The witness report from Floyd Mayweather’s son about watching his mom be abused broke my heart. I’m glad the stupid bout is over. I love watching boxing, but this was epic bullshit.
Loyal readers know how I feel about my new princess, I will say no more. Any comments which I perceive to be critical of the notion of hereditary monarchy or the British Royal Family or my attachment to the same will be deleted. For more of my thoughts, I encourage you to peruse my Twitter.
RIP, my beloved Ruth Rendell and her other self: Barbara Vine.
A family’s journey into and out of alternative therapies for autism:
When they returned home, the Laidlers took David off his restrictive diet, and he continued to improve—rapidly. Louise stopped Ben’s supplement regimen—without telling Jim—and Ben’s behavior remained the same. Then, after months of soul-searching, Jim Laider took to the internet to announce his “de-conversion” from alternative medicine—a kind of penance, but also a warning to others. “I had this guilt to expunge,” Jim says. “I helped to promote this nonsense, and I didn’t want other people to fall for it like I did.”
I, and some other powerful women, spoke to Jazmine Hughes about what we do to feel more powerful.
This week on The Nib is my most reliable source of comic LOLs and also comic THINKS.
The changing face of Asian male leads on TV:
Asian visibility has come a long way on American TV screens. As an Asian-American viewer who pays keen attention to such moments, for me these past few months of television have felt progressive—revolutionary, even. Mindy Kaling and Aziz Ansari have both established themselves in significant, non-stereotyped roles in the TV world. The post-Sandra-Oh era of strong Asian women has seen Lucy Liu as Joan Watson on Elementary and Maggie Q as Beth Davis on Stalker. ABC’s Fresh Off The Boat—a show that stars an entire Asian family—made waves when it debuted in February. But perhaps the most surprising development of all is the casting of Asian men as romantic roles, notably on the short-lived and underrated Selfie and Netflix’s latest comedy hit,Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.
As someone who has moved pets across countries and to FRANCE, I am here for Meghan Daum:
Frankly, I thought we had this in the bag. Like most Newfies, Goose is gentle and magical with children. The people from the therapy dog organization had been excited about the prospect of having one in the mix. To ensure maximum cleanness, I’d taken Goose directly from the groomer’s to the hospital, where he aced the first half of the test. But when an evaluator entered the room with a leashed Labrador, Goose did not stay still as required but instead lunged toward the dog with such force that I was knocked to the ground.
“We’re going to go ahead and stop you now,” the head evaluator said with a pitying smile.
On being black and making eye contact with the cops.
you appear to be lost:
Mallory and I did this together! One station was on one side of the gym, one station on the other side, and we could pick any exercise from the blue section to move between the two! Mallory DRAGGED A FULL-GROWN MAN ACROSS THE GYM with a rope to fulfil her gym-crossing duties! I am so proud of her:
I once asked Ruth Rendell if I could take her photo. She agreed and continued to eat her scone most heartily. pic.twitter.com/ubf45biQze
— Hadley Freeman (@HadleyFreeman) May 2, 2015
Farewell Barbara Vine! ‘The Chimney Sweeper’s Boy’ remains one of my favorite novels. You’ll be missed.
Friendly reminder that autism is a) not necessarily a bad thing, b) a developmental disorder that is present from birth, and c) impossible to “cure” as it isn’t an illness.
Forgive me for a dumb question here, but would you – or someone else in the know – mind talking a little more about the distinction between developmental disorder and illness? I do agree that autism isn’t necessarily a bad thing, and I think there’s a particular tendency to pile everyone on the spectrum together under “sickness”. I’m trying to chew over the line between requiring intervention and recognizing that ALL human brains are different. (Which I think gets much more complicated when parents are trying to decide on interventions for a minor; an adult should have the right to refuse intervention.)
A developmental disorder is just something that you were born with that makes your cognition different from a neurotypical person, but doesn’t necessarily mean you are negatively impacted. (I suck at doing my homework on time because I’m autistic. I got over 2100 on my SATs because I’m autistic.) There are what I consider fundamentally-okay disorders and fundamentally-difficult disorders: A kid can have ADHD, dyscalculia, or awful balance and still basically function in the world, but nonverbal autism comorbid with epilepsy and OCD is going to make daily life a bit harder. Not impossible, just more difficult.
I treat them differently from regular disorders and illnesses because illnesses are sicknesses, not an inherent part of how a person thinks, and the DSM definition of disorder is “deviant, dysfunctional, and distressful.” Conflating developmental disorders with, say, OCD is how you get people advocating for autism “cures”- you can’t cure the way an autistic person processes information, you just make a person behave in a more neurotypical way. I and a lot of other autistic people aren’t distressed by our conditions, but by the way that people force neurodivergent people to stick to a social norm that doesn’t really apply to us.
A mother may be weeping because her child does nothing but sit in a corner and play with toy trains all day, but the girl’s probably just fine- trust me, you’ll know when an autistic kid doesn’t want to do something. If the mother worries about little Susie’s social life, that’s her problem, not Susie’s.
Ahhh, thank you so much for your thoughtful reply! I come from a different perspective, both because I have a chronic physical illness and chronic depression. My experience with depression in particular has been odd in that it’s hard for me to tell what is inherently me and what is the illness at times. However, I also have the space to suss that out and make my own decisions regarding treatment, etc, without being pounded over the head about how I’m not fitting in. And I also had the capacity to deal with my depression as an older teen and an adult, which allowed me to have more autonomy. I’m seeing a lot of rightful criticism that much of the topic of autism is about caretakers, not about people with autism themselves. AND depression doesn’t have any positive, or even a neutral, value to it, whereas I can understand why developmental disorders/variations can run a spectrum that include positive/neutral outcomes.
Thank you for your patience and willingness to talk!
Seriously, after reading that article, I felt like the biggest problem wasn’t alternative medicine, but this attitude:
“In a way, it’s even harder than a death, because you can’t mourn and go on,” she says. “You have to figure out how to care for your new child.”
I guess, but to be fair it can be really hard on a person to raise an autistic child. (I have a young autistic family member). One reason is that the child naturally just does not do a lot of the things that make parenting feel good, and that are hardwired biologically into humans: smiling at you, looking in your eyes, responding when you call their name, perceiving or acknowledging your emotional state as well as their own, acknowledging you as a loved relative. It can be really hard to not receive those things from your child — you can feel deeply ignored, not loved, not reciprocally wanted, even if intellectually you know the child can’t help it. Because these are the ways that love is usually (though not always!) expressed between humans. Probably these parents could have had a better attitude from the start, but I wouldn’t knock them too hard without having been in their shoes. And they did have a loss — even though they also had a gain of someone they love who is unique and special.
Edit: I am not defending them in any other way — I actually don’t want to read the article and haven’t. They may be terrible people! I just wanted to say that their reaction is a human one and they did lose as well as gain something — they are hoeing a hard row. I don’t think they were trying to say “autism is worse than death” (who would? especially the relative of a beloved person with autism?) so much as “we had to mourn a possible future that we’ve given up.”
Great. That’s super empathic of you.
Now maybe try imagining being an autistic person, and having your mother say in front of you that raising an autistic child is harder than having a child die. Imagine your mother going on at great length to a bunch of strangers about how awful her life is because she has an autistic child, and how much she hates you, while you are sat silently next to her. Imagine your Dad wrote an enormously popular book about you called I Wish My Kids Had Cancer. How well do those shoes fit?
but… she didn’t say that in front of or to her child?
and… that’s not what she said?
A) She said it in a public interview, where her child can read it someday, b) these are all real examples, c) they are REALLY FUCKING COMMON. This attitude is everywhere. Every. Fucking. Where. The article Grumblyqueer linked you to above is one of dozens, hundreds, where a parent or caregiver murdered their autistic child and got a fuckton of sympathy for it. Issy Stapleton, for example, survived her mother’s attempt to murder her, and now has to deal with all of the news coverage and her mother’s interview with Letterman being all about what a difficult child she is and how she was completely justified in TRYING TO MURDER HER DAUGHTER.
This is the DOMINANT NARRATIVE around autism. That we should all be dead. And it surprises you that I’m upset?
I think Helen is making the point that this stuff is on a continuum and possibly that this stuff has happened to them or people they know. Your innocent bafflement is indecent.
Yeah, this. This has happened to me. This has happened to people I know. This is my life as a burden.
Hunty, my parents did not mourn the day that I figured out that I was never going to be a neurosurgeon. They did not kick me out of the house when I came out. They never told me how everything would be so much better if I were only two inches taller. I have never had to bleach my hair because my parents were planning on a blonde. But it would have been perfectly acceptable for them to moan and sob for the child they never had when they suspected that I was autistic.
They would have fully been within their rights to drag me to a behaviorist and force me to act like the peppy femme extrovert I will never be, simply because I don’t have mirror neurons or something. Forty years ago they could have put me in a mental ward because I don’t always pay attention to people. They could have refused to vaccinate me for fear that I would be what I am. They could have murdered me and used my autism as a defense in court. Because they couldn’t stand to see me live like this. And this sort of thinking is only ever condoned when a child is autistic. I love my parents and they know it. They do not need me to couch my affection in ways they find more comprehensible. Get yourself together.
hey there, I’m sorry if my comment upset you. That, I definitely don’t mean to do. But I do think there is a place where we can have compassion for the parents and all the children of all types here.
Of course it can be really hard to raise a child on the spectrum. It can also be really hard to raise a child who’s NOT, who has something else atypical going on, or who is completely typical in every way but just beyond your comprehension/nothing like you, etc.
I feel the need to point out the very obvious: it is a BIG spectrum and not all autistic kids are the same. So the stereotype you’re describing – of a child who doesn’t ever smile or look at you, respond to you, notice or care about your emotional state, etc. – is not every autistic child. There are people more like this on the spectrum, sure, and they deserve love and respect and care as much as anyone else; they deserve not to have their family members hurt or harm them or say terrible things. There are also plenty of people whose autism doesn’t manifest in this way. My 4yo woke me up with “happy birthday” this morning, and has always been way more of a cuddler than her neurotypical big sister.
I get that you want to have sympathy for the parents. But parents of autistic kids ALREADY get a lot of sympathy. They/we really dominate the whole narrative surrounding autism, and it is not a great look much of the time, as we saw in this article (which you say you haven’t even read so I am unsure why you are so set on defending the parents?). Many parents write about autism as if their children aren’t even PEOPLE in their own right, people who don’t need all of their behaviors publicly aired, people who won’t grow up and possibly read the things their parents have written about them for the entire world to see. (It’s obviously VERY different, but a lot of adoptive parents do this re: their adopted kids, which could be why I am kind of conditioned to notice and be bothered by it as an adoptee.)
Of course no one wishes a difficult situation on anyone else. But you don’t need to try and interpret the mother’s words to make them less awful. The parents had their shot with the article, and could have found plenty of ways to express their fear and worry and difficulties, etc., without saying it’s “worse than death.” I know many, many parents of kids on the spectrum who would never dream of saying anything like that. And parents who DO give themselves free rein to say things like this make it harder for OTHER parents of children with autism, too. It doesn’t help me one bit on hard days to know there are people out there who are in my shoes and not thinking of their kids as full people, individuals with dignity and worth equal to any NT person. I find it really disheartening, honestly.
<3<3<3
Your children are unbearably lucky to have you in their corner.
<3 well, I am sure I fuck up all the time, but thank you for saying that.
I’m just going to put the actual quote from the article in here. It is not “Autism is worse than death,” declares the mother of a child just diagnosed with autism. Rather, it is:
“In a way, it’s even harder than a death, because you can’t mourn and go on,” she says. “You have to figure out how to care for your new child.”
And apparently that’s what they did: worked really hard to find ways to help and connect with their child. After a period of surprise and mourning at the diagnosis. I agree that it is not well said, (coming from the other angle, actually: having been around a lot of death, I think it is a very careless thing to say about death) — and it is not sensitive to the child’s perspective — but it’s not the words of a monster who doesn’t see her child as fully human. That is really a stretch. Especially since the type of autism her child had seems to be one of the types that are not detectable at a young age and so appear to be sudden onset.
I wouldn’t normally come back to keep having this conversation after the other person involved has gotten upset, wouldn’t want to stir the pot, except that there does seem to be something going on where a complex/ambivalent situation gets reduced to the worst, most reductive possible version because of emotions around past bad experiences in other contexts & with other people. It’s understandable to react that way after repeated bad experiences — but it can create more hurt if things that are not actually harmful/dehumanizing/cruel get filtered and perceived that way. So it’s in the spirit of not wanting us to demonize, and wanting to allow back in a little gray space that I contribute to the conversation again.
People say the wrong thing all the time. But I think what she’s saying is understandable even if she expressed it poorly. Just like people on the autism spectrum are hardwired to not perceive social interaction in the same way “neurotypical” people do, neurotypical people are hardwired to perceive affection through some specific things: eye contact, smiling, responding to one’s name. Even if you know intellectually why the other person is not responding in the way you expect, and you understand, and know that it has nothing to do with how much they love you, we neurotypicals are still biologically hardwired to experience affection this way, and it is disappointing not to be able to feel the connection in that way with your own child, or your own sibling, or niece, or nephew, or what have you. It’s no one’s fault – but it’s a kind of loss and there can be private mourning for it. That is not per se a condemnation of anyone else’s humanity.
The initial disappointment one could feel at receiving an autism diagnosis seems absolutely on par with the disappointment one might feel at all sorts of other conditions, and maybe even lighter than the disappointment other conditions might evoke — I think it’s pretty obvious that autism is (often) a much milder condition than all sorts of other things that could happen with a child. If the parent in the interview had thought for half a second, I’m sure she would agree. You’d have to be very thoughtless not to.
For the record, by the way, in my own experience (which is different from yours as the mother of a child on the spectrum, i.e. not the same, but still valid), a person can rarely do eye contact, not respond to their name, and not smile much in response to you, and still be very very high-functioning. They can also learn how to get better at these activities with time — and experience pleasure in getting better at them because it helps them feel more connected to their family and those around them.
Personally I would step in front of a bus for my younger relative on the spectrum. (And I’ve come pretty close to doing it, because she’s not very aware of her environment sometimes). It doesn’t preclude me from feeling disappointment occasionally, or seeing disappointment in others, including most poignantly in children who want to be her playmate and perceive rejection from her when she is simply not focused on them at times. And yet she is fully loved. Acknowledging the disappointment — the mismatches that make connection occasionally difficult — doesn’t preclude love or seeing the dignity of the other person.
It’s not good to mix these things up, disappointment vs. love and dignity — or think the equation has to be either/or. I may be talking more to other people on the thread in saying that than directly to you — apologies if that seems too obvious — but I just felt it needed to be said.
I think it’s important to distinguish between not doing those things and doing them in am atypical way. As an autistic person, I do experience love and human connection, but if you only accept that in the forms you yourself would show, you’re going to think I’m a cold mofo. I know a lot of us who are very aware of others’ emotional states, but we react differently than non autistic people to that information (I tend to have very practical responses, like getting kleenex if someone is sad, rather than hugging, for example).
1. Every time I hear someone talk up homeopathy I want to scream until my throat ruptures because dipping a flower in water does not make that water medicine.
2. I hope there are many more Asian men in romantic leading roles in Hollywood, and also many more non white men in general, because obviously why wouldn’t anyone want that? That would be amazing. And then maybe fewer people would say things to me like “Your husband is Asian? I have just never found Asian men attractive, I don’t think I’ll ever date one.” (EXACT QUOTE)
I can’t believe people say that to you :/ ugh. Burn it down!!!
Agree about homeopathy. If you want to drink flower water because it makes you feel good, ok I guess, but it’s not medicine!
Why would anyone say that out loud. Why. Like, even if you’re kind of an asshole and you’re looking at all your acquaintanceship and judging whether or not you, personally, would have sex with their spouses–and hey, sometimes humans play sort of embarrassing mental games like that, sometimes it’s harmless– but why would you not keep that to yourself.
Notes from boners, whether lady- or dude-, are rarely appropriate in regard to other people’s husbands. Thus concludes another edition of Dear Abby, Fucking Obvious Edition.
*screencapped because I know this will come in handy one day*
Of course, notes from boners are deprecated in *all* situations (regardless of marital status) where the recipient has not clearly indicated that they are desirous of said boneral opinions.
Wait, is “boner” a derogatory term, now?
I don’t know that boner as a term or as a condition are being deprecated here, but unsolicited commentary from said boners (“Hi there! I am not attracted to your husband or to the enormous population of humans to which he belongs!”) most certainly are.
And possibly this subthread is a reference to Captain Awkward’s affectionately chiding Notes from a Boner.
Also, I can’t bear to see Tom Hiddleston so sad about this. Cheer up, Tom! None of this applies to you you can say what you want to me anytime.
Yeah, I stole the phrase from the Captain and was using it in her sense. Nothing wrong with boners in general!!!
So many terrible comments about interracial relationships. The thing that’s been bothering me recently is this: isn’t our age cohort supposed to be the ones who are better about interracial relationships? I thought so and there are more in the US vs older age cohorts, but then every so often I come across buzzfeed articles or anecdotes from other people about truly vile things that are said about people who date/love/marry interracially. I mean, along the lines of “why would you date outside of your race, it clearly means you weren’t loved enough as a child” sort of thing.
“Better” doesn’t necessarily mean “good.” It can also mean “marginally less awful.”
that quote! set it on fire.
“If you show me
That, say, homoeopathy works,
Then I will change my mind
I will spin on a fucking dime
I’ll be embarrassed as hell,
But I will run through the streets yelling
It’s a miracle! Take physics and bin it!
Water has memory!
And while its memory of a long lost drop of onion juice is infinite
It somehow forgets all the poo it’s had in it!”
Hat-tip to the incomparable Tim Minchin. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhGuXCuDb1U
“That’s totally cool, because I’ve never found you attractive and will probably never date you. In fact, my external genitals are doing their best to crawl into my cervix right now, is how much they don’t want to be near you.”
Re art theft: Red Bubble is an enabler.
https://twitter.com/skottieyoung/status/592731614…
Looks like they yanked that particular account, anyway. Also, Skottie Young is a genius, as if it needed to be said.
Oh, really? That’s good news. I know their quality control is sorely lacking, but that was egregious.
And yes, he is. There are few things cuter than the A Babies.
I eagerly anticipate the announcement of the new princess’ name and the ensuing coverage in which the British press attempts to predict her entire future despite the fact that she’s three days old.
Charlotte Elizabeth Diana, just to screw over the bookies. Surprised they didn’t manage to squeeze a Victoria in there as well.
I called it. No one can verify it but my sister, but I so called it.
Ditto! Well, I didn’t get the Elizabeth, but I def got the Charlotte Diana.
One of my friends posted on FB that she is realllllllly hoping Charlotte takes after Harry in the sense of being the “wild one” because she’s the spare. I have joined the bandwagon and really hope that when she’s 16, she gets a nose ring and briefly refuses to answer to anything but “Charlie.” (Basically I want her to be the embodiment of what I never had the guts to do at 16.)
A few Open Threads ago, someone started a discussion about getting unexpected pictures in image searches. Here’s one for you: I was going to tweet a picture of a stormtrooper wearing a tutu for #Maythe4th, but when I googled “stormtrooper tutu” I was flooded with so many more specimens than I could possibly have imagined.
This is the one I wanted:
Yayyy! I searched ‘baby seals’ earlier and got this:
unfortunately as well as baby seals in the club, there are also a few photos of baby seals being clubbed which I could have done without.
OMG this is amazing.
personal headcanon: this photo is not `shopped and there is a glorious Arctic nightclub somewhere where baby seals (and the occasional human lucky enough to find the entrance) frolic to upbeat music.
This is now my own personal headcanon, thank you!
This is what’s in the secret back room of the original Ice Bar, but very few people know the password.
It’s very well ‘shopped if it is, I think they might be rescued/domesticated or something.
In a perfect world, this would be the only possible result you would get from searching “baby seals” + “club.” Ooot-oot!
I love everything Hadley Freeman writes for The Guardian. Pointless comment, but I discovered that just seeing her face beside the tweet makes me happy.
I am going to savor that “what makes you feel powerful” roundup all day. Meaghan O’Connell’s is immediately great:
I feel most powerful when no one knows where I am and I can do whatever I want without asking anyone.
I love that feeling! On the weekends, when my roommates sleep late and my boyfriend isn’t visiting, I get up reasonably early and just leave the apartment. Sometimes I have a plan (gym, museum, cafe) but sometimes I don’t. No one saw me leave, and I can stay out as long as I want, just wandering the city. And, of course, having the means to do impulsive things (buy second breakfast, do some shopping) feels very powerful. As does the ability to walk miles.
THAT explains why I really want to travel alone again. Going somewhere on my own and doing whatever I please is an amazing feeling.
yes, this, exactly. the ability to go somewhere and do something and not have anyone know where i am? it doesn’t have to be drastic, like, hopping on a plane. just doing something just for myself. that makes me feel powerful.
This is part of why I like taking myself out to a nice restaurant every now and then. Nope, I’m here by myself, nope, my date didn’t stand me up, I just wanted to sit down and have somebody bring my food directly to the table.
Yet another reason I like you so much. I love taking a good book to a good restaurant and having someone serve me, just me, while I read in peace with exactly what I want to eat and drink.
😀 You’re so nice, RoseCamelia. Thank you.
The best thing about that autism article is still the mental image of that kid defiantly eating a waffle. He was at a Disneyland breakfast–which I remember as MOUNTAINS OF GLUTEN–and he was denied everything that was best in life, so he just took one. You go, kid!
YES. “Fuck this nonsense, it’s WAFFLE O’CLOCK”
Plus those Mickey waffles are delicious. There’s something malty in the batter, I don’t know what, or maybe it’s the shape of Mickey’s head that changes the texture from a normal belgian waffle, but I usually don’t eat breakfast and I especially usually don’t eat a bunch of sugar/carbs for breakfast, but when I’m visiting my brother in Orlando, I like to make it a point to head out to WDW for breakfast at one of the resorts just for the Mickey waffles. And, of course, I eat them EVERY MORNING when I’m actually on vacation and staying at WDW. It’s like the entire day’s calorie allowance gone in 5 minutes at 9am.
Hi everyone!
I’m just going to try to keep the Baltimore thread going for at least another week, so here goes. Other Bmore Toasties, please join in!
-Friday was a momentous day! However, even though SA Mosby is going to pursue charges against all six police officers, many of us on the ground are trying to focus on making sure we see this through. Arrests and charges are just the first step.
-Remember the young man with a $500K bail for being a protestor? Well, you can help his family meet bail by donating to this Indiegogo site.
-Let’s take a moment to reflect that the young man, Allen Bullock, has a bail that is higher than the six officers charged with being involved with Freddie Gray’s death. Mmm, yes.
-Some people are using the Baltimore riots (it still feels weird saying that phrase, I don’t know why) as an excuse to highlight tensions between Black customers /Asian (and primarily Korean, although there are shop owners of other ethnicities, even non-Asian ones) shop owners. I’m not going to say that they don’t exist, but I just want to share this opinion piece that pulls out some other anecdotes.
–Baltimore City Transgender Legal Fund. Because Black transgender lives matter too.
My god! If you or other legally minded Toasties know the answer to this question – is there a way for a bail amount to be adjusted or lowered? Or are there regulations/guidelines for what bails should be set for which crimes? 500,000 is absolutely absurd.
I don’t know the answer so will defer to other legal minded Toasties, but I understand that usually people can pay a percentage–5%? 10%? to meet their bail. If anyone has more information or information to the contrary, please chime in!
If Baltimore is anything like municipalities around me, yes, bail amounts can be and often are adjusted by a bail commissioner. The initial amount is set by the PD alone and can vary wildly depending on the officer.
Bail bondsmen will front your bail for usually 10% upfront. They are Very Interested in making sure you get to your court appearance afterward, because otherwise they don’t get their money (your bail, which is treated as a deposit not a fine even though I personally see it as punitive).
Did anyone see this at The Washington Post this weekend? It’s a very Toast-like take on Baltimore reporting.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan…
How Baltimore would be covered from a more global perspective.
“Local leaders in the American township of Baltimore imposed a state of martial law this week after peaceful protests turned violent. In response, countries around the world have advised darker-skinned nationals against non-essential travel to areas noted for state violence against unarmed people of color….”
I was on 695 this morning at about 6:45 and I saw what I believe was a bunch of National Guard trucks getting the hell out of town (yay!).
oof, the quotes from the parents in that autism article. “In a way, it’s even harder than a death.” I mean, I realize this is depressingly not far off from the mainstream of how people talk about autism, and I don’t wanna judge the parents off of a few lines in one article, but how does no one in that whole interviewing –> publishing process say “wow, that might be a super hurtful thing for your kid or another disabled person to read.”
Ha ha, I wrote almost exactly the same thing! Reposting my original comment here because yes, totally agreed.
Oof. I got to this:
“In a way, it’s even harder than a death, because you can’t mourn and go on,” she says.
And, uh, wow. I get that it’s hard, yes, but wow. I…diagnosis of developmental issues/chronic illness is harder – somehow worse – than death? Would you say that if your child had developed, say, kidney disease or diabetes? But it’s OK to say it about autism. I’m not trying to minimize her pain, but that’s a little fucked up there.
I can’t read a lot of essays by parents of kids with autism and this is why. God knows I don’t want to judge other people who are in the same boat as we are — and it’s a broad spectrum and I am sure it gets harder the more severe the needs; I have plenty of dark, dark days — but that quote actually made me gasp.
yeah, exactly, it’s not so much icky that she said it, because someone in her position might understandably say a fucked up thing or two, it’s more that it’s not even portrayed as a fucked up thing to say!
Yeah! Spoiler Alert: I got terribly sick as a teen (completely out of the blue), lost kidney function, went on dialysis, ended up getting a kidney transplant (thank you mom! <3). (I’m better now, though still chronically ill- it really does affect your life.) My parents say that was one of the worst periods of their lives. Understandable; wasn’t great for me either. But they NEVER implied the things that people talking about autism seem to think it’s OK to say. I have never thought for a moment that my continued existence was a “fate worse than death”. And the fact that it’s OK for people-parents-to say that about autism? Is really making a lot of things clear to me. Ugh.
That is exactly the point at which I stopped reading and opened a new tab to come back here to comment. How terrible and cruel.
mmhm, it’s a great piece overall but the couple of quotes along those lines are really all I can remember from it! (That and the mental image of the kid’s gleeful waffle devouring.) I’m so curious how they made it to final publication with no added context from the interview, no walking it back from the parents, no “this is a pretty extreme thing to say” comment from the author, and I’m very afraid the answer is “none of the people involved in creating this piece had a problem with it.”
My first thought on reading that is “fuck you, parents who said/would say this.” My sister just lost her baby and you can damn well bet we would all have happily taken a live baby with autism rather than no baby at all. Not that we were given that choice, obviously.
I get that they are in pain and I generally prefer not to play oppression olympics, but seriously, fuck them. …maybe this just wasn’t a good time for me to read that particular quote.
The thing is, by the end of the article, these parents were totally on point. They had set up a farm to help enrich their son’s life and give him independence and essentially treat him like a human instead of a “disease.” But somehow they still figured out a way to talk about it so terribly???
This is one of the reasons why so many people hate Autism Speaks, because they perpetuate that idea that having an autistic child is a) the worst thing that could happen and b) about the parents, and not about the child.
I’ve been surprised by how many doctors we’ve seen who have referred us to that org, and if I hadn’t been warned about it, I might have been sucked in. Doctors are talking to parents who are already in a scared/vulnerable/desperate place and throwing them into the arms of an org that will probably not help them think about autism in a good or healthy way.
I’ve met several parents who do think about autism in terms of finding the magic bullet/”cure” for their child – whether that’s due to Autism Speaks and other parents/pressure, or just because that’s what they need or want to focus on – and I never know what to say. I understand and sympathize, but it’s the opposite of helpful for me to think about it that way.
Right.
It makes sense, because you have hopes and dreams and expectations about who your child will be and what their life will be like, but I think that Autism Speaks both really demonizes autism and prevents parents from coming to terms with who their child IS, and how to make the most of that. I would really rather see organizations focus on finding ways to help people cope with autism in a world run by neurotypical people, (and helping neurotypical people learn better ways to interact with and design for autistic people) rather than “curing” autism.
Right. I always think of it as if PFLAG were a) called Homosexuality Speaks, and b) headed by the WBC.
YES, I should have drawn attention to that, actually!
I don’t know, I think you’re all being really hard on them. The passage is very clearly referring to their feelings “in the moment of diagnosis.” It was their raw and unprocessed reaction to getting devastating news with no support or advice on how to help their child. That was a theme of the article and its primary critique of mainstream medicine. Doctors don’t receive training on how to deliver devastating news. They don’t provide a social worker to be there during or immediately after. Etc.
I have been through this myself (for a personal diagnosis), and I’ve never felt more alone and hopeless. Maybe that’s why I feel the need to defend them, but I can absolutely see feeling this way in the moment. It’s not coming from a place of “this is worth than death” so much as a “where can I even go from here? I don’t know what to do.” She’s describing that initial feeling of hopelessness, that there’s nothing they can do to help their child. A friend who just went through this described it as feeling like she’d somehow let her kid down.
The whole point of this (excellent article imho) is that when you leave people in that mental and emotional place, then they are going to seek out alternatives that offer them some hope.
I have a lot of sympathy for parents who feel that and say that – I feel like it’s a reasonable thing to tell your therapist, a close friend, or possibly something to include in a pamphlet about an autism diagnosis.
I don’t like how it’s the main narrative or a major narrative about having an autistic child. The parents can cope with their grief any way they want, but the author of the article should have maybe softened the part where they compare someone having a brain a lot like mine to that person dying. Possibly.
That all kind of hinges on people who are on the autism spectrum never coming across these thoughts, or not being able to understand them if they do. These thoughts are unfortunately not at all confined to “in the heat of the moment,” they are all the fuck over the internet, and people who are non-neurotypical can and do come across them.
Right, but that’s literally what she said: “In the moment of diagnosis, it feels like the death of your hopes and dreams.” I think it’s really unfair to take her words completely out of context; they are describing a very specific (and painful) moment in their lives. I have no doubt that people say all sorts of awful things on the internet, but I don’t think this is comparable to that. That was the starting point for this family’s journey. They were lost and devastated at first, and they had to figure out how to go about doing what’s best for their kids. I don’t see how it helps anyone for them to pretend that they didn’t have those feelings. The point is that the current medical establishment doesn’t provide the support and resources necessary for people who are facing these types of tough decisions.
Well, as a parent who’s been there, even if I had that exact thought, I would never publish it where everyone, including someday my child, could read it.
I’m not talking about “people saying terrible things on the internet,” I’m saying, specifically, these exact things are said a LOT by parents of people on the autism spectrum and that people on the autism spectrum come across those things a LOT.
The point is that people who are on the autism spectrum don’t need to be told by parents of people like them that their existence is worse than death.
ETA: and to report those feelings without in any way saying “hey that’s super fucked up” is irresponsible and harmful, directly fucking harmful, to people who are non-neurotypical.
I have more to say, but my last comment didn’t show up, so I’ll just stop with this now.
Oh I like you.
Fun fact: Because autism is part of a kid’s brain from the moment they have a brain, parents of autistic kids aren’t mourning the kid they lost to autism. They are mourning the future they expected for their kid before autism came into the picture, the same way that parents of gay kids will say things like “I’ll never have grandchildren” when there’s no guarantee either way.
YES thank you, and thank you to all the people chiming in to agree that it is super fucked up, you all make me feel much less stabby.
BABY SEAL BANK HOLIDAY MONDAY
with bonus baby otters because for some reason they came up in a google image search for baby seals
there are a LOT of noses that need booping.
I think I’m up to the task.
BOOP
oh my god i needed this post so badly?? thank you. thank you so much. I hope your bank holiday is really great.
thank you thank you thank you
NUH-UH
That AV Club piece was great (more Asian romantic leads please!), and made me remember how much I miss Selfie. Such a surprisingly great show for something with such a dreadful name. It actually reminded me of Better Off Ted, another amazing sitcom cancelled too soon. Stop taking away everything I like, ABC!
Yes, Better off Ted was delightfully weird. Portia de Rossi all the way!
(I wanted to like Selfie, but some of Eliza and Henry’s choices made me cringe so hard from second-hand embarrassment!)
There’s definitely cringeworthiness, especially in the first few episodes, but I thought it improved every week. I just really liked that it threw out the smart-man-fixing-the-stupid-woman premise pretty quickly (I hate My Fair Lady for that nonsense), and made it about two people who are terrible with people in different ways helping each other be less terrible with people. Also, the cast was just so great! I love Karen Gillan, and John Cho is both hilarious and super hot, plus all the secondary characters were wonderful. Ugh, now I’m mad at ABC all over again for cancelling it so soon!
JOHN CHOOOO
I am honestly fine with Selfie’s demise, or would be if someone gave John Cho a BETTER show of his own (or three). Even the updated version of Henry Higgins, even staring out from John Cho’s impossibly handsome face, was too much for me — the character is just so awful. I like Karen Gillan and I LOVE John Cho, and I think they both deserve better than Selfie. (I didn’t watch the last few eps, though, so it may have improved.)
The last few eps were literally the best thing about it. I mean, just go with Imperfect Harmony, ep 10, if you want the summary, but the last episode was really good too. what no i don’t have the episode titles memorized, of course not.
(I really liked Henry Higgs, but that’s because I KNOW a few nerds like him, in person, and he made me feel nostalgic for a guy who talks to the yogurt in his fridge, like I might.)
(edit: also, I guess I was comparing him to Higgins, from Pygmalion, who is The Misogynist, and comparably, Henry is a living, breathing, plausible human being with foibles of his own who grows as a person. Therefore he was worlds better.)
You’ve convinced me, I will watch the end of the season! I still want him on a new show, pronto. And not New Girl, because I want a show that is literally ALL ABOUT JOHN CHO, idc about the other people at all and they def shouldn’t be headliners.
woooottt. 😀 also I am 100% on board with that show. There is a tragic lack of “John Cho making out” on television and just John Cho in general.
There IS because RACISTS
Pitch: “Everybody Loves John Cho” and it’s just about all of the people who want to kiss John Cho, aka everyone with eyes and a heart, including a storyarc involving aliens who come to Earth just to kiss John Cho.
well, it would be better if we changed “Everybody” to “Nikki”
I can’t believe the universe gave us a show where John Cho rode a white horse and then it TOOK IT AWAY.
^ the absurdity of this had not hit me until it was phrased this way which is SO ACCURATE.
Ooh, they did announce the name! Charlotte Elizabeth Diana.
So cool to have another Princess Charlotte (who will have a very small chance of bring butchered in childbirth and will have lots of legitimate cousins)
You’ve pleased my Charlotte Augusta obsession. (Seriously. No one needs as many Regency death souvenir books as I have.) Everyone else can leave. You stay.
News reports: “they named her Charlotte after her grandfather, Charles”
I *demand* for more historical context in frothy morning news shows. Give me a montage of the original Princess Charlotte’s life!
Yes. The more saucy political cartoons in it, the better. (After a semester staring at them and two papers about Charlotte’s portrayal in period media I can go on about saucy engravings for days.)
YES
Also, those papers sound legitimately fascinating and I would read for fun
I spent a lot of time discussing the one where she punches Queen Charlotte in the face. I sometimes want to tell the whole world about the fact that there is a early nineteenth century print of Princess Charlotte punching her grandmother in the face.
…this is the sort of thing I respond with when people ask what my major was.
Also, Pippa’s middle name is Charlotte, so it’s really a family name on both sides (AS IS Elizabeth, which is Kate’s middle name AND her mother’s maiden name). I don’t know why I get bent out of shape over this, but I love that they have managed to incorporate names from the Middleton side as well, because it’s still got Kate’s family, even if they’re not famous.
I devote far too much time to thinking about these people, I know, but I can’t bring myself to care because it’s so cool.
Is there any reason to ever refer to her as other than Good Charlotte? Hint: no.
If she arises and drinks the sea and licks the flesh from our bones, it will still be delightfully ironic!
That would arguably make her the most interesting royal since the first Elizabeth.
so about a year ago, there was an article about how you can be a feminist and change your last name when you marry or do other things that aren’t feminist but you should recognize it is not the feminist choice. anyone have the article to hand or maybe have a better way of searching for it
Kate Harding wrote it, I think!
thank you!!
https://khauthor.wordpress.com/2013/03/08/why-i-l…
Editing to add that I changed my last name when I got married for one really, really good reason: Admiraal is a way cooler last name than Gordon.
I was adamant about keeping my name. But given the chance you had, I would have abandoned my stance instantly for such a cool name.
I like my fiancé’s last name but won’t be changing mine because it just seems silly to do so. The complicated part becomes what last name we give the future kids. (It’s extra complicated because my fiancé is from another country and his parents and basically all of his family live there, meaning there has already been and will continue to be a lot of travel. Traveling internationally with children can get complicated, especially if your names don’t match.)
My SIL changed her name from one that, if you don’t know how to pronounce it correctly, looks very much like it’s pronounced ‘cunt.’ She was very happy to move on from that name.
ahhh I love name change/name keeping/name inventing stories, everyone has a unique one and they range from silly to super meaningful and from simple to super complicated. Of course, I hate most venues for such stories, which are 50% “you’re doin it wrong” and 50% “gonna write this in a really defensive tone because I’ve heard ‘you’re doin it wrong’ a million times.” Which is to say, Toasties are once again the best.
i took my (ex)husband’s last name when we got married because 1) i wanted to ditch my maiden name and 2) the exes last name is awesome as fuck. when we divorced, i took my mother’s maiden name. her parents raised me for a good chunk of my early childhood and i really wanted something that linked me with that part of the family.
I changed my last name when I got married, which I never thought I would do, but I a) realized that I had a really toxic family of birth, and I sincerely wanted to raise the next generation more like my husband’s family (he has three siblings who never ever considered being in competition with each other, they have really open conversations, relationship dynamics are much less fraught all around — meanwhile I was raised in an unhealthy concoction of toxic behaviors that I’ve been consciously shedding) and b) realized I could get [email protected], which I never could with my maiden name.
It was like 95% A to 5% B, but I have to admit, B had an impact.
I changed mine when I married because I HATED my maiden name, and it was my adoptive name and never felt like “mine” anyway. But I’m thinking about changing my name to my Korean birth surname, and it seems like it’s going to be a pain. in. the. ass. So now I have a lot of opinions about how it should be easy/free to change your name to whatever you damn well please, and no one including the judge should ask you to justify it or explain your reasons at great length; the end.
You have to justify it??
Holy crap, Admiraal is a cooler last name than any that I can bring to mind at the moment, most definitely including my own.
I changed my name for the same reason. My husband’s last name is much cooler and much rarer than mine. Miller (7th most common) vs. Nesselrodt (no one can say it right). Come on!
no sorry
thanks anyway!
I got married 5 years ago when I knew shamefully little about feminism. I took my husband’s name because I just didn’t really give a fuck either way. A few gender studies classes later and I have some regret. I wouldn’t ever go back to my maiden name, because I feel little to no connection to it, or to most of my family. But I am definitely considering picking a new last name for myself, which is equal parts exciting and daunting to consider. So many possibilities!
Another possibility is for both of you to choose a new surname and both change, together!
I have heard of other couples doing that and think it is super neat! Though I also see why it would be cool to have an identifier that is yours and yours alone. Many things to consider!
i have a coworker that’s getting married soon and she and her partner have decided to create a new last name for themselves by smashing up their maiden names. think: harmann + fairlink = harmink.
Most of the women I work with are a generation older, and they are always surprised to learn that I changed my name when I got married. When I was making the decision, almost 10 years ago, I found Virgina Postrel convincing: even if you keep “your” name, it’s still your father’s name, i.e., a man’s name. And like VP, I love my father, but I chose my husband. http://vpostrel.com/blog/postrel-is-my-name
Also, I was already on thin ice with the in-laws due to eloping. Going traditional with the name-change was a lot more palatable than a big traditional wedding.
That was my line of reasoning at the time, too, but now I just want to detach my name from the patriarchy as fully as possible. It will be such a task to narrow my choices down to one surname, though! Maybe I will have Toasties vote when it comes to it. 🙂
The “you’re choosing a man’s name either way” argument is so invalidating of a woman’s ownership of her own name! Yes, I share a name with my father (and mother and brother), but it’s been mine since birth.
Thank you, well said.
That’s how I feel about it, too. No, my last name ISN’T my father’s name, it’s MINE. I imagine there are also women who change their names at some point in their lives (due to marriage or otherwise) and can make the same argument.
ETA: because women get to own their own history, and arguing that your history actually belongs to men no matter what you choose seems tantamount to saying women don’t get to HAVE history, to me. That’s why it feels so invalidating.
Seriously, I hate that argument. I hate it so much…it-it- the f – it -flam – flames. Flames, on the side of my face, breathing-breathl- heaving breaths. Heaving breaths… Heathing…
I’m all for more scrutiny of how children are assigned surnames, but trying to tell me the name I’ve had all my life, this visible link with the non-obvious half of my heritage, isn’t really mine…that is so demeaning, honestly, and I cannot believe I get that shit from actual feminists instead of misogynists who are trolling me for not taking my husband’s name when I got married.
Just to be clear, I’m not saying my choice is The Only Feminist Choice, just that *nobody* gets to tell me my name isn’t my own.
It’s no less invalidating to say a woman ought to keep the name she was given at birth, but didn’t choose.
Anyway, this whole conversation is exactly what Kate Harding was talking about in her essay, so thanks to Nicole and citizenchristy for tracking it down.
Phew, good thing that is not what she said.
Look, I’m going to have a family name of the patriarchy whether it’s GrumblyDad or GrumblySpouse or GrumblyGrandpa or even GrumblyMatrilinealGreatGrandma’sMaidenNameWithAFeminizedSpellingBecauseHerMotherTongueIsInherentlyGendered. If I do the socially progressive thing, get married to a lady, and hyphenate, it will be GrumblyDad-Wife’sDad. I just so happened to completely change my IRL first and middle name, so I think I’m justified in keeping the last one as a chauvinistic relic.
I’ve never understood that argument. I mean, where do men get their last names? Why is my brother’s last name “his” name while my name is our father’s, when we both inherited the same name from the same guy? And where did dad get his name? From his dad, right? So is it only the Ur-Name who has a true last name?
My husband and I have talked about giving our kids our mother’s original surnames, in just a general step back from the patriarchy. But even then, those names were still their father’s names, so it doesn’t do much good.
We’ll just have one kids with my last name, and one kid with his last name, and mess with the system that way.
We’re doing one of each too! I’ve been surprised at how many people are not weirded out by it, although I have had some comments along the lines of “won’t it confuse them??” I’m pretty sure they’ll figure out they’re related anyway.
I kept mine! Admittedly, I’m not a traditionalist at all (we didn’t even really get married – we are “registered partners”, which is almost exactly the same thing except with fewer societal expectations), so it was without a second thought.
In the Netherlands, you both get a form with 4 options: your name, your partner’s name, your name-your partner’s name, your partner’s name-your name. He opted to keep his. I opted to keep mine.
If we decide to have kids after all (unlikely), it’ll definitely be a discussion, because I have a bland-but-serviceable last name but his is unique (only 7 of them in the country), hard to pronounce, hard to spell, and generally weird. As in: if he makes a reservation at a restaurant, he uses my name, because otherwise it’s too complicated. Who wants to do that to a kid, even a hypothetical one? And hyphenation’s not an option, since my name is van Something, and his is two words, so we’d be saddling the poor improbable little ones with a four word last name.
On the topic of adults with autistic spectrum disorder and other developmental disabilities– for those who aren’t able to buy 17 acres of land and start a farm for their kids, Home Depot is an awesome employer for non-neurotypical people who are able to work independently. My brother is on the spectrum and has found satisfying work there in a supportive environment. He even gets regular, documented, meaningful feedback on his performance– I haven’t worked retail in a long time, but that was not a feature of my experience!
I just learned that one of Home Depot’s founders started a nonprofit that provides training and job placement for adults with developmental disabilities. I don’t know if my brother was hired under that program, but it looks like they’ve been expanding to other chain stores, too.
That is amazingly cool, and really made me feel better about the world. I am so glad someone is putting in that kind of effort and appreciating the strengths of their employees.
That’s fantastic. I work with people on benefits to help them get jobs, and i have a couple of non-neurotypical customers who would hugely benefit from something like this. They want to work and are willing to put in _so_ much effort, its such a struggle to find a company that will meet them partway and work with them to support their progress.
Thanks, that is good to know! It may come in handy for one of my own relatives soon.
I’m assuming that the TRX on the whiteboard is short for “Tyrannosaurus rex” and that everyone at the gym is secretly Calvin.
http://www.octopusoverlords.com/forum/viewtopic.p…
I’m defending my thesis later this week, and I posted the date and time on Facebook so that all my school friends would know and hopefully come. (My mom said “oh, we’ll come, and probably like five other people.” so, you know, perfectly healthy desire to have fifty people show up.)
One dude, that one dude commented “You somehow make it sound sexy.”
Oh good. That is the only purpose of my academic efforts: appearing attractive. I am delighted to have succeeded.
Ooooo! Is that one dude gonna show up? Make sure the rest of us know how to spot him. It would be so much fun to surround and torture him.
Seriously, though, congratulations on the thesis defense. I am proud to know you.
We will eat him.
(Also thank you!)
Congrats! It is a huge accomplishement!
Thanks!
Ooh, ooh, what’s your thesis on!? I know you work in a vaguely similar discipline to mine, I think?
(Also, I might call someone’s research “sexy” but it would mean something…really different. Like “we have access to a deep-sequencer *on campus*? OMG SEXY.”)
WAIT WAIT I JUST INTENSEDEBATE-STALKED YOU AND YOU MENTIONED SEPAL ARE WE AT THE SAME SCHOOL?
SF State? Biology?
I am trying to maintain a little distance between this avatar and my real identity for google reasons, and like two other people work with my genus, so, um… hmmm. Hmmm.
I’m in the Patterson lab? Which lab are you in?
Swei lab! Honestly we probably don’t know each other, I don’t know a dang thing about plants.
Goodness you guys have a cool project. I also have a PI crush on your professor: she is in the lab! Doing lab stuff! You don’t have to carefully bait Frank into teaching you how to do everything!
Anyway, I am the person who is presenting next door to the lab on Thursday morning. You should come! We’ll have food!
Oh man, Thursday is my off-campus day cuz I have to go to therapy and learn French sometime, but I’ll try!
Say hi if you do, and if you don’t, have a good therapy and French class, and I’m sorry we didn’t meet sooner!
The opportunity to drag a man across the floor with a rope would be a pretty fucking amazing incentive to exercise.
Oh lord. Just finished reading the autism alternative therapy one and ouch. My youngest brother was born around the same time as their oldest and he’s on the spectrum. (As is my other brother. And heck, if I’d been born later I probably would have been put down as having Asperger’s instead of being one of the early Ritalin kids. (Though I would heartily disagree.)) I don’t know how my parents managed to avoid the alternative route, but am I ever glad they did.
i’m just kinda proud because i thought about it for a second this weekend and figured Charlotte sounded like a solid choice and then that turned out to be the actual name. so i’m either a) psychic or b)influential in royal affairs . either works for me.
Note: I didn’t remember that Charlotte was the feminine form of “Charles”, until I overheard a co-worker mention it, and I might have loudly exclaimed “OH THAT MAKES SENSE NOW” so that’s been my Monday.
The autism article contains the phrase “In a way, it’s even harder than death, because you can’t mourn and move on.”
Please excuse me, I need to go set something on fire now.
I work the front desk at a prominent alternative medicine conference, and I think many of the practitioners came to alternative medicine in the same way the author did, most out of desperation or frustration with the current medical system. What’s really unfortunate to me is that these doctors seems open to every suggestion given to them. This ranges from doctors preaching better nutrition, all the way to chelation to cure every thing, and Scientology. What started as a good openness to new ideas is exactly what the article said, a mind so open your brain falls out.
I aspire to eat scones as freely and heartily as Ruth Rendell.
I'm just going to put the actual quote from the article in here. It is not "Autism is worse than death," declares the mother of a child just diagnosed with autism. Rather, it is:
“In a way, it’s even harder than a death, because you can’t mourn and go on,” she says. “You have to figure out how to care for your new child.”
And apparently that's what they did: worked really hard to find ways to help and connect with their child. After a period of surprise and mourning at the diagnosis. I agree that it is not well said, (coming from the other angle, actually: having been around a lot of death, I think it is a very careless thing to say about death) — and it is not sensitive to the child's perspective — but it's not the words of a monster who doesn't see her child as fully human. That is really a stretch. Especially since the type of autism her child had seems to be one of the types that are not detectable at a young age and so appear to be sudden onset.
I wouldn't normally come back to keep having this conversation after the other person involved has gotten upset, wouldn't want to stir the pot, except that there does seem to be something going on where a complex/ambivalent situation gets reduced to the worst, most reductive possible version because of emotions around past bad experiences in other contexts & with other people. It's understandable to react that way after repeated bad experiences — but it can create more hurt if things that are not actually harmful/dehumanizing/cruel get filtered and perceived that way. So it's in the spirit of not wanting us to demonize, and wanting to allow back in a little gray space that I contribute to the conversation again.
People say the wrong thing all the time. But I think what she's saying is understandable even if she expressed it poorly. Just like people on the autism spectrum are hardwired to not perceive social interaction in the same way "neurotypical" people do, neurotypical people are hardwired to perceive affection through some specific things: eye contact, smiling, responding to one's name. Even if you know intellectually why the other person is not responding in the way you expect, and you understand, and know that it has nothing to do with how much they love you, we neurotypicals are still biologically hardwired to experience affection this way, and it is disappointing not to be able to feel the connection in that way with your own child, or your own sibling, or niece, or nephew, or what have you. It's no one's fault – but it's a kind of loss and there can be private mourning for it. That is not per se a condemnation of anyone else's humanity.
The initial disappointment one could feel at receiving an autism diagnosis seems absolutely on par with the disappointment one might feel at all sorts of other conditions, and maybe even lighter than the disappointment other conditions might evoke — I think it's pretty obvious that autism is (often) a much milder condition than all sorts of other things that could happen with a child. If the parent in the interview had thought for half a second, I'm sure she would agree. You'd have to be very thoughtless not to.
For the record, by the way, in my own experience (which is different from yours as the mother of a child on the spectrum, i.e. not the same, but still valid), a person can rarely do eye contact, not respond to their name, and not smile much in response to you, and still be very very high-functioning. They can also learn how to get better at these activities with time — and experience pleasure in getting better at them because it helps them feel more connected to their family and those around them.
Personally I would step in front of a bus for my younger relative on the spectrum. (And I've come pretty close to doing it, because she's not very aware of her environment sometimes). It doesn't preclude me from feeling disappointment occasionally, or seeing disappointment in others, including most poignantly in children who want to be her playmate and perceive rejection from her when she is simply not focused on them at times. And yet she is fully loved. Acknowledging the disappointment — the mismatches that make connection occasionally difficult — doesn't preclude love or seeing the dignity of the other person.
It's not good to mix these things up, disappointment vs. love and dignity — or think the equation has to be either/or. I may be talking more to other people on the thread in saying that than directly to you — apologies if that seems too obvious — but I just felt it needed to be said.