Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Amanda Baggs, Prelude to Becoming Autistic

What Amanda said in the interview and what she was saying 8,9 and 10 years ago...



"Also deliberate retreat into fantasy — not a “disorder” driving me to do this but a choice to avoid reality if I could. "

Oct 24 1998

"Toward the end of sixth grade I started thinking I was receiving telepathic messages from someone, possibly someone who lost a sister... that summer I started hearing voices"

Oct 1998

"I had really lost touch with reality, and was constantly hearing audible voices at that point. "

April 7 1998

"Schizophrenia is not necessarily a complete mental dysfunction. But it -is- a mental dysfunction, most of the time. For a long time, schizophrenia kept me on the sidelines of things. I watched, but there was no way I could join in. The voices were, most of the time, not saying anything "religious" in nature. They were threatening me with permanent insanity if I didn't do what they said when they said it. I do think some of my "visions" (read "hallucinations") may have meant
something. The black spiny fractallene hole I saw on people, I'm sure had some significance. As did the viewing of a city as a circuitboard.
But for the vast majority of the time, I was just outright psychotic.


"I began being sexually abused in adolescence."

Apr 13 1997

"First, I was sexually abused by one of my brothers for a few years.... I was also sexually abused by my grandfather in one instance...."

"Went away to college (yes, at 14, early, all that) which removed the sexual abuse from the immediate picture. (Apr 1998)"

"Then, when I was thirteen, I started dating a boy I met at a summer programme. We went to the same college the next year, and I was excited at living close to him. That was when the physical abuse started. "


"Like right now people often consider me “low functioning” for not speaking because speech is really important to them, I guess then I would have been “high functioning” when I did speak even though my actual amount of communication (even as measured on tests it turns out) was lower."

People think when you lose things it means you were always “normal” and this wasn’t the case with me. I lost whatever speech I had somewhere between 12 and 15 months. When I regained it, it was echolalic. One of my earliest language memories is of hearing my mouth say the words “Saint Bernard” without knowing what words were, that they had meaning, or even that it was my mouth the sounds were coming out. Even when my speech sounded more normal, I had trouble with receptive language, and didn’t always understand what I was saying.

Apr 26 1999

"I was a very well-behaved child who only had to be told once not to do something"

Dec 8 1998

"(She's principal of a different school now) and she said, "You were such a delight in the classroom." and that that's what other teachers remember
about me."

Sept 15 1999

"I was tested 'gifted' in school".


Oct 24 1998

"I started taking classes at a community college... went to CTY for the second summer (a summer programme that does intensive school work but the social stuff is intense too in a good way... lots of unconventional people there) and then to an "early-entry" college..."

CTY = The Johns Hopkins University Center for Talented Youth:

http://www.jhu.edu/news_info/news/home06/jan06/ctyalum.html
About The Johns Hopkins University Center for Talented Youth (CTY)

"CTY conducts the nation's oldest and most extensive academic talent search and offers educational programming for students with exceptionally high academic ability.

For 26 years, CTY has identified America's top academic students in grades two through eight and provided challenging educational programs through their 10th grade year. Students who score at or above the 95th percentile on standardized tests normally taken in school are invited to participate in CTY's Talent Search, during which they take an additional set of standardized tests used to measure mathematical and verbal reasoning."

June 6 2007

"I'm brain-damaged, and I have a significantly lower IQ than I used to."


"Complex PTSD in reaction to institutional settings in adolescence."

Dec 11 1997

"I know that two months in the hospital was enough to drain just about everything out of me. After those two months, they were going to put me in an institution, but when my parents visited it they said that I absolutely couldn't go there. Fortunately, they sent me to a residential treatment centre instead and the staff and doctors there dragged me kicking and screaming out of my little psychotic hole into reality again. But even now, I am haunted by that other possible future. In another universe, I am probably in the institution now and will die there. I always wonder, why was I lucky? How did I get out of it? I don't think I'll ever know... "

"Went away to college (yes, at 14, early, all that) which removed the sexual abuse from the immediate picture (though I was having physical flashbacks at the time and didn't know what they were). But then I started dating a guy older but close to my age who was at first very compassionate about my problems. Then he got sick of watching my "episodes" and having a "crazy girlfriend" and started using a -lot- of physical force to get me back. Didn't work, but it etched into my brain. (some of the "episodes" were flashbacks from previous stuff)."

Apr 10 1997

"When I was in the hospital, and refusing medication, my mother had them inject me with medication until my paranoia had gone away to a point
where I could take them on my own....It seems cruel but I am grateful for what it did for me, and accept the few minutes of terror that the injections produced. At first, I thought they were trying to poison me, and I would freak out. But after a few weeks (I think) I was clear enough to see that they were helping me."


"Typing was more reliable. I was starting to be exposed to people whose experiences of the world were closer to mine, and their use of words helped me to learn which words to use myself."

May 14 1999

"I hated writing. It made me frustrated and it hurt my hand both from holding the pencil and scraping across the paper....When I learned to type, I started liking "writing"-type assignments as long as I could type them". "Some of this might be due to being left-handed and not having a proper pencil grip..."


I’ve walked into traffic without meaning to.

Aug 1997

Ophelia wrote:

" you ran into the road repeatedly. "


"I “regressed” in infancy. "

Dec 1998

"I did most things early (including talk) by my parents say they were told I took slightly longer than normal with the toilet training (not as long as your daughter)." (i.e. Before the age of three).


"The first book I ever read, quite young, was a field guide to birds rather than an easy reader book."

Sept 15 1999

"I think I was reading around age 9 months, although not diagramming sentences until junior high) It is a part of my reality, because that's what I did."


"I have so much imagination that my pretend play as an adolescent was detailed and full-immersion enough to be part of what got me labeled psychotic."


5 Apr 1998

"I would have hallucinations that I didn't know were related to any of this, like seeing spiders and/or butterflies literally covering the floor, crunching under my feet. I didn't like seeing flower petals and would go to great lengths to avoid them, thinking they were dead butterflies. I also had dreams I thought were real, and every time an object from those dreams appeared in real life...I knew enough to keep this fairly secret (and it was all the sort of stuff an imaginative kid would come up with, right?) "


May 1999

"I remember requesting to go into a psych hospital because something in me was trying to die and something in me didn't want to. I remember being told it was abuse, or previous drug use, or being away from home or various other things, that caused my problems and that I was 'just fine' before I left. "


Aug 1997

Ophelia wrote:

"you tried and did hurt yourself and others. you refused to eat. you went a digging in a school yard and tried to throw a chair through a window there. you ran into the road repeatedly. there aren't a hell of lot of options when some starts doing that stuff. "


"I went to college *and then* special ed in that order."

Apr 5 1998,

"I'm also going to a special-ed school mainly for therapeutic stuff."


"I was in ballet because the alternative given by my doctor was a leg brace. My mother helped move my body through all the positions."


Sep 9 1998

"I learned left from right when I was probably two or three and had been enrolled in ballet to correct a foot that turned in... they drilled it into my head... when I was facing east anyway. Meaning I had to face east to know which side was which for awhile."


"Later on I was forced to play certain kinds of ‘crazy’ by various psychiatric professionals. I gave them what I thought they wanted out of me. To make matters more confusing, sometimes their drugs caused delirium, mania, or hallucinations, convincing me that maybe these people were right about me."

Apr 12 1997

"I'm not hearing voices anymore. I am, however, receiving messages from other beings which use thought in words to communicate... They call themselves the Others, and say that they came from the sky. They say they are like me. They say I will meet them someday, but that now is not the time. They say I won't hear voices ever again if I work at it."

"There is a group of beings that created the universe, but they only watch over it; they don't "run" it. And I should know -- I am one of them, and I am in contact with several of them. We do not demand belief."

"i have thought for years that i was an elf until the past few weeks when my therapists are starting to convince me it is a delusion. "


May 5 1997

"The Lithium helped curb my mania, where sometimes I would think I was God, I'm 16 years old."

May 29 1997

"I attacked someone last night. I didn't want to, and the Others were screaming for me not to, but I did anyway....Does anyone else feel like they are
being used by an outside force to explore, like a probe sort of?... I've realised that I'm an elven anthropologist of sorts. I look human, interact with humans, and study humans. But sometimes I study things that I don't particularly want to because I'm being guided by the Others and the collective elf-mind. "

Dec 16 1997

"Basically, immediately after I (deliberately) broke off contact with her, I realised I was an elf... There is nothing wrong with not being human mind you (-I'm- not!), but there was definitely something wrong with her. And I know very clearly that I need to find out what it is to protect myself and the rest of the world. I really think given the right knowledge and opportunity she could destroy many humans if not the whole world. I think I'm the only elf that knows about her... I'm getting really scared... I suspect that if I find that out, I can use my own knowledge combined with the Others and the Elves to figure out what to do... "


"The randomly-assigned doctor in a psychiatric facility when I was 14 got an overriding impression of autism and ‘idiot savant’ from an interview with my mother (who also knew little about autism), and then met and tested me, still playing ‘crazy’, and continued to believe I was autistic."

Mar 16 1999

"I thought that when I first read about autism, too. It explained everything, but it also seemed 'pretentious' as you said, to believe that I was autistic in any way. Now I have an official diagnosis (which doesn't necessarily mean much) of atypical autism (pdd-nos) "



"When I finally learned that I did not have to ‘play crazy’ anymore, I did go through a period when learning about autism where I tried to force-fit myself into a lot of autism stereotypes I heard."


"In reality I have had two so-called regressions, one in infancy (before which I was also not “normal”) and one in adolescence. "


Dec 26 1998, 9:00 pm

"I can count myself in as a lefty with a high-functioning form of atypical autism."


Dec 7 1997

"Many children (mostly autistic) at my school use those picture card things. Everything in the room is labeled with them, and they have schedule boards with velcro on them to attach the pictures. When they want to do something, they point to the picture (often with a lot of coaxing). My school's pretty neat actually. It's special-ed for ages 7?-22. There are maybe forty students, of all kinds of problems (I'm in the high-functioning class, recovering from schizophrenia). I get to
work with one of the autistic girls once a week, and I really enjoy it.

I want to do things like that professionally, eventually. Once I get out of this school and back to college... "

May 13 1998

"I think I combined the two and thought that the government, who was
out to get me, working through my father....was also exerting mind
control. Yes, I also thought that my food was being tampered with
(but mainly hospital food, where you never know), that a transmitter
aimed at me was causing the voices (the voices told me so, after
all), the TV/radio talking to me, and on and on with the stereotypical stuff."



Mar 1 1999

"I developed schizophrenia at 11."

170 comments:

Cat Lady said...

Good post Foresam.

Amanda's so called autism is another psychotic episode controlled by the 'Others' that live in the skies. It actually makes me sick that a person like her is a spokesperson for autism, I can't wait until her scam becomes known to all.

Joeker said...

This is quite interesting...
The voices are definitely symptoms of Schizophrenia, and I'd say that a combination of Aspergers and Schizophrenia would likely look fairly close to this.

Anonymous said...

I hope everyone realizes that quotes can seem to have a meaning that is very different from their intended meaning when they are removed from their context. Also, everyone makes mistakes and people change their minds, so if something Amanda said a decade ago contradicts something in a recent interview, it is possible that Amanda has simply changed her mind or made a mistake.

John Best said...

Nine, You don't just change your mind about whether you are autistic or not. One might decide they are no longer an elf but I think it's easier to switch from being an elf to a human than from brain damaged by LSD to autistic. Of course, when one has brain damage, who knows what they will decide.

Anonymous said...

Nine, Autism isn't just something you can turn off and on and decide to be autistic one day and not the next (oops I changed my mind, never mind the mistake).

Anonymous said...

Joeker,
For someone that advocated and signed a petition to get rid of this blog - you should be ashamed of showing up and participating.

Anonymous said...

I believe he was actually invited to this particular discussion by John.

Anonymous said...

After reading all this stuff I am quite honestly beginning to feel sorry for Amanda. I think she is mentally ill, not autistic, but she is clearly very ill. She should not be advocating for autistic adults because she is giving people a completely wrong impression about what autism is. There is something terribly wrong with her, but it is not autism.

Ditto on Joeker. Why are you here after you have been trying to get this blog removed? You need to make up your mind about what you believe in. I think you are being influenced by someone who should know better.

Anonymous said...

Joeker was invited here by Fore.

I feel sorry for Amanda. Sexual abuse and schizophrenia combined with whatever issues she has now.

Anonymous said...

If she was dating guys just a few years ago when did she become a lesbian?

Anonymous said...

Joeker said...

"The voices are definitely symptoms of Schizophrenia, and I'd say that a combination of Aspergers and Schizophrenia would likely look fairly close to this."

Not just the voices. Believing you are an elf, a god, God, and a probe, that the government is spying on you, that your food is poisoned, that you're receiving messages from radio and TV, believing that a girl at school is going to destroy the world unless you do something about it, and having hallucinations. These are all symptoms of schizophrenia. Paranoid schizophrenia.

So you're saying that the voices are definitely symptoms of schizophrenia, and therefore she must have had schizophrenia on top of Aspergers? Does Amanda say that? Does she say that she had schizophrenia, or does she say that she was misdiagnosed with schizophrenia and was playing a "crazy" role forced upon her by psychiatric professionals?

And why are you diagnosing her with Aspergers? Amanda has never claimed to have had Aspergers, has she? According to her profile at AFF, the only diagnosis she's had officially on paper is "low functioning" autistic. And yet in March 1999, Amanda said, "Now, I have an official diagnosis of atypical autism (pdd-nos)". Presumably that "official diagnosis" wasn't on paper so it wasn't really official, even though at the time she said it was.

I don't know what you mean by "a combination of Aspergers and schizophrenia would look fairly close to this". Fairly close to what? At the very end of 1997 Amanda says she was looking forward to going back to college and working with autistic children professionally. Do you think she would have considered that as an option if she looked fairly close to how she looks and acts now? And don't forget, she's currently non-verbal. (So if she was considering a teaching career at the age of 17, when exactly was that regression in adolescence that she talks about?)

Droopy said...

Of all the other autistic people, the famous ones, none of them can be confused with one another.
Sue Rubin is not like Temple Grandin, Temple Grandin is not like Donna Williams, Donna Williams is not like Tito, etc. None of them are similar or like one another in their experiences, sensory issues, their perseverances (aka as "Things' to me, and other which has been adopted by Amanda),

non autistics are even more subject, you would think, to being similar in what they like or think or how they think etc, than autistics you would think, since the typical pattern of a normal person is to go to an elementary regular school, then a middle or then high school, then you have teenaged jobs like at McDonalds, and you go to college and then you have regular jobs, you all drive cars, you live in houses or apartments, you get married, have kids, they have kids, you're a grandparent and you retire.

That's A LOT Of being just alike in experiences, right?

So how come when even non-autistics are not especially like one another at all and are so unique, and all the known autistics are too,

You've had all those very in common experiences, yet none of you normal people even are as alike as Amanda is to me.

She is this one who has yet to come up with much of anything original about her (plays with water like Sue Rubin, has synthesia or whatever like Tammet, can't find her body like Tito, has to wear green glasses as her way of being like Donna Williams, etc etc on and on and of course all the stuff her and Laura T amassed about me over the 12 years I sat on IRC chats talking about myself where they could see (and third party evidence of logs with Amanda as "autelf' sitting in chats with me unaware of who she was from since the 1990's may exist on someone else's hard drive may very well exist and that's being explored. I already do know that Laura T/Muskie was there,

Why is it that the only thing that's 'unique' about Amanda is how she just kind of looks like everybody else (and especially me)?

How come the rest of us are unique, but then

Why is it that the only thing that's unique about Amanda Baggs is her general lack of uniqueness?

How come Amanda just seems to be a bundle of 'me too me too!' and 'me more me more!" carbon copy in all respects, responding and existing as a compilation of data about others that she's seen?

I want to be clear that I had no idea about her background and these things being talked about here when I personally realized what she was doing to me.

I realized it on the sole basis of the direct dialogues I had with her in live-time IRC and Second Life chats. All that Me-Too-Me-Too and One-up-man-ship, anything disabled about me she was more disabled so she tried to say, any and all of my capabilities, she claimed them all, one after another, but of course embellished to better for her, all my experiences she recited back to me as if they were hers or claimed on the spot, the telling me she has some sort of 'communication learning process' that involved direct verbatim parroting of others -- these are what made me aware of what she was doing. That others came up with and presented her history only support what I previously already and had only come to knew from my direct contact with her directly myself.

All this about her college and Usenet statements, being diagnosed with factitious disorder, even the existence of this very HatingAutism page are things I only came to know about AFTER.


How come she talks out of one side of her mouth about how we're all unique, but when it comes to me then the story is that we're (autistics) 'cut of the same cloth'?

How come none of the other autistics had to borrow and steal from another person in order to be who they are, or to lie and rewrite things, saying they were diagnosed as Autistic at 14 or some other age which they really weren't?

Is it mere a coincidence that I don't talk about some of the things I've seen in the 20 years of being institutionalized, and Amanda has a similar gap and hole in her story, or is it lack of data that I never provided, not even to my closest friends on-line?

What do you think?
I'm sure some AspiesForFreedom or other "but we WANT to believe shes' real so badly" supporter will be along with some answers.

Then of course there is her current tagline/signature on AspiesFOrFreedom (located from today's episode of 'me-too-ing' this one about 'personal space')

"People only like the idea of fairies. When they bump up against a particular, real-as-corn fairy, there's always trouble." -Gail Carson Levine

Maybe somebody should point out to Amanda that I am shorter, I have bigger ears (which I actually can hear as well as I say I can with) and I probably look a lot more 'elfish' than she does, maybe if she thinks I'm a stupid 'Elf other' or whatever, would this be 'speaking her language' the language of schizophrenia then and she'll back off, who knows?

Meanwhile, time for another shameless plug because the more people view my blogs and the more I am known and exposed and 'out there' the more difficult copying/acquisition of me and my stuff might be, might slow down the joy of stealing (and maybe get me that proper biographer I'm still looking to catch the attention of),
Please click on my profile and read my blogs, I have been pretty prolific with the help of an old friend and got a lot more of my life's writing down.

Mine's not exaggerated since its based on the real person, me, and therefor after reading Amanda's renditions might seem kinda boring or something maybe, but its real and its me and the more I can gt myself 'out there' as my best defense, the better, so go read please, for me, be my extra sets of eyes and ears helping look out for me just by having a look.

Meanwhile I will keep writing all about myself that I can, and doing what I can.

thank you.

PS,
for those of you at AspiesForFreedom who say stuff about me like I'm 'a real mess' and that you 'almost feel sorry for me' etc -- know that those 'qualities' you 'refer' to are exactly why Amanda copies me.

She's looking to appear as severely autistic (and that's the correct phrase, its not 'severely disabled' as I'm not trying to be cagey and mislead people from one set of disabilities over to being considered another), and to gain sympathy/awe/admiration in the autism community as 'the most autistic' or whatever when she's simply not.

At least I know who and what I am (and thanks for 'celebrating my autism' with your remarks
-- 'how kind of you'-- [sarcasm])
and at least I'm honest and I don't have a problem with who/what I am,
as further evidenced by the fact that

I don't have to pretend to be somebody or something I'm not.

I'm glad for all of this about her that keeps coming out because here, in the truths found out about her is were she and I are undeniably different.

Droopy

Anonymous said...

Nine, So if Amanda simply changes her mind or makes mistakes about her past, how can anyone trust that anything she says is factual?

What has Amanda said?

That she retreated into fantasy deliberately.

Can that be true?

Not if she was having hallucinations from age seven. Not if she thought that she was receiving telegraphic messages and hearing voices at age eleven, and believing that she was an elf. Not if voices were threatening her with permanent insanity if she didn't do what they told her to do. Not if she was repeatedly running into the road, trying to harm herself and others, or trying to dig up a transmitter, causing the voices, that was buried in the school playing field. This kind of behaviour is not evidence of a deliberate retreat into fantasy.

That she had difficulties with receptive language, and she didn't always know what she was saying.

Can that be true?

Not if she was: considered "gifted", an A grade student, "only had to be told once not to do something", and "a delight in the classroom". Not if she skipped grade two, went to college at 14 to major in psychology; attended The Johns Hopkins University Center for Talented Youth for two years running where she would have been re-tested for verbal reasoning; and not if she won a place at Simon's Rock College.

That she began being sexually abused in adolescence.

Can that be true?

Not if she was sexually abused by her brother for years, and that the abuse stopped when she went to college.

That her PTSD was a reaction to institutional settings in adolescence.

Can that be true?

Not wholly, if she had PTSD from the earlier sexual abuse, and physical abuse at age 14 at the hands of a boyfriend. She said that he was "compassionate about her problems at first" but then he got "sick of watching her episodes", and told her she was crazy, and Amanda admitted she was having "flashbacks from previous stuff". She also says elsewhere that she was grateful for the treatment she received from the doctors and nurses, for without their help she would have been institutionalised. But she wasn't institutionalised, thanks to her parents and the care she received at the residential treatment center.

That her learning to type helped her to communicate and that the words that people she communicated with used, helped her to learn which words to use herself.

Can that be true?

If Amanda is saying that she couldn't communicate before she met up with autistic people on the internet, then her numerous messages on the various google forums should show that she had difficulty with writing what she meant before she found the autism support list. I believe that those messages show that Amanda has always been an excellent communicator. There is no doubt that she had, and still has, a way with words, and that other posters paid attention to what she said. Also, she learned to type when she was nine and preferred to type rather than write assignments because being left-handed, handwriting hurt her hand. This was when she was getting 'A's for assignments. Aren't type-written assignments a form of communication?

That she regressed in infancy.

Can that be true?

What does Amanda mean by "regression" and where is the proof that this happened? She spoke early, and if she lost language at 18 months, and started using echolalia to communicate, wouldn't her parents have been concerned about it and wouldn't there have been some sort of diagnosis in infancy? According to Amanda, she didn't have any diagnosis at all until she was 14. And she said that she was toilet-trained before she was three years old. How many children with regressive autism go back to wearing nappies at that age? Language isn't the only skill they lose. And from what she said about her ballet lessons, she learned right from left when she was two or three years old by facing east. How many children with autism and receptive language problems know where east is? How many normal children aged three can tell their right hand from their left?

That her pretend play "in part" got her labelled psychotic.

Can that be true?

What does she mean by "in part"? She requested to go into a psych hospital because "something in me was trying to die and something in me didn't want to." A young girl of 14 trying to kill herself is not pretend play or an overactive imagination.

That she was in ballet because the alternative was a leg brace and that her mother had to help move her body through all the positions.

Is it at all surprising that her mother had to help her? She was two and three years old.

That she went to college and then to special ed.

Is that true?

Yes, but she was "mainly in special ed for therapeutic stuff". The impression she gives is that she had regressed to a point where she needed to be in a special education class, and yet at the time she was looking forward to going back to college to become a special ed teacher.

That she was forced to play "crazy" by psychiatric professionals, and that she gave them what she thought they wanted out of her.

Can that be true?

Well, no one was making her share her psychiatric experiences - voices, hallucinations, delusions, violence, paranoia - with members of multiple online support forums. If she was telling them what she told the psychiatric professionals, then it is not surprising that she was labelled psychotic. No one on the support forums was forcing her to play crazy for them.

That she tried to force-fit herself into a lot of autism stereotypes she heard about.

Can that be true?

Definitely, and not just the ones she heard about. She'd also read 70-odd books on autism including autobiographies, and she described Jasmine O'Neill's book as "her bible" which she carried around with her everywhere, and she even took it to bed.

Is it a coincidence that Jasmine O' Neill is/was also an elective mute? A manic-depressive, diagnosed with autism at 26, who describes herself as having "fairly severe classical autism", "a savant in writing, art, and music" who believes that her autism is something "very beautiful" and that "'normalizing' autistic people is not just ineffective but wrong".

It appears that in 1999, the same year that her book was published, Jasmine found the love of her life and went to live in Hawaii, and I don't think anyone has heard from her since.

I only wish Amanda would do the same.

Anonymous said...

"Not if she thought that she was receiving telegraphic messages and hearing voices at age eleven"

That was supposed to read "telepathic messages"!

John Best said...

Watson,
Excellent points. Nobody chooses to have hallucinations.

The suicidal stage came after the heavy LSD use and somewhat removed from the family sexual abuse. Did she also have a breakup with a boyfriend around that time? It was a friend of hers who alerted her parents about the suicidal thoughts. Was that friend also a boyfriend?

She claimed the LSD made her more normal so maybe the hallucinations were what she considered normal. At any rate, she went from a gifted student to royal mess in a short time. I don't think too many psychiatrists would hear all of this and call it autism. They would certainly pick some other word for "looney tunes" but autism just doesn't fit.

Cat Lady said...

I tried reading that interview, what the hell is that about? I think Amanda has found her soulmate. The reporter seems to enjoy talking about herself as much as Amanda does. Do these people ever stop analyzing themselves and consider other people around them? They remind me of the Greek god Narkissos that died because he looked at his reflection in the water for too long, he was in love with himself. The word narcissism is derived from his name.

Anonymous said...

There are a bunch of idiots here, since when did anyone have to know what East means to know where East is, I can't sleep comfortably in any bed that is not correctly oriented, and I don't need a compass to tell me or any idea of why the bed is wrong, it just is.

Anonymous said...

I have never met an autistic who could evven identify their feelings, let alone explain them to the degree that Amanda Baggs does. Her ability to do this makes it clear that she is regurgitating information she has heard somewhere else.

Droopy said...

Watson said...

"[...]She'd also read 70-odd books on autism including autobiographies, and she described Jasmine O'Neill's book as "her bible" which she carried around with her everywhere, and she even took it to bed.[..]"

Googled and located one book by the aforementioned,

"Through the Eyes of Aliens: A Book About Autistic People" (oy!)

With a title like that the very first thought that ran thought my mind was

"well now, isn't that just what the world needed"[sarcasm - I might not get other people's but i can do my own sarcasm, thats pretty un-autistic right?]

its no wonder I never heard of this person, and no wonder the Elf Goddess was so keen on it.

This also may explain why 'word has it' that Amanda has actually said she's glad I'm attempting to get my biography written, etc..

Apparently from her remark and this other person's book being her 'bible' and first example to copy, I can deduce that being published and in a book is no deterrent for her then.

Just terrific [<---more sarcasm, thats very HFA of me isn't it?]

You mean to say then I could bust my butt and put all this work and write my book and she might just cart it around too and just keep right on?

That leaves me thinking,
Now what do I do?

Did Amanda leave off of this Jasmine character as soon as it was realized she's not all that authentic either then, or what?

What am I supposed to do now, try somehow to come across as a fake autistic myself too, is that what discouraged her of of this other woman and what I need to attempt so Amanda will stop being so keen on copying me?

and if so, how am I supposed to do that?

How am I supposed to do that?

This doesn't look good if that's what is needed from me then and I'll tell you why:

I once, in upset and during a phase of 'there is no such thing as Aspergers you people are all normal to me" I went to a local neuro-psychology testing place and tried to trick them into thinking I was normal, or at very least "Asperger's to prove a point I had, that "if you guys can be normal and fake this Asperger thing then maybe I can go fake it too" or something (because these people kept talking on about having to 'pretend to be normal' and acting like autism was a coat or clothing they could put on and take off or like a dungeons and dragons role-playing game and its not, is a real thing some people have and have no choice) and I tried really hard to sit there and be as normal as I could I was going to fool them and be 'normal' and that didn't quite pan out. I didn't even get the 'upgrade' to Asperger's, I was still decided to be very autistic, but I did learn at least that I really do remember things better than just about everybody and to stop being so mean to normal people and others when they can't remember because they can't help it (they're not purposely not telling me things like I had thought before).
That was about five years ago.

I don't have a hope in hell of coming across 'normal' and this is just too confusing and frustrating {<---I can identify that one best] to me.

Chalk up yet another reason, a new one, to wish I wasn't autistic -- thanks again, Oh Great Disability Rights Advocate and Advocate Amanda Baggs.

I can tell what feelings I am having most of the time. when in real doubt and not being at my best I can usually tell at least 'upset' vs 'not upset' but I do pretty well generally really at knowing I'm happy or sad or angry/frustrated (those are very similar to me), so there, maybe I'm not so autistic do to that then, go away Amanda I'm not autistic enough for you to copy then!

Is it "Elective Mutism if you choose not to try?

I am aphasic but that's besides the point, I DO think verbal speaking is over-rated and there are certain things I will not attempt to say -- EVER because it pisses me off (makes me very angry, very identifiably angry and FRUSTRATED very very frustrated) to try to say and at big risk of bad behaviors, if you want to see me really upset, get me trying to say The Beatles or their names especially John Lennon because I can't and it kills me, hurts me very badly that I can't and I am liable to pitch a big fit, a tantrum, a meltdown for trying so I don't. Just talking about it, saying it right now and thinking about it hurts ('worms in my bones' startup feeling which is FRUSTRATION), so maybe I'm not exactly the greatest at speaking and I never have been but I can tell what I feel when I feel it pretty well these days, and type like I do and people see me on line without seeing how I look in real life (not webcam chats or movies or pictures just text) and don't know anything is different about me unless I tell them and then they sometimes say 'well that must be a pretty high functioning autism you have then" so there, I'm too functional for you Amanda GO AWAY, find somebody new to pattern yourself after, WHATEVER.

I have a mind that likes to try to fix things and because of it I just think about this whole thing way too much and I am so sick of thinking of her and trying to figure out what makes her do this why and so I can try to think then what can makes her stop, I am so sick of having to think about Amanda Baggs. I want this to stop.
Its been 10 months that I've known of her and that she's been doing this, seems like at least a good ten years she was at it before I ever knew she existed. I don't deal well with being 'blindsided' by things like this.
I know this didn't develop overnight and it won't be dealt with and made to go away overnight but still, 'if its all the same to anybody':

GO AWAY, AMANDA

WHAT PART OF 'GO AWAY' DON'T YOU GRASP?

IS IT THE 'GO'

OR PERCHANCE

IS IT THE 'AWAY'?

JEEZE!

Said with a grumbly feeling (don't ask what that is, probably frustration, yeah that's it frustration) that I will probably read this stupid book by this stupid other person since I am now OBLIGATED to try to understand Amanda freaking Baggs in order to get her off my ass. I'll do it, but I won't like it.

I'd really rather be thinking about The Beatles or how short I am or how tall that "King Larry" Paul Bunyon typewriter carrying British guy was, or exactly how heavy my typewriter is (30-31 lbs) or thinking about how hysterically funny rattling streetsigns is to do or just any of many other things, anything other than YOU.

I collect up and use lots of idioms and colloquialisms, and related things, a counselor guy once told me not to do it on-line because it makes me sound 'old' but I like them and I collect then and I don't think I sound 'very autistic' when I say them either, when I have all my idioms and colloquialisms lined up, then I have 'all my ducks in a row' and I don't always have to put them in quotes like that any more either when I use them, and my huge vocabulary may have come from reading dictionaries (two in particular) over and over "just like rainman read the phonebook' but who cares how I got it, just like anyone else who has one the point is I do have this big vocabulary and that's not very autistic to have either I don't think, is it? so Amanda, I'm not autistic enough for you, I'm not real then, here I am as fake as your Jasmine O'Neill you liked so much, you won't like a book by me then either, not disabled enough for you:
GO
AWAY
YOU

Anonymous said...

Anonymous said...
"There are a bunch of idiots here, since when did anyone have to know what East means to know where East is, I can't sleep comfortably in any bed that is not correctly oriented, and I don't need a compass to tell me or any idea of why the bed is wrong, it just is."

Anon, At what age did you learn to distinguish right from left, and did you have to face east to do it?

Were you aged two or three, like Amanda claims she was? And, if you were, did you also have receptive language problems, like she also claims?

Anonymous said...

Fore Sam said...
"She claimed the LSD made her more normal so maybe the hallucinations were what she considered normal"

You could be right, John. According to dmd who says he went to college with her:

http://www.metafilter.com/58058/In-My-Language

"If you knew you were surrounded by elves, wouldn't you feel better if you could at least see them?"


Elves and elfland were, and maybe still are, her reality.

I wonder if that particular delusion was triggered when she became a fan of Tolkien:


http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.books.tolkien/msg/ef184278c2e5e01f?hl=en&

"Message from discussion any other elves out there?

Mar 11 1997


I am writing this because I know that other elves might be drawn to the works of Tolkien.

I am an elf, and am looking for other elves. If you happen to be one of the elves that I am so desperately looking for, please write me email (not a reply in the newsgroup) describing in detail the forest you came from. I cannot be any more specific because I have to know that you are really what you say you are.

Amanda Baggs "

Anonymous said...

Anonymous said...

"I feel sorry for Amanda. Sexual abuse and schizophrenia combined with whatever issues she has now."

For some years, Amanda also claimed that she had Multiple Personality Disorder, and then she apologized to the Dissociative support forum. She didn't have it, but thought she had it.

How would anyone know for certain that she'd ever been sexually abused, or might she have claimed that she had in order to join the Abuse forum and take part more fully in the PTSD forum? Are there any posts on any forums after 1998 in which she mentions sexual abuse? For some time, she appears to blame her boyfriend's physical abuse and her parents loud arguments for her PTSD, then she shifts to blaming psychiatric professionals for their abusive treatment of her in "institutional settings". (I don't think we should forget that she says that she was psychotic - and violent.)

I don't see why anyone should feel sorry for Amanda. She has said that if she really had schizophrenia, she would be proclaiming her "schizophrenic pride" as thoroughly as her "autistic pride". She doesn't feel in the least bit sorry for herself or for our children with autism. According to Amanda, everyone should accept and celebrate neurological diversity - which has to include our children's brain injuries caused by vaccines, called "autism".

The people I feel sorry for are her mother and father who must have had great hopes for Amanda's future before they watched her deteriorate from a top academic student with a very bright future to a seemingly very disabled mute who "communicates" with drawer handles, slinkies and running water.

I feel sorry her grandfather and her brother whom she has accused of sexual abuse even though she says that her grandfather only did it - whatever 'it' was -once and stopped when she said she was uncomfortable, and that her brother "left no physical evidence. He wouldn't go far enough that", and she's "fuzzy on the dates".

I'm sorry for the adults who have suffered all their lives with autism, who live or have lived for years in institutions, and, who would not want Amanda Baggs - whose life has been nothing like theirs - to speak for them.

And I'm sorry for all the children who could be treated and recovered from autism, but who won't be, because their gullible parents have watched Amanda's "inspirational" and "amazing" YouTube videos, and believe that she has severe autism and learned to type in order to communicate at the age of nine. They think she knows what she is talking about because she looks the part. Those are the individuals who should be pitied.

Droopy said...

Musical Interlude:

I decide who, if anyone, speaks for me.

Amanda Baggs sure doesn't,

but sometimes
(even when apart and quarreling)

The Beatles do.

These three songs and their words and feelings are exactly how I feel towards her and her cohorts:

John Lennon - How Do You Sleep?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzG4WpqO4u0
John Lennon - Gimme Some Truth
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBpIfVt46Bk
Too Many People - Paul McCartney &Wings
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6IFMPJQCcY
I don't know about anybody else but
I sure do know my feelings
and I sure do know what's going on.

I'm autistic not dead.

Cat Lady said...

Droopy, I love your fascination with the Beetles and how you remember all those lyrics.

You're right about normal people not remembering things too well. My friend's son is autistic and he remembers arguements she had with his dad word for word; even 5 years back in time. It's incredible, he even remembers whole books word for word.

John Best said...

I have a picture of Amanda looking thin and normal while at the college. Does anyone know when she gained 300 pounds? The loss of all self respect that goes along with suicidal thoughts probably caused the weight gain. What causes a normal teenager to go from being heterosexual to falling for an obese and disgustingly ugly older woman? The only answer I can come up with is that she still hates herself and is punishing herself. It would probably take years of therapy to deal with the sexual abuse. That might cure her autism.

Anonymous said...

Amanda claims that her weight gain was her body's natural response to 'yoyo dieting' which does cause a person to gain more weight each time they go off the diet.

However, she claims, in her case the 'yoyo effect' was not caused by dieting or by choice. She says, on AFF, it was because she was so autistic and had no services, that she was literally starving on more than one occasion and that now she has a weight problem because of that.

She also claims to have been homeless for a period of time.

How could someone like Amanda be homeless without someone noticing that a severely disabled, non-speaking person was living on the street? She has written in her blog since that just her appearance on the street has called attention from the police because she looks strange and has an odd gait.

So it seems that these days she cannot go out alone with the police stopping her, yet some years back she was living on the street, starving nearly to death, yet no police bothered to check her out. How?

Droopy said...

Long post, necessary though, and will be on my own blog as well. Needs to be seen here thought too as its further demonstrates the extent to which she's taking from me:

a whole lot of that (homeless at one point, weight due to starvation and lack of services at another point, a bad encounter with a police officer) I'm afraid are more direct parroting and twists of my experiences:

At 19 and fresh out of the children's home and into the home of my father and his new family (he hadn't told the children's home any of this and I was completely unprepared and it went very badly), a very very bad circumstance I did what I had seen other girls do at the children's home, and I ran away. Walked the exactly 8 miles to the nearby small town and slept in the doorway of that town's high school detention center. It was winter and that's a very bad time in this state to be stuck outside a lot. I went unnoticed and unsought because I am a master at hiding when I wanna be and because my stepmother would not allow my father to contact the police to make a report and forbade him to even look for me (thought I learned years later he defied his new wife enough to drive all over looking for me, no call to the police was made).
It seems in our notorious winter to have lasted forever but I really wasn't out there that long before a woman took me in and allowed me to sleep on the floor of her 2 year old daughter's room. I laid on the floor looking up at the underneath of this little girl's crib and just slept and didn't move much at all, working off frostbite and pretty much literally scared stiff. This woman who was on welfare herself contacted the necessary agencies and I was put into the system and into a group home.

Years later, living where I do now I stopped being able to attend the university and since at that time a whole lot of my services had been provided based on my attendance, by 'voc rehab' etc when I quit being able to do that, I quit having a lot of things, from the full sized communicator (which I've never been able to get one since) to home help services, I curled up in here and nearly died. I had to reassemble my computer (which I had taken apart out of upset) and ask a man on line (a Canadian man, an accountant and friend at the time who can attest to thsi) how to make boxed mashed potatoes because that's all that was in my apartment. I could reassemble my computer, install a modem while starving because they are like simple puzzle pieces that snap together and just one way, but I couldn't make food or do much in here. I did however, have transportation to doctor's appointments and my neuropsychiatrist who'd come to my rescue in some other equally crucial ways before and my general doctor realized I was losing weight and extremely rapidly and papers were written, contacts made by them, and I got home help services provided to me, pretty much what I had before but now by different agencies. (I had my small handheld communicator and that was sufficient until it just broke down here pretty recently).

I have had all kinds of mobility coaching, frustrated all kinds of mobility coaching (this was again when I was attending the local university) in attempt to get me to be able to independently get myself to campus and to classes, never panned out, I am horrifically inclined to get lost, super easy, I am I'd say extremely agoraphobic due to this, but when you're autistic they don't write down 'agoraphobic' as a separate thing its just part of being autistic for me evidently, and one day I really stupidly did this really really dumb thing and I went outside, alone, without my friend John or anyone at all and without my communicator and I got myself good and lost and really really upset and when I realized I could not see my apartment building and I was good and lost I completely freaked out. The police don't bother me and haven't but for this time I was out alone and freaked out and somebody must have called him because I had an officer trying to ask me my name and make me look at him and I wouldn't and I ended up hitting him and myself and being put in the police car and spending a weekend in the local state hospital, a 72 hours as well, since it happened on a Friday until Monday until my beloved Dr M could cone contacted and I could get out of there. That was horrible. I used to have a copy of the paper they used to put me in and it had marks for 'mentally ill and unable to care for self' and
mentally retarded and unable to care for self' and I could see they has scratched out 'mentally ill' and marked in the 'mentally retarded circle.'

I talked about all of these things online since 1994 and there are people who may well recall and verify this.

I am 42 and if anyone had an excuse to be fat, its me and my small statured slowing-due-to-middle-age been starved, been on major psychiatric drugs most of my life since 11 years old when I was put on Thorazine and then Melleril and Moban and Stelazine and Haldol and the realy harsh bad drugs because that what they did with 'severely emotionally disturbed mentally handicapped' kids which is ALSO what they called severely autistic kids on a mission to self distruct and also anybody that got near enough to get ahold of, and that was me way too much of my life.

I have a battle now because I am losing weight and too fast again due to a behavior problem renewed and provoked by the problem with amanda. I lost five pounds lastweek and you might say "don't complain' except as my counselor says "I would not recommend the starvation diet' and its not my intent but I get upset and I throw up, projectile vomiting type, I was a ruminator baby, lots of special needs babies are, and I never lost the ability to make myself throwup just with my stomach, Amanda knows all about this because we had a livetime talk about it with her responding 'that would be Blanche' and a story of someone she allegedly knew in an instantiation that was able to artfully aim her vomiting on staff.

Anyway, if anybodys' got reason for a narfed up metabolism its me from the hordcore oldtime drugs and the years they were used to try to hep control my behavior, my very real and ongoing mentalism-narfing puking behavior problem when really upset, I was lucky I was only out in the bitter cold short enough to not die and somebody was a real samaaritan and the police don't come after me unless I give them a reason, like anyone else (and I also have checks and solution in place to prevent that now< I never go out alone, I have a card in my wallet that explains about me and I know my main job if I am freaking out and a police officer approaches is to try to be still, be as still as I can).

After an autistic boy was shot in this state (for his failure to sit still when an officer stopped a family's car and ordered all to be still and he couldn't and was shot) it so happens my state has taken great pains to educate its police forces about Autism, and I don't hold it against them or the officer that took me to the hospital like that. He didn't know any better and I wasn't in any way able to tell him.

Its not because of a fear of police that I don't go out alone, its terror at the getting lost in and of itself. I can't be left alone in a store, don't leave me in an isle where I can't see you (and I am short that means being riight WITH me as I can't see over the isle), fear of being overwhelmed and not having somebody there to make it safe and make it right. I'm not proud of this, but that's how dependent I can be on others outside of my apartment and outside of the very limited places my friend John and I go to where I know the places well enough I don't have to live in a perpetual high level state of alert/anxiety.

But her getting it wrong like this is what happens when somebody takes somebody else's story and makes a guess as to why and misses so badly.

Droopy said...

I'm waiting for Amanda and her "got on SSI the first time" etc butt) to come out with a twisted rendition of my competency hearing that was required for me to become my own guardian (I had been a ward of the state south of here as a child until I turned 19, as long as they could keep me as a child, let out of the children's home and then the briefly back into the hands of my father, then onto the custody of this state where I now reside until I was 30 when all hell broke loose because I started being able to show I CAN think I CAN communicate I AM smart and I wanted to be my own person.

At 26, Amanda's age, I was still very much an adult ward of the state, and was I believe most of the year I was her age was in the certain 'regional center' institution I kept being tossed into when I couldn't handle it or behave well enough/be watched well enough in adult foster care. I had a good-sized sign vocabulary to get some needs met/sign when prompted to get my things from house staff, but at 26, her age that's where I was institutions and homes, and I hadn't typed a word.

The only reason I wasn't on SSI as a child is my parents made too much. My father worked for the social security administration, he was a claims representitive.

Until he retired we had the 'sticky situation' of his not being able to work in the same social security administration off ice for my area (my father lives actually pretty close to me still). for fear he'd get our section of lastname letters, and you can't have your own father being the guy who takes care of your SSI or then SSD (when here retired as a DAC disabled adult child) of his that changed my stuff again, I'm not even supposed to talk to people who worked in the office who were friends of his.

I qualified right along though, and he knew it. As I was an adult and caseorkers moved on the situation and got me on it, he wasn't allowed to have anything to do with the process because of it being where he worked and care and his working at a nearby office instead eventually ended up taking place.

I'm not supposed to talk about his having worked for the social security administration for two reasons that I know of:
1. its embarrassing to him to have a daughter who was on it, I know that embarrassed him the whole time he was still working and I was on SSI and I feel bad about that.

2. People bother him at home, asking him Social security questions even now that hes' retired some people still call and pester him with questions and he doesn't like that.

I'm hoping that because Iv'e been so careful not to give exact details about myself this one time will be okay, and also its another "Let Amanda try to copy THIS part of my life then" statement.

You can't copy everything Amanda, there's going to be interesting juicy good stuff I either didn't elaborate on fully enough for you to get right or in some instances things I hadn't talked about at all, and I do have a good memory and now that you've forced me to the task, even though there's limits and 'everything I ever said in 12 years on line' is a tall order even for me, I am continually working on recapturing and know what I did/didn't talk about and to what degree.

So, Amanda, did your father ever work for the social security administration? oh no, that's right, your's was off sparking the edges of plexiglass or some such.

I'll bet your dad never held some of the other jobs mine has, or has some of the traits and skills that run in our family (like the language one, why my father was the one they gave all the non English speakers of all sorts to when they came in the SS office), bet your dad was never a Tool&Dye Journeyman, never learned then turned and taught at the same university, lots of stuff, Ms Amanda Baggs, that are MY family and MY life and MY history.

I hope you'll all understand and will appreciate it when I say I don't feel one bit sorry for Amanda M. Baggs

Droopy said...

Maxima,
John Lennon once said he had a dream in which "a man on a flaming pie came to [him] and said 'you shall be Beatles with an A'" but its believed John Lennon was making a joke at the time, however they had many Beatle-related names,and all of them had an 'a' in there, Starting with (as far as Beatles' names go since they were also the quarrymen and others, at one point jsut John and Paul were The Nurk Twins) "Long John and the Silver Beatles"
They also also backed Tony Sheridan as "The Beat Brothers"

One of Sir James Paul McCartney's album/CDs is called Flaming Pie.

as far as beetles with two e's though a fact I know about them is that the largest one in the world, is the Madagascar cockroach.

I love The Beatles, I am okay with beetles, but I really hate and fear cockroaches (somebody made me learn about them in an attempt to get over that more because while nobody likes them I was a little ridiculous in how fearful of the idea of seeing one to the place it was getting in my way of doing things and that's why I know abut the Madagascar ones).

Back to Beatles with an a (which is what I think you meant because I had been talking about them not beetles), Sir James Paul is the 'biggest' as far as most record selling solo, and John Lennon was the tallest sort of biggest (being 5'11" and 3/4th as the most common reporting of his height) and I really do love them. Being able to hear them and appreciate them (and quite literally having heard them in the womb as they saturated the airways the very exact year I was carried and my mother was already sick to death of The Beatles and especially I Wanna Hold Your Hand well before she had me).

That's the sort of stuff Amanda can't copy. She can and she does try, but you'd have to be my age, carried in your mother at the right year to listen to The Beatles everywhere your mother went, whenever the radio was played, born on a day when the Beatles literally had 8 of the top 10 songs, the top 5 completely. That didn't happen in 1980 the day Amanda was born, that happened in 1964, the day I was born.

When I get upset at somebody and I argue at them I can start saying "YOU SAID and I QUOTE" and starting in saying what they said and I also get 'stop interrogating me' said to me when I get 'lit up' and 'on a roll' and arguing and I dare say this is one of the reasons Amanda declines, with all her wordy-savvy social skills and smarming and 'here's reality I'll tell ya how it is' stuff because that's how I'd 'harass' her (that's what she's calling it anyway) I'd have a few good questions about our many many 'shared' things in common,' and I'd dare her outright to an ability-face-off. I can do what I say I can do, can she? I'd put her to the test, publically call her out on it, lets go on TV, let's go before a judge in a court of law then, bring out the audiologists and the block test and the keyboards,
who can remember?
who can hear?
who can type?
who can do that little block test?
come again, was who?

Give us both exposure to a language neither of us have ever heard or seen or been exposed to before, and lets see who can do what with it, who can discern and begin to comprehend, assemble learn then produce text-based structures, sentences, who can scoop up vocabulary and the mechanics and patterns of it, and that's another thing:
who's got some part of my family's language skills?
who's a pattern learner?
who is that? come again?

Yeah that's how I'd 'harass' her alright, calling her out, using my memory to query and 'interrogate' and hold her to and to accountable for her words, and she can't play 'I'm a poor disabled woman leave me alone, you are victimizing me' to me, and then make her take all these crazy sign-pots to lies she's got scattered all over the Internet that are based on me -- and keeps adding all over the place and leaving them sit so they are there forever -- right the hell down too.

Here is a core thing about all of this I haven't been able to express before but this is core to why this makes me crazy and continues to make me crazy:

she keeps leaving a trail of lies based on my life all over the Internet, instead of taking them down, every few days she adds a new one so they're all over.

Its not like she says her BS once and its gone, they stay there forever, for all to see and that's very much a part the problem.

Apparently for all her great claims, other people have cornered her on things when she starts rolling in the 'me too' business at them, and ultimately when pressed by these others, Amanda's response is:

"I can't remember"

Anonymous said...

What about Johnny and the Moondogs? the A in that is surely apocryphal and would be there if it were Freddy and the Squirells or any other combination of names linked by the same conjunction?

You are aware that the Beatles auditioned under the title Johnny and the Moondogs relevance to the Beatles I trust?

However that was back in 58.

Anonymous said...

What really appals me is the attitudes displayed in this blog not only toward autism but mental illness.

So far as I recall here, Amanda was considered to have had a single episode of Schizophrenia in full remission.

If there is a belief in a cure for autism, is there not a belief in a cure for Schizophrenia, and that the existence of delusional belief at one time in one episode of a person's life is no evidence for believing that after treatment they are still "crazy" and "deluded"

All I see here is an "insane" assembly of vindictive monomaniacs contesting equally reprehensible world views with each other ad infinitum from both sides of the argument. I do wish there were a simple cure for that.

Cat Lady said...

Ha ha, I didn't even realize that I spelled it wrong. I meant to say the Beatles :-)

Droopy, Amanda will crawl under her rock pretty soon. Someone from her past contacted me and this isn't the first time she's faking a condition. In college she claimed to have multiple personality disorder. She carefully made up 80 different personalities and wrote down in detail character distinctions for each person. I wonder if there is a word in psychology for someone that fakes a disorder?

John Best said...

Amanda gets plenty of attention from the neuroinsane to fuel her delusions. She serves their purpose of confusing the facts about autism. Too bad CNN didn't check with people who post here to determine the truth of her story.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous said...

"What really appals me is the attitudes displayed in this blog not only toward autism but mental illness."


What is really appalling is that Amanda Baggs who claims that the only official diagnosis of autism she's ever had is LFA, (which if true, she got at age nineteen or twenty), should be allowed to post what she likes on AFF, whereas Droopy who was diagnosed with LFA in infancy, and who tells the truth about living with autism, gets banned because she is not saying what the AFF want to hear.

Droopy, who has lived a lifetime with autism and disability is being denied a voice in an autism forum. I find that appalling. Don't you?



"So far as I recall here, Amanda was considered to have had a single episode of Schizophrenia in full remission."

When did Amanda say that?

Amanda says she was "misdiagnosed with schizophrenia".

So which do you believe now? Is it "schizophrenia in full remission" or a misdiagnosis?


"All I see here is an "insane" assembly of vindictive monomaniacs contesting equally reprehensible world views with each other ad infinitum from both sides of the argument. I do wish there were a simple cure for that."

I wish there were a cure for gullibility.

Anonymous said...

In March 1999 Amanda said, "Now, I have an official diagnosis of atypical autism (pdd-nos)"

At AFF Amanda claims that the "only autism diagnosis" she's "had officially on paper is "low functioning"".

On her blog in April this year she says:

"My written diagnosis when my diagnosis was PDD-NOS was “PDD-NOS (atypical autism)”"


Gosh, I didn't know there was a difference between a "written diagnosis" and a "diagnosis on paper". Did anyone else?

I wonder what makes PDD-NOS/atypical autism an "official diagnosis" in 1999, but not official in 2007.

Anonymous said...

maxima said...

"I wonder if there is a word in psychology for someone that fakes a disorder?"

Yes. It's called factitious disorder. And Amanda has been diagnosed with that. She said,

http://groups.google.com/group/alt.support.autism/msg/648eb16d2730cc7a?hl=en&

Dec 10 1998

"Well it should be unnecessary for me to have some sort of proof to believe that I'm on the spectrum. Unfortunately every diagnosis is another framework I can put myself into and see everything through. Whether or not the diagnosis is true.

Ever since I was diagnosed with factitious disorder (faking illness to become a patient for no other reason) by a doctor who hardly knew me and wasn't honest with me about the diagnosis (he never told me; I found out in a report later on) I've doubted my own experiences.

Every time I experience something I wonder if it's my imagination or suggestibility that makes it happen."

Anonymous said...

Anon, Amanda, homeless? Mmm...

Maybe that was what she imagined had happened to her after she'd read Donna Williams' autobiography. Or maybe after she met her partner Laura, who spent years living on the streets.

Droopy said...

anonymous,
of course I know why 'moondogs' -- do you?
I wasn't trying to include every instance of 'a' in their names, but of course the ones pertaining explicitly to Beetles/Beat/Beatles.

'and' doesn't count.

Another theory is it was inspired by Buddy Holly and The Crickets.

But since you were trying to be all inclusive (and where is there an a in The Nurk Twins?),
another you forgot their name that included the word 'rainbows'
(I will leave you to google for it), but thanks for playing.


Maxima, I hope you are right but
I'm afraid that Fore Sam is.

She didn't build this overnight, and she is being very rewarded for it. My counselor guy as well as people who know her pretty well seem to have the general conclusion that its 'automatic' on her part. She sees discussion or example of something 'autistic' and she just instantly and compulsively 'cops it' for her own, joining in like she does with her claims and me-too-ing and its unlikely that even a court order to quit 'cease and desist' or whatever, my publishing a book of my life, none of it is liable to make her quit it. Its very possible that nothing I do or don't do can have an impact on it, and she likely is under the delusion that people are buying this, somewhere in her somehow she both knows she is faking but is delusional and lies to herself effectively enough that she doesn't know, all at once, that's the best understanding I have of it, and its all very confusing.

I also get that she isn't capable of having feelings for others, including her impact on me, its all about Amanda in her world, what this does to me, the wrongness of it, etc aren't even on her radar at all.

This is from people who know her well and are part of her 'inner circle' as well as actually 2 professional people.

The people coming here whining on her bahalf just boggle my mind, how can you completely disregard what she is doing here? What circumstances can possibly justify this or warrant feeling sorry for her. Other people when talking to me about this use this term first, and call what she has and does to me a form of 'psychological rape' and you're going to see this, and act like people on this website are villains and call out for pity for her?
Nothing you can say can make what she's doing to me okay in any way shape or form. Nothing. Ever.

You people who are doing this feeling sorry for and defending and acting like it shoulld be allowed without comment, do you also pity physical rapists and child molesters, pedophiles and burghers and common house thieves?
I'll bet you do, you'd almost have to in order to be supporting Amanda's doing this to me.

This will never be right, not in a million years and I don't care of her 'illness makes her have a need to do it'

My ME-ness, maybe my AUTISM then too, makes me have a real need that she NOT do it and my need that she NOT do it is GREATER, trust me on that one!

and I'll bet she's not on SSI for 'autism.' I'd bet you that she got on hers schizophrenia and is still listed that way.

Lastly, all of you supporting and pitying her need to learn that there's a big difference between 'Mrs Who' 'quoting' (her latest excuse for it), 'echolalia' (which is her common standby excuse), and plaguerism

When you have some sort of mental kleptomaniac like this on your ass and its happening to YOU then you can come talk to me about how forgiving and sorry for and understanding and all that, what a what a martyr you are for her about it, but until it happens to you, stuff it. you're not the ones being violated mocked and made fun of on a life long and a global scale for somebody's wicked fun and profit.

Amanda, you most certainly ARE "the monster I met on the Internet" and if I ever have the grave misfortune to have to be in the same room with you, I give up all and any hope that a conscience might spring forth in you at seeing me up close and personal, you'll be studying me to mock me even then face to face, 'heartless bitch' does sum it up very well actually and I have no doubt you'll only then be 'the monster I had also the grave misfortune to be in the same room with'

From dictionary.com:

plagiarism

pla·gia·rism /ˈpleɪdʒəˌrɪzəm, -dʒiəˌrɪz-/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[pley-juh-riz-uhm, -jee-uh-riz-] Pronunciation Key -
–noun
1. the unauthorized use or close imitation of the language and thoughts of another author and the representation of them as one's own original work.
2. something used and represented in this manner.

Is that clear enough?
Any questions??

Joeker said...

Anon: Participation is not a crime. As well, I've said many times, that as far as groups and alliances go, I try to remain as neutral as possible. It's not like I can't speak my mind on here any different than anywhere else.

Anon2: You need to make up your mind about what you believe in. I think you are being influenced by someone who should know better.

I believe in facts, information, and hard data. I don't think to pick a side and enter bias, nor do I give credibility to the opposition simply for the sake of ensuring I'm not biased, because I am neutral.

I'm under no influences, at least to my knowledge. Whom do you think is pulling strings behind me? I will enjoy the theories you may present... as I am neutral, and that's no lie, it should be intriguing.

As for the things that have come up here, it's not my honesty you should be puzzling over. I've made no secret of my intents, speaking openly, but what about Baggs?

John Best said...

Watson, Phil Gluyas wrote a long response disagreeing with you but it was too idiotic to publish. The fact that Phil disagrees with you means you are correct in everything you said since Phil hasn't got anything right yet.

Anonymous said...

The following is by Amanda, circa 1995.

It is posted in the hope of furthering understanding.




An elf showed up in my head in December of 1993. I guess I was 13 years old at the time. She was several hundreds of years old, from what I could gather. I didn't know exactly what to make of her at first. She looked like an elf -- not the tiny sort that run around with Santa, but the tall, dazzling type that Tolkien and many Celtic legends speak of. She had long red hair, green eyes, a pale complexion and a pointed face. At first she could not talk, but I taught her English. She learned very quickly.

She spoke rather oddly in the beginning. She would cluster together words that seemed to be related, with little regard to grammar or (when she typed, which I also taught her to do) punctuation. Qucikly she began to talk like a airly normal human, which pleased me because it meant she could learn to take over our body when necessary. She chose the name "Galiganinda" from a Cocteau Twins song called "Those Eyes, That Mouth". She began to tell me things that sounded like they were straight out of the _Tao Te Ching_. I gave her a copy of that book to read, and she liked to quote it occasionally, but she also told me that it was slightly inaccurate because it talked about government and government was unnecessary in her eyes.

After awhile, I began to merge with her frequently. I would experience a feeling as if my body had no boundaries, and anything alive around me was glowing in a light I had never been able to see before. When the family went to Yosemite, I skied part of the way down a hill and then called Galig out by singing "Those Eyes, That Mouth" to the best of my ability. We sat down in a circle of pine trees that was fairly emoved from the places where people skied. We were in the middle of blending into one of the trees, when we realised that there was a five-year-old girl standing there on her skis looking at us with a shocked expression. We tried to explain to her what we were doing, but she just stared and backed down the hill.

Her conception of time was different than any I had encountered previously. Like her speech, it clustered around events and relationships rather than flowing in a linear way. When I experienced her thoughts or memories, I often reinterpreted it into a linear framework so it would make sense to me.

By spring, Galig was becoming adept at stepping into the dominant role when I got scared and went away. She could do this without anyone noticing, and she would email a friend of ours (K) to inform him that I was having problems. Once, K's main person (Kato) somehow moved into my head to get me out of a bad space I was in. I still don't know how he did that.

In the next year, Galig herself was at times forced into the dark back portions of our head. When we were being abused by the same K who had saved us when other frightening things happened, we would all retreat into the back of the mind. Someone else was out during the worst parts, and it wasn't me or Katy (although the memory of those events flowed through to Katy).

When I tried LSD in February, things got really strange. All of the known people at the time (Nightsong [me], Galiganinda, Sayjon, Sugar Magnolia, and Taneskal) sort of melted in their five places in the tunnel behind the prism, and what was Me became something that could move between these places with no problem. I chose to remain Nightsong, with access to Galig's memories and thoughts.


Galig came from a strange forest where many other elves like her lived. Each elf had one particular tree that they would walk into when they needed to regenerate. The tree would take certain nutrients, I suppose, out of the elf's body and the elf would do the same to the tree. The experience of walking into the tree was like stepping into a field of calmness, with strange glowing lights all around. It served as something like both eating and sleeping. Then after awhile the elf would step out of the tree. If any particular elf didn't get into a tree often enough, that elf would basically dry up and blow away. Otherwise, there was generally a complex ritual going on around the forest, wherein the elves would tend the plants that grew around. The tall elf that I never saw move from her spot coordinated it through their special mode of thought.

Thought was a mutual thing. There was something like a "collective unconscious", only for them it was more like a "collective conscious". Their thoughts were all simultaneeious, but individuality was retained in a way similar to "memories" of a fractal whole.

Reproduction went much the same way as the trees, but it usually involved two elves instead of an elf and a tree. Two elves would walk into each other, until the pillars of light inside them aligned. Then, the light would branch off almost like lightning, and a young elf would be "born". Young elves had the same tie-in to the others' minds that the adults had, and so they quickly found their trees and became accustomed to the ritual.

Once, when I-Galig was relatively young, I wound up in a place full of people much like humans. They had dark skin and short, straight black hair. They used some kind of woven, leathery fabric as shelter by dangling it from tree branches. They were all taller than I at the time, but shorter than full-grown elves. They smiled at me a lot. When I stuck my hand into one of the trees, they smiled at me like people smile at a young child when she does something cute.

One night, I stepped into a tree and wound up in a body I did not understand. That was Nightsong's body, and I am still here today. I hope I have brought some kind of knowledge to the other inhabitants of this body.

Now I'll have to explain the structure of the inside of our head. It can get complicated at times, and it always seems to be changing.

When I first started to notice other people in my head was not the time when they first appeared. Katy has been here since 1989 [note by those of us who know -- it's longer] and the others who stand behind me-katy without speaking have been here eeven longer. I-Nightsong started to notice Tim in September of 1993, and soon of course his children, Lorna, Sammy, and David (he intended the acrostic implications of their names combined in that particular order). Tim gave me thoughts, usually in the form of strange images that would float through my head. Lorna provided companionship, someone to discuss reality and philosophy with. She was always a little bit on the side of what I would call conformity, and constantly urged me to look and act normally. She appeared in a business suit-dress most of the time. Sammy and David just bickered all the time, and it was often difficult to shut their voices out. Tim, named for Timothy Leary, also did much of the research on LSD.

At this point, there was sort of a dual structure. There was the front, in which Nightsong, Tim, Lorna, Sammy, and David lived and communicated with each other. In the front, Nightsong nearly always took the dominant role, meaning she spoke to the people in the outside world. However the rest of those in the front were usually able to see and hear everything that went on outside. They were aware of each other and communicated frequently. They were unaware of those in the rear.

In the rear, the as-yet-unnamed Katy and (she tells me now) many others sat unseen by the inhabitants of the front. These others, she says, are mostly other children. Of these children, she is the oldest and the leader. She says they are afraid to talk to anyone in the front. She will not tell me how many of them there are or what their names, if any, are. [note now that I know -- one of them is named Butterfly]. There was also one other, who first came out last night, on December 17, 1995. This one's name, Katy tells me, is Dark Mind and she is more of an absence than a presence, a hole in our mind that things fall into and do not come out of.

There was a line of communication between these two places, as those in the rear provided and withheld information from those in the front. The ones in the rear actually held more power than the ones in the front, as they could control the memories and actions of the ones in the front to a great extent. This was the first setup I was aware of. Prior to this, there was only one in the front and many in the rear, although I was not aware of the ones in the rear.

After Tim came Galiganinda, and after Galiganinda came Taneskal in the beginning of 1994. Taneskal had an enormous libido, and was not afraid to talk about that to anyone who happened to be around. She was another of the ones in the front, and she was about as obsessed with sex as Tim was with LSD. She was very sociable, and liked to share the domninant role with Nightsong so she could talk to people. There was not much of a chance to socialise at the time, seeing as we were studying at home for the most part.

Then there was TaLory. At first we thought that Tim had just changed his name, but that was untrue. He also advocatee the use of LSD, but he seemed to have a sadistic view of it. He had two aims in life. The first was to figure out how to use LSD to control people's minds, and the other was to get his hands on some LSD, take a larger amount than anybody could handle, and wreak havoc on the rest of the people in his head. Once, he assumed the dominant role and put Nightsong into a box. He squeezed the box until she was barely able to think, and the only thing she could think was that she was trapped. K somehow changed the situation so she escaped from the box and TaLory disappeared.

Later in the month, a tiny, frightened, and dishevelled-looking Tim crawled out of a corner of the mind. He said that TaLory had invaded his mind and used his appearance to do things that he would never do. As far as the structure of the mind goes, TaLory was very interesting in the fact that throughout the entire time he existed, he only existed as an attachment to other people's mindspace.

On March 22, 1994 (I am consulting my diary on this one) another woman showed up in a dream. I was walking about in a forest which I recognised to be Yxuxacta (the name of a forest in a MUD that I played). I saw an old woman standing in a clearing, wading in a drop of dew. I knew she was Sugar Magnolia, from both the MUD and the Grateful Dead song. I hoped she wouldn't mind my clothing (I've had a lot of adults berate me for the clothes I wear because they look '60s or something). She didn't. She just asked me, "You look nervous. What is the reason for this?" I told her why, and she looked somewhat disgusted. She told me that she refused to symbolise the rest of the adults in the world seeing as she didn't like most of them anyway. She told me I was just fine the way I was, and that I could chagne the world by not letting people get to me. When I woke up, I was happy and refreshed. This was the beginning of Sugar Magnolia, whom I still love dearly like a feisty grandmother.

The people in the front of my head started merging around April 15. They just thought so simultaneously that they didn't seem separate anymore. And they weren't, really, for awhile. But they developed their divisions again, and stood apart.

We saw Pink Floyd's "The Wall" sometime in late April or early May. It affected us badly. It was one of those matters of coming too close to something that was already in the head. Things came bursting o ut of the rear that the front people didn't even know existed. And another dream happened. I was standing in the airport of the city of Sayjon. The city was also run by a guy named Sayjon. The walls of every building were pure white. I left my body and witnessed the death sentencing of a man for eating the little red flowers that grew on the sides of the roads. People could also get the death sentence for eating ice cream or speaking foreign languages. Sayjon the man looked like Pink from "The Wall" after he went Nazioid. He was frightening. He persisted into real life as another person in our head. He appeared as Pink again, and gave us the crossed-arms signal from "The Wall" that we feared so much. On May 10, 1994 he wrote in the diary, "No matter how hard I try, no one will ever see me."

In the same diary, on May 15, Nightsong wrote the following about her CRB, or Catastrophic Reality Breakdown. Shee had problems that the rest of us couldn't cover for, and she exposed some of the parts that we are meant to keep her from exposing:

BEGIN QUOTE

I CRBed last night. I stepped over the edge for a moment. But it landed me in an awful situation. Shane took me home while I was still zzroufed out. Today everyone treated me like a crazy person. Especially Shane, who says I need "professional help". I am not allowed to visit Shane's flat for an indefinite amount of time. It felt so good last night when I broke free of all my inhibitions. It was frightening, and it only lasted a moment. I don't know whether it was worth it to use manipulative deception to get it though. That bit felt horrible. I never knew I was capable of it. It was so cold, and someone almost called the cops on Shane. I was so stir-crazy today, and when I went on a walk it wasn't much help with Shane so serious and so unreadable. Well I could read him but I could only read that he was hiding something from me. K kept me company for much of the day, as I couldn't leave the house. He told me all sorts of things, some related to the CRB, and some not. Can't they see that if I'm not crazy yet, they'll drive me crazy keeping me in here!? Yesterday was two days, the beginning I was high on the espresso beans in the food Rachel gave me. I was rather antsy, but I took a walk with Shane and most of it wore off. But then, if on, no I don't want to remember that [unreadable]!!! I want to scream but if I do They will come in and then They will have me into trouble AACK! I'll just scream on this page. [unreadable] I want out away from me away from the world! For one day no stop I don't have to remindest but then if I forget then the Withholder of Memory [reference to Dark Mind!?!?] will conquer me I have to remember but the day was so beautiful and then so horrible and I jumped off but did I ever come back? I am so isolated now my family doesn't understand nobody will ever understand me why does anyone TRY? Where has my mind gone WHERE AM I? No. I know where I am. But nobody else does. If I have my way, nobody else will. I burst through all the barriers last night. And now I will make [cuts off, words going down the page].

END QUOTE

During that reality-breakdown, the rest of us were watching but we couldn't seem to do anything. There were blocks in place keeping her in the dominant role even while she was obviously in a state where we should be taking over for her. We wanted to help her, but she had made it impossible. We still do not understand why she structured the mind this way.

In the summer, Nightsong and Taneskal fell in love with Kato and Tammy and Miria, three of K's people. We seemed to have a telepathic bond with them, and K called it the "patternlink". Kato and Nightsong would say the same things at the same times, much to to the confusion of the people around them. Then we went to Simon's Rock College, where the layout of our mind shifted again.

At Simon's Rock, we started a sexual relationship with K. We also started an abusive relationship wih K. This shifted our mind into a defencive formation. K would do things to the body like shake it roughly, throw it across the room, and kick it. Usually, while this was going on, the body was curled up into a little ball and someone unknown was in it. The people in the front were very far removed from the dominant position. I suspect that the person in the dominant position was someone unidentitfied from the rear. Katy was taking most of the memories, as usual.

With all the changes, the front people who were left were Nightsong, Galiganinda, Sugar Magnolia, and Sayjon. The rear people were Katy and the other children, Dark Mind, and at least one other.

Here are a few more parts of Nightsong's diary during this period, on October 30, 1994:

BEGIN QUOTE

Things with K have gone downhill in a lot of ways. Now that we have to deal with real things, and now that we aren't the only island of free thought in the world of Garrett Jacobsen, we behave differently. Each of us often assumes that the other is like everything else. We have come to refer to Patternlink as "The Myth". We have even gotten into some really nasty fights.

When K is angry, he is often violent. He has thrown me across the room a few times. Would the person I was three months ago have even been able to conceive of this? It gives me flashbacks of my father holding me down tightly. When this happens, he tells me and anyone else that will listen that I am crazy. The only reason the psychologists can't say it, he says, is that they can't figure out how I am crazy.

...

K now says that it is an illusion that either of u would go crazy if the other died. He has o know on some level that this is not true. The day after he told me that the insanity was only an illusion in my mind designed to convince myself that there was really a patternlink, something happened. I felt an almost irresistable urge to move. I felt wired, but I hadn't had any stimulants. In order to prevent myself from running off K's porch, I banged my head hard against his wall. When K asked what was wrong, I explained. Then I could not sit still any longer. I told him I would be right back, then I ran out the door. I heard him scream "What?" and yelled, "I'll explain later!" He didn't hear me. I ran down the stairs and outside. As I ran down the path, I dimly heard him screaming "Stop her!" I ran almost all the way to the lake, but a tree stopped me. I heard a scream behind me, louder and crazier than anything I knew K could make. Then he yelled "Noktkanto!" I turned around. "I'm coming!" I slowly walked back toward him. I was exhausted. He told me he was giving up and going in. I told him I was still coming. He waited for me. Then he dragged me inside and told me I had been right. He apparently had thought I had fallen in the lake and accordingly gone insane, temporarily. Then, he shook me and told me never to do it again. Now, he still thinks the insanity thing is another Myth.

END QUOTE

When we were running, it was someone else unidentified who was controlling the legs. And it was the same unidentified person who experienced the shaking. We watched from a distance.

This semester was also when we discovered marijuana. It was interesting the first time, but the novelty wore off quickly, especially when we discovered that we could move off in the same directions within our head. Still, we took it sometimes when we wanted to be sociable. K disapproved.

Things continued this way until December, when we went home for the holidays. Then, we developed a system for communicating with the world that allowed us to be even more deatached. Or at least December break was when we noticed this system. Sayjon and Nightsong would sit behind a prism-like apparatus and speak, and the prism would integrate what they were saying and talk to the outside world as both of them. Sometimes Galiganinda would join in the talking, but for the most part it was a combination of Nightsong and Sayjon that talked to the world.

When Nightsong heard the mouth saying things that were partially Sayjon's, she began believing that she, herself, was somehow Sayjon. She knew on some level that she and Sayjon were merely polar opposites, but she thought that Sayjon's thoughts were hers and this upset her. Combining that with the suppressed knowledge of K's abuse, she became deeply depressed and suicidal. Many times she told K she would jump into the lake. But with the help of Sayjon and the prism, she managed to look normal enough to fool her family and her therapist into thinking that she was okay.

We went back to school in January, with Nightsong and possibly Sayjon still very depressed. Throughout the end of January and the beginning of February, she was intermittently suicidal, threatening to throw the body into one of the lakes on campus. Then on February 23, she tried LSD. This again changed the pattern of our mind. Now we were five rather melted entities, with one person who switched between being each of us, instead of us switching into one place in our mental map.

Galiganinda became the one whom this primary person seemed to approve of most. She spent most of her time in Galiganinda's mindspace, with tiny bit of it in Sayjon's. Then, as the meelting effect wore off, Galiganinda assumed the primary role and Nightsong and Sayjon disappeared altogether. This happened around the beginning of summer. When we came back from school, Galig cheerfully informed our therapist that we were doing very well ever since the LSD, and that we were happy.

Then, a few weeks later, things changed again. Galig-Nightsong found herself in Saratoga with no explanation as to how she got there. Katy says one of the children was out then. For the next week after that, she found not only that Nightsong and Sayjon were both back but that she was drifting in and out of strange states of mind all the time, didin't want to eat, and couldn't sleep. The week after that, I was finding myself in her room with pieces of glass pressed to my wrist not knowing how I got there. Again, Katy says she knows someone (not one of the children) who did this. That was when I checked into Charter voluntarily.

A week later, we were out of Charter, and very medicated. Another week after that Nightsong was feeling suicidal and was involuntarily put in Belmont Hills. Then we got out of there, on different medications. This is when Katy first evidenced herself to anyone on the outside. She came out and posted to the alt.support.dissociation group on USENET, and talked to the parental units. She told them that the Risperdal trapped her in a forest and that she was nine years old. Nightsong didn't remember much of the conversation afterwards.

We spent fall in and out of Belmont Hills. Katy talked a lot more toward the end, and we got more of an idea of what was going on in the rear portion of the mind.

BEGIN QUOTE

hello. i am katy. i am nine years old. i have to keep the bad memories so nightsong doesn't get scared. i have been h ere for all of the body's life. i have always gotten the bad memories. even in preschool and daycare. i am the one who gets mad at people so nightsong doesn't have to. i am the one who hates people so nightsong doesn't have to. i love the other children and i don't want anything bad to happen to them. they are scared to come out. so i come out for them. they are scared to talk. so i talk for them. i like christmas lights and, flowers and, cats and, ice cream. anna took me to look at christmas lights and eat ice cream. i like talking to liza and little girl. i like outer space and star trek. galig and nightsong are all i wish i was in those long skirts. and they can do things and, they are happy. i have to be mad and hate.

END QUOTE

Yesterday we read _When Rabbit Howls_. It described some of the situations in our head very well, and it was different in many other ways. Dark Mind recognised this and came out.

BEGIN QUOTE

I am Dark Mind. I am an emptiness, a hole, and a void. Black is the best colour for me because all I am is black. I absorb everything. My job is to absorb everything. Anything that gets close to me falls in. You could call me Black Hole too, and that would be appropriate. I am the one who trapped Katy in that forest. It was to protect her from Nightsong. Nightsong was too close to finding Katy's memories. So I put an inescapable void in her way. It did the job quite well, I believe. I do not wish to complicate things by letting people know I exist. But I also believe now is the time to tell people that we are here.

END QUOTE

There was another person who came out tonight. H er name as Luka, after the abused woman in the Suzanne Vega song.

BEGIN QUOTE

I decided to come out during the argument with Ron tonight. Everyone was going in and out, in and out again and it was real confusing to try to follow the conversation. But when I heard him start up about abuse, that set me off. That's my trigger, if I ever had one. It gets me mad to hear anyone go off about abuse victims the way he did, especially with there being several of them in this body. So I have to fight back whenever I hear something like that. But he didn't listen to me, and he didn't listen to anyth of the others and we were all confused because none of us heard the whole conversation and it went to hell from there...

END QUOTE

Another woman of the rear mind, Banshee, came out during that conversation. We have all heard her chilling screams before, but she has rarely made herself known in any other way.

BEGIN QUOTE

I had to say something to him. I could feel the rage running through me, and I knew I had to speak, so I broke through and told him that I did not care what he said, that I hated all of it. That no matter what he said, I would remember the worst parts, because he had said them. Because *he* had said them. Someone who did not give an opinion lightly. I really hated him. And then he tried to hug me, and his touch burned my skin. I had to get away from him.

END QUOTE

The last four quotations have been from people in the rear part of the mind, whose breaks from each other are far less superficial than those in the front part. Katy now communicates with the ones in the front, in an effort to make everyone in the mind understand what is going on. I am a coordinator of sorts, but I am not the one who has been speaking all the time. I coordinate the things from the rear mind in order to express them in words well. I was taught to do this in writing classes in school and it works fairly well.

We have been working all day on this. It has been a collaboration of all of our memories; all of our knowledge. We hope that whoever reads this believes us and accepts us for who we are.

Sincerely,
The Sidhe

Anonymous said...

The following is also by Amanda, in the hopes of furthering understanding.


Shepherd Treatment Centre journal

05-08-1996

Today I feel a lot different than I used to feel wihtout the clozaril. I don't have as many of my symptoms to fall back on as before. Now I have o take responsibility for what I do. I cant fall back into the fog, because most of the time there is no fog there. I can't recede into a sea of voices, as they are quiet when they are here at all. I have to learn to cope with this new reality as it comes. I don't really know what to do with it. It's like going to a foreign country. Everyone speaks a different language, has different customs, and different mannerisms than where I come from. I have to get used to all of these things as the come to me. The clozaril helps, but I have to do the rest.

-Nightsong

05-09-1996

Today I got Dr. B to spell out to me exactly what "schizophrenia" means. He read o ut the definition from the DSM-IV, and it was basically some combination of delusions and hallucinations and thought patterns and behaviours. Hee told me that thinI I am an elf is a delusion. I don't *feel* delusional! On the other hand, I trust Dr. B to know what is going on with me. If he says I am schizophrenic, then I probably am. But that means I will be like this all my life, and will always need medications to control it. I don't want to be schizophrenic. Why do things have to turn out this way? Every time I see a group of children I wonder which one will turn out like this. Children make jokes about the "looney bin." Children make cracks like "Have you had your medication today?" They don't realise the reality of it for some people. I feel stuck. It seems like everyone else's life is moving along and mine is standing still. I shouldn't feel that way. I'm maI progress. The medication is starting tto do good things for me. "Solitude Standing" is playing on my stereo right now. That song has bored a permanent hole into my mind. Suzanne Vega must have written it for me. I wish I were allowed to read Tolkien, speaI of things written for me. Mother's Day is coming up nd I don't know what to get for A. Maybe I should make her a card or a drawing or something. I went swimming with Reed today. The water was cold and full of dead things, but it was nice to swim in anyway. I wish A would accept my diagnosis as I have. I don't like it, but I don't deny it anymore. But I can't change her opinion any more than she can change mine.

I feel like banging my head against a wall. The voices are too loud. They are threatening to kll me. I have to remember that they are only hallucinations and they don't have any real power over me. I have to give up the power of the "other" world and take power from the "real" world. I don't want to do this. Does that mean I can't be an elf anymore? I am *not* delusional! Then what am I?

-Nightsong

05-10-1996

"I reach out from the inside" (-Peter Gabriel) That quote means a lot to me. I don't know how to explain it very well. It speaks for itself, I suppose. My parents will be coming to visit me today. I can't wait to see them.

A and I got into our customary argument about my diagnosis today. She sid that Dr. B made up his mind too quickly, and I said that he was probably right and that he probably had enough time. I don't think we'll ever come to an agreement on that.

I went out on pass today and got "A Momentary Lapse of Reason" by Pink Floyd and a They Might Be Giants album. It has "Cage and Aquarium" on it. That's my favourite TMBG song. I feel nauseated right now. I think it mgiht be from the medication.

-Nightsong

05-11-1996

My parental units are here in the room with me. I have been trying unsuccessfully to write poetry. I know what I want to express, but I just can't seem to do it.

-Nightsong

05-12-1996

Somebody's reading your mind Damned if you know who it is They're digging through all of your files Stealing back your best ideas You cover your windows with lead Even keeping the pets outside Then you hear a moment too late this sound coming over the phone This is the spawning of the cage and aquarium Don't wait a moment too soon Used to be different, now you're the same Yawn as you plane goes down in flames -"Cage and Aquarium", TMBG

He's haunted by the memory of a lost paradise In his youth or a dream, he can't be precise He's chained forever to a world that's departed It's not enough, it's not enough -"Sorrow", Pink Floyd

There are a lot of songs that seem to be written for me. Here is something I wrote today:

He was so normal And we found him Deep in the forest In the whirlwind tree His mind was screaming For another life As his grey eyes blankly stared ahead We could not believe The thoughts were his After all He was so normal

One of the main problems I have run into during treatment has been people saying that I am too normal to have the sort of problems that I have. That's why I wrote the poem.

-Nightsong

05-13-1996

I have a session with Dr. I at 13:30 today. We always find something interesting to talk about.

R sent A a letter from K about me. In it, he seems sorry for all of the abuse. But I can't tell whether he is sincere. I will talk to Dr. S about it tomorrow.

-Nightsong

05-14-1996

"I had to fantasise just to survive" -Cocteau Twins, "Evangeline"

I wonder if that is what happened to me. Are the places I know as reality, fantasy? And which worlds are realit then? Should I trust the doctors or should I trust myself? I am confused.

D hurt her leg this weekend, and now she is being shipped off somewhere else for medical care. I will miss her. She was one of my two favourite horses here.

-Nightsong

05-15-1996

I just had a dream where the neighbourhood was being terrorised by a man in a trenchcoat. My family climbed a stairway in the backyard of the house which ultimately led to nirvana.

J and L should be coming today. I can't wait to see them.

-Nightsong

05-16-1996

Yesterday Dr. S and I decided it would be best not to respond to K's letter. We also discussed A. We said that maybe she can deal better with having a sick daughter than having a well one. We also discussed how when she is given several diagnoses, she is likely to pick the least frightening. She does not want to admit to having a schizophrenic daughter. This sort of gets in the way of my treatment.

-Nightsong

05-19-1996

I got a book called _Surviving Schizophrenia_. It has things in it that I didn't even realise were symptoms of schizophrenia, like not understanding words. My parents brought "The Wall" and "The Final Cut" by Pink Floyd.

-Nightsong

05-21-1996

Dr. I told me today that I only have two parts -- the "nuts" part and the intellectual part. He says I will have to build more parts before I can get rid of the "nuts" one.

Tyeukana tyeukana tyeukana sgaivus

-Nightsong

05-28-1996

Today I will go to my first meeting of a support/informational group for schizophrenics.

-Nightsong

06-06-1996

I don't know what they are doing to J and N, bu one of them just punched a hole in his wall. I am trying to get as much information as I can while keeping a respectful distance. The two of them have been fighting a lot. I know they called Tony. There is a rumour that someone called the police, but I don't know about that.

Dr. I and Dr. B say I am making progress. I am socialising more than I used to. I am not having "episodes" in public very often. I have had to give up my communion with trees, though. This bothers me, but it may be worth it in the long run.

-Nightsong

06-14-1996

I am alone here. The only elf. The only schizophrenic. The only glowing star inside of a hook.

-Nightsong

06-17-1996

Someone stole the keys from the staff office today. They were found in J's room, but I think he is just being used as a scapegoat. I am going to try to learn Esperanto now. The boys can't seem to talk without swearing every other word. Everyone is accusing each other of everything. This is a mess. They did room searches. M is cutting herself. This is a mess!

-Nightsong

06-19-1996

Last night was terrible. The other residents ran around the house screaming "The cat is dead!" They said that they had burned the cat with a lighter. I didn't know whether or not to believe them. C assured me that the cat was indeed alive, but it made no difference. I tried to hide in my room, but I couldn't stay there forever. When I left, they were all clustered around my door. C asked them why they were doing t his to me. N said that when a cat dies, an elf dies next. I ran down the driveway. C took me for a drive. When we got back, a fight had broken out between S and M. For our own safety, S and I slept at the other house.

-Nightsong

06-19-1996

I keep having these episodes of blankness for the past few days. I think it might be from the combination of Clozaril and Thorazine. I am worried about where to spend the night. I want to spend it away from the elf-killers!

-Nightsong

06-28-1996

My parents bought me a hammered dulcimer today

-Nightsong

07-02-1996

J told me why he and M avoid me so much. He said that they never know when I will scream or "flip out" and that they are afraid I will hurt myself. I didn't know they cared.

-Nightsong

07-07-1996

I have discovered the music of the Cranberries.

I can't seem to write straight anymore. I don't understand why writing is so difficult. They tell me (they=the staff) that I am isolating in my room too much. I do not see this happening. They won't let me stay in my room at certain times. I am trying to learn Esperanto. I don't know how much I care about getting "better". What if the voices are all I have?

-Nightsong

07-10-1996

F killed himself last night. He told me so in a dream. Now I am floating in a fog away from the "real" world wehre the voices are so loud and I can't get away from them. The voices say I will die the same way he did.

-Nightsong

07-13-1996

Today I gave my parents all of my Tolkien and fairy tale books to take home with them. It is part of my treatment plan. I feel like my whole reality is being torn away. I don't know what to do. Their reality is being imposed on me and I have no means of defence. The voices are getting louder. They say "We will kill you!" and "You will die like Jeff!" and "There is no final escape from yourself!" What do they mean?

-Nightsong

07-15-1996

G (my therapist) is coming to visit me today. I can't wait to see him.

-Nightsong

07-15-1996

I am sitting in my room. Every second is an eternity of loneliness and fear and confusion. Between eternities, the time is broken by tiny scraps of time in which someone comes in to check on me. Then back to the eternity of silence broken only by voices that I would rather not hear.

-Nightsong

ETERNITY

Alone I sit In eternities Of the darkness Of my mind Broken once or twice By tiny scraps of contact With the outer shells Of others While I return To swim in a sea And float in a fog And drift in a daze Of unwanted voices And eternity

07-16-1996

I just got out of a session with Dr. I. He told me that I have no full ego of my own. He says that my ego is always enmeshed with that of others, like A's. When I went to college (away from A) and CTY (away from A) I became enmeshed with K, including his fragmentation. This may be why my fragments went away after K went away. Now what I need to do is form an ego of my own.

-Nightsong

07-17-1996

"And I turn to the crowd as they're watching Sitting all together in the dark in the warm And I wanted to be in there among h em I see how their eyes are gathered into one" -Suzanne Vega

-Nightsong

07-17-1996

I just got a puppy named Nokomis (Dakota for "Moon Daughter"). She is part Shepherd. I intend to train her to be a service dog. Her birthday is May 5.

-Nightsong

08-10-1996

I have a pass from Thursday (my birthday!) to Sunday, unless I do anything wrong between now and then. I think I will use that time to get back on speaking terms with S. I miss the good things about him. I will have to set up some boundaries though. Maybe no hugging. I can't hold a grudge for so long. I have to set him straight that I am not multiple, and that that was, as Dr. I says, a delusion. I don't think I can get better without facing S.

-Nightsong

08-19-1996

I went home to find that all of my defences are gone, or very poor at best. Of course, the defences that I lost were mostly psychotic. I felt like I had been undressed at Shepherd and sent home naked. I will talk to Dr. I about this today.

I was unable to see S when I went home. This was disappointing.

Nokomis is growing. She is mostly housebroken now.

-Nightsong

08-19-1996

I AM AN ELF I AM AN ELF I AM AN ELF I AM AN ELF I AM AN ELF I AM AN ELF I AM AN ELF I AM AN ELF

-Nightsong

08-20-1996

"Hide, hide, hid Behind paranoid eyes" -Pink Floyd

What if I am not an elf? That would be so much of my life all gone.

The voices: WE HATE DR. I! NEVER FORGET YOUR ELVEN HERITAGE!

The voices convinced me not to go to the gym tonight by telling me that if I left, Nokomis would be dead when I got back. Dr. I reminded me that the voices can't predict the future. He told me not to listen to them. He also told me I may hear them for the rest of my life. Ack.

-Nightsong

08-21-1996

What will I talk to Dr. I about today? The voices? My elf? Why would I have to hear the voices for the rest of my life. I hate them. I hate them. I hate them.

-Nightsong

08-22-1996

I read a part of _The Quiet Room_ that showed a part of the author's memory. The even that she remembered never actually occurred. I guess the same is true for me and my elven memories. I must be human after all. I am disappointed. I want so much to be an elf. O Elbereth!

Everyone else seems glad that I am human. I have despised humaanity for so long. Why do I have to be human? Humans are oppressors to elves. Why? Why?

-Nightsong

08-23-1996

Maybe being human isn't so bad after all. It makes me closer to my parents and my friends. Dr. I saw the painting I made of the elf forest when I was 13. He said it was "psychotic". Why do I bother showing people these things? I wonder what life will be like as a human.

-Nightsong

08-24-1996

I am very grateful to the doctors and staff at Shepherd for making me better. I no longer think that my parents are trying to poison me with my medications. I no longer think that my father is involved in a government conspiracy to take over my mind. I no longer think the Belmont Hills staff are trying to poison my food. I no longer think that I am an elf and that the voices are the thoughts of the other elves that I must obey. I no longer think that there are lizards all over my body. I no longer think I have tentacles that can reach out and grab people. I no longer wander around in a constant haze of voices. I no longer see ghostlike people in my room and glowing red eyes at my window. I no longer pace aimlessly around the hallways of Belmont Hills. I no longer think of medication as evil mind control. I no longer wander off at the whim of the voices. I no longer believe that an organisation called the Banshees will rescue me from the hospital or treatment centre. I no longer think that the Shephred staff cook and eat elves. I no longer think that the voices have the power to hurt or kill me or anyone else. I no longer think that the voices can predict the future. I no longer think that my thoughts are being controlled by a transmitter buried at Harker Academy.

-Nightsong

08-26-1996

I am working on writing my life story on the computer. It is helping me sort out "fact" and "fantasy". So is writing in this book. It is what A would call a "grounding" experience.

I am listening to David Bowie. It is interesting music.

I love the world and I know it loves me back. I am so happy. I am well, so why do they keep me here? I am so happy.

-Nightsong

08-26-1996

Dr. I gave me a list of target behaviours:

- not isolate so much - engage others in meaningful interactions - reality-test well - self-soothe - increase general awareness (identify & respond to others' feelings) * develop a sense of self - decrease acting out in response to delusions and hallucinations - general sense of availability to othrs - good presentation (hair, dress, walk, hygiene) - identify & express emotional states - break enmeshment

-Nightsong

08-26-1996

I feel terrible. I want to run. The voices are quoting Yeats:

"Come away O human child To the woods and waters wild With a fairy hand in hand For the world's more full of weeping Than you can understand"

I want to run away with the voices. They are all I have left. I am scared. I took an Ativan, at Dr. I's suggestion, but it hasn't started worI yet. I am definitely not calm. Somebody help me!

-Nightsong

08-29-1996

Nokomis is sick. I am scared. There is death in this room. I can feel it. i hope it doesn't touch her! The voices scream, "Death! Death! Death!" And I can feel it in the walls. Somebody help my poor puppy! I have a pass for this weekend. Maybe she will get better at home...

-Nightsong

09-02-1996

I got back from my pass today. The voices say I can never go back to normality. Dr. I says that is my own resistance to becoming normal, and that it shows the ease of slipping into psychosis. Do I want to go back? I don't know anymore.

-Nightsong

09-04-1996

"Come on you miner for truth and delusion and shine" -Pink Floyd

-Nightsong

09-05-1996

"This world is not my home; I'm just passing through" -His Name Is Alive

-Nightsong

09-07-1996

I am still an elf, and I know it. They don't know that I know it though. They think I think I'm human. But it is necessary to hide it from them, or they would try to kill me and replace me with a human. I'm terrified. Should I let on that I know by showing them the poem? Or should I let them believe I have already been replaced and get discharged? I t doesn't matter. They will find out sooner or later.

-Nightsong

09-08-1996

Why do they hate me so much? They all want to kill mee. The only one one on my side is my puppy, Nokomis. Somebody get me out of this world!

-Nightsong

09-08-1996

I need to tell someone but who can I trust????

-Nightsong

09-09-1996

I admitted to Dr. S last night that I knew their plot. She acted as if she was not part of it. Clever woman.

-Nightsong

09-11-1996

I love Nokomis more than anyone else in the world. She is always there for me. I love her.

-Nightsong

09-22-1996

I'm moving into a duplex Friday. Then I'm starting day treatment 3 times a week (living in the duplex) and living in C for the other 4 days. I can't wait. Dr. I tells me I am too enmeshed with my parents, particularly my mother. I moved a bunch of stuff into my duplex today -- bookshelf, desk, computer, and posters, not to mention kitchenware and a bunch of other stuff. The manager is cool. She calls herself a "computer weirdo". I want to show her my fractal software. I think she will find it interesting. I think that if I move into the real world with normal people my chance of recovery will be greater. I will not even mention to these people that I am schizophrenic. I will learn to control my psychotic episodes so they don't happen in public. It will be a tough job, but worth it if I want to get well. Dr. I will still see me 3 times a wee, and his therapy is always very intesne. Between Dr. I's therapy, my own efforts, and the Clozaril, I will arrive at something approaching normality. I can't expect total normality, but who can? Look at my writing -- it flows the way a normal person's thoughts would. Then there is the elf issue. I don't know whether I am an elf or not anymore. I feel exactly like an elf, but I can remember being equally convinced that I was human. I walk into a session with Dr. I believing with all of my heart that I am an elf. Then he gradually chips away at this belief until I start a tentative belief that I am human. Then the session ends and I slide back into believing that I am an elf. I can see this process from the outside, but it doesn't keep those beliefs from occurring. Dr. I tells me that in order to get better I have to accept his reality as the Ultimate Reality. Does he think he is God? What if my reality is correct and his is wrong? It is all so confusing. Welcome to the machine. I'm scared. Do all the doctors want me to think their way because elves are a threat to their reality? Or is their reality a threat to my reality? Or both? Dr. I once told me that if I ever met another elf, she would either be lying to me or delusional. Should I believe him? Should I believe that I have been wrong for all these years, that my memory is false, that *I* am delusional?!? I don't know or understand. Somebody please come in and help me out. I am torn between my own reality, my parents' reality, and my doctors' reality. I was born in a doorway. I have lived in the doorway ever since. I look at myself in the mirror and my face keeps changing. An elf is in that mirror! An elf is in my hands. Now there is no doubt that I am an elf. And I am so alone without the voices of the other elves ringing through my mind. No, wait, those weren't truly the other elves. But I miss the voiceless thoughts of the other elves as we danced through the forest and sang, all in harmony. I miss the forest. It had to be real. Dr. I would read this and laugh. He doesn't like me to be an elf. He wants me to think I'm human, like him. Maybe I should just tell him that I can never hold onto the belief that I'm human for more than a couple of hours, whereas I can believe I am an elf for days, weeks, months, years. Dr. N says there is to be no magic in my life until I am better. I am not sure I can get better without magic. I thrive on magic. I need it in order to survive. No one can take it away from me. "Nothing's gonna change my world." These doctors think they know what's best for me. But do they really? Aaaack!

-Nightsong (Galiganinda Dulin)

Droopy said...

Maxima,
What did it take, were there any any details or clues, for Amanda to retract and apologize for her big multiple personalities charade?

(all 80 of them? talk about going for the gold/Guinness. I'm no expert there either but I think she had to be going for the most multiples/worst case ever there too)...

Was the multiples community possibly onto her right away? Or was it maybe like schizophrenia and didn't have a good enough payout?
Not enough attention and praise, no free all-expense-paid trips, no TV appearances, no donations? no 'speaking engagements'?

Even if it doesn't stop her.. and that just doesn't make any sense to me, it seems that's what the legal system and laws would be there for, to enforce her stopping and to help her to stop if she 'just can't help herself' and seems like at some point mental illness or not she could find herself sitting in a jail:

Maybe wheelchair and all, rocking as long and as hard as she can too (before being fat makes her have to stop and rest by 'being catatonic'), telling herself all the while 'I'm autistic, I'm just like droopy, I am, really I am!' Maybe they'll even let her have her pick from that 'closet full of communicators' to have in there with her, typing it away on it, but finally just to herself.

I'm going to keep on writing for my book and doing what I need to do.

Droopy said...

Nine said...

"it is possible that Amanda has simply changed her mind or made a mistake."

Yeah. Very possible.

In fact,
copying me and other autistics and pretending to be autistic when she isn't happens to be her current 'mistake' on which she needs to 'change her mind.'

Anonymous said...

Looking at some of her recent exchanges with others online and the way she can just talk and talk and badger (sometimes just by sheer volume) her way into out and around just about anything, how she uses her words to distort, how she tries at times to use her words to intimidate, etc

Amanda Baggs missed her calling:

She really should have been a used car salesman.

It might take getting off her ass but it would certainly make the best use of her 'skills' and she's young, there's still time.. and a *perk* -- she'd even get to be on tv!

c'mon tricky dicky.. er I mean mandy

Droopy said...

that faking then having to apologize and leave the MPD community.. I want to know more about how that came about, because she needs to do the same here.

Anonymous said...

Why didn't you let him make a fool of himself then, John? You're letting me down, mate!

Droopy said...

I just read through the entirety of the several long posts of Amanda's teenaged writings up above.

All of the rest of you really need to make yourselves read it -- all of it,

and then know the following information:

Amanda's going to be 'speaking' at 'autcom,' an Autism Conference in Edmonton Alberta Canada on October 12-13th 2007, on a topic of being an autistic teenager:

"C About Teens and Transitions
Panel featuring Amanda Baggs and Larry Bissonette: Having a Voice in Decision Making: The Issue of Guardianship"

http://autcom.org/pdf/ConferenceSchedule.pdf

Anonymous said...

Droopy said...

"Apparently from her remark and this other person's book being her 'bible' and first example to copy, I can deduce that being published and in a book is no deterrent for her then."

It wasn't the first book she read, Droopy, but it was the first one she raved about. Here's autelf's comment on Amazon. I think we can guess who wrote it.

http://www.amazon.com/Through-Eyes-Aliens-Autistic-People/dp/1853027103


Here's more about Jasmine on the NAS website:
http://www.nas.org.uk/nas/jsp/polopoly.jsp?d=120&a=2204

"Did Amanda leave off of this Jasmine character as soon as it was realized she's not all that authentic either then, or what?"

I think she still admires her, but my guess is that O'Neill was too high-functioning for Amanda and the political aims of Neurodiversity.

I don't think any neurodiversity activists or Aspies have ever questioned O'Neill's authenticity. They just love the book because she says what they want to hear.


What am I supposed to do now...?

I think you should write your book, Droopy. I'm sure many people would like to read an authentic autobiography.

Anonymous said...

Droopy said...

"that faking then having to apologize and leave the MPD community.. I want to know more about how that came about, because she needs to do the same here."


http://groups.google.com/group/alt.support.dissociation/msg/7d5e909b8c10c9ba?hl=en&
Message from discussion apology
Galiganinda Dulin

Jun 9 1997, 7:00 pm

"I used to post on this newsgroup maybe 2.5 years ago. I want to apologise for telling people that I was multiple.

Now, that's actually what I thought I was at the time, but it turns out the voices weren't from MPD/DID, but from schizophrenia/schizoaffective/whatever.

But I not only deceived myself by doing that, but I deceived others.

I allowed the voices to take on lives of their own, gave them names, believed they were alters, even post what they said. I realise it probably isn't my fault, but I feel better posting an apology. "

Anonymous said...

Fore Sam said...

"Watson, Phil Gluyas wrote a long response disagreeing with you but it was too idiotic to publish. The fact that Phil disagrees with you means you are correct in everything you said since Phil hasn't got anything right yet."

Pity you deleted it! Now, I wonder what I've posted that Phil disagrees with. You don't think he could be disagreeing with Amanda, do you? Any quotes that I've used have been Amanda's exact words, but I must say the picture that she paints of herself does get rather confusing. It keeps changing all the time.

Were they anything like his comments on Joeker's blog?

"Amanda never claimed to be LFA. It was always HFA! "

Definitely wrong.

Amanda was "misdiagnosed with schizophrena".

I don't think there is any doubt whatsoever that she was correctly diagnosed.

"What Amanda says makes perfect sense."

On the contrary. What Amanda says about her own life never makes sense. It never adds up.


About Amanda imitating Droopy:

June....

"she took to innocently immitating Droopy's (life) (not realising it was socially completely wrong) and then going off the deep end about it when Droopy rightly complained. She has trouble being herself."

One month later...

"Amanda "never imitated Droopy's life. At worst it was an unfortunate co-incidence. "

What made Phil change his mind?


" lfa's aren't allowed on aspies for freedom." "it's the rule of AFF"

WRONG...

http://www.aspiesforfreedom.com/
"It was called Aspies for freedom as the founders were all aspies, though the group is for anyone with autism, asperger's or any spectrum condition."


And the reason Phil doesn't believe that LFAs are allowed to post on AFF...

Because they "are INHERENTLY not intelligent - unlike HFA and Aspergers!)". and "Because they constantly won't acknowledge it when they are careless and rude without provocation."

Um.. Having real problems with communication is one of the difficulties that all people with Autism share. Unlike Amanda Baggs and other ND activists who are great communicators (and propagandists) who now claim to have autism.

Droopy has a unique style to her writing, expresses herself very well, uses her own words and, what is more, she speaks her own mind. That's the reason she was banned from AFF. Not because she's not intelligent.

I think Phil owes all people with Autism an apology. Especially Droopy.

(Take it down, Phil.)

Anonymous said...

Apparently Amanda never read the story of Truddi Chase who had 92 documented personalities.

John Best said...

Anon, This bit about all these people in Amanda's head sounds like Sybill, nothing like autism. I don't think this can be covered in any newspaper or magazine article. I think it would take a book to do it justice.

So, Amanda went from a very messed up 15 year old, into an institution, and winds up autistic a few years later? Reading all of this, I now don't doubt that she believes it herself. What a mess.

She needs lots of help. It might be good for her if Neuroinsanity stopped using her and found a psychiatrist who could help her and get a book for himself in the process.

In the meantime, she really ought to be ignored by everyone in the autism community. CNN should investigate further and do a show to point out that autism has nothing in common with the mess that is Amanda Baggs.

John Best said...

Informer, I don't mind letting Phil make a fool of himself but he's gotten a little too insulting. He probably needs some stronger drugs to calm himself down.

Anonymous said...

Phil is bored and desperate. He is unemployed, has far too much time on his hands, does not have the money to sustain his sports hobbies and is losing his battle to get this blog taken down. AFF members have turned on him. He attacked Droopy on his Wiki, how desperate is that?

See Phil Run.

Anonymous said...

"Informer, I don't mind letting Phil make a fool of himself but he's gotten a little too insulting. He probably needs some stronger drugs to calm himself down."

Phil was bragging on AFF about his high level of testosterone (he was trying to prove that WFF wrestlers don't take steroids.) This may explain some of his problems.

"Read my lips; TESTOSTERONE does NOT equal STEROIDS Are we clear yet, Kylo? I've got a high level and I've never taken any steroids in my life. *rolls eyes*"

John it is time for you men to pick him up. I think he has become a danger to sane society.

Droopy said...

oh dear oh dear,

I believe I've been just been called a tard by phil!

By an 'autistic advocate' no less!
[insert dramatic mock gasp here]

With people like you 'defending' Amanda with this sort of bigotry and circular thinking you couldn't possibly do me any better favors and prove my points better.

In other words, [captioning provided for you, the lowly Aspie HFA/impaired]:

Goooood jobbbbbbb Phil!

Oh I'm sorry, was that 'rude' of me? What the hell was it when you called me tard? HFA Etiquette at work there was it? My bad. Next time I'll try to respond in a higher functioning/aspie way,
'cause when I grow up I wanna be
JUST LIKE YOU, PHIL

http://www.aspiesforfreedom.com/showthread.php?tid=9660&pid=125282#pid125282

Show me the way, (and call me tard again because I haven't laughed like this in days. To quote Bugs Bunny here (yeah that's all you rate) "He don't know me very well, do he?"
Keep it coming, Phil

What changed his mind?
Amanda badgers and intimidates most people, I've watched an observable pattern from her, seen it attempted on me and then played out on others, somebody named noetic is just one other I saw barraged with volumes, often in private messages but she'll do it publically if she thinks it'll work and it seems with most folks it does and thusly 'explains to death' until most people seem to just give up.

Apparently I can out persevere/out stubborn her, and quite simply if she pisses me off, I can out type her and argue to the end and I guess plus I don't intimidate that easily from crap tactics like that and I sure as hell don't let others define my reality, least of all her.

Phil instantly strikes me as being of the usual makeup of followers, people who worry over social stratas and other crap and who kind of believe 'he who talks the most must be right' (which is what she's banking on.. but hey.. I'm the tard.. you're the genius who can't listen to and just assumes anything longer than a five minute sound byte must be true so whatduIknow? (Gee, such are the perks of being NT and Aspie that I miss out on)


Oh did I get a "pinched and squeezed and pulled my neck in 1988' honor mention too?

*squirming with giddy glee at the very idea*

Anonymous said...

"Oh did I get a "pinched and squeezed and pulled my neck in 1988' honor mention too?

*squirming with giddy glee at the very idea*"

You go girl!! I laughed so hard I almost peed my pants.

Anonymous said...

Droopy, I love reading your posts. I can't wait until you get a book out.

Anonymous said...

You have got to read this thread from the beginning by Phil (timelord). Best laugh I had in weeks. According to him, if you disagree with him you are calling him a liar. The Einstein argument is also great for laughs.

http://www.aspiesforfreedom.com/showthread.php?tid=9660&page=1

John Best said...

Hey Droopy, Was Amanda copying you when she became an elf? Or was she an elf before she met you? I'd think of her more as an Orc myself. What kind of animal does she think Laura Tsoncik is?

Anonymous said...

Droopy being little and kinda cute looks a heck of a lot more like an elf than Amanda.

Anonymous said...

Timelord and Einstein! That thread is a hoot.

Poor Phil throws a wobbler everytime he is challenged. He hates being diagreed with, he hates being doubted or questioned. If he doubted his aspie diagnosis then I would dx him as aspie, because those are such aspie traits!

Phil needs a make-work project to occupy him. It must be awful being that pissed off all the time.

Anonymous said...

Droopy being little and kinda cute looks a heck of a lot more like an elf than Amanda.

Let's be fair. Back when Amanda was claiming she was an elf, she did in fact have the physique for it:

http://bayimg.com/KAeLeAaBG
http://bayimg.com/KaElfaABG

Anonymous said...

Phil was bragging on AFF about his high level of testosterone

The Geiers are correct about higher testosterone in autistics compared to the NT population. This Phil guy should look into their theory.

Droopy said...

Fore Sam said...

"Hey Droopy, Was Amanda copying you when she became an elf? Or was she an elf before she met you? I'd think of her more as an Orc myself. What kind of animal does she think Laura Tsoncik is?"

Anonymous said...

"Droopy being little and kinda cute looks a heck of a lot more like an elf than Amanda."


No, I've never thought I was an elf.

Now there's one of those crazy sentences that looking at it after typing it I never thought I would have to actually say. I am studying that sentence and laughing because its one of those 'sentences you just never 'hear' or think about or think you'll ever really have cause to say, very much like,

"Please hand me that piano,"

-- how often do you have to actually say that one, you know?

This definitely was her own 'trip,' then from what's been shown here, 'complimented' by that screwy book about autistics as aliens or whatever that nonsense is all about (I read the amazon excerpts, got the gist and won't be giving that woman one cent of my money for that silliness) and I have considered that my stature (which Amanda has demonstrated an attempt to try to mislead people to thinking she's as short as me when she's not) my own 'elfish-ness' may very well have contributed and made the whole copping from me thing that much more enticing..

I've seriously considered that Sue Rubin (who personally I think kind of holds the crown for cute and elfish if I dare say -- Noonan syndrome helps Sue have her 'elven appearance' and she's even shorter than me) narrowly missed being the main target for Amanda's 'acquisitions.'

I've got an intense 'gut feeling' that had Sue Rubin (who's also LFA and nonverbal and non-party to neurodiversity) not already been very established and secured (published, having had her own stint on CNN already) and had I not been just a little too stinking available and 'easy' for copying that we'd be seeing the exact same sort of wholesale "Rubin-esque" full-scale 'modeling' of her that 'lucky me' ended up with instead -- much more than the currently mostly limited to only bits like "I play with and talk to water in the sink' etc., that Amanda has 'borrowed' from her.

'In short' ('little' pun intended):
I believe that when it comes to Amanda's picking a favorite to pattern herself after:

"but for the grace of I go Sue Rubin."


I'm sure it drives Amanda completely nuts that our family did in fact own woods, several of them in succession as part of our farmlands, none of them constructed in my mind, all quite real, one of them even known locally as "Sherwood Forest" as my father purchased it from a man named Bill Sherwood and I'm sure record of this, Bill Sherwood's prior ownership and subsequent transfer of land deed to my father is still documented in a courthouse in the neighboring small town.

It was known that way as long as I had known, as Bill Sherwood was really old and had lived there forever and when we picked up his property it continued to be called that even as we owned it. For all I know it might still be called "Sherwood Forest" to this very day.

After reading that whole bit from her that was posted here about imaginary woods and elves I realized I had better get going and write about this, so I did, on my blog, just lastnight in fact

http://droopyssafespace.blogspot.com/

While she makes up places and stuff in her mind (in more ways than one!) it must drive her mad (madder?) to know I was in fact the 'eery quiet girl' who led lost hunters out the only direction I would allow them -- to our property to be confronted (gently, but while leaning against his own shotgun) by my father for generally pleasant but clear exchanges about hunting not being welcomed on our property.

I suppose that's pretty elvish of me, especially given that I couldn't have been more than 4'8" or 4'9" at the time.

This is stuff, especially 'Sherwood Forest" which I should think would 'ring a bell' with those who sat with me from 1994 onward even as I connected from linux telnet access at the Macintosh within the honors college (aka 'gifted' course building) on campus at my beloved University (is that what 'tards do, Phil?) to talk about these things on one Autism IRC chat after another.

"Old-timers' including a few now famous 'auties' know me from 'way back' in this way.

I don't know what animal Amanda thinks Tsoncik is, but you can probably guess at a few 'choicy' animals I'd compare them both to. (hint: it 'ain't elves')

Droopy said...

Oops.

It's on my OTHER blogspot "The Original" where I wrote about the woods, etc., lastnight:
http://oneoriginal.blogspot.com/2007/07/real-farm-real-woods-and-real-girl.html
or
http://oneoriginal.blogspot.com/

I'm trying to sort and organize where I write about things:
"Droopy's Safe Space" is where I mean to have more like a diary for current things and comments, "The Original" is where I'm trying to put more historical stuff that might go in a book.

I'm not always successful at this sorting attempt (I really do need a professional writer type person for this, one to be professional and know how to not only help me get it written but how to deal with confidentiality about proper-names and protecting msyelf and other people's privacy while verifying the truth in what I've said etc too). I can get pretty confused with where I wrote what etc., sometimes pretty easily.

John Best said...

Droopy,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnRqYMTpXHc&mode=related&search=
I tried one of the links from your blog and had to go find this to hear it sung right.

Droopy said...

Anonymous said...

"Let's be fair. Back when Amanda was claiming she was an elf, she did in fact have the physique for it:"

Who said she's ever quit?

Have you not noticed her current 'signature' on AspiesForFreedom:

"People only like the idea of fairies. When they bump up against a particular, real-as-corn fairy, there's always trouble." -Gail Carson Levine

?

Have you not seen the dialogue about lying and saying what they want to hear (something Amanda seems most prone to in any circumstance anyway) to get out of the mental health system and lose the label? Its a conversation she had with Tsoncik, posted somewhere in the bowls of autistics.org
(maybe Watson or someone can dig up the link again and direct you to it)

Have you not seen her little Second Life avatar, made to look like an elf, as short as she can get it, spikey little ears and little green elf hat to go with them?
Have you seen her little description (somewhere on the bowels of her ballastexistenz blog now) about this elf second life elf character, how it is/she's like a specific elf in a specific story?
Wherever it is, it was written within the past year, and that's the avatar she was using when I saw her on Second Life not more than 10 months ago.

Just What makes you think she's ever given it up? What is it, her chanting "I AM NOT AN ELF I AM NOT AN ELF" in a diary?

Just who or what is an 'anbuend' anyway?

What book or cloud is this one copped out of now?
What trippy little LSD-damaged cloud dos she think she's found/has become this one now?

And let's not forget its not just an elf its elf GOD -- this creature actually thinks she created people, created me then? Has some right to pull on this crap on me? Created me in her little mind so its perfectly fine to stir us all about like ants, use me like a tool she's found in the backyard... That's the kind of thing about this that really gets me 'started' when I think about it.
She took the dope to do this to herself, nobody else did it to her, and even if somehow they had, it sure wasn't me who did it to her, she messed her mind up but good and her doing it had nothing to do with me when she and her pals were gulping down their dope in their pristine 'we got it all gifted normal teenagers at our little gifted college world' why should I have to pay a price for this, what the hell have I got to do with any of this?

I was attending a university the same year she was, you know. She at 14, me at 30 and while one guy came up to me and asked me to a binge party with him (and then got really pale and literally ran away when I took out my Identification and showed him my birthday, showing I was probably nearly old enough to be his 17 year old self's mother and I admit laughing as he ran off because it was funny), that's the nearest to acid dropping I ever got, and I haven't done anything to cause my disabilities, nor am I now putting on somebody else's now.

I took pride in what I did at that university at 30. It was important to me, being considered not only not retarded but genius/gifted was HUGE to me. She threw hers away and then sought to imitate people like me.

that whole "god" part of the deal is the one of just two things that makes my whole body tense and get an adrenaline fight-not-flight response even while sitting right here at my computer. The other idea that can do that to me is the idea of her ever bothering or going near the remainder Beatles or their families - Amanda Baggs stay the hell away from Sir James Paul McCartney (I didn't say all of this was fully reasonable rational or logical but we ARE talking about intense emotional responses to something nutty as hell being done to me.. but maybe somebody else will understand the impact and how that just 'corks my bottle' or whatever of the "God so I can twizzle stick and violate you as I please" business).
Grrrr

Its really better for that I don't think about these two things (the God aspect of her deal and how it plays out to her justifying sticking a proverbial cattleprod to me and the very idea of her going near a Beatle).

Easing up from typing right here and breathing. Breathing is your friend (everybody should remember that.)

Interesting pictures anyway (I'm still no more swayed she looked disabled or elfish or anything else then any more than now).

Droopy said...

Fore Sam said...

"Droopy,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnRqYMTpXHc&mode=related&search=
I tried one of the links from your blog and had to go find this to hear it sung right."


Yeah. "Satchmo" Louie Armstrong.

I really needed to have you post this just now just when you did.
Listening a few times over, and adding to favorites.
Thank you.

Droopy said...

There's three things (the last is definitely a rant I have been needing to let out) that I've been thinking about and want to address all in one post:

1) Hey Amanda, if you're such a God why didn't you just give yourself my cool life to start with? Why didn't you just make it so it was YOU who was diagnosed autistic at age 2 and YOU who had the cool Sherwood Forest to go hang out and stay in all day like I did, why didn't you make yourself shorter like me and make it all your life to start with then?
If you're such a God why don't you just also strike me dead and steal my life outright and then blip everybody's memories so they only think it was you all along, hmm?

2) Today they informed my friend John and I at the restaurant we always go to that there's been a recall on some of the canned chili he buys out of there from them, and why, and as we sat and listened and she actually showed the writeup on it to ME rather than my friend John I was reading the small phrase hidden in the middle about 'deadly bacterium" as the waitress assured us it wasn't this product but the company is 'covering its ass' just when my friend John said to her in all seriousness "the last two cans smelled different.. but they tasted great!" and I burst out laughing and it took them both quite a while to 'get' the humor in this.
Tomorrow my friend John and I will take the remainder cans of chili (tho of which I had already eaten too) back for his refund, and problem solved..

You Neurodiversity people however, in the same situation, you'd be painting big dramas all over your websites, calling out for 'action' and to sue and all this other mega drama saga bull shit and you know it and that's just ONE of the staple differences between me and you.

3) Can somebody please tell me why so very many of the 'neurodiversity' women are ex-ballerina queens and gymnasts and such with their little horseback riding lessons and their language lessons and little flute and other various instrument lessons?
What's up with that?

How come my family is one of self-starters (no lessons, self taught in a major chunk of the above listed, save for the gymnast ballerina bullshit because who cares about that crap? We're obviously a smart bunch and we didn't.)

Where the hell would we be if every person on the planet required lessons on every damned thing like this? I guess regardless of our collective education (and don't assume its anything to sneeze at) that makes me and my family a little closer to "the Einstein school of self study' than your pompous lot, doesn't it?

Bear it in mind when you're patting yourselves on the back and making gross assumptions about others intellects, especially based on what schooling they've had (or you think they've had).

How come Amanda's "Go Ask Alice Meets I Never Promised You A Rose Garden" write-ups of her 'institutional' approximately 2 month experience bouncing back and forth between her mental illness group-home and psychiatric hospital visits sound so damned ritzy who in the hell else has horses at their group-home or gets to have their own pets there hmm?

Setting aside "am I the only autistic here" for a moment to ask:
"Am I the only autistic here who had a natural more non-spoiled not-so-doting attention-expectation simply middle class sensible sort of life here?"

My sister taught herself piano and then taught me, and save for my brother and sister taking one required high school language course apiece (one took one semester of French, one took one semester of Spanish) apiece there were no languages classes available in what my brother taught himself in other languages, there were not only no special ed classes available for me at their school, there was nothing there for my brother, no gifted classes available for him either, that stuff simply didn't exist there and it didn't seem to stifle his need to learn and independent study and ultimate capability in any way.

Smart people will be smart regardless. Think about what would have happened if you'd put Mr Albert Einstein in a box and left him there. That man would have sat there thinking, found a way to utilize that box as part of his thinking, dare you to tell me he wouldn't. And never ever confuse a plainspeak manner of communicating or even a complete lack of ability for stupidity or under estimate a person based on it(and I won't tell Steven Hawkings of your major faux paus in that area if you won't).

Anyway,
(can't be caught trying to teach you people a damned thing, must keep yelling at you instead, I've got an 'image' as an inherently stupid rude and blindly angry person to keep up, my bad, back on track now)

Your collective socioeconomic/intellectual snobbery (yeah Phil this decidedly includes your intellect yardstick mentality) and resulting piss poor demanding spoiled snobby little superior-than-thou attitudes give you away as a collective, neurodivesity, and based on that right now I have just two words to say, reflecting on all three points made here:

Get real


*strolling away for the night now, knowing full well the truth in yet more of John Lennon's words that yes, a working class hero is something to be.

Anonymous said...

Re: Anon's pictures of Amanda.

Agreed, she looked like a perfectly normal, quite pretty young girl back then. So how did she go from that to the hugely overweight, nearly bald, staring at the ceiling, rocking back and forth mess she is today, in a few short years. Her poor mum must be horrified.

Autistic researchers often said years ago that autistics have an otherworld look about them and are often noticably beautiful. Too bad Amanda did not decide to follow that pattern of autism. I cannot imagine what made her decide to make herslf so unattractive.

Droopy said...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5IIXeR5OUI&mode=related&search=

Anonymous said...

In one of those pictures Amanda is smiling at someone, obviously engaging in a normal way. In the other she is totally responsive to the cat. Her body posture is normal and natural. How can all that change to become as bizarre as it is today with her unable to make eye contact because she 'finds it threatening' (Quote from CNN) or unable to walk properly. There is a video on her site showing her strange walk. She did not used to look like a girl who would be stopped by the police for looking strange. How could so much deterioration occur unless it is forced, mimicked, pretended? Or unless there was a closed head injury.

If I wanted a new persona I'd pick a much prettier one. Why would anyone let themself get into that state?

Larry Arnold PhD FRSA said...

Yep I am one of the other worldly beautiful ones of course:) never mind my receding hairline (too much testosterone I suppose)

Still I am more of a wizard than an elf these days, more yellow brick road than yellow submarine.

Don't ask me why I just posted any of that, it has to be a delusion, "nothing is real" and pounds shillings and pence in the Welkin with diamonds. Poor old Syd Barret was short changed so he was.

Anyway this whole Lord of the Rings, elf/wizard thing was big back in the sixties, I remember (which must mean I could not have been there) the themed mural in the basement of the Lanchester Polytechnic, where many a pyschedelic band played in the sixties including Pink Floyd.

Ou sont les neiges d'antan?

Droopy said...

I think Larry likes me.

Anonymous said...

Droopy said...

"Have you not seen the dialogue about lying and saying what they want to hear (something Amanda seems most prone to in any circumstance anyway) to get out of the mental health system and lose the label? Its a conversation she had with Tsoncik, posted somewhere in the bowls of autistics.org."

Here it is, Droopy:


http://www.autistics.org/library/conversation.html
Conversation on Institutions

Amanda: Like in my case I'm supposedly out because I'm not schizophrenic, which in part is not diagnosed simply because I stay away from the sorts of people and saying the sorts of things that worry people.

Laura: Yes. Yeah. Well in a purely practical sense, I think anybody who can get any loophole to get out of that system, can and should use any loopholes they have. Because they have no right to keep anyone, so therefore anything and everything that will keep someone out of there, including if necessary lies, it's perfectly fine with me."

Anonymous said...

Anonymous said...

"Let's be fair. Back when Amanda was claiming she was an elf, she did in fact have the physique for it:"

Droopy said...

"Who said she's ever quit?"

I don't believe she has.

An Autistic Elf: Elven and Autistic Identity, and Autreat by Amanda Baggs ...

http://www.autismdigest.com/past_issues/SeptOct2000.htm


Autobiographies

An Autistic Elf by Amanda Baggs...

http://darngroup.tripod.com/id7.html


And this by "Jessadriel Darkmountain" was published in 2004:

http://www.autistics.org/library/elves.html

Elves and Autistics and Nazis, Oh My!

Anonymous said...

Before viewing those pictures I first read this:

http://ballastexistenz.autistics.org/?p=189

(which would have been more aptly named "How I Want My Sociopath Behavior Viewed")

I shudder to think what misery some creature must've been going through in order for her to sit there watching, grinning from ear to ear.

Droopy said...

July 21st 2007 (4 days ago as of this posting) she claimed to be a DAR (Daughter of the American Revolution) and a Native American:
http://ballastexistenz.autistics.org/?p=425
"Comment from ballastexistenz
Time: July 24, 2007, 18:40

I don’t resent recent arrivals and some of my family have been in America for centuries. Not that their having been here this long creates any particular sense of home.

I’ve never exactly met any relatives older than my great-grandmother (who was raised in another country and moved here). I certainly haven’t met my ancestors. I didn’t know the ancestor who moved here before the Revolution and fought in it. Any more than I know the purported American Indian ancestors that everyone from the area my relatives are from claims to have."


but here you go, in 2004

"http://www.autistics.org/library/elves.html
From
Elves and Autistics and Nazis, Oh My!"

"...were part of the Resistance - the Nazis were the one group of people I was raised from childhood to hate. I've got my great-grandmother's ID photo (everybody had to wear them during the Occupation) in which she is staring at the camera with a look of utter cold contempt, and I had to laugh, the first time I saw it, because I look exactly like her when I'm angry. Yeah. I learned the song "Heil, Heil, right in Der Fuhrer's face" (21) at my mother's knee..."


When I first made this post I had to do a LOT of backspacing off

But you know what?

This one time at least I'm not going to get angry, I'm not going to call you names, you know. At least not today.

Instead today I'm just gonna sit back and laugh

You really haven't got a clue do you?

as if you don't have enough targets on your back already
Well here you go, knock yourself out, this one's all yours.

(You really shoulda taken that down but hey)

Amanda, you're Jewish!

Innat cool?

She's not just any Elf God, she's
The Jew Elf God!

Baggs is Yiddish for..
er.. well..
Nevermind

AMANDA BAGGS IS JEWISH
Who knew?!

They're still having that Nazi/skinhead/KKK rally in Kalamazoo Michigan on the 4th of August, you just gotta come, Autism Pride, Jewish Pride and er.. Elf Pride and Deity Pride too! Man, Amanda you got it all!

You're such an amazing and fascinating person gollygeewhiz Amanda I sure wish I was just like you!

John Best said...

Watson,

"Laura: Yes. Yeah. Well in a purely practical sense, I think anybody who can get any loophole to get out of that system, can and should use any loopholes they have. Because they have no right to keep anyone, so therefore anything and everything that will keep someone out of there, including if necessary lies, it's perfectly fine with me."

Sweathog Laura would, I assume, want my kid to be tossed out on the street rather than being institutionalized. He'd be dead in an hour if left to survive without 24 hour supervision but that's OK with this obese, disgusting, hog. I can also assume she would have favored letting Cho loose when it was obvious to some people that he was a dangerous person.

What has this world come to when anyone listens to obviously moronic lesbians? What happened to every sane person just telling them to STFU? This bitch is justifying lying about the mental condition of brain damaged people who will undoubtedly die without the assistance they receive.

CNN should have me on with these two psychotic whales so I can put them in their place in public.

Anonymous said...

Are CNN still standing by their story on Amanda? Anyone know?

Larry Arnold PhD FRSA said...

I am sorry to dissapoint, but Jessadriel Darkmountain and Amanda Baggs are two quite distinct and seperate people.

This self avowed elf would appear to be an SCA re-enactor amongst other new age pagany type things.

http://elenbarathi.livejournal.com/

For my part I consider elfinkind to be a metaphor, in the same was as wrong planet or whatever is a metaphor. It is interesting that Temple Grandin spoke of being an anthropologist *on* Mars, (meaning she was an earthling and neurotypicals like martians to her) whereas Clare Sainsbury spoke of the autistic child as the "Martian *in* the playground. Neither meant that literally even if the pair of them are Autistic.

Whatever it is all well established cultural metaphor, the whole changeling legend having been given scholarly attention by Uta Frith. Legends usually come about to satisfy some cultural need for an explanation where none is forthcoming.

Indeed not much more than a century ago belief in fairies was as common and acceptable as belief in ghosts and spiritualism (never mind indigo children) is today.

Mind you I do consider the deliberate attempts to create a mythology as with Aspergia, as absurd and counterproductive and on a par with the beliefs of Elijah Mohammed. Its a bit like the back story to the Wicker Man, and I would not like to live on an Aspergian island. I have seen to many arguments on line to believe that real life would be any different. Mostly I like to keep mysel to myself.

Nothing wrong with a bit of poetic licence and imagination however for entertainments sake, but so far as human rights arguments goes, it is by far better to argue that one is human, even if one does not greatly feel a part of the human society, else that does indeed lead to pogroms and worse.

As for the racial purity of the average American, I think DNA analysis shows there to be no such thing except perhaps amongst the Amish and much good it does not do them. There is a lot more native American DNA about than mere examination of surface appearance would show, and Barack Obama, is descended on one side of his family from slave owners, whereas many apparantly white families have some racial intermixture in them.

And as for me if I want to run around the countryside communing with trees, I am in good company as Prince Charles does as well.

Anyway my biggest delusion at the moment is believing there is anything the other side of my computer, maybe you are all just part of a bot network generating spam.

Anonymous said...

laurentius rex said...

"I am sorry to dissapoint, but Jessadriel Darkmountain and Amanda Baggs are two quite distinct and seperate people."

Larry, You are right that elenbarathi calls herself "Jessadriel Darkmountain", but did she write this piece?

Here's the page again:

http://www.autistics.org/library/elves.html

Read this paragraph:

"I admit that I'd be happy to see humans cut back their insane rate of overbreeding, which is causing no end of destruction, but I don't want them to die or be harmed in any way. I admit that I do not trust them, for that their whole culture is based on lies and competition, and they are very, very quick to harm anyone perceived as "different" (12) - having spent the last four years of my minority as a prisoner of the Thought Police (24)"

Now click on footnote 24. - Outposts In Our Heads

Where does that take you? And who wrote it?

Droopy said...

Larry,
I consider my DNA to be one of those especially personal things, but I also have felt that way about so many things that have been violated here.

In reality and apart from the 'drama' -- and it being a part of me -- aspect that drew your asshat friend to it, being Jewish is actually a pain in the ass (613 Commandments vs Christianity's 10 and when I can manage an "I don't know" without the testing and with my family's handling of it, I can be a Noahide who has only 7 Commandments, as long as I don't have that DNA testing to confirm, I don't have to follow all that, but Jewish Law says that if your mother's mother's and so forth) are Jewish, you are, and you are expected to adhere to Jewish Law (if you believe in such things and yeah I do, and I have avoided all of this and been a Noahide, a "Child of Noah" instead because I can get away with it (Ask my father why our name is Yiddish for Book and not what he said his hearing aid dies just then etc etc)
We are not practicing Jews, we pretend not to be Jewish at all and deny it because being Jewish isn't always so good for your health around the wrong people.
Now you have another huge clue to why I am so secretive. Its what we (my family) do.
If you've seen my YouTube movies you've seen at least one picture of a Christmas tree there.
In fact by and large my extended family are devout Catholics, even having brought some old country specific Polski traditions from it like the Christmas Opletek to our traditions table.
Nobody would know.
Nobody but a pathological liar waiting in the wings while I chatted to a small group of people online I thought were all my friends. Its not like I posted any of this all over the internet (well, except for right now) who knew anything like this could or would happen?

You draw the attention of the wrong person and BAM.

Anyway
There are several Yiddish words for book, so hopefully I've not put myself at too great a risk with this.

Its just a whole lot easier to be private people and not be Jewish, lets just be honest but in the interest of getting her off of me and shutting her up once and for good everywhere her story comes from mine

Until I can get that professional and balance of security/privacy vs validity and book going (with my name on it larger than life in the end I suppose), while it doesn't prove who's ancestor's this core story goes to, certainly at least who's going to be Jewish to at least have HAD POSSIBILITY for such a story to start with,

Larry,
if you can get her to agree to it, I'll go for that DNA testing if she will too. That should show with certainty who's telling the truth and who isn't. What do you say?

Given as she can't be bothered to communicate with me (as to do so makes that many more aware of me and the situation and when not responding falls nicely into her playing the 'victim' as well) and she's not responded to any of my open offers and challenges that we take her claims on my abilities against my own and have an 'ability face off' somewhere, I don't expect a response to this either, but again, this is yet another thing that is verifiable from my end, and DNA testing for both of us could be easily enough prove/disprove our respective prospective Jewish lineages and I make the challenge/offer and I stand behind it.

I did say 'whatever it takes'

Anonymous said...

Anonymous said...
"Why would anyone let themself get into that state?"

Well, maybe Amanda attended Laura Tisoncik's workshop at Autreat 2000, and everyone thought that finding a low-functioning adult with autism who was pro-neurodiversity and anti-cure would be the perfect way of transforming public perceptions of autism. Then, perhaps they couldn't find one.

The "Getting the Truth Out" website was probably the brain child of long time political activist Laura Tisoncik of the Lesbian Fat Activist Network and webmaster of the radical lesbian website GRRLTALK

And, seeing as Tisoncik's strengths are in sculpting electrons and she has a work history of advertising/marketing and propaganda, she probably has lots of ideas. Like linking autism prevention and cure to "GENOCIDE".

Using FEAR is a great way to rally support - especially since the teens and adults who think they have autism is growing daily, thanks to online Aspie quizes.

Droopy said...

To everyone,
I am sharing a conversation, verbatim copy/pasted in fact.
The only modifications being replacement of my friend's name with '[friend]' and about 5 typo cleanups, 'tatoo' to 'tattoo,' 'i've' to 'I've,' etc).

Outside of remarking on my last name, all other references to my grandparents I made during this conversation pasted below refer to my mother's side -- my mother's parents.

This friend is someone who sometimes tries so hard to be neutral that overcompensation happens -- its frustrating).
This friend is one of the old timers who's known me and 'my stuff' for over a decade (I frequently post conversations with him like this on my blog in an attempt to foster getting my own story told).
Please pay particular attention to my friend's replies:

[19:31] [droopy] Amanda copied my heritage
[19:31] [droopy] I knew she would
[19:31] [droopy] I knew she either had somewhere already or would
[19:31] [friend] how?
[19:32] [droopy] she's claimed her ancestors fought in Nazi Germany
[19:32] [droopy] is claiming to be Jewish basically
[19:32] [droopy] let me finish this and I'll show you
[19:32] [droopy] its a pretty big contrast between what she wrote about 4 days ago
[19:32] [droopy] she wrote this ton of shit in 2004
[19:32] [droopy] but let me finish this first
[19:32] [droopy] (the other thing also shows she still believes she's an elf
[19:32] [friend] I've seen her strongly hint at being Jewish before
[19:33] [droopy] a ton of stuff shows she thinks she's an 'autistic elf'
[19:33] [droopy] yeah and guess who the hell she got that off of?
[19:33] [droopy] wouldn't be the person you know with a grandmother who had a tattoo on her arm, a Grandpapa who refused to build a concentration camp in Krakow, or anyone you know with a lastname that's Yiddish for book, now would it?
[19:34] [friend] could be
[19:34] [droopy] 'could be'?
[19:34] [droopy] Could?
[19:34] [droopy] she gets 99% of her shit straight off of me
[19:34] [droopy] and you STILL say 'could be'?
[19:35] [friend] I don't have positive facts re whether she is Jewish or not. I do know that Phil S. is Jewish

Thinks she's an elf God (thinks it and tries to hide it because she's out of her mind -- at least that bit isn't from me).. thinks she's she's Jewish... posts on autistics.org with links back to Amanda's writing written openly as Amanda Baggs...

and using somebody else's rather specific online username to do it?

That's pretty nasty isn't it?
Hiding behind somebody else's name so that you appear to be them doing the writing?, How honest is that?


Where is this going and how far has it gone already and how far is it going to go before its over?
Is she going to try to write as me at some point then too? what is this? When does it stop?

To Larry/Amanda-supporters&friends/AFF/ND/ALF etc etc, etc

How many licks to the center of a tootsie roll pop, and just how many droppings of acid a day for how many days does it take you people to continue to categorically deny what's going on?

Item by item you go, you who can so readily generalize remarks about all autistics everywhere, yet when it comes to the situation we have with Amanda and I, you categorically pick at each individual aspect as if it stands alone and not against the collected slew of things concerning this, guessing and theorizing and trying to justify it away and when all else fails you, you fall back on 'who cares if shes' real or not, as long as the words are pretty' when if you're all about autistics speaking for themselves and the rights of those with autism, advocacy for people with autism, you should care very very much.
How can you not?

I'm sorry she's not real. Believe me, I'm the sorriest of all that she's not real and in ways I doubt you'll ever really know, but this little game of being like a handful of blind guys looking too close feeling up at the elephant's foot, and then the tail, etc and having no idea its an elephant and having it go on so long and being any more believable than the originating BS from Amanda herself is stretching it a bit.

I'm sorry she's not real, and there's no way that you can just turn that around and make her real by swearing to it and denying the obvious. You can't make her real or make this anything other than what it is by stubbornly stamping your foot and insisting anymore than you can make the sky green by shouting and stamping and insisting that its really a lovely shade of green either. It just doesn't work that way.

And before we even 'go there' I'll save everyone a little effort and hassle here:

An image posted online of a prescription pad with some sort of "I'm Jewish' scrawled on it in big block letters that look suspiciously like other big block letters identified by Amanda as being Amanda's) just isn't gonna cut it.
http://ballastexistenz.autistics.org/?page_id=289

If by some miracle she actually acknowledges and agrees to the DNA testing challenge on this one, we're going to do this DNA testing thing right, in agreement and accordance and where everybody can see, no doubts, etc, and there are websites that offer such a service, but its gonna be real, agreed upon, planned and valid and undeniably so and to both our satisfactions, in short, done right (ie, I don't want the 'result' to be something filtered and offered up/'relayed' by way of or through you because I'm kinda getting tired of playing with you, Amanda, and I've every reason to not trust you).

Fore Sam, I hope you've directed your journalist friend to this thread as well.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous asked "Just who or what is an 'anbued' anyway?" Anbued is Old English (Anglo-Saxon) for hermit or anchorite.

Anna Salamon said...

Hi all,

My name's Anna Salamon, and I've been a friend of Amanda's since we met at nerd camp (CTY) when we were both twelve. I'm a real person, I live in San Diego, and I'm going to grad school at UCSD. You can check by Google. (The details are so you can check.)

I know more of the facts concerning Amanda's alleged paranoia and the rest of what is discussed here than anyone else on this thread. Including John Best's informant, whose identity I happen to know. I was in communication with Amanda all through her time in and out of the mental institutions. I know her brothers and parents. I talked to her on the phone a lot at the early entrance college, visited her when she was in special ed., talked to her and watched what happened to her in the intervening years, and lived with or near her for portions of those years. I know her in more detail than I know anyone outside my immediate family, and over a longer period of time.

In light of all I have seen of Amanda and her past and present, it is not remotely plausible that Amanda is imitating Droopy's life, nor that she is pretending to be autistic or disabled more generally. I'll explain why in several pieces.


1. You can't fake every day, all day, in detail, since age twelve.

I have seen a great deal of Amanda, day in and day out, since she was twelve. That makes a total of 14 years, much of it in childhood. (She's now 26. It's more than half her life.) Some of the time we spent together was before either of us had heard more than the word "autism". Some of it was late at night talking, or while she was stomach sick and trying not to freak out at the sensory terror of throwing up, or while she was suicidally depressed and experiencing flashbacks. Much of it included little details people often don't notice themselves doing--the way she moved her hands, the phrases she used, the faces she made or didn't make in response to movies we watched together.

Nobody can keep up a detailed, conscious front the whole time through that kind of contact.


2. Language use

At nerd camp, and through much of the rest of her childhood, Amanda sometimes spoke. She even put sentences together in a way that made people think she was gifted (she used big words) and eloquent.

People have asked how she could have sounded eloquent and still had serious problems with language. For example, Watson writes:


That she had difficulties with receptive language, and she didn't always know what she was saying.

Can that be true?

Not if she was: considered "gifted", an A grade student, "only had to be told once not to do something", and "a delight in the classroom". Not if she skipped grade two, went to college at 14 to major in psychology; attended The Johns Hopkins University Center for Talented Youth for two years running where she would have been re-tested for verbal reasoning; and not if she won a place at Simon's Rock College.



The thing is: it is possible to sound eloquent *and* to have serious communication trouble. Communication doesn't just mean putting fluent-sounding sentences together. Communication means getting something from your head into someone else's head. And Amanda had trouble with even simple communication in this sense. For example, she often could not tell people when she was in physical pain.

It may sound strange to be able to assemble words in a fluent-sounding way and not to be able to communicate simple things. But think about BSing your way through an exam in school. In high school, I didn't understand enough Spanish to understand the reading passages, and I also couldn't understand the multiple choice questions that came afterwards. But I could match phrases: I could see which question-and-answer phrases appeared near each other in the text. This simple word-matching trick got me B+'s on the exams. People also BS their way through essay exams, using the teacher's words and phrases, plus some decoration and general appearance of fluency, to cover for the fact that they don't understand the phrases they are parroting. Some BS well enough to get A's.

At 12 and 13, during our summers at nerd camp, Amanda tried to show me that she was speaking by this kind of pattern-matching. She didn't have the words to straight-out tell me. But she talked a lot about Mrs. Who, a character in the children's book "A Wrinkle In Time" who has trouble assembling sentences and who mostly has to quote other people's sentences to communicate. She said she was like Mrs. Who. And she gave me lists of books and music as though she were offering me a collection of pointers to her life. An assemblage of objects that reached, together, toward what she did not know how to say outright.

This kind of semi-echolalic pattern matching turns out to be pretty common in autism. There's an autistic boy who greats my mother every morning by saying "Hi, what's your name?" He knows my mom's name; it's just that this is the greeting phrase he knows and he doesn't know how to use the word "hi" by itself. Amanda had a much bigger store of sentence-pieces, and (like a student BSing her way through an exam) she could recombine them to look like she knew what she was saying. But it's a similar idea. And at 12, when Amanda talked about Mrs. Who and so on, she didn't know what autism was (she'd heard the name, and that was about it) and she had not heard of autistic language patterns.

It is also worth remembering that abilities can be partial. Someone can understand language partially, or in some contexts, without understanding it always in all contexts. People can be confusing, but that does not imply that they are making it up.

3. Character

Some asked whether someone who lied during adolescence can be trusted now, at 26. The answer is yes. Think about it. What were you all like through your teenage years? Would you really like to be judged by it now?

Imagine this: you're thirteen years old, you can't communicate effectively, and you're terrified that you're crazy. You've been having longer and longer periods in which you can't understand spoken words (auditory processing shuts down, and it all sounds like water). There are also periods when you can't talk and other periods when you can't move at all. And there is no one in the world that you can turn to for advice, because (a) you're terrified, and (b) you lack the requisite communication skills.

Can you picture trying, eventually, to hide yourself in "crazy" stereotypes, since hiding yourself in "normal" stereotypes looks impossible? It wouldn't be a smart thing to do, or a moral thing to do, but... is it really something you can't imagine doing yourself? Terrified, insecure, teenaged, alone, and under attack from all sides ("How can you act so incapable? I'm going to hit you or tie you down or inject you or hurl abuse at you." ... "How can you act so capable now? It shows you were faking before. I'm going to hit you or tie you down or inject you or hurl abuse at you"). There would be some attraction to looking one, consistent, maintainable way. And there would also be some attraction to that way being a shield or disguise. Who wants to let a bunch of bullies see their own vulnerable self?

If so, can you picture, maybe, extending that disguise to internet bulletin boards and to your journal (which is read by people who aren't you)? And, if you can, do you think that that kind of insecurity, as a teenager and while under sustained assault, need be the permanent measure of a person?

I'm pasting in from a previous letter here, to explain Amanda's integrity today:


I'm not sure what else to say about our past. We have a lot more experience together: several visits, six weeks' attempted attendance at UCSB during which we crashed and burned together; a year living near one another in California in 2001; other visits and phone and email. We grew up together; I watched her fight her way through fear and language barriers and psychiatric behavior modification and stereotypes to speak more and more of the truth. I have no doubt at all that she is a person of integrity. N. points out that Amanda hid herself in stereotypes as a teenager: fair enough. But who the heck didn't hide as a teenager? Who the heck wouldn't have been insecure at 14, without effective language, believing they were "crazy" and having no models for what an adult like them might be like? Weren't most of us insecure at 14 without any of that help?

I've seen her work painstakingly to speak the truth and to act rightly, in stressful and dangerous situations. I've seen her gain increasing awareness of how to do so, increasing understanding of and governance of herself. I don't know. I'm sure we're all suggestible, a little, and maybe the hypochondria and attention-seeking that some people speculated about is something many people can be prone to. Distancing yourself from a stigmatized group (e.g., schizophrenics) can be easy too. I could picture any of these of Amanda as a teen, or of myself, or of many people I know. But I really cannot picture it of Amanda now. And there is absolutely no way she is "acting" in the sense of pretending that she stims, enjoying being waited on while lollygagging on the internet all day, etc. It seems demeaning to need to pick over someone's life or testify to their "authenticity" in this kind of detail, but yes, she stims, and has as long as I've known her. And, yes, her loss of skills and inability to work, or feed herself, are real. It was not for CNN that she starved (lost weight precipitously) in the months before she got services. And many of her health conditions have worsened since then.



4. Autism and skill loss in adolescence

The other point that seems to be confusing people is that autism is said to be life-long, while Amanda's appearance seems to have changed greatly from childhood to now. At 12 she could walk and could usually talk, and she looked more or less non-disabled, if eccentric. Now, she looks visibly and obviously disabled.

There are documented autistic traits going back to infancy. She had to be taught how to nurse. She began speaking as a baby and then quit for a time, and her mother did a simple version of ABA (making Amanda speak to get things she wanted) to get her to start talking again. I've seen her school reports from grade school, which are full of comments about how she needs to learn to get organized, to deal with transitions, and to improve her social skills, as well as the quoted comments about how gifted she was. After skipping second grade, she was made to repeat fourth grade because it was thought that it might improve her social adjustment some. It didn't help. When I knew her at CTY and thereafter, she stimmed, she had autistic sensory troubles, she had social skill troubles, and she perseverated. She had autistic language patterns, as mentioned above. All of this is before she, or I, knew anything about autism. I could give details on these traits if anyone cares.

But it seems like what is puzzling people is not that there could have been autistic traits in her childhood. A few aspie traits would not bother anyone. What is puzzling people is the transition from something that looked relatively mild to something that looks severe.

The thing is, although transitions from mild-looking to severe-looking autism seem counter-intuitive, they are actually rather common, and well documented, in autistic adolescence. Particularly where catatonic/Parkinsonian movement disorders are involved.

Autism researcher Lorna Wing did a study showing that a significant minority of autistic adolescents and adults become catatonic and that this makes them much more disabled and much more autistic-looking. The study is worth reading. It is also well documented that neuroleptic ("anti-psychotic") drugs often cause or exacerbate similar movement problems. Amanda spent years on neuroleptics. She'd also had milder movement difficulties since childhood. So it is not surprising that her movement difficulties (including speech, which is a motor skill) and general autistic-looking-ness got more extreme over the course of adolescence.

Journalist Ann Bauer describes her autistic son's transition from quirky near-normalcy to catatonia, by way of neuroleptic drugs. The story is similar to Amanda's and well worth a read: http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2007/05/18/autism_misdiagnosis/index_np.html. (Amanda's story was years before the article was written and cannot have been copied.)


4. Other stuff

A couple miscellaneous details before I close:

I'm not sure where the homelessness rumor got started. Amanda hasn't been homeless and hasn't claimed to have been homeless. She did spend three days on the street once when a combination of construction and asthma made her apartment uninhabitable, so maybe that is what people are thinking of.

Many of the details Droopy says are copied are details of Amanda that I can vouch for from long before she had any knowledge of Droopy. Amanda perseverated greatly about the Beatles when we met at 12; I loaned Amanda the money with which she bought her world-opening first typewriter at a thrift store, etc.


I'd be glad to talk to anyone who is interested in Amanda's reality. Posting her private journal on here is an invasion of privacy, and I'm not up for extending that invasion, but serious and non-invasive conversation is welcome. You can email me privately at myfullname@gmail.com. [You have to put in my actual full name--my first name and then my last name, like "bobsmith"--in place of the "myfullname" bit. My name is below. I am trying to avoid spam bots.]


Sincerely,

Anna Salamon

Anonymous said...

Using FEAR is a great way to rally support - especially since the teens and adults who think they have autism is growing daily, thanks to online Aspie quizes. ...Watson.

Watson, I look forward to reading your posts because you make so much sense and are never swayed by emotion. You analyze other posts perfectly.

Am I the only one who has a hard time understanding Larry?

Larry Arnold PhD FRSA said...

Simon Baron Cohen's team has my DNA. I was against the idea at first but changed my mind after persuasion that there research is not intended to lead to a genetic test which will allow abortion of potentially autistic foetuses.

Incedentally Simon Baron Cohen is Jewish, so's his cousin AKA Borat.

Anonymous said...

Amanda has a lot of people working for her, a lawyer and now a PR person, Anna Salamon.

How does she do it? How does she get so many people working for her. It must be because she is just so damn sweet.

Anna, you wrote all this same stuff on Amanda's behalf on AFF, now you are here doing the same thing. Is she paying you? Are you autistic or planning on becoming so very soon?

Did it take Amanda 5 hours to boil a kettle at nerd camp?

Anonymous said...

If Amanda really had all these problems using language, why didn't at least one of the doctors or psychiatrists she had contact with spot this? Why did they no see rhat she was really autistic?

John Best said...

Anna,
So, you knew Amanda for a year or two before she fried her brain with LSD?
Do you think it was the LSD or the sudden onset of autism that caused her to forget how to use a toilet?
How come she can still sing but claims she can't talk?
Sorry Anna, intellectually gifted people don't go from normal to schizophrenic to autistic. She has some of the twitching down pretty good but she does it too often for the camera. Real autistic people don't stim all the time. They also space out a lot and don't respond to anything but Amanda seems to be able to pay attention quite well. She's overacting.
Do you think it's right that she's giving a false impression of what autism is? Do you agree with her deranged notion that no autism should be cured? The role she plays makes her a "basket case" yet she claims she doesn't want to be cured. This is insane. Do you agree that she is insane? If not, we'll have to question your sanity.

Anonymous said...

About 9-10 years ago schizophrenia was hot in the media, guess she's autistic now b/c it's been hot in the media for the last several years.

This is so disturbing. What a disturbed woman. I'm so glad that I will never cross paths with a person this crazy. She needs to be in an institution.

Anonymous said...

Elenbarathi wrote it.

Anonymous said...

What the hell is nerd camp?

Larry Arnold PhD FRSA said...

Well notwithstanding whether anyone can understand a word of what I write or say, let me point out that a little reserch will show that Elenbarathi/Jessadriel Darkmountain is a real person, and is not an alter ego of Amanda's or that the posting on autistics.org is Amanda writing under that name.

http://www.livejournal.com/interests.bml?int=elves

This Jessadriel, who looks nothing like Amanda, is into elves big time it seems, and so from the list of sites are a lot of other people.

I think the people here who can't seperate fact from fiction are Amanda's accusers who cannot tell a piece of literary fiction, from reality.

If I were to write a short story or novel from a first person perspective, shall we call it "I Claudius" for arguments sake, would that mean I literally believe I am the emporer Claudius, a deity in his own lifetime worshiped in Colchester?

Well read Robert Graves, (who wrote I Claudius) he was as new agey as they come in the "White Goddess", but he was a literary figure given much to poetic licence. I did once meet someone who had met him, and I have to say the description of the old recluse in Majorca, was that he was rather eccentric.

Now all that I see in all this elf talk, is a lot of literary allusion and poetic licence.

You'll be telling me next that Tolkein was Schizophrenic to dream up such stuff in the first place.

You'll be telling me next that all these re-enactors belong in institutions, for dressing up and acting out there fantasies.

I think people here chose to believe what they want when they pick sides, they then fit the evidence however slim to suit what they want to believe. And believing that Jessadriel Darkmountain is a pseudonym for Amanda's confession of elfin delusions of grandeur is somewhat of a delusion in itself.

All this anonymous evidence is beginning to fall apart, I doubt it would stand up in any court, besides people would have to give there real names in order to present this concoction of "evidence" it all seems like something out of Arthur Millers Crucible to me.

Anonymous said...

The only people who can really vouch for Amanda are her parents. They must have watched CNN, they must know what she is up to. Her brothers must have seen her on TV and online. Why are'nt they on here defending her? If someone was trashing my kid online I'd be up in arms.

Droopy said...

Evidently I've hit a nerve:

Larry's here trying to distract from and obscure )'hard time understanding Larry' is quite intentional, as he is quite capable of posting coherently as demonstrated on sites where he has exchanges with his ND chums -- just ignore him and don't bother responding to him seriously is my advice -- sorry Larry, I like you but its the truth. Conversation with Larry is only good for passing sillinness. A movie about my typewriter and its weight just for you is still planned.)

When Larry and Anna both step up, you know I've hit a nerve.

Anna's demonstrating the 'barage that no one would possibly attempt to take piece by piece and respond to due to sheer volume' and exaggerating/misleading statements for which Amanda herself has to me become rather 'famous.'

Anna, No I'm not going to email you so you can hope to keep me entertained privately with, Amanda and I already played that routine when I tried to get her to quit this copying me to start with when we were still communicating.

And I do have quite a number of questions about the things you've carefully 'addressed' and at least as many about the number of them you haven't, so watch this board for those queries, in chunks/segments multy/posts.


For the moment let me tell you that you merely saying 'its not plausible' regarding the outright copying of me isn't satisfactory. Just because you say it isn't hardly makes it so.

Youve' also done a fine job while carefully skirting a multitude of the things she copies about me, of doing the blindguy examingn th eelephants foot yourself as you selectively address what.. two things of the enormity that is my life she steals?

So much of what you've said here is normal childhood stuff - I have a sister whos' completley normal, a brother who is most likely an extreme case of AS (he's in his late 40's and frankly our familyl just does not care, he's functional enough and one autistic in the family seems enough, whatever) but I can tell you the remarks on those are normal every day typical kid stuff. Ask any parent here with a normal kid, ask any parent here about their own report card even. Its the same stuff my sister, my cousins etc had, but nice try.

"Elaborate echolaiala' nad "Mrs Who" bits are your nice way to cover for her plaguerism, not gonna happen, not washing here

as for The Beatles, since you prefer to play the "its about Beatles and Typewriters' game, forgoing the fact that this woman has copied every last thing about my life she gets her hands on, not one aspect of my life has gone untouched, I swear to God if I listed the number of freckles on my ass and there was an 'ass-cfreckle count found assocaited with autism research' Amanda's be all over it too, adding or subtracting by jsut one as she goes in order to 'be more autistic'

But okay, lets ignore the volumes of data inhaled and regurgitated back as if they were her own, lets just once go ahead and play
"Its about Beatles and typewriters' the way she wants you to:


To Play "Its about Beatles and typewriters we set aside the following -- just for now -- this list is also not all inclusive:
Setting aside my heritage, my height (for crying out loud), my and my family's language abilities (claimed and quoted verbatim save for one added embellisment), my hearing/aural recall abilities, my aphasia/need to use a communicator/being nonverbal, having braindamage, seizures (identiried as being the exact same types of seizures and by the 'oldschool' names by which I refer to them although she lists no seizure meds in her med regimine), My having been a student of ABA (Lovaas type, by professionals and she does claim on Getting The Truth out and another place to have had ABA proper by 'well known named" professionals, not her mother's doing what mother's do as you describe), claiming exact historical events by my grandparents (merely swapping out their ancenstry for 'danish' and saying great-grandmother to modify), claiming to have been disabled like this all of her life, claiming to be in schools like I have (let's face it, she wasn't), claiming my mother's "Battleheim's-poster child of mothers' misfortune (sorry, requires the right era..like say '67 ` -- not the 80's/90's), claiming exact events that required stuff like 45 records (again an era-based thing), claiming duplication (with one upmanship of course) of a very specific block test ablity I have and have demonstrated (enough that a picture of me with that set of blocks from that test on the desk before me was included in a pamphlet for the institution I live din as a teenager), and that's another thing, claiming to have been institionalized like I have, milking a couple of months in some luxary mental hospital and a very extravegant children's grouphome as a teenatger (and teenagers are not children, sorry, you can drop that act any time too) against the 20 years I spent in places designed for people like me DD/MR proper institatutions and homes, my SIB behavior problems, screaming, hairpulling, vomiting


Did I cover it all? I doubt it, its so overwhelming, there's so much if it I doub't think I can ever list it all in one place

but again, let's set all of that (and there is alot) aside to play your/her's
"ITs about Beatles and Typewriters" game:

DO you KNOW what Amanda "me too-ed' me about on that particular day on an IRC chat regarding The Beatles?

DO you? I do? You better check with her, and I'd like a little more elaborating on her 'pservereing at 12" because its not matching up with her claims that day.

Do you know what she's staking claim to regarding the typewriter event in my life?

I think you'd better find out, and I'd like a little more elaborating on these.


Be warned, we aren't gonna play this 'its only beatles and typewriters' game of you'rs for long though, she's got alot of explaining to do and she, not you, needs to be either out here explaining or finally resigning herself to the realization that its getting her nowhere, the gig is up for her and Tsoncik and you as well, and needs to put up or shut up take me up on my challenges, any number of them dropping the act.
Amanda was all too happy when I was oblivious and posed no resistance to this and she's done everything she can try to return me to that state, having another buddy (an estate lawyer personal friend of her's with no business writing threatening letters like that on behalf of Amanda), she's hiding what she does so that I won't see it (as I didn't for 12 years due to unwareness) so that I can't object, she's tried pretending I don't exist, refusal to acknowledge, in the hopes of appearing 'the victim' and to keep the reality of this situation as quiet as he can...
Portraying herself as 'scared of me'
Yet for someone so 'scared' she has yet to do the one thing I ask:
Stop copying me once and for all, and instead of just creating more and more every few days, take down all the crap she's got littered all over the internet that's just sooo 'uncannily just like droopy'

What she really needs to do is get real, step out of that wheelchair on her own two legs, make one final movie with her voice that frankly apologizes to me diretly and the autism community and the world at large and a guarentee needs to be given that this is the end of it, its over.

I can live without the crockodile apology however and would settle for the crap stopping, its removal from the internet, and for her to vanish off like her elf alien autism 'bible' author Jasmine.

Yeah I can believe she bullshitted her way through classes etc, just as I believe shes' bullshitting her way through life and autism now -- MY life and MY autism

She's going to hide behind you (who writes quite in the same style she does - go figure) -- expect more questions forthcoming

Droopy said...

Anna,
Here's a little more (and still not to be considered all inclusive) list of things which we're only momentarily setting aside so that we can play her/your
"Its only about Beatles and Typewriters" game:

incontinence, my lack of coordination/gross motor/movement issues, milestones never met, being visually impaired (she can't seem to decide on this one sometimes referring to being nearly blind with out her glasses etc, then at other times an eagle eye with superior vision), my manner and order of learning (hearing, pattern, tactile), the adaptation of my movements after observing me on YouTube, the verbatim stealing of my onetime experience in a public school (only changing the story to be about a high school rather than a junior high and adding in some bits about people jumping on her), my birth defects (which were in fact my 'spastic movements as a baby' crappy APGARs even for 1964 standards, failure to BREATH for too long, being a blue baby, my odd growths all over me they had to cut off, my inverted sternum thing, and my seriously screwed up eyes), the fact that I nearly died from the combination of 'failure to thrive' (what you and her are calling 'needing to be taught to nurse'), and pneumonia the year I was 1 year old, My Ehler's Danlos.

The above was a result of laying on the couch and thinking and recalling.
Then I sat here for about two more minutes and these came to me:

koosh balls, my toys, what type of toys, why and what I do with them, the length of my hair (I had it long then short and guess who followed that shortly after and for what same reason), even my cat statue collection on the top of my entertainment stand, when/at what age I taught myself to read and how (but with an upstaging embellishment added), my sensory issues.

I'll bet if I sit and think very long again there'll be more.

Every other person I've ever encountered, never mind the subset of every other autistic I've ever encountered or been aware of has been their own person, unique and not particularly like another, no one other person has ever actually had even a portion of as many similarities as she keeps creating/reciting and claiming.

Anna,
you've got a lot to 'vouch for' when we get done playing
"Its About Beatles and Typewriters."
I hope you're ready.

Droopy said...

Larry,
(you were coherent there YAY! - Good to see it, you get a real response now -- so YAYx2!)

Its not a 'piece on elves' its a running diary and hardly written as 'fiction' -- it's been enough to keep her on psychiatric drugs, quarreling with psychiatrists in and out of group homes and psych units and the only way out of it was to deny her continuing delusion that she really is an elf God.

There's a huge difference between 'poetic license' and delusions lasting years as a result of excessive drugs and mental illness.

As for my name and a court of law:

Gimme a lawyer and a biographer/ghostwriter/whatever and we'll see my name and what the courts might decide.

I had a lawyer's interest, one guy really wanted to take this on, one specializing in Intellectual Property matters even, it was his specialty and he was perfect, but he was an associate not a partner in his firm and they wouldn't let him take it because I barely could collect enough to put him on retainer (start his services let alone fund the hours this would take), no funding -- hence the big book/biographer idea that maybe I can get my life said and out there and thereby protected that way in a book plus get revenue from it enough to pay the writer guy and the lawyer because I'm not about money they can have it -- I'm not interested in any money, just in protecting my rights.

Droopy said...

Anna,
One more tip:

Be very very careful in your excess use of 'autism vocabulary' to describe just every imaginable every day ordinary things like you have. It does much to undermine your credibility then when you say a phrase like 'she persevered on the Beatles'

I think I'm pretty safe in saying that if anyone knows what constitutes "perseverance on The Beatles" it'd be me.

(In discussing this, your friend Amanda took the opportunity to back up, renig/modify her claims from her original statement she made at that time and only posted the second claim and a highly distorted and very untruthful retelling of the actual exchange that happened between us regarding this, so it'll be good to see, because she obviously didn't know much trivia about The Beatles and was not able to cull up lyrics/aural recall on demand).

If she's going to prove any of this she'd better start on making a quick study of the Fab Four and hope for the best and take me up on that challenge then, we can do aural hearing/recall/ Beatles-recall/Beatles-trivia in one full swoop, bring in the audiologists and the CDs and records and let us start tossing lyrics and trivia back and forth and see how she fares.
Get us in a room together and do it with an impartial party governing the thing. Its not like I haven't made this sort of challenge before.

Know that I've won doorprizes at Beatles conventions in Chicago where thousands of hard core Beatles fans were not able to answer the questions I could, and between my typing ability and "not so random access' memory I also hold my own at lyrical questions in live time settings.

I'll bet I can come up with Beatles songs she's never even heard of.

Oh wait.. Will you tell me now she didn't 'persevere' on them that much ?

Or will it be:
Its been a while and she (of MeToo Abilities To Match or OutDo Droopy) has forgotten?

Of all the topics to play this on, she hit the Motherload when stepping into MeToo Mode on this one, so do tell how 'she persevered on the Beatles'
I'll be waiting with bated breath for your reply

{this is probably Larry's cue to say one of his incoherent remarks about now that includes a cryptic reference to The Beatles.
Relax.
"The Beatles and Typewriter" limited phase of this exchange should be over soon enough,
it'll be okay, Larry, really.}

Cat Lady said...

Anna Salamon is probably Amanda Scambag trying to make it look like she has a real friend from that past that saw how autistic she was. Someone from her past contacted me and has a much different story to tell than this Anna Salamon character.

Cat Lady said...

Fore Sam said...
"CNN should have me on with these two psychotic whales so I can put them in their place in public."

I'm still laughing out loud after reading that and picturing that scene :-)

Larry Arnold PhD FRSA said...

Right on cue ...

I know you know what you know
but you should know by now that you're not me
Talk about a month of Sundays
Toffee nosed wet weekend as far as I can see

What more can I possibly say?

Maybe not the Beatles but close enough.

Anonymous said...

Anna Salamon posted under the name Woodpeace then gave her 'real' name. Sounds like another elfs'r'us name to me.

Where are Mr. and Mrs. Baggs in all this? Why don't they live near their disabled daughter to take care of her. Why did she move across a continent from them?

Anonymous said...

"I am sorry to dissapoint, but Jessadriel Darkmountain and Amanda Baggs are two quite distinct and seperate people."

Larry, You are right that elenbarathi calls herself "Jessadriel Darkmountain", but did she write this piece?


Hi, this is me, Jessadriel Darkmountain. Amanda wrote me and told me about this "discussion" - Gad, reading it is like wading through a pool of toxic waste; all the hate and pettiness. I don't see why she even bothers trying to communicate with you lot at all. If you're not ashamed of yourselves, the only possible reason can be because you have no sense of shame at all - and you think you're justified as labeling anyone else as "sick"?!? Yeah right. Go look in a mirror, eh? Best do it on an empty stomach, though.

Anyway, I'm here to say that no, I am not Amanda Baggs, and yes, I DID write that article, exactly as it appears on Amanda's site. I wrote it on my own private blog, in response to a discussion that is none of your damn business, but Amanda saw it and asked my permission to post it on her site, so I said okay. I don't think much of it as an article (and it was not intended to be one when I wrote it) and I have NO slightest interest in "feedback" about it from persons such as yourselves, but... there it is; my writing, and no one else's.

If you bunch of hate-spewing losers doubt that, come and ask me in person, or get some of your loser buddies in the Puget Sound area to come and do so. I'll be performing all three weekends at the Washington Renaissance Fantasy Faire - http://www.washingtonrenfaire.com - so I am very, very easy to find if you want to find me.

Unlike Amanda, I have no problem expressing myself in verbal speech, so... come on, morons; bring it. Make my day.

Very sincerely yours,

~Jessadriel Darkmountain

Larry Arnold PhD FRSA said...

Ego sum Odobenus rosmarus

Carpenters notwithstanding.

Anonymous said...

Thank you for the compliment, Anon.

Anonymous said...

laurentius rex said...

"a little reserch will show that Elenbarathi/Jessadriel Darkmountain is a real person", and is not an alter ego of Amanda's or that the posting on autistics.org is Amanda writing under that name .http://www.livejournal.com/interests.bml?int=elves
"

Larry, I already knew that Elenbarathi/Jessadriel Darkmountain was a real person.

It's no good posting a link to show that one of elenbarathi's interests is in elves. Can you find her saying, "I am not human; I am an elf"?

Amanda had more than an interest in elves, she claimed for years and years that she was an elf.

I have read a number of elenbarathi posts and she doesn't come across as a deluded person. Robert Graves didn't adopt a limp and a stammer believing that he really was Claudius, did he? He didn't live in fear of assassination, did he? Otherwise he would have been locked up.

There is a huge difference between an author using his imagination to write a book and a person who sincerely believes every day that she is one of the many elven characters that she says lives in her body.

"And believing that Jessadriel Darkmountain is a pseudonym for Amanda's confession of elfin delusions of grandeur is somewhat of a delusion in itself."

Okay, so now we know that Amanda didn't use elenbarathi's pseudonym to write that piece. However, there is no doubt that Amanda believed she was an elf from the age of thirteen until she was nineteen. Actually, she has said in her diary that "Katy" the elf appeared in 1989 (when she was nine).

Do you think it likely that when she discovered autism she would have easily abandoned a sincere belief that she had held for more than six years?

Anonymous said...

Ana Salamon, Is this the Amanda Baggs you know?

When I was a girl, I was diagnosed with autism on admission to an institution. I was described as low-functioning, severely regressed, non-compliant, severely complex and unsalvageable. I was regarded as severely violent and self-injurious. I banged my head on the walls. I ripped my hair out in clumps. I sat in a corner a lot without interacting. People trying to interact with me often lead to takedowns and spending a night or longer in restraints. I spent a lot of time in solitary confinement. My speech didn't make a lot of sense. I didn't seem to have fully learned to connect speech to communication.

"I was transferred to a different institution. They used behavior modification there, and they used verbal abuse, torture, and violence as well as rewards. I learned to repeat what they wanted me to say. I was buried underneath their taught non-communicative echolalia, and their control and power over me. I felt like a prisoner, but I had no way of communicating this. So instead I woke up screaming every night, and in the day my mouth obediently repeated what they wanted. "

"I learned that I had to spend time around people every day, even if it became unbearably painful, and I learned that when I felt that pain, I was supposed to engage even more vigorously in the things that caused it. "

"They decided this was enough "progress" to send me home. "

"Then I lived in a combination of my parents' house, special education, and day programs. I had already been broken by the behavior modification. I learned how to have PTSD flashbacks without showing it."

"This was a place that was well-known for having a "good" autism program. I watched children who could not stand unassisted thrown on the ground, stripped, and tied up with their own clothing, and I heard them screaming and crying when they were thrown in the closet. It was so terrible, and I was being given so much training to view things like that as normal and inevitable, that I almost wondered if I'd imagined it. But I got independent verification years later from two separate staff who had worked at that school: It really was that bad. This school still operates."

"I repeated what I had been taught to repeat (and in some cases, to believe), which often included lies like "The treatment I was given saved me from being institutionalized forever." I had learned my behavior mod goals of obedience, so I tried to obey everyone, even those who hurt me."

"I had been explicitly taught that if I thought for myself, I would die. "

"I began to be able to truly communicate rather than repeat things I was "supposed" to say. "

"Prior to this, I had not entirely grasped the full purpose of communication, because the behavior programs taught me to say things, not necessarily to say what I meant."

"A psychiatrist who had known me in the institutions diagnosed me with iatrogenic post-traumatic stress disorder -- an extreme and life-changing negative reaction to "treatment".

"I got help obtaining a life for myself. This life involves a lot of assistance with things that I still can't do. "

"I still soil my clothing.

"I still can't attach speech to communication with enough frequency to use it for that purpose. "

"Sometimes I can't eat without help. "

"All the behavior programs have not changed this, and in fact have caused me to lose a few skills I might otherwise have kept or developed.

There are things I could do in the institutions that I can't do now. I have a much better life now than I ever have before."


Ana, How much of that is fact and how much is fiction? You are a mathematician, so percentages would do.

Anonymous said...

Jessadriel Darkmountain,

You are a performer and have an interest in fantasy, and elves, but you don't believe that you are an elf, do you? Then the question is, why did you write the "article" and why did you link footnote 24 to Amanda's article? Did you spend the last four years of your majority in an institution? Somehow, I doubt it.

"I wrote it on my own private blog, in response to a discussion that is none of your damn business, but Amanda saw it and asked my permission to post it on her site, so I said okay. I don't think much of it as an article (and it was not intended to be one when I wrote it)"

That's the problem. Things that are taken out of context that Amanda uses for her own agenda.

I believe you wrote it after this post:

http://community.livejournal.com/paradigmshifter/4954.html
Jessadriel Darkmountain (elenbarathi) wrote in paradigmshifter,
2004-01-16 15:03:00

Autistic rabble-rousing (x-post to aspergers community)
Just assume that I'm quoting a whole lot of the standard slogans used by other oppressed minorities here, and then go browse your way around in Amanda Baggs' Autism Non-Site.

("Oh gawds, she's getting political again... what brought it on THIS time?")

Buncha things. Partly it's that I'm having a particularly "autistic" week here, perceptual and communicational anomalies out the wazoo, and thus am having to work my butt off to maintain an adequate level of functionality. I can't really tell anybody about this, because the price of getting cut a little slack would be to be perceived as "less functional" - which I am NOT willing to risk - and also because my verbal communication is pretty much 'flying on instruments' right now. I can appear to have normal conversational ability as long as I restrict my speech to conventional phrases and topics, but it would fall all to pieces if I tried to talk about myself in any sort of personal way. Thus, I am not going to make the attempt. However, I'm resenting the hell out of the fact that if I give up my right to remain silent, anything I say can and probably will be used to discount me. This is an ongoing problem; just sometimes it annoys me more than other times.

Mostly, though, I'm annoyed with what appears to be a prevailing attitude among autistic persons: namely the idea that we are disordered, and therefore that NT people have the right to lable and control us... in ways that serve their interests, not ours. Diagnoses, "treatments", all manner of condescension and patronization... and for what? For alleged "help" that, at best, is minimally helpful, and at worst is life-threateningly harmful.

It's freakin' humiliating - not just that things are that way, but that so many autistics apparently accept it, and assume (in the face of clear evidence to the contrary) that the Thought Police medical/psychiatric establishment wants only the best for them. Therefore, all I'm asking is that people at least look at the evidence - and I know some people won't, because it's too scary to even consider switching from being a compliant patient to being a social activist, but for others, maybe it's not too scary.

There are a lot more of us than one might suppose, and we do have rights, if only we've got the guts to stand up and fight for them. Just think about it, okay? And please check out the site. Thanks.

Anonymous said...

Ana Salamon wrote:

Journalist Ann Bauer describes her autistic son's transition from quirky near-normalcy to catatonia, by way of neuroleptic drugs. The story is similar to Amanda's and well worth a read: http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2007/05/18/autism_misdiagnosis/index_np.html. (Amanda's story was years before the article was written and cannot have been copied.)

Ann Bauer is also an author. Have you read the article in it's entirety? Amanda's story is nothing like this.

Ann's autistic son didn't become catatonic because he took neuroleptic drugs. His autistic catatonia was not diagnosed, and he developed a form of schizophrenia after he was put on anti-depressants. The schizophrenia was then treated with neuroleptics and they turned him "psychotic". Amanda's hallucinations and delusions pre-date her medication.

Notice also that Ana took her son to the Mayo clinic to be detoxed.

What is interesting about this story is that Ann eventually found herself living with a very low-functioning person with autism. She certainly wasn't celebrating his neurodiversity - or the shit on his sheets. As soon as she realized that the drugs had damaged her son's brain, she did everything in her power to get her son back. And she succeeded.

That's what many of us here are trying to do. Get our children back.

Why do you think Amanda and the Neurodiversity crowd are so opposed to our efforts?

There's no doubt that drugs can damage brains - and vaccines can too.

Droopy said...

This "Jessadriel Darkmountain" allegedly wrote a 'fictional piece of work'
Amanda Baggs wrote a diary chronology of some of her mental illness

HUGE difference.

Anna,
I'm still awaiting your reply to my first queries.

Watson,
what you quoted of Amanda again on too many counts sounds like me and is more toward the difference between what's been her reality, what's been mine, and the Grand Canyon level of misleading leaps undertaken by her to bridge the differences between them.
I also like that you're here finding data and posting it as you do. Please keep it coming, its powerful stuff.
Is it any wonder with all this 'being something they're not' and multiples and all this other nonsense that its next to impossible to keep track of the players (and I do mean 'players' in every sense of the word) involved?

Larry,
you want my first name?
Its right on autistics.org where muskie illegally copyrighted something of mine and at the time rather then attempt a court issue, through 3rd party mediation agreed to have her update the page to give me due credit. Look for it.
Hint: its a page with a copyright in 1998 for work I submitted to their page circa 1996, copyrighted to Laura T as if its hers (there are also dozens of duplications of my work with the same theme, mine being the first submitted).
But prey tell: How is my name or the lack thereof supposed to change anything for you?
Are you suggesting if you have my full first and last name that's going to somehow finally sway you to admitting reality here? Somehow given the failure of the evidence thus far to sway you, I doubt that.
Keep playing "Blind Man Feels Elephant's Foot and Wonders if its a Tree" -- I won't give up my safety and security just so after its done you can then resume this game once I've made that sacrifice.
I'm autistic, not stupid.
When I've got a professional looking out for my best interests, securing my rights and my safety I will trust their advice and give what's needed at their discretion and not before.
Know though, that in addition to off-line verification of my life, there are on-line witnesses, quite a few in fact, to my presence on-line dating way back, and in this way I just may have verifying my life covered in both realms.

Amanda,
You really need to learn what constitutes copyright/intellectual property infringement is and isn't -- boy do you ever!
This 'work' by one "Jessadriel Darkmountain" was clearly posted here with this authorship's labeling and a direct link back to your page.
While there's obviously been some confusion (and not without good reason given your own fifty million little elve-y persona names personalities 'switchbacks' etc you bring about and your notoriously dodgey means to misrepresent yourself) and while the question was very viably there: "was this you in disguise or not?" -- Nobody here at any time claimed authorship of that work, nobody here was in doubt where it was located, (linked from your site) etc. Properly Identifying, giving credit and linking to material is hardly a copyright infringement.
What you do to me however does fall squarely into the very sort of violation you've now screamed about this exchange about this 'work' as well as what I understand you've done to that Danial Drucker, its odd how you scream 'copyright infringement' at any and every oddball turn, and yet both you and Muskie/Laura have been quite guilty of exactly that (claiming the works, experiences thoughts, intellectual property, of others as your own.
Please for the sake of everyone, learn and respect the difference.

Jessadriel Darkmountain,
listen up,
Your friend isn't being truthful and you're an actress, making neither of you anything you say, including autistic.
If you're an actress then (this whole combined nonsense has me confused I'll admit.. for people claiming to be 'on the spectrum' be it by way of acting/role-playing or mental illness delusions there sure seems to be a monumental amount of general bullshit thats not based on the truth involved no matter how you slice it.
If this was 'writing a piece' of fiction then its odd how that was never identified as such, and also then we can conclude the entire thing from danish great-grandmother and autism as well to be 'role-played' as well.
Nazis do that sort of thing you know, role-play distort mock and diminish the reality that people endured at their hands. They also think nothing of ridiculing the disabled in just this way.
Play-acting or delusion, one person or two, either way its reprehensible and I can see that 'birds of a feather flock together.'
Amanda surely is every bit as verbal as you, Ms Jessadriel Darkmountain, and therein lies the problem and the very point I've been making right along as she conscientiously does the same as you, but in her case using my reality, my life as her source.
I might not be as verbal as you and Amanda, but don't confuse non-verbal with non-vocal and if you've got some notion of screaming nonsensical words at anyone as some sort of proof or way to win something, because bullshit is bullshit and my screaming worldess vocalizations in response has/lacks the very same level of meaning etc you can provide with your words.
Assuming this is the work of a separate person and its being a work of fiction would certainly explain the miscalculation at your being 48 and creating this story based on your great-grandmother.
Were it not for that and the 'der furher' nonsense (and it being located on Amanda's website rather substantially reducing the credibility), you might've fooled me... almost. (that's a compliment to your writing, take it, its one of the few kinder things I believe will be coming your way from me).
As for some sort of John Wayne "Make my Day" bullshit?
I don't intimidate all that easily, but if you want something, a screaming match or whatever, make your way to Kalamazoo Michigan on August 4th with the rest of them to meet up with more like yourself but be warned, I may not even be in town that particular day as the likes of you en mass will be overrunning it and you should have a hay-day. But be warned should you and I ever meet one on one ever on any day and you want to step up -- I really don't like Nazis

To both of you (Amanda "Jessadriel" and whomever else the SS boot fits):
For such a bunch of people who pride themselves on what are supposedly stereotypical autistic traits such as honesty, a sense of justice and logic, there's sure a lot of illogical less-than-scrupulous people-screwing rights-violating bullshit going on, a much higher percentage of it than I generally encounter with non-autistics.

Take this:
http://droopyssafespace.blogspot.com/2007/07/im-still-standing.html

Droopy said...

or take this
(heh, URL nurfing website):
http://droopyssafespace.blogspot.com/
("I'm Still Standing")
or just go here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lK-0wfHutk

Anonymous said...

Anonymous said: "Anna Salamon posted under the name Woodpeace then gave her 'real' name."

Woodpeace is my Live Journal name. I am not Anna Salamon. I am male and British, she is female and American.

Also I posted the definition of 'anbued' on July 26. I forgot to give my name.

Anonymous said...

Foolish Dragon. If something can be cured via medical means then it must be a medical condition. Only fools refuse a cure to someone suffering from a medical condition. So what were we discussing again?

Anonymous said...

Who is Amanda Baggus?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/gloucestershire/6284184.stm

Anna Salamon said...

Watson,
Yes, that is the Amanda I know.  To the best of my knowledge, all the statements you quoted or paraphrased are accurate.  I can personally vouch for many of them, including the current disabilities you quote (trouble feeding herself, can't speak for communication, can't reliably toilet), and much of the horror of the institutions.  I didn't see the institutions, but I saw the flashbacks afterwards in great detail, and I saw how much slow, painful work it took to overcome institutional conditioning afterwards.  For a long time Amanda was terrified anytime she said anything about herself that differed from what they had conditioned her to say.  Telling the truth is something she worked long and hard to be able to do, under hellish circumstances.

Though true, the passages you quote could be misleading.  There is more to Amanda, and to anyone, than her disabilities.  But that was one of Amanda's points in the passage you took your quotes/paraphrases
from, and so they give a different picture in the original context (http://www.autistics.org/library/time.html).  She was talking in part about how medicalized descriptions of people can be misleading.  She was using herself as an example. And, again, her business in that essay was not to give a complete and fully nuanced description of her life (she's written more about her own life elsewhere) but to counter a specific form of anti-self-advocate propaganda by pointing out that people who sound terribly disabled in certain medicalized terminologies can also live outside of instiutions (with support) and can want human rights and so on.

In any case, it is fact, not fiction.

Anna

Anna Salamon said...

Watson (in reply to your other message),
Yes, I read Ann Bauer's whole article. And the sequence of events for Amanda is not so different from the sequence of events for Ann Bauer's son.

Ann Bauer's son had autistic catatonia before medication, but it became much worse because of the medication (and other symptoms arrived too).

Amanda had autistic catatonia-type movement disorders before medication (she was originally sent to a neurologist at 13, for periodic inability to move among other things). But the movement disorder became abruptly worse after she was put on neuroleptics, and worsened further over the years she was kept on the drugs.

She did not believe she was an elf before or after medication. As discussed in my first post, the elf "delusion", and the apparent schizophrenia more generally, was a fiction to hide herself in. Much of the content of that old journal was a part of hiding herself in that fiction (for example, she did not hallucinate at age 7).

Anna Salamon said...

Maxima,
I am a real person and am not Amanda. Nor am I Woodpeace. If you doubt it, try asking Watson, who seems to have done some research on me.

You could also email me at:
a w salamo (but make it all one word) at ucsd dot edu. Like most large organizations, UCSD checks its students' legal names before giving out email addresses.
Anna

Anonymous said...

A friend of mine got really annoyed when she found out that at least ten other people had the same online name as her. It certainly causes confusion.

John Best said...

Can anyone give me the timeline on the hallucinations? Did they start after the sexual abuse?

Wasn't she only in an institution for a couple of months? Was it longer?

John Best said...

Droopy, What did Amanda do to Daniel Drucker?

Anonymous said...

Didn't she accuse him of stalking after he said he knew her in college and that she was just fine before she began to take LSD.

Droopy might know more.

BTW Droopy, you are very astute! You said Larry can be perfectly coherant in his writing when he wants to be. It's true, he can.!

Larry Arnold PhD FRSA said...

Gotta be coherent once in a while, I didn't earn my place at Birmingham University by not being coherent (or did I?)

At least I don't go around pretending to be a Walrus, not that Walri don't have civil rites. (and some downright uncivil ones too)

John Best said...

ANNA,
I asked you a couple of questions. Why don't you answer me?

Anonymous said...

It's nice to know that Amanda reads this blog, since she took the time to direct Anna to it. Also it seems quite a number of AFFers read here too. I guess it gives them somethin to do between going to the mail tp pick up theor checks

Don't you feel special John?

Anonymous said...

Anna, where are Amands'a family. Why don't you direct them to this blog so they can tell the real story.

John Best said...

Anon, Amanda and her scumbag lawyer, have been reading this blog for a long time. It's odd that they only try to pick on an autistic woman. I wonder why they don't come after me.

You don't think Amanda conjured up this "Anna", do you?

Droopy said...

Anna said...
"[...]I can personally vouch for many of them, including the current disabilities you quote (trouble feeding herself, can't speak for communication, can't reliably toilet)[...]"


You can't vouch for the difference between can't and won't.

Amanda stakes her exacting claim on my fine motor skills and a test that demonstrated them, she has demonstrated ability to play two flutes simultaneously, makes weak claims on my ability to type, my words per minute etc, yet she claims to be lacking the same fine motor skills to bring eating utensils to her own mouth?

Do you know how many seriously disturbed paranoid schizophrenics who think they are God would delight in and expect to be spoon fed? Do you know how easy it would be for a person to feign such a thing and how impossible it would be to prove it as a bona fide disability in her case rather than a choice?

The same goes for toileting. Let me ask you this: having implied you've seen her soiling her own clothes, pooping her pants (and have you witnessed it or is this another little trickydick wordwrangling on your part?):
Who changed Amanda after the event? Who took care of the resulting soiling and cleaned her up? Was it Amanda herself or was it her "staff" coming to tend to the situation while Amanda did nothing?
I'll bet I can guess, and again, you can't prove that wasn't a willful sort of encopresis sort of act done to foster her elf God delusion and more than you can prove her elective mutism is anything other than what it is.
Why is it Amanda's 'disabilities' are a matter of extreme convenience for Amanda, and I'd bet one month's social security check that a close studying and following of Amanda, if it were possible to see her with her unawares, would find her 'disabilities' surfacing and receding at times most convenient to her. I'm that serious.

People refusing to do things they actually can do for a variety of motives isn't a new concept, neither are the motives that inspire it.

That none of these things come up in her writings or are referred to before getting online, linking up with Tconsik and making her way across country first speaks volumes. There's no discussing of any of the things she stole from me written by her at any time, none of these teenaged writings include any of my disabilities or attributes and its only in retrospect and re-writing history that she and you are doing this. No problems speaking, toileting or feeding herself any autism (other than her admiring it in students she was set to work with) referenced at all before Laura T and her go round with her third disability, by the time she got done with schizophrenia and MPD and having read 80 books on the matter and having a real life example to go by (me) she's perfected her act.

I have caregivers/support people/home help-health people who work WITH me and I don't have a lawyer to bully my county or state into giving me excesses of these so I can wave the number of hours around like another badge and some proof of excess disability that I'm obsessed about conveying day and night. No wonder no one ever sees 'more of Amanda than her disabilities' because my.. oops I mean 'her' disabilities are all Amanda wants to talk about, the more severely disabled (read: severely autistic) she can make herself appear the better and that is all she is about.

For the record:
I feed me. I change my own diapers/clean my own ass and I don't have 'staff' this is not the Oval Office or a king's court here and I only take the services I need out of a commitment to a community I am a part of. Every hour I have "Betty" for example working with me is an hour somebody else doesn't have her, and the state of Michigan -- which I do give a shit about, not being some California Queen creating some new identity Johnny-come-lately to some new unsuspecting state/county with no care in the world for how it impacts them, and being one who takes PRIDE in my INDEPENDENCE and what I CAN do and alone time being a precious prize for me, you can rest assured not only my autism but my entire collective of disabilities are not only 'more severe than' hers and I only take what I need to survive because I give a shit about this city, this county, this state and the people in it and proudly boasting how much you could rob them of these things is nothing to be proud of and no reflection on real level of need you can be sure of that.

Even as Michigan starves, being the the last and worst off state in just about everything at the moment, my state manages to supply me with incontinence supplies. Why is it Amanda must periodically run out to a drugstore and pick up a bag of depends overgrown adult pullups (for the not-so-incontinent and not to be confused with adult diapers), aren't cases of diapers and adult wipes a joy to behold and evidence of severe disability, another badge to wave about and refer to and discuss at every turn? Why wasn't her personal friend attorney able to badger these out of the state of Vermont as well? An oversight?

"I didn't see the institutions"

Don't worry, neither did Amanda.

I, however, did.
20 years of them and in fact being incontinent, really incontinent, is the single most reason I took the abuse and mistreatment that I did, but I don't talk about that and so you won't see Amanda talking about it either as I've not given up any data there to be robbed because that's *really personal* and like Vietnam vets I know, I have built walls around it, but if I ever do open up about those things, you can be sure Amanda will be right there 'misremembering' the same things. It makes me sick.

I will tell you this much:
We didn't have suede fur-lined restraint cuffs in the places I was in. Real disabled people in real MR/DD places, state run places, maybe you get the idea, had not so fancy. I recall hard blue plastic ones, but that's another story, that's all private business I won't be handing over to Amanda so she can recount it as her own, she's gotten quite more than enough off of me already.

""Telling the truth is something she worked long and hard to be able to do"

She needs to try longer and harder.
Telling MY truths in a distorted carnival funhouse manner isn't getting it.

its she's giving hellish circumstances now, and does she care? In all the commentary and relayed messages I get regarding this from her, not one expresses remorse for the shit she's put me through for her game.

"Though true, the passages you quote could be misleading. There is more to Amanda, and to anyone, than her disabilities."

Could be misleading? that's all she's ever been and again, 'her disabilities' and as heavily modified in 'hindsight' as she dare and as she can make them are all we see.
Why is it that outside of the 'cool and oddball and notably autistic' and specifically procured off of me, there is not one instance where Amanda admits to being high functioning? There is not one instance where Amanda admits to actually not being as severely autistic in even any one singular way, than anyone else?

Why is it Amanda attempts to be all aspects of autism at all times? Its not possible, sorry, she is not Everyone's Autism, so many things outright contradict and are not possible to be within one person, but she knows that and has all these mile long attempts to explain why she is The Ultimate Autistic.

They don't give anti-psychotics to people for no reason and she self induced psychosis with her LSD taking, as a result was given these drugs. As a result of being given these drugs she's decided to take some overgrown tardive disconesia concept and milk it into an excuse to suddenly be very autistic (and 'very autistic' is exactly what she is playing at, its only when really pressed she will admit that most of the things she's playing as if they are 'her autism' are then the result of all these other very notably NOT autism disabilities she also claims).
In the middle of all this she sampled those other trendy disabilities (Schizophrenia, MPD others).
Autism was no part of her illness and it isn't now.
Get Real Amanda.

If you want to say you have some overgrown tardive disconesia, some overgrown Parkinson's etc then SAY THAT, stop pretending any let alone all of this is "your autism' when its only mine and a game you're playing off of it.

Anna either she was seriously schizo or she was play-acting. Today you're opting for the "she was play acting to please,a performance' choice and then telling me the play acting to please performance of MPD wasn't real but now suddenly the play acting performance to please of autism is one we should believe?
I don't think so.
She was diagnosed with Fictions disorder for a damned good reason and that on the third trendy go round of disabilities she's pretended she's honed and perfected her shtick still doesn't justify it's taking place at all.

She did not believe she was an elf before or after medication.
Then she lied.
She lies now.

"As discussed in my first post, the elf "delusion", and the apparent schizophrenia more generally, was a fiction to hide herself in."
As is my autism and my life are a fiction to hide herself in now.

Get out, Amanda.

Once the entire world even thought the world was flat but for one person. They were wrong and likewise an army behind you swearing to your intentional lies still does not make them any more real.

Anonymous said...

Anna, Thank you for responding.

Let's be clear. 'Past, Present and Future' was written by Amanda to give an adult face to low-functioning autism, and to speak vociferously against any intervention and treatment for autism - on behalf of all low-functioning children with autism.

In this piece Amanda gives the impression that she was at one time a low-functioning child with autism. That her speech didn't make a lot of sense, that she was not toilet-trained, that she banged her head on walls and ripped her hair out in clumps.

That is not true, is it, Anna?

I mean, presumably, at age 12, when you were discussing conformity vs non-conformity, it wasn't one-sided, with you doing all the talking and Amanda sitting in the corner, virtually bald, banging her head on the wall, and talking nonsense.

Presumably she had actually read the Tao Te Ching that she lent you - and she hadn't just sniffed and rubbed the pages against her face.

Amanda gives the impression that she had ABA and that although at times she was rewarded, she was more often than not, tortured, beaten, punished, and in this horrific way she was taught to speak. "Non-communicative echolalia".

That is not true. Is it, Anna?

That even though they tried to teach her to use the toilet they failed, and at the time of writing the article at the age of 24, she "STILL" soiled her clothes.

That also is not true. Is it, Anna?

She was using the toilet appropriately at 12, wasn't she? According to Amanda, she had been fully toilet-trained before she was three years old.

Perhaps you can tell me why after being brutally treated, and having watched other children with autism "thrown on the ground, stripped, and tied up with their own clothing... and having "heard them screaming and crying when they were thrown in the closet", she, your friend, Amanda Baggs, wrote in Dec 1997:

"Many children (mostly autistic) at my school use those picture card things. Everything in the room is labeled with them, and they have schedule boards with velcro on them to attach the pictures. When they want to do something, they point to the picture (often with a lot of coaxing).

My school's pretty neat actually.

It's special-ed for ages 7?-22. There are maybe forty students, of all kinds of problems (I'm in the high-functioning class, recovering from schizophrenia). I get to work with one of the autistic girls once a week, and I really enjoy it.

I want to do things like that professionally, eventually. Once I get out of this school and back to college... "

This paints an entirely different picture, doesn't it?


Now, Amanda might think that she "had autism" when she was a child, and it wouldn't surprise me in the least if she had what are now called "autistic traits", after all they are not that unusual even in the 'normal population' but can you honestly say that Amanda's first 12 years were anything like this:

http://dir.salon.com/story/mwt/feature/2003/09/27/autism/index.html?pn=1

Be honest. They weren't, were they?

And that is what's wrong with what you are doing coming to Amanda's rescue, just like the cavalry, when any discussion is raised about her past - on AFF, on Metafilter, on here.

Why?

Because neither Amanda nor you have lived with Autism. Neither of you have cared for a loved one with Autism 24/7, 365 days a year. Year, after year, after year.

Scott Sea's daughter has low-functioning autism. Amanda has taken it upon herself to speak for this child and for tens of thousands like her.

What do you think will happen to this young girl when her parents are gone? Who will take care of her? Not you in your Maths Department at UCSD. And certainly not Amanda.

Amanda's interests center around Amanda and Amanda's wants and needs. Her interest in autism is primarily an intellectual one. And she loves being consulted and giving advice. After all, she has been doing it for years on various support forums: schizophrenia, PTSD, DID, Bi-Polar,..

She has lived most of her life inside her head and her experience of LIFE has come from the numerous books she has read.

Parents of children with autism, on the other hand, are living day after day with stark reality, in the blood and guts of it all. Our lives revolve every day around someone else, not ourselves. That's the difference.

What you may not know is that since 1999 there has been an active campaign to paint a rosy picture of autism, and, from reading some of the posts at AFF, it is obviously working extremely well.

Stimming has become foot jiggling, stroking one's beard, biting one's bottom lip, or tapping a pencil. Echolalia has become BSing your way through school and getting straight As by storing large sentences and sentence-pieces and recombining them to look like you know what you're saying. Perseverances have become special interests or collections. Having sensory problems is having to remove tabs on clothing because they feel scratchy. Social difficulties have become shyness or not being able to do 'small talk'.

Today "having autism" or "being autistic" means being a geek or a nerd, or getting a certain score in an online Aspie quiz. It means being special and superior to Neurotypicals.

Before this bullshit started, no parent wanted to hear that their child had autism. Since it was suggested in 1999 that Einstein might have had it, intellectuals think they have it - or their quirky children might have it.

Only problem is: they don't.

I am not at all surprised that you are supporting Amanda now because you have apparently been a steadfast friend who has stood by her for many years throughout her schizophrenic illness. Not many friends would do that.

But please consider that by supporting Amanda in this fiction that she had full-blown autism as a child and, as such, that she should be free to speak against treatment for children with autism, you are also agreeing with what she says:

"Autism is fundamentally beautiful."

Do you believe that? Now read Scott Sea's article again, and tell me it is.

Anonymous said...

Anna said...

She did not believe she was an elf before or after medication. As discussed in my first post, the elf "delusion", and the apparent schizophrenia more generally, was a fiction to hide herself in. Much of the content of that old journal was a part of hiding herself in that fiction (for example, she did not hallucinate at age 7).

It would seem obvious that you have not spent any time reading through Amanda's numerous posts on the google support forums. If you spent a few hours here you might learn more about Amanda from what she has told other people at various times. I must warn you though, it gets very confusing.

John has already asked you about the sexual abuse. Being a close friend, did Amanda ever discuss sexual abuse by family members with you?

I wrote....

What is interesting about this story is that Ann eventually found herself living with a very low-functioning person with autism. She certainly wasn't celebrating his neurodiversity - or the shit on his sheets. As soon as she realized that the drugs had damaged her son's brain, she did everything in her power to get her son back. And she succeeded.

That's what many of us here are trying to do. Get our children back.

Why do you think Amanda and the Neurodiversity crowd are so opposed to our efforts?

There's no doubt that drugs can damage brains - and vaccines can too.


And you side-stepped that part of my message. I would like to hear your response.

Droopy said...

Fore Sam said...
"Droopy, What did Amanda do to Daniel Drucker?

Anonymous said...
Didn't she accuse him of stalking after he said he knew her in college and that she was just fine before she began to take LSD.
Droopy might know more."


This is all I have about him:
In direct dialog with Amanda on IRC about Daniel Drucker, she said he kept pictures of her up on his website and refused to take them down. She said he was a stalker of her's, a general known stalker of disabled women in fact and heavily implied he would be a danger to me and for my own safety I should stay away from him. According to Amanda the stalking included having taken pictures of her without her permission and posting them on the web. I made the natural assumption based on her words (being not aware yet of Amanda's mastery of carefully leading people to the assumptions she desires them to make) I believed then that this was some camera-welding peeping tom following her in the shadows, taking pictures and having some perverse disability fetish thing. Amanda of course did much to foster and nothing to correct these notions.

That he was a friend or boyfriend, a party comrade, that there even WERE parties, acid dropping and a notably non LFA life before etc etc was this whole other life Amanda had lived etc were carefully kept from me by her.

Amanda had even gone so far as to tell me her mother had to forge documents and coerced the forgery and compliance of everyone around her (doctors, school counselors, teachers eye witnesses) so that she could attend this college. She distinctly led me to believe she was 'just like me' and had been when she attended that university.
That's how we exchanged experiences My experiences consisting of things like my needing a support person assist me to classes, using my communicator in class, being called 'Rainman' and the awful remarks, naively thinking as long as I didn't rock hum and scream in classes and lecture halls I was 'good to go' etc., Amanda carefully allowing me to think these were her sorts of experiences too...

Obviously details were carefully kept from me in our exchange and its also clear that Amanda's intent was to have me scared of this guy so I wouldn't dream of trying to contact him.
She seemed actually pretty animated about this whole thing, enough to provoke some speedy (for Amanda anyway) text to come out of her on this livetime (IRC) chat we had about this (She showed no signs of being able to type faster than anyone else and like with anyone else, I frequently had to stop and wait for her to read and cast her reply as not to 'type rings around her' -- this is not a cognitive issue, its that I DO type FAST and well she should wish she could half as well), but this topic clearly provoked a lot of effort on her part, and because already stuff just wasn't stacking up right about Amanda at all the more I talked to her and on seeing Laura T again, etc, so I looked up this Drucker on-line later that same night via a Google search and found an actually pretty typical-looking married guy:
http://www.3e.org/dmd/

Stalkers aren't usually married and anyway, his wife doesn't look disabled so I wondered right away about the implication of his being somebody who 'preys on disabled women' (and that is what Amanda said to describe him).
Amanda seemed extra animated during that whole conversation, and later when I received her lawyer friend's threatening letter it made very clear direct reference to this, there were exacting threats that specifically talked about and warned me against 'contacting people from her past' and the way it was worded against the exchanges she and I had had, it was just short of using his name. It was clear the letter's threat was an reference to Drucker.

I have no idea why its so important that I of all people not make contact with Daniel Drucker, but its also been a reported worry of Amanda's that I might when she's talking with others about the situation. I still don't know exactly why. It makes me wonder though.
Has she contacted him somehow and told him I'm likewise an insane deadly stalker or something too then to scare him from me? Is he afraid of speaking with me then too?
I also wonder: has her lawyer goodbuddy also sent similar threatening letters to him like were sent to me? I don't know, I just really do some wondering there.

This is all I have on why Amanda claims he's a stalker:
Amanda and this Daniel Drucker met in college in 1994, and were very close friends for quite some time. In '95, Amanda asked Drucker to act as caretaker for many of her writings, pictures, and other creations - i.e., make them available on-line, keep them safe for future retrieval. However, a few years later, Amanda forgot that she had asked him to do this, and accused him of stealing her work and/or violating her copyright. She claimed that he forged emails from her asking him to publish her poems.
Since then and for the past ten years they (Amanda and Drucker) have evidently had a mutual feeling of not wanting to be a part of one another's lives.

That's about all I have, but as an added note, for all her excessive fears that I might contact this person from her past,

Amanda then in turn went ahead and purposely sought out someone from my past that I had by name explicitly told both her and Laura T I did not want contact with and did not want hearing about me or knowing my where abouts etc -- Amanda explicitly sought out an 'old friend' of mine to do some intensive querying of regarding me and in turn due to Amanda's seeking this person from MY past out and intensive probing, sure enough that person turned and sought me out and admitted the 'background check' and contact and query about me made of my friend by Amanda and that her doing this was the cause that prompted said 'person of my past' to seek me out and make contact with me.

Amanda did precisely that with me that she's been so terrified I might do with Drucker.

Fortunately for me its only a stroke of luck that so far her doing this and dredging this person out of my past hasn't turned out to be a complete disaster -- that still doesn't exactly make her having done it right whatsoever.

I'd be interested in an explanation on how she justifies that sort if shit behavior, but when it comes to things involving the recognition and responsiveness to the feelings of others, all my queries are met with complete and total silence.

Other people and our feelings, responsibility for and equality of rules (what applies to me applies to her, whats fair is fair, that I even HAVE feelings or that her actions have impact or consequences for others -- none of that seems ot be on her radar at all.)
There is no word on any of those from her the only responsiveness to any of this, any word or message she might like conveyed back to me have been the following:
'through the grapevine' that I can find, only that

A: At one time she was scared for her own welfare, scared of the repercussions of having done this to me, what might come of my publicly protesting this plus having gotten her ass on CNN, a fear that others might be inspired to do something to put her safety at risk the more I talk about this.
(I don't know if that claim is still being made, but for my own answer and conclusion I look to the fact that if she's so scared, she's evidently not been scared enough to stop coping me)

B: she'd like me to know and with emphasis that she recognizes I'm not mentally retarded (Because she knows my response to certain specific events in my life, those lock-on heat-seeking-ICBM-Missile "oh call ME retsrded will ya?" few major responsive points in my life that were instigated by such things and I guess she didn't wanna be one of or the focus of one of those. If she's really worried, she can step off of underestimating such that you think you can use me and get away with it and you can rest assured you won't be)

C: she vows adamantly that she did not attempt to copy or convey my heritage, and is not attempting to appear Jewish in any way shape or form (and wanted this stated somewhere by me evidently even, so much so that this as a plaintive request from her to me was put through the 'grape vine'), as a courtesy actually more to a friend of mine, I'm relaying this message.

D: she continues persisting in vowing globally up and down and all over that she does not copy me at all in any way whatsoever (which to me the untruth in this statement from her rather flies in the face of and shoots in the ass any and all of the previous)

Droopy said...

Fore Sam said...
"ANNA,
I asked you a couple of questions. Why don't you answer me?"


Same here, Ditto that questions without replies from Anna here too.

What is the meaning of this?
Does this mean we're not playing "Its About Typewriters and Beatles" now?
I was hoping for the reply there and if its moved on without anyone's alerting me so that now about diapers speaking and feeding oneself and the impossibility of you proving she can't do any of those things and there no historical proof of any of these before getting on-line and getting an eyeful/database's worth of me, I'm waiting there too.

Side note:
Any of you American Autistics USA AFFers ALF and ND types,
(besides Amanda and Kassiane that is, I already figured with the medical fraud routine performed by you two within days of its release that you two have),
the rest of you, have any of you gotten access to see Michael Moore's latest documentary "Sicko"?
At 14:28 (14 minutes and 28 seconds into seeing it it) I observed that:

Autism and Asperger's are both on the nationwide standards for health insurance's "Do Not Insure" list, Michael Moore went on to demonstrate that you don't even have to have a formal diagnosis for things on those lists, and there are people employed to go at you like murder scene detectives to keep you from being insured, making sure you become uninsured and keeping your claims from being paid by them...

Maybe in much the same way I do, Amanda's got herself secured. Smart by getting on her SSI with whatever she used at 19 (likely was her schizophrenia) then insuring its continuation by play-acting at the severity of my disabilities to keep it coming -- and 'Mandy' you'd better hope your parents retiring or passage doesn't throw you onto SSD enough to bump you up and over income limits for that much needed precious Medicaid -- will you still be poor enough? If you're parents could afford the deluxe mental hospitals and luxury grouphomes and flute lessons and all -- did they put just little enough in the system to keep you safe, or will it throw you over? Makes you wonder dunnit),

Maybe Amanda's got herself covered.
What about the rest of you?

The rest of you who can't get disability (because of a silly little detail like not being disabled) who didn't take time to think ahead and construct a deal like Amanda did first, its you who can forget about your envious eyeballing and dreams of services I need for survival as sweet perks for yourselves by trying to erase HFA/LFA distinctions etc). You're gonna have something else to keep you busy, because you got your wish ( at least as far as health insurance turning you down goes), to them its all the same too there is no LFA/HFA for them its just equally wrong and enough to deny you (oh joy, you made it, there's no difference to somebody, whee!),

and it looks like can all predate right back to here, right back to the Internet or anywhere else you have been running off stamping Autism/Asperger's all over yourselves and screaming bloody murder about it, all you self diagnosers too don't worry you're not being left out, all of this could very well come back to bite you in the ass in a very real and personal way, courtesy of the US govt and its health system... but don't listen to me, what do I care, my stuff's safe I gain nothing by telling you (other than maybe yet another chance to ask "how cool is being autistic now?"), and you get a heads up on this (lots of you teenaged AFFers who are gonna be in the work force soon should really be listening..

but I'm just a lowly 'tard dontcha know, (right Phil?) don't listen to me!, no, instead listen to Larry (who's maybe got a cruddy council house but hey at least he's got his National Health), and Amanda.

Yeah, they've got the same to lose as you, and they really care.. they've got your best interest at heart... really they do.. they've got your back... really... honest..
they do... really!

Maybe Amanda can put webpages about each and every one of you too, one at at time, posturing and calling for others to come pick up your medical expenses too, just like she did for Kassiane (better hope you're early in line before the graces and funds of the do-gooders run out)...

Yeah that'll do it, that'll fix it up.. yeah forget I said anything at all, shhhhhh nevermind,

Stand up, Be Asperger's, Be Autistic, Be Proud (but then just don't dare Be Sick)!

Droopy said...

Anna, lets try this:

How come there are no entries in Amanda's diary from when you knew her/she was schizophrenic that say anything like:

"July 29th 1996
Dear Diary,
while I was busy pretending to be an elf in an imaginary woods today in my mind and I was SOO busy watching all my litle elve-y personalities inside my head that I completely forgot myself and pooped my pants."

Nightsong"


Or maybe:

"June 29th 1996
Dear Diary,

Today I was so busy thinking about being an elf God that the staff at the grouphome/hospital had to feed me because I could not navigate getting food on my spoon or fork and my mouth open and the food in.

Nightsong"

Anywhere there is NOTHING like that, and why isn't there anything like:

"Dear Diary,

I sure am glad my good buddy Anna brought me a typewriter today I'm sure it will help because it sure is a real drag not being able to talk and it really sucks when all I REALLY want to say a little thing like 'I'm the Elf God' but all I get when I try are mostly little sounds like grunting and baby babble or getting upset and screetching and stuff like that instead.

Nightsong"

why no entries like that, Anna?

and how could he be in a 'special school' that catered to both schizophrenics and autistics and have these people who specialized in both completely fail to notice her and pick out the distinction?

Don't gimme misdiagnosed -- she was right in with people who surely WOULD know the difference. AFTER her gifted college days so we're talking 1995 and onward -- ASperger's was freshly in the books, even a very MILD autism would have been picked up, but ohno, not for Amanda in her special school in her class for schizophrenics with the classes for autistics evidently flanking her classroom. Go figure.

Oh that's right, now I remember, its because she wasn't freaking autistic


And lastly, why should she try so very hard to keep all this stuff suppressed.. and right when she did...

looking at the timeline of when this stuff was written vs the 'few years later' it sure looks to me like about the time a trek across country to start up her new image was in process was the 'oh woops wait, Daniel Drucker's got this stuff there, must suppress it" events would have taken place.

Rather than deal with and have any sort of reasonable answer (hint: because there is none!) she jumped on him to get stuff hidden that smacks of her not being autistic or all that 'severely disabled' to any degree.

schizophrenia 'oh she didn't mean it'
MPD 'oh she didnt' mean that either that was a mistake'

Now she's ;autistic' and a whole hellofa lot like me and the way I've been all of my life in the process -- and going to great lengths to downplay and conceal and mislead people off of the fact that this is very very contrived on her part and only developed and carefully explained away then after finding Laura T circa 1998 who is also very political, not particularly autistic herself, showing a history of low scruples, and who was once a borderline personality working on coaxing a counselor she had into giving her the DX of AS.. she's subsequently 'misremembered' her own childhood into having 'speech problems' too.
I personally remember that about Laura T, her first diagnosis (BP) and her being in battle to get and AS dx and I suspect it stunned them both when I sat on IRC with Natalia 'relaying' conversation between the two of them on "Second Life" and me on IRC when I pulled that out of memory and asked about it. When Natalia started pasting about "misremembered childhood' back to me I got a very intense sick feeling as my immediate response was I didn't want them to be this, I wanted her to be real, be her own person. She just wasn't.

Anna you also were a bit more liberal with admitting on your AFF version of this that Amanda is 'histrionic' and 'prone to exaggerate' and a bit of a hypochondriac, with a lot of excessive pleas for sympathy and understanding at her doing this, so where is so much of that now?

Where is you asking me to just 'understand' because the poor misunderstood confused starve-for-acceptance 26 year old Amanda Baggs just really NEEDS MY LIFE for her own and won't I just be so understanding and nice and kind as to let her have it (and the answer as if you didn't already know is: "oh HELL No" and if you've any doubt how that might sound spoken or thought, think of "Bernie Mac" giving those three words but not for any comedic value as I am quite serious).

and what WERE you doing in this 'camp' with her and were you in the group homes the ritzy psych unit, etc too? What's your deal?

in all her writings (and she's got a few the wordy one is she)

There's ONE remark that she pounded her head into a wall -- due to voices advising her to do so

There's no talk of seizures, no talk of hair pulling, no vomiting, that whole list of stuff I recited (all three of them) what do you see of what she copies in me now, in her actual writings of the time?
hmm?

Before you dodge out with 'well she got worse due to catatonia' -- its not autism, if any of that business is even true its not the result of autism its because she twigged her head with LSD then had to be on major mental drugs as a result of that and then whatever this total BS she's claiming as a result of THAT. there is NO AUTISM in any of that and she needs to start addressing that which she actually says DOES cause her to just suddenly magically and mysteriously and rather overnight, the duration of a travel across country being the length of time it took for her to go from what she was to what replicate ME and MY experiences MY abilities and MY disabilities,
and she can go get herself 'detoxed' from this claimed BS 'catatonia' so she's hardly in any position to be speaking from the point of The Worst Off but Most Oddly Ably Gifted Mega-Autistic BS, when whether you believe her shtick or not, either way, its by choice there's no room to bitch and either way by open admission of copying me or by this BS "hey I like being a 'catatonic autistic BSer so I can play at being All Things Autistic after I read 80 books about them and decided to switch to my 3rd trendy disability so I can bitch about it and convey how very disabled I am, the most of all, see attention and rewards from it just every day on my blog and anywhere the word autism can be found I'm there I'm the most' when it comes to her its not autism and it is a choice.

So, have we covered Beatles, typewriters, incontinence, nonverbal, and spoon-fed satisfactorily? If I see no reply and see you instead moving onto the next topics I will conclude that we have.

Next?

Cat Lady said...

Anna Salamon, I'm not going to e-mail you at your college, WTF? If you are real, you're most likely very persuaded by Amanda's narcissistic charm.

Amanda's friend from college that Droopy mentioned called the cops on Amanda when she thought the elfs were out to get her. Mental patients usually never forgive people that get them committed. He has never taken credit for her art work, he actually admires her talent and talent she does have. He has a web page online where he talks about how he loves to photograph. This man has numerous images of his friends posted on his website and talks about their talents. Funny how Amanda twisted that fact to suite her needs.

Amanda's behvior reminds me of histrionic narcissism.

Cat Lady said...

Narcissistic Personality Disorder- Narcissistic personality is characterized by behavior or a fantasy of grandiosity, a lack of empathy and a need to be admired by others.

Histrionic Personality Disorder- People with histrionic personality disorder are constant attention seekers. They need to be the center of attention all the time, often interrupting others in order to dominate the conversation. They use grandiose language to describe everyday events and seek constant praise. They may dress provacatively or exaggerate illnesses in order to gain attention. They also tend to exaggerate friendships and relationships, believing that everyone loves them. They are often manipulative.

Larry Arnold PhD FRSA said...

I think Michael Moore has exagerated the benefits of our NHS somewhat. Yes treatment is free, however you might have to wait for years for simple operations you would get on insurance in the US, and may well suffer a lot of pain and increasing disability in the mean time.

Benefits in the UK do not go with specific encoded diagnoses, but with a supposedly funtional assessment according to what the benefit is supposed to provide for. It is a rather chaotic system, which is overhauled every now and then but still does not make complete sense and allow for "joined up thinking" for the most part the reforms have more to do with fewer people administering the benefits, making the administration of them more remote from the point of service.

Social services care has likewise declined, not that I got a lot of help with my mum even in the days when it was somewhat more available.

I think everyone should live in fear of developing a disability that severely impairs there mobility, for people who live on there own, that means staying in bed until someone comes around at a time that suits them, not the disabled person.

My mum at least had me to ensure that she led a useful life, was able to get out to meetings, and the other work she did for disabled people. This was practical advocacy actually interceding for people with the various authorities, and included getting a man out of a mental hospital who had been there 20 years because he had CP and his parents found his temper tantrums hard to cope with. Yep that was a real institution allright, which is closed now.

My mum actually sat on benefits tribunals, she knew a lot about the system, but that never made it any easier for her to get the basic benefits, which she had to appeal for herself.

These benefits did not exist when I was a child, or in the time of my grandparents. My grandfather was confined to the house because of lung disease and my great grandmother likewise through Asthma. Neither of them would risk the social stigma of being seen outside in a wheelchair.

My life is a picnic compared to my mums, I can get out of bed, and put my clothes on, go to the toilet and walk to the shops.

Living upstairs without a lift does bother me as my mobility is not what it was when I was younger, that is down to a deteriorating spine, which is not surprising considering the physical nature of what I had to do for my mum.

Indeed very few carers retire from looking after there relatives without having developed problems of there own.

At the end of the day there is only me to look after me, and when I can't do that I die, on my own.

I don't see after spending most of my adult years propping up the care system, why I should not be able to study at University in my latter years and maybe even end up teaching there in what years are left to me before retirement.

It's gonna cost me thousands to do though unless I get a research grant.

Incedentally you do not get a place to do doctoral research if you don't know what you are talking about.

John Best said...

Some great comments overnight. I wonder if Anna will addrerss them.

I'll be spending most of the day handicapping Saratoga and Del Mar so I apologize if I don't get comments approved in a timely fashion today.

Joeker said...

Anna Salamon has fled, trying to save face. Such a shame that she's unable to answer these questions, as they'll paint a better picture than Bagg's fantasy.

I guess she doesn't want to lie much more.

Anonymous said...

I wonder if Anna Salamon is the same 'Anna' who posts as 99mountainrose on Youtube and posts favourably on Amanda's vids. She states her age as 60 and mentioned she had known Amanda since she was little.

Anonymous said...

Laura T is another one who claims to be autistic. She is no more autistic than I am. She claims to have had no functional speech until at the least the age of 10, says she was largely echolalic, just like Amanda claims, yet she has more normal speech inflection than your average Aspie.

I remember years ago in the gay community there were so many political, hugely overweight Lesbians looking very similar to these two. Often they would be involved in politicizing mental health issues as well as gay and women's issues. This pair are like a couple of throwbacks from the late 70s and early 80s.

I wasn't gay, I was just into the women's movement and had a wide variety of friends. I've seen The Girls From Vermont types before.

Anonymous said...

John, I have a strong feeling that this is David's attempt to derail the thread, and unless he wants to contribute meaningfully to the discussion, I think he should buzz off.

In my opinion, personal messages between him and Larry should definitely be posted elsewhere. I can't imagine there would be anyone here who would have the slightest interest in reading about Larry and David discussing themselves. Except Larry and David, of course.

Anonymous said...

Larry, perhaps instead of posting odd messages on this thread such as "Ego sum Odobenus rosmarus. Carpenters notwithstanding", "civil rites for walri", and "Ou sont les neiges d'antan?", you wouldn't mind sharing what you thought of Amanda when you first met her in 1998/9 on bit.listserv.autism and alt.support.autism.

Did she strike you then as a person with low-functioning autism?

Anonymous said...

Maxima said:
Narcissistic Personality Disorder- Narcissistic personality is characterized by behavior or a fantasy of grandiosity, a lack of empathy and a need to be admired by others.


Too funny!
That sounds exactly like you Maxima.

Larry Arnold PhD FRSA said...

She struck me as a person who was what she said she was, someone who had been rediagnosed after a diagnosis of schizophrenia, which she disagreed with, with a diagnosis of "atypical autism" (whatever that is supposed to be)

Back in 99 none of us were very knowlegable about autism in general terms, there were a lot fewer publicly available autistics for comparison.

I thought if anything she was like Donna Williams with a lot of sensory issues which interested me, because I was looking for people who had similar sensory issues to me, since before encountering autistic people on line, I had never encountered anyone with the same issues, which were poorly understood by the medical profession at that time.

Later on when she dissapeared and re-appeared it was quite apparant to me that the then anonymous getting the truth out site was hers. I recognised her eyebrows and the political content of the site. I thought she had put a great deal of weight on since she took down the Aeleis site and wondered why.

In fairness if you do not see an image of someone in a long time the difference in weight becomes more apparant, I have a real life friend who has put on a lot of weight, partly because of the usual medications, however I have seen that as gradual progress.

Anyway. I concluded that the site was a specifically engineered anser to "autism every day" constructing a viewpoint and then deconstructing it. Clever but flawed, a bit similar to the article I wrote contrasting the appearance of my Council house life with my intellectual interests.

I thought the site would attract the wrong sort of attention because people would not get through to the deconstruction part or understand that it was about how images are manipulated to say different things according to how they are viewed, but would simply think this was another pity party and feel sorry for the figure portrayed as a low funtioning autistic, when the final message is to me that nothing is as it seems and the supposedly "simple victim" was a person with strong beliefs about disability rights

I don't believe that any viewpoint can ever deliver "truth" all we have is contrasting interpretations , the only truth is internal, and that we cannot know absolutely. The "Rashomon" argument.

As for high or low funtioning, these are not official terms that have any consistent meaning or are consitently applied, I believed this to be one critique of that. If low funtioning were a lable that is applied by ability to perform a set of normative self care activities, my mum would have been "low funtioning" something which in terms of the social impact of her being there on others was clearly not the case. Therefore I do not and never have regarded Amanda as low funtioning.

John Best said...

Larry,
Amanda certainly was not low functioning to be selected for Johns Hopkins TCY or college at age 13. But that was before she becane schizophrenic.

It was also before she blew her mind out with LSD. It was after she destroyed her brain with LSD that she decided she was a creator of the universe.

I'd have to reread this to see when she became an elf. This broad isn't autistic; she's nuts.

Wake up, she claims she can't even feed herself at times. My kid, who IS severely autistic, could always feed himself from the time he stopped breastfeeding. Even the most severe autistic teens I worked with in an institution always fed themselves. Yuh, some of them needed help but, if they didn't get it, they'd grab the food with their hands and eat. Sory larry, I'm not buying Amanda's act for a second. She may well be brain damaged from LSD but I'll never agree that she's autistic.

Anonymous said...

Some of the symptoms claimed by autistics are suffered by non autistics too, but we don't get special treatment because of it. I do not doubt that Larry is an aspie, however, I'm not, and I've had major sensory issues my whole life. I have trouble with noise, crowds, bright light. I feel as if my senses are being battered when I am in a shopping mall or on a busy downtown street. After an hour or two at a party I have to get out and be alone. I have had synesthesia my whole life and I know lots of non autistics who also have it.

Not every symptom is indicative of autism. Some crap is just part of being human. We have to get on with life anyway.

Sorry, did not mean to derail, but I wanted to respond to Larry talking about sensory issues. Not everyone with sensory issues has a syndrome but these days everyone with sensory issues claims to be autistic. It's crap!

Amanda Baggs may well have sensory issues or she may have read about them and the said she had them like she does with every other symptom, but sensory issues do not make her autistic either.

Larry Arnold PhD FRSA said...

Point is when I first came on line about these things I was looking for explanations, I had thought myself that I had ADHD to begin with on the basis of similarities in my childhood and that of a child I had advocated for, so there you have a self dx that was wrong when subjected to professional scrutiny.

Ever since I discovered usenet I have been looking for answers for my sensory experiences, in fact I have only just found a complete explanation, and I agree it is not autism that brings them altogether into a coherent diagnosis, but it is a diagnosis that may well be more prevalent amongst people on the autistic spectrum than elsewhere which requires more research.

I also believe there is a danger of people who have phenomena such as synasthesia, aura's somatosensory distortions being diagnosed with a mental illness because GP's do not understand the nature of such conditions and are apt to impute factitious or hallucinatory disorders.

To someone who does not feel or see such things, and who has difficulty imagining them, the descriptions can sound crazy.

I'm not talking about Amanda's previous diagnoses here, because I cannot know the veracity of them, only suppose, but I do know my own history and the difficulties I have had getting any one to take notice. One reason of course, is because sensory differences are not in the current DSM descriptions, but they were noted by Kanner way back, and of course in anecdotal evidence from many first hand accounts.

But yeah the description of these things predates autism literature a long way, and no it ain't mercury that causes it else you would have people tripping out on there fillings to get the pretty light shows.

John Best said...

Larry,
Perhaps the difference is that you were always different while Amanda was quite normal according to her classmates.

BTW, many adults have had their mercury fillings removed, chelated themselves and seen their lives improve.

I wonder if any psychiatrists would see Amanda's thinking she was an elf as some sort of escape mechanism after being sexually abused by her family. That seems to be about when her alleged hallucinations also started.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous said...

"Not everyone with sensory issues has a syndrome but these days everyone with sensory issues claims to be autistic. It's crap!"

Absolutely agree with you. Most people have sensory issues of one kind or another but they are not generally aware of it. It's only when they have a child with autism, or they are looking for an explanation for the difficulties they have faced in life, that they find out about "sensory issues". Then they become truly significant. Unfortunately, that's why so many people today think they have autism, and that autism is "genetic".

"Amanda Baggs may well have sensory issues or she may have read about them and the said she had them like she does with every other symptom, but sensory issues do not make her autistic either."

Some here have asked why the teachers at Amanda's special ed school didn't recognise that she was autistic, after all most of the students at the school were autistic. That's a very good question, and I think another would be: why didn't Amanda recognise herself in those students? When she met them she didn't say,

"Wow! These people have the same kind of neurological hardwiring as I have. These are my people. I belong here."

She recognised the difference. They had autism, she had schizophrenia.

Maybe that's where she learned about Scotopic Sensitivity Syndrome and bought herself some Irlen lenses, and then about AIT for hypersensitive hearing, and thought she'd try that. Then when she joined the autism support group in 1998, she discovered that she wasn't the only one who didn't like the sound of flushing toilets, and she wasn't the only one who didn't like strobe lighting.

If that's all it takes to start thinking along the lines of "I think I have autism", then who doesn't have it?

How many ordinary people don't like the sound of fingernails scraping a blackboard? Or don't like the constant bombardment of different kinds of music in malls? Or can't concentrate on selecting a book in bookstores because they find the music intrusive? That doesn't indicate autism. They don't make libraries quiet places for autistic people. Quite ordinary people need quiet places to concentrate.

Then Amanda started blaming her "atypical autism" - Scotopic Sensitivity Syndrome, perceptual distortions and sensory overloads - for her previous hallucinations and delusions. She said, they weren't really hallucinations at all but visual distortions. The voices weren't really voices telling her to do things.

She could at last change her schizophrenia diagnosis to autism. And, I believe that's precisely what she did.

Anonymous said...

Larry, So in 1998/99, from what Amanda told you, she had a diagnosis of atypical autism, and she came across as high-functioning. Is that right?

She had written nothing in those messages that gave you the slightest impression that she had been a low-functioning child who had been institutionalized as a child, or that she was physically disabled or mute. Is that right?

I would suggest that when you were searching for reasons for your difficulties, that you were encountering other people who were also searching for answers, or the answer to their problems.

People like Amanda.

And you believed what she said, just like people believe what she says today.

But, in April 1999, didn't it concern you that when Amanda posted the article accusing Donna Williams of fraud, that she wanted to discuss with the group Donna's alleged fraud?

She wanted to make absolutely certain that Williams actually had autism and "not something else" before she, Amanda, "came out".

She had recently read Williams' book and she said it had been the first autobiography that she could relate to, "in a stack of autobiographies" she'd read.

No book, she said, had "stood out in quite the same way" and she was "just kind of floored by the relevance to my own life that no book had ever had". (NB Droopy that Donna's early life was nothing like yours.)

But several times in the same thread Amanda asked the group if they thought Donna was genuine because, she said, she wanted to be sure -

"It makes me afraid to say anything to anyone because they could say the same thing, possibly more easily, about me".

Now, that would have concerned me. But to continue...

Then Thomas McKewen, who was diagnosed with autism as a child and who had known Donna Williams for some time - having attended autism conferences with her as a fellow guest speaker invited to talk to parents of children with autism about what life was like for them - said:

"I have done a lot of traveling and met a lot of people with autism and in all those people there are only TWO of them where I would question the diagnosis.

Donna is one of those two."

Lura/Mao replied:

"whether she "is" or "isnt" - if she thinks she is autistic, and that label has inner meaning to her, and she is satisfied in her mind that she is autistic, then who cares what ANYBODY else thinks? Whether it be me or you or some news program or WHOEVER! It is her SELF to self-identify. And HER right to do so in whatever way it best serves her. Not ours."

And you said, that you wouldn't make a decision either way, it was not your position to judge:

"I think that the article refered to is an example of the kind of debunking that is popular, and that any celebrity, and we can presume that Donna Williams is a celebrity, is open to.

It is interesting in a sense because I was watching on u.k. TV. a documentary about an early environmentalist who went by the name of "Grey Owl" who purported to be a native american, when he was not, even to the extent of dying his skin, it all helped sell his books and further his career on the lecture circuit.

But what the heck, his cause was just."

The bit I've bolded bothers me.

Then Lura/Mao got an invitation from David Spicer to join the ANI, which I've no doubt she did.

Did Amanda and you join too I wonder? And is that where Amanda discovered Jasmine O'Neill who claimed to be a person "with severely classical autism", "a savant in writing, music, and art", and "an elective mute" who thought autism was "a gift" and "something very beautiful", and that "'normalizing' autistic people is not just ineffective but wrong".

It was O'Neill's book that then became Amanda's "bible".

You see what concerns me greatly, Larry, is that you and a number of others who supported Amanda, and still do, knew full-well from the outset that she didn't have low-functioning autism as a child, that she was not "non-verbal" - and, what is more, that her life had been nothing like the children on behalf of whom she has taken it upon herself to speak.

Less than one year later, if we can believe anything Amanda says, she had a diagnosis of Autistic Disorder - Low Functioning. The only official diagnosis (of autism) she said she'd ever had on paper.

(So when you 'met' her in 1998/99, she had not been re-diagnosed with atypical autism. If she told you that,she lied. Unless, of course, she is lying about her official diagnosis of LFA).

Along with many other activists, you knew that the Getting the Truth Out website was a political move - a ploy.

And no doubt Laura T who designed it I suspect, knew that very few people would get to the "deconstruction" part of that charade. No wonder it was so L-O-N-G. Page after page of agonizingly heart-wrenching photographs of what purported to be an extremely disabled, self-mutilating, doubly incontinent, non-verbal autistic person.

About that you say...

"it was about how images are manipulated to say different things according to how they are viewed, but would simply think this was another pity party and feel sorry for the figure portrayed as a low funtioning autistic, when the final message is to me that nothing is as it seems and the supposedly "simple victim" was a person with strong beliefs about disability rights

I say that it was not clear that this was an actress delivering a political message. It was deliberately misleading and, as such, false advertising.

How many people have been taken in by it? How many are still being taken in? Just like they were taken in by the CNN interview with Gupta, and just like they are being taken in by Amanda's YouTube videos.

People are being fooled, Larry, all in the name of "Disability Rights".

And in answer to that, I guess you'd say:

But what the heck, her cause was just."

Am I right, Larry?

But is it really just when genuine people with autism like Droopy, Sue Rubin and others who would like to be cured, are being systematically silenced?

Anonymous said...

Did anyone see The Night Listener with Robin Williams? It is about a woman with factitious disorder and her relentless determination to draw people into her fantasy even to the point of writing a book about it. It was based on a true story and was extremely creepy.

Remind you of someone?

Larry Arnold PhD FRSA said...

I don't see Sue Rubin is being silenced, she has quite a show of her own going with all the commercial backing.

I was going to get round to Grey Owl eventually, Grey Owl, or Archie Belaney if not a native American as he wished he were, was actually a genuine backwoodsman and trapper, who lived the Indian life, probably more traditionally than some, who became appalled at the way that trappers like he was and others were destroying the North American Wilderness. What he said he was, was a lie, but the things he talked about were not. The influence it has had on the environmental movement was beneficial and the only victims were people who paid to read his stories and hear his lectures.

Nanook of the North, the first ever documentary movie, was also largely faked, again however it was faked in order to show something that had already gone, rather like a historical reconstruction as we would call it today. Historical reconstructions are used to teach people about the past in novel ways.

In my time in the disability world, I came accross fakes of a different kind, those who were using the pity model of disability to defraud people into raising money for them, which is something different.

Archie Belaney, the fake is gone, and Hollywood has now made money off his story too. It matters not historically as there is no one being hurt by the fakery now, the message he preached is still a good one.

I don't know where I have ever said I thought Amanda was low funtioning, all I agree with is that there is no reason to suppose she is not actually autistic.

My argument is with the definitions of low and high funtioning, sometimes it refers to IQ, sometimes to self care skills, and sometimes to verbal abilities.

Three ways of defining something which can have a variety of nine different permutations. I think the autism world needs to sort itself out and be a little clearer what is meant when such terms as high and low funtioning are used.

I think it is quite wrong to define Amanda Baggs as low funtioning. Certainly in terms of the way I would define it according to a social model of autonomy. If you have a reasonable degree of autonomy over your environment, that is to say you have charge over such matters as when you get up, what you eat, how you dress, then you are high funtioning, and the goal of disabilty rights is to obtain the maximum practical autonomy for every individual regardless of the degree of disability.

I would hope Droopy would not disagree with such a goal.

Larry Arnold PhD FRSA said...

Unless she uses a screen name I am not aware of, to my recollection I have never had any contact with Jasmine o Neil or ever been at conference where I knew she was at. Neither for the record have I read her book.

Donna Williams on the other hand I have read. I am also inclined to disagree with Donna Williams interpretation of things, because it does not make sence from the viewpoint of cognitive science, I expect I would find myself agreeing with Michelle Dawson there.

Of course some people would say she is not autistic on the basis that they don't like what she says about having a right to a voice in the autism society of Canada, or because she is against ABA.

You know there are also a heck of a lot of autistic advocates out there, whose names are never seen nor heard on the internet, not even on AFF, some of whom subscribe to a notion of neurodiversity which is certainly not the same as that pushed out by autism hub members.

CNN is yesterdays news, what was it Andy Warhol said about 15 minutes of fame, its come and gone.

Larry Arnold PhD FRSA said...

BTW has everyone forgotten Marty Murphy and here fakery "my name is autism"

People on the opposite side of the cure fence have been happy to defend that for the sake of it being a "propaganda" piece.

The professional selective editing of Autism Everyday is accepted, but
the somewhat amateurish attempts of some off the stuff on you tube shows the joins as it were, even if it is made with a sincerity of belief in a viewpoint that lacks the financial backing of an autism speaks.

Amanda was making an answer to that, and like I say, it obviosly backfired. As for CNN, all they were after is another "freak show" and it is the morality behind CNN that really sucks there.

Just about every TV company that has ever gone in to make a documentary about some real persons life, has gone in with a script and has required people to fake real events for the benefit of the viewers, you can read the latest example here.

http://www.mailonsunday.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=472120&in_page_id=1770&ct=5

Its the one where the TV company pretended to film an alzheimers guy dying on screen, sick or what???

Anonymous said...

Larry, Actually, I'm really rather surprised that you didn't correct my spelling of "Thomas McKean". I should imagine you 'know' him quite well and would certainly know what he thinks about self-identified "autistics" addressing parents at autism conferences. It's "dangerous".

In 2006, he wrote:

"It seems that today anyone can make a claim they have autism and it will be believed. These people will get a slot at a conference and they will get up there and say things that are dangerous to kids with autism and their families, and the parents will take notes and eat it up."

"We have young people who have no documentation of a diagnosis being accepted as autistic and who are accepted to speak at these conferences to speak on behalf of those who cannot speak for themselves. What they are saying is that ABA is wrong, they are saying that seeking a cure is wrong, and they are saying that we need to allow the children to be themselves and to respect them for who they are."

That's what Amanda is doing.

So Archie Belaney’s lie and the faked Nanook documentary served their purpose and changed the way people thought about the environment, and you appear to approve - "“so long as the message preached is a good one”.

Do you approve of lies and fakery to change people’s attitudes towards autism? And do you believe that Amanda’s “No treatment. No cure. Celebrate autism”, message is a good one? Thomas McKean doesn't. Sue Rubin doesn't. Droopy doesn't. They were diagnosed in infancy - Amanda wasn't. They grew up with autism -- Amanda didn't.

How about your mother? Would she have approved?

Your mother was a fighter all her life, wasn’t she, Larry? She got things done. What do you think she would have done had you been a non-verbal, non-communicative child spinning a piece of coloured thread or staring at dust motes hour after hour, day after day? Do you think she would have been celebrating your neurodiversity, or do you think she would have done everything in her power to see you better-functioning and more able to take part in family and everyday life?

If she had known you for two whole years since your birth, and you had reacted to a vaccine just after your second birthday, and then directly afterwards she watched you gradually regress into this state over a matter of a few months, do you think she would have accepted that it was just a twist of fate? What if she'd met parent after parent who told exactly the same story? Normally-developing child gets vaccine, regresses, loses language and loses interest in people - totally.

What do you think her attitude would be?

Would she have celebrated your brain damage - or tried to get you back?

Would she have strongly suspected that a group advocating autism acceptance and celebration that is undoubtedly pro-vaccine was in league with vaccine manufacturers and government health departments? After all, Neurodiversity sprang up directly after the focus came on vaccines.

The timeline is very important.

”I don't know where I have ever said I thought Amanda was low funtioning, all I agree with is that there is no reason to suppose she is not actually autistic.”

As far as I know you have never said that Amanda was low-functioning. It is she who claims that she has only ever had a low-functioning diagnosis “Autistic Disorder” – and then adds “officially” and “on paper”. This is trickery to give the impression that she was born with Autism, and grew up with Autism. People in the autism community know what “Autistic Disorder” is, and it’s certainly not atypical autism, Aspergers, or autistic traits.

As I said, she may very well have had autistic traits prior to becoming a schizophrenic at fourteen after dropping acid and smoking dope at college, but autistic traits are not Autism, and they’re certainly not “Autistic Disorder – low functioning”, now are they?

The argument against using the labels high-functioning/low-functioning sprang from Neurodiversity, and I believe Amanda Baggs herself. It’s clap-trap. There’s a world of difference between “Autistic Disorder” and what Lorna Wing described as “Aspergers”, and again, a world of difference between Lorna Wing’s Aspergers and what is considered to be Aspergers today.

It’s totally idiotic to lump all people together under one Autism umbrella with all the atypical autisms and atypical Aspergers, and people who self-identify with autism – people with dyslexia, ADHD, OCD, ODD, synesthesia, hyperlexia, sensory problems, traits – the “cousins” and say that they are all have autism and they are all “autistic”. They’re simply not.

So you've never come across Jasmine O'Neill. There is enough here to give you an impression:

http://www.nas.org.uk/nas/jsp/polopoly.jsp?d=120&a=2204
National Autistic Society - I live in a home within myself - by Jasmine Lee O'Neill

"I am a young woman with fairly severe classical autism, and am a savant in writing, art, and music, also. I view my autism as something that is very beautiful. "

Is "Classical Autism" another name for “Autistic Disorder” do you think, or something quite different?

“Of course some people would say she is not autistic on the basis that they don't like what she says about having a right to a voice in the autism society of Canada, or because she is against ABA.”

I guess you’re talking about Michelle Dawson here, not Donna Williams. Donna appears to support any treatment or therapy that might benefit our children.

Dawson, on the other hand, the ex-land surveyer, has no business sticking her nose into other people’s affairs and telling them what they can and can't do. Many parents know from experience that ABA works for some children. It certainly benefited my son.

Catherine Maurice was treated disgracefully by your activists, and accused her of lying about her children's recovery from autism. Catherine’s book helped me and perhaps hundreds of thousands of parents to consider the therapy she used. Her book and ABA therapy gave us hope of recovery.

Most people don’t realise that just over a decade ago, worried parents were handed a diagnosis and were either told to put their child in an institution and forget about them, or manage as best they could. There was nothing, they said, that could be done for a child with autism. It was a lifelong disability and the prognosis was grim.

Please note that I'm not talking about quirky kids with autistic traits here. Doctors do not recommend institutionalization for quirky kids, geeks and nerds. They do not have Autism.

”You know there are also a heck of a lot of autistic advocates out there, whose names are never seen nor heard on the internet, not even on AFF, some of whom subscribe to a notion of neurodiversity which is certainly not the same as that pushed out by autism hub members.”

Why then are they not visible? I presume that they are pro-treatment and therapy, so therefore they should realise that Kathleen Seidel and Autism Hub members are harming them and the people they advocate for.

Online Neurodiversity activists are even more dangerous than self-identified "autistic" guest speakers at autism conferences.

I want to see attitudes change towards autism. I would like my son accepted by society and not judged by his behaviour or speech. I would like him to be respected as a person. But I see that there are even some Aspies who would not respect my son:

http://www.aspiesforfreedom.com/showthread.php?tid=8666&pid=118840#pid118840

Have you any idea why Droopy diagnosed with LFA was banned from AFF, and yet this 19-year old Aspie supremist was not! It horrifies me that this Nazi is going to be a lawyer.

”CNN is yesterdays news, what was it Andy Warhol said about 15 minutes of fame, its come and gone.”

Not "15 minutes of fame" unfortunately, Larry. Now we have computers and the internet, Gupta's article and the transcript are ever-present for all to read - again and again. The CNN interview with a DOCTOR gave Amanda credibility.

Every minute, more and more people are being taken in by a fraud - Amanda Baggs pretending to have been a low-functioning autistic all her life who found a keyboard with a little cat on it at the age of nine and finally learned to communicate through typing.

And there would be few parents of children with autism today who haven't heard her name.

Anonymous said...

“BTW has everyone forgotten Marty Murphy and here fakery "my name is autism"”

Was that fakery? Really? How so? Was she really pretending to be a 26 year old man? If you look again at the letter, I don’t think you'll find that the sex of the author is clear. However, Marty Murphy's nickname is "Mouse", so it would seem very likely that she wrote it herself, and Omri H L Fiman is a pseudonym.

The only detail that doesn’t 'fit' is Marty’s age, so I wonder if she wrote the poem in 1988/9 while she was going through a particularly difficult period in her life, when, at that time, according to normalfolk.com she was depressed, self-injurious, and non-verbal (an elective mute).

Marty, like Donna, is not telling parents to accept and celebrate their children's autism. Neither she, nor Donna, is accusing parents of child abuse because they treat their children. That's the difference.

”Amanda was making an answer to that, and like I say, it obviosly backfired.”

I don’t think it backfired at all. Getting the Truth Out is not the only place where Amanda claims to have been a low-functioning autistic as a child and institutionalised as a child.

We know that that wasn't the case, don't we Larry?

Kathleen Seidel knows it. Neurodiversity activists know it.

Don't you think it's time Amanda Baggs came clean? That she should make it crystal clear publicly, and on CNN in a follow-up interview with Doctor Gupta that she was NOT diagnosed with autism in infancy, that she did NOT grow up as a low-functioning child in an institution, that she has NEVER actually been institutionalized, and that she really has NO right to be anti-treatment and therapy for a condition that she has NEVER had? She has absolutely NO right to give our children a voice.

She should come clean and apologize.

And the Neurodiversity movement should not be using this person who has been diagnosed with Paranoid Schizophrenia and Factitious Disorder as a tool to give an entirely false impression of autism.

Anonymous said...

Watson,
The blurb below is posted on Ballastexistenz as a video Amanda plans to make in the future. It is listed under 'Future Video Projects.


"I have been working on a video about having a future. It is aimed specifically at children like the child I was, who could not envision my place in society as an adult, and whose reactions to being unable to envision that place had drastic consequences in our lives. I want to show how there is so much more to our futures than the things we can imagine, or than the things others can imagine for us."

She is not going to give up until she is exposed as a fraud.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous said...

"She is not going to give up until she is exposed as a fraud."

I agree.

So what are YOU going to do about it?

And that rhetorical question is not just directed at you personally, Anon. It's addressed to everyone who really cares about children with autism.

The more people who know about this fraud the better, and I guess most of us here post on other blogs, and belong to lists and forums...

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." Edmund Burke

Anonymous said...

Watson, what can be done?

I have posted this info about Amanda Baggs on another autism site, but it got no response. What can we do?

Anonymous said...

yo, sup dudes? heres something intrestng.
from aff by baggs


"I was diagnosed at 14 (several times), and I'm sure the word was used but wasn't really explained to me for several years. I remember hearing the word "autism" and "underlying developmental disability" and so forth but not knowing much if anything about what they meant."

Anonymous said...

Thank you, Anon.

Just do what you did again on another site, then another. It doesn't matter about not getting a written response. The short-term aim is to get people to think and question. And to direct them to the posts and discussions here on John's blog.

Even if people don't care about the damage it's doing to children with autism, or don't want to get involved, I'm sure many would find it an 'interesting read'.

The only way to get people to change their minds about Amanda is to encourage them to read what Amanda has written about herself.

Do they think that her historical background is identical to the impression she gives?

The bottom line is that she didn't have severe autism as a child, she wasn't non-verbal, she did not learn to communicate at the age of nine by using a typewriter, and she was not "institutionalized".

Therefore, her performances on CNN and YouTube are not "Sensational!", "Amazing!", "Incredible!", "Inspirational", or "Wonderful! - a must see!".

Parents of children with autism need to know that. No, correction -actually, I think everyone needs to know that.

Anonymous said...

Good Man, Could you post a link to the thread? TIA

Anonymous said...

lol, she's the owl

http://www.aspiesforfreedom.com/showthread.php?tid=9506&page=2

Anonymous said...

Thanks, Good Man. If you hadn't told me, I would have looked for an elf.

BTW, great thread. Some good laughs there. Did you read Ethel's post?

"To not tell him is to deprive him of the information he needs to make use of whatever gifts Aspergers might have bestowed upon him - to let him know why he's different."

When did Asperger become a god? lol

Anonymous said...

There's a very simple solution to the problem of Amanda Baggs. Murder.If she is so dangerous, killing her would protect others as well as fixing Droopy's life. It would be quite safe. No court would convict anyone for killing someone who was such a threat to all of society. This is someone who should not be alive and whose life should not be preserved, so killing her would not be wrong. Who's volunteering?

Anonymous said...

I have a question, how does anybody know if "anonymous" is always the same person? Or is anonymous sometimes a different person? Why would anybody take what "anonymous" writes as having any value?
Also this last post by an "anonymous" asking somebody to volunteer to murder somebody. This don't sit right with me. I won't put up with it.