Getting the truth out on autism

Omigosh! It’s her! The woman on the site Getting the Truth Out: https://www.gettingthetruthout.org/ is the very same woman who maintains the blog Ballastexistenz, Amanda Baggs: https://ballastexistenz.autistics.org/?p=52

This page is my favourite. You can say – oh my – some sort of splinter skill in that video. https://www.gettingthetruthout.org/pagee001.html

But I say – Oh wow – and now check out her blog. Doesn’t seem so low-functioning anymore, does she?

Getting the Truth Out spokesperson“My appearance and life are political in nature whether I like it or not. I often wish I could spend my time entirely around people who don’t have those two opposing views. People who just saw me. As roughly who I am. Without exaggerating the similarities or differences. Without awkward discomfort. Without rushing to prove they “understood that stuff all along” to mask the fact that they didn’t. And saw neither horrible empty tragedy shell for my appearance nor amazing genius for my typing. Nor the ghost of who they wish or imagine I was or would have been.

I’ve met people like that. But Getting the Word Out ensures that it will be harder and harder for any autistic person to meet people like that. Because they have more money and power and credibility in the eyes of many. They will be believed. Our voices will be lost and denied. All of us.”

Here she’s quoted in an interview with Cal Montgomery, ‘Autistics Speak’, on Ragged Edge Magazine:

“With Getting the Truth Out,” says Kim, “I wanted to write a site that started out like the typical descriptions people use to raise money, along with the typical photographs, and all that kind of thing, so that the people who would normally read that sort of thing would take interest and read further. And then to show what is really behind that stuff — not just ‘behind the autistic appearance’ or whatever, but how people use these images of us, how they stick their own captions on them, and how they pretend to know better and all that, when all of it is a way of getting money, power, recognition, etc, without truly making anything any better for us.”

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