comes to these things, because the ASD can take actual advantage of the hyperfocus, but that's something a lot of people with ADHD do NOT have...
Also if someone was never born, they wouldn't know nor care that they weren't born since they never existed. There's literally 0 downside to not being born. Any sort of idea that you'd hate to not have been born or that you would prefer to be born than not to be is a purely irrational thought considering that.
And yes, there are people with ASD and ADHD and depression and whatever that live lives that they like. That's not the point. The point is that the disorders do cause an objective amount of suffering that is higher than those without, especially in this society, and in many cases the suffering causes a lot of harm to the person, so intentionally taking a high chance of that happening to your kid is immoral. I don't want to intentionally harm my kid, you shouldn't either.
Btw, it's not a "slightly higher risk" you are giving your kid like 9x the odds of having ASD if you yourself have ASD. And if you have ADHD you are almost guaranteeing that your kid also has ADHD.
I don't consider ADHD a superpower and I struggle with executive dysfunction every single day. I would love to be able to understand other people and their non verbal or indirect communication better. On the other hand I love the fact that my personal combination of disabilities has allowed me to learn to extremely quickly research enough of any given topic to have relevant discussions with experts. My widespread intereste allowed me to learn a huge variety of facts most of which are useless most of the time but many of which were surprisingly useful at least one time in my life. My bad working memory forced me to learn to use general principles to get useful results based on very little information and to quickly distill the most relevant information out of heaps of text. Nearly every single strenght I have is literally the flip-side of one of my weaknesses. On the whole I would say that while my ADHD and ASD have clearly made my life more challenging on the whole those challenges helped me become the person I am. I recognize that not everyone is as lucky as I am in that regard but i"m quite sure there are others who are even more lucky than me many of which won't even suspect they are neurodivergent, just as I didn't a few years ago. So I think your perception of the "objective" ammount of neurodivergent suffering may be squewed because only people who suffer at least a bit have reason to get a diagnosis.
It kind of sounds like you're saying these parents should have predicted their 3 twins would end up with autism. Which, you know, would be....deeply stupid
I would assume that one or both of the parents have ASD if all 3 of their kids have ASD. I would hope that kind of stuff would be clarified when taking the guy's sperm, but who knows in some countries like the US right. It could be recessive genes, or something environmental like smoking/drinking while pregnant though
Not everyone who has ASD gets a diagnosis, not everyone with ASD is non functional. Two adults can have ASD without knowing it, and even if they do, it's perfectly reasonable for them to assume their children will be like them, functional and happy.