Stigmatizing. Hmm.

Try reading it this way:

“Ischemic heart failure is like dilated cardiomyopathy, but using the umbrella term unnecessarily stignatizes those with dilated cardiomyopathy”.

Or try substituting a gender preference or ethnic origin for “Aspergers” and “Autism”.

Then think about what you mean by “stigmatizing” and stigmata, and what precisely is the target of shame in this example?

She was a pioneer, if not THE pioneer, of high-functioning autistics publically identifying themselves as autistic and explaining the positive side of autism. She has just as much as a career as an autism spokesperson as she does as an animal scientist. In fact, I remember reading that she purposely divides her time in half between the two fields.

When I read her account of her work as a designer of slaughterhouses, I was surprise to find myself looking at her through a different lens—one provided by being a Jew. We Jews have an extensive tradition of ritual slaughter, after all (as of course, do many other religious groups). It’s a part of Judaism I admit I’ve long been very ambivalent about because its usual practice falls way short of its stated purposes.

Temple Grandin’s design work is deeply informed by her philosophical struggles with the contradictions of life requiring that we take other life—needless to say, survival requires eating and everything we eat was first alive. A lot of the second half of her book “Thinking in Pictures” is about the issues surrounding eating meat and what it means to be humane. I often say she’s the world’s only true shocket (kosher slaughterer) because I think she takes something profane and makes it as elevated as it can be.

And she’s as concerned with the effects slaughterhouses have on their workers as she is with the animals. I think you sell her short, John Emerson.

http://neurodiversity.com/bio_wittgenstein.html

Aspergers is like autism, or a form of autism, but it’s very dissimiliar to the severe forms, which make people incapable of the simplest functioning. Using the umbrella term is misleading and tends to have the effect of unnecessarily stigmatizing those with Aspergers.

I think that it’s reasonable to ask about Aspergers for any very high-functioning person who is extremely rude, inconsiderate, and socially inept. “Madness is the absence of work” as Foucault said. Those with Aspergers who were in a situation to be productive tend to be surrounded by people who effectively take care of them and protect them.

I am less enthralled by the Temple Grandin story; buidling painless slaughterhouses seems like a rather dubious and ambiguous achievement.

On a pedantic note: I haven’t got my copy with me, but I think there’s a parity error in the `grains of rice on a chessboard’ anecdote? The book gives the total number of grains at the end being an even number, which is rather hard to do if you start with 1 and keep adding even numbers…

not sure how much this case is representative of autism in general. fascinating in its own right, but maybe a bit misleading if anyone goes away thinking “so that’s what autism’s like, eh?”

he’s right about prime numbers, though. composite numbers look like lego-bricks.