Yesterday it was World Autism Awareness Day. So let me copy here the only Slashdot comment I remember (and one of the few that I’ve read anyway). I read it before autism knocked my door:
As the mother of an autistic (PDD) child–thank you for saying all that.
I’m so fucking sick and tired of these geeks who think autism is some sort of neato cool thing to have which makes your life a magical fairyland of math and science genius while explaining away their aversion to dating and soap. That attitude alone tells me they have no fucking clue what they are talking about.
Autism is not a benefit and it’s not fun and games. It’s a fucking nightmare! I can’t even begin to imagine what my son goes through when he “short circuits” on sensory overload. And he’s old enough now to realize something is going wrong, but he can’t do anything to stop it. How come none of the “autism wannabes” out there ever talk about that aspect? Maybe because they’re not actually autistic? Trust me, if I could I’d take my son’s autism away from him and give it to one of those “autism is so kewl!” geeks so their dream of being autistic can come true.
It deserves better visibility and I can now attest to its accuracy.