Someone claiming to be Anna Salamon, an old friend of Amanda Baggs, showed up here to defend Baggs' questionable autism diagnosis. So far, Salamon has not responded to Watson's challenge which follows.
watson 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 in this article by Scot Sea.
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, pseudo-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.
Sat Jul 28, 09:31:00 PM PDT
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http://www.usc.edu/CSSF/History/1998/pictures/pic_s11.html
Cut and paste the above. If this is her she looks nice enough. Intelligent too.
Anna Salamon might have changed in appearance over the last nine years, but I'm sure that she's just as nice and intelligent as she was then.
I just discovered this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqCU6UMqXuk
Read the comments.
Was I clear enough?
God I hope so.
I am especially sorry this post is going to be so long, but what can I say? If it weren't so ridiculously long I wouldn't be here bitching up a storm about it, now would I? But I just really feel a need to do a little recapping and collecting more in one place, of the so-far listed 'coincidences' Amanda Baggs and I 'share'
(get your eye drops ready its not a short list):
my heritage, my height (for crying out loud), my and my family's language abilities (claimed and quoted verbatim save for one added embellishment), my hearing/aural recall abilities, my aphasia/need to use a communicator/being nonverbal, having brain damage, seizures (identified 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 regimen), 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 ancestry 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 ability 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 institutionalized like I have, milking a couple of months in some luxury mental hospital and a very extravagant children's grouphome as a teenager (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 institutions and homes, my SIB behavior problems, screaming, hair-pulling ("by the clumps" and "places her hair will never grow back" visible on me but nowhere to be seen ion her head), vomiting (behavioral problem when upset, projectile type), head banging (as in, into walls and pounding, not tapping myself on the side of my head a la 'Rainman' and Amanda on CNN, I mean severely), 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, 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, and of course lets not forget, being severely autistic overall.
Stop here, take a break, rub your burning eye sockets a moment before we commence the "well what'd'ya know?" section below:
I am the youngest of 3 children, the oldest, my brother is "Asperger Walking" super HFA, its obvious on meeting him (he has one topic he can talk about to excess at any time, right now its ferrets, his pet ferrets, the first and only living thing he's ever had interest in, and he'll be 48 in August). the middle one, my sister is perfectly normal (an RN), and then there's me, a severely autistic person.>
Amanda also claims to be the youngest of three, with an oldest brother being some degree of AS/HFA, she claims a middle brother who is non-autistic, then herself, the youngest she portrays herself as every sort of autistic in particular mine (see list above).
My father is an outdoorsy sort of person with a robust beard who's first name is "Rod" who is now retired.
There are pictures around my family of the log cabin on the lake where I lived with him, of him cutting firewood, we have a history of owning many farms in succession, many with large wooded areas (one was even known as "Sherwood's Forest' by the locals due to coincidence of its size and Sherwood being former owner's last name). I spent as much of my waking hours in those places (fields and woodlands) as I could as a child and while I can't go outside unattended in a city or in any other environment, I'm somebody you definitely do want scouting for you when you (any you, every other you who's not me) gets yourself lost out there and need me to lead the way out. One doctor told my parents when he got done 'patching me up' he wanted to 'start to work on my father" -- that really angered my father but my mother (they are now divorced) still remarks on this with a smirk. Was this evidence of my people-capable but rather reclusive and sometimes 'milk-toast' (when not drinking anyway) father's "Asperger's Syndrome"? Who knows? Who cared (at least before Amanda came along)?
Amanda's father is also evidently an outdoorsy sort of person with a robust beard who's first name is "Ron" and is now retired (what age is he that he has a 26 year old daughter and he's retired?) She has pictures posted of him evidently chopping wood, certainty at very least posted and posturing with an ax and cut wood around him. Amanda has made up plenty of imaginary wooded areas in her mind as an "Elf God" where she and her imaginary playmates romped in her head. I have no idea if she's ever been near or exposed to real wooded areas at all. Amanda also alludes to her father's having some sort of suspect of Asperger's, a bad temper and possibly drinking problems.
I am a ham radio operator, licensed in 1998.
Amanda is also a ham radio operator, licensed in 2006
I took a test known as an ACT (counterpart to another called the SAT) in 1994, with that gained entry to and attended a well-known selective-admissions public university, attending 1994-1995/96, taking 2 classess at a time, as a part-time and particularly non-traditional student. My second semester there I gained entry into the exclusive Honors (aka gifted/accelerated courses) college on campus, mention on the Dean's list, acceptance into a GPA-based sorority, and other Grade Point Average accolades. I had been accepted to and was considering transfer to the bigger and even more prestigious (and they ran their entire university at the rate of our little honors college) University of Michigan at the end of my sophomore year.
I had yet to even claim my major which I never did (because I had never seen real education before and every set of classes I saw I wanted to be something to do with those). I was 30-31 years old at the time.
Amanda attended an entire little college expressly for little gifted teenagers, claimed her major in psychology the same years. She was 14 years old.
(Rest. Its almost over now, save for just a little commentary):
To be fair I will make this statement again too:
Amanda has adamantly denied making intimations at my heritage (the first thing listed in my groupings above). Apparently its okay to hint at but not to be directly called out on (evidently even Amanda isn't prepared to take on a full-case of 'Jew Cooties' if she doesn't have to).
How lucky for her that she has that choice.
When/if she ever decides to drop her role-playing cloak of the severely autistic, that's another option I won't ever have.
I bet those comments won't last on Youtube, but good for you for posting anyway Droopy and Foresam.
Amanda says on a number of her videos that her father encouraged her to make them and post them. She keeps including him as being her advocate. Why isn't Mr. Baggs on this blog telling everybody to shut up about his severely disabled daughter. I have a hard time believing he does not know what is going on with her on line. She also claims her father is autistic, maybe an aspie or something HF.
I wonder what stake Ms. Salamon has in doing this for Amanda. If she has truly known her for so long then she knows the truth about her, the drugs etc.
I don't know but sometimes I just wonder if there's been promises of money to be had, fame to be made, threats made, or what all is going on, why are so many who know better going along with this and assisting in it..
One of the posts I was explicitly ordered to take down from my blog by Amanda's chummy lawyer pal was the one where I theorized on why someone might do a thing like this and that I believe its about potential for book or movie deal. I'm still not so sure its not something like that or that Amanda and Laura Tsoncik don't have an agenda, a planned schedule even, to which they are adhering.
I never leave Laura T far from my mind, she's burnt me directly a number of times years ago and anyone that you ask will tell you that she's 'extremely political' and well.. Richard Nixon, George W Bush are 'very political' too and all the more reason in addition to my personal experiences with her to not trust and to believe and keep in mind at all times that she's as much a part of and behind this as Amanda herself (especially given that of the two of them, Laura had the most demonstrable and consistent access to me, my life's story, my data).
What I currently suspect is that Laura provides much of the ideas (every time you see a generic reference to 'my friend' on Amanda's blog its Laura she's talking about), and Amanda provides the words (and gives great credit to Laura for 'teaching her how to communicate').
I'm still trying to work out what the issue allegedly was with Amanda's written communication. You do realize, right, that she claims to have similar major issues with communication by way of text/typing of the same sort and type as I did and at the same time as she claims to have had her 'communication echolalia'?
She's claimed it about the time frame that's been shown here (her being 12, 14 16 etc) and claims issues to the severity I had and even exacting startup ways I started out typing in another of ways/means (lyrics etc), yet I don't see that, haven't been able to find this online (where she says she got on BBS' and did the very same things I did as I sat at the manual typewriter at the desk at the grouphome, typing Beatles lyrics in just the same way).
I'm going to elaborate here on what part of my life/learning process it is from my life about this Amanda stakes a "me too' on here:
I first started out typing random letters, this lasted several days as I did a sort of 'drive by' poking at individual round tall keys on the typewriter (Greg, the guy who had put the typewriter on the desk for his own purposes as he was a staff studying to be a police officer and was using this thing to type his homework would disengage keys that got knotted together once in a while when I did this), then Beatles' lists, Beatles' songs by order of their albums, then listings of "Beatle people" (their immediate family constellations followed by more extended listings including producers, roadies, session players, etc), moving on then to entire Beatles' song lyrics, followed eventually conversations overheard and played back in my mind dictated onto the paper that way (and I know Amanda has made claims on at least some of these exact same experiences when she 'first started typing' and with a typewriter, then online and at the age of 14 for at least some of this.. even as she once invited me to do a search to see her doing this on BBS/bulletin boards there's no evidence of any of this from her online that I've ever found ).
When I first started typing people's conversations I typed them as I heard them, in conversation lumps that went like this:
typedinclumpslikethis becausethat'showpeopletalk. Theydon'ttalkwordatatime theyspeakinlumps anditwasuptome tosortthelumpsfromthepieces.
I know that normal babies start making 'conversation sounds' without words and imitating those kinds of lumps, I was working out the step between those lumps of language and what they meant and I think it was kind of like normal babies do but I don't know.
I have figured out that people use their thinking to actually change what and how they see and hear things differently than I do or how they are or to know when to see an outline vs a bunch of pieces or when to hear a word from a sentence or whatever, which is a hugely powerful and difficult thing to figure out, but I did.
I don't know how to explain real well but I was working on that and I was sorting the lumps from the pieces and to match the uniform way that non-autistic people both hear and see has been the major part of the struggle for me (its you who are the puzzle to me, the at least more or less uniformly done puzzle at least and if somebody would write a book about
"How To Be Neurotypical"
that's the handy book we need since unlike these handfuls of highly disturbed self-centric types with something to gain from it, I don't think the world at large is really looking to learn how to be autistic . I think instead its expected that an autistic person should try to understand and try to get uniform with and fit in and learn and do and adapt to how it goes for you non-autistics instead.
The world does not need another handbook from another 'autistic' on
"How To Be Autistic"
(and I'm pretty suspicious of all that anyway since if I could tell more of the difference of one from another than I suppose I wouldn't BE autistic to start with but whatever). If I ever ever actually get someone to help me with the writing of my life's story you can guarantee it will not be for purposes of preaching to the masses about autism, its just to secure my life/my stuff from the likes of her.
Unfortunately real life does not come automatically equipped with a plot or a purpose, so some writer guy is going to have to figure out how to work around that I guess.
Anyway, my main point in this post is that I find it odd that Amanda stakes claim to all of this sort of thing when it comes to how I started communicating and the method/process that took and so very exactly in far too many instances, but without basis, with all her stuff all over the Internet it looks to me like she fancied herself to be some sort of great writer from the start, well before she ever landed online, from 14 onward, I can see no communicating or sorting it out anywhere near in the manner I had to sort out being shown from her whatsoever.
Maybe Watson can see if he can find her alleged Beatles lyrics quoting as a means to express herself like I did or her somehow getting herself on-line and doing any of these in some recorded place amongst others like she insisted to me she had.
(All I ever found was one comment by her in an alt.beatles group about the 1977 BeeGees movie "Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band").
I am trying to talk about two things at once here, why I think/what people have to gain (and I also think she intimidates people and I have not found out what the power is, why it is people will email me and openly admit and theories about why, but nobody will admit openly what she does), what end goal is here that would keep her going on and on as if driven, as if somehow to her she thinks this can just go on indefinitely.. like her and Laura have a map, a pre-set course and they don't know what else to do, how to stop, even with me out here resisting it and more people knowing about it,
and I was trying to detail out a bit more of how I started communicating and the claims made by Amanda about this that she claimed took place online, even daring me to go look them up, was confident there would be online BBS proof of her having done these same things, so Watson, I'm evidently google impaired but you've proved yourself to be a master at this..
is there any truth to this, somehow she went from directly quoting lyrics and reciting conversations to a wannabe author who wrote like she was practicing to write "Never Promised You a Rose Garden Meets Go Ask Alice" somehow all at once at age 14 and we missed the first part somehow? I couldn't find it, can you?
Anonymous said...
"Amanda says on a number of her videos that her father encouraged her to make them and post them. She keeps including him as being her advocate."
thats interesting.
Those are exactly the same sorts of words I've used to describe my father's role in my life
-- referring to when I was a very little kid
Amanda seems to do a lot of romanticizing about what it must be like to be mistaken for and treated like a profoundly mentally retarded person (her latest post as if this writing is even back on that yet again).
I think "dad is my advocate' while she plays at "The Great Autism Advocate" is for show as in a "I need my daddy to advocate for me 'cause I'm so special" total mockery routine she's got going on.
real advocates don't need their daddy's to come along. Real advocates take full responsibility for their own actions, behave like equals who earn the respect they demand and above all else, real advocates are honest.
Amanda, I've seen you on your CNN stint, seen the videos you putting on your productions at the MIT conferences, yes the ones you say are 'more like the real you' and its the same shit as the CNN fiasco, yeah I mean the Estee-whatever nonsense with the "everybody stop, Amanda is typing" bullshit and you don't look mentally retarded there or anywhere else, not in the very least.
What you look is very contrived like a nasty mocking teenager's idea of what a mentally retarded/autistic person might look like (only taken to extremes and acted for far longer than anyone with a conscious ever could), and looking like you're maybe waiting to enter a courtroom for your million dollar ambulance-chaser's dream case come true (with only lacking the whiplash neck-brace to round out your image).
But Retarded? No. Not even close.
I think you're dreaming up and romanticizing being spoken down to and treated that way based on a boatload of wishful wistful thinking on your part. Its you wanting that somebody would treat you that way, and nothing more.
Maybe had you actually spent your formative years (and then the following decades) actually living such things 24/7, maybe that might've been enough to stifle the twisted gratification you obviously gain from such things now -- too bad you've never lived this instead of your luxury gifted world.
Could Amanda sue the drug dealer who sold her the LSD to cause her brain damage?
I'm beginning to doubt that Droopy is autistic based on what she writes here. How can someone supposedly so low functioning possibly write so well? Droopy, I think your the fake here.
I think the better question is:
Could the drug dealer sue Amanda for his half the cost of the all-expense-paid-trips, the donations for autistics.org, donations for more movies, the camera, CNN's payment, disability checks, the cost of county and state services rendered, and any and all other gains she's received as a direct result of the drug dealer and their 'exchanges' so long ago -- after all if it weren't for him, none of this would be possible.
Who could have guessed barbecuing your brains could be so rewarding?
(and then people wonder why she 'doesn't want to be cured')
Anon,
Droopy writes a lot better than Amanda because she's not pretending to be something she isn't. She writes like a real person, not someone's interpretation of a real person.
We saw that Anna Salamon did something useful with her intelligence. I wonder if she feels sorry for Amanda for wasting her life abusing autistic people.
Anonymous said...
"I'm beginning to doubt that Droopy is autistic based on what she writes here. How can someone supposedly so low functioning possibly write so well? Droopy, I think your the fake here."
Good. Now, run right over to Amanda Baggs and tell her that this is what you think. Tell her she's that been copying a fake autistic all along.
"Siblings of the grown disabled child still living with the parents say, I got my own problems. The father sees his son in 10 years locked away somewhere. Forgotten. No advocate. No family. No warmth of touch. Who will care what his pleasures are? Will someone ever take him rafting down the Bitterroot again? The father sees his son wandering hallways the rest of his life. Soiled pajamas. Decaying teeth. His only human contact a brusque toweling down after a lukewarm shower."
This thought from the Scot Sea article is our worst nightmare. Baggs tries to make people think this won't happen. For that significant misrepresentation about autism, she be restrained from having anything to say on the subject.
Fore Sam said...
"Anon,
Droopy writes a lot better than Amanda because she's not pretending to be something she isn't. She writes like a real person, not someone's interpretation of a real person."
Fore Sam, shhhh!
If they think I'm fake more's the better for me, I certainly would loose the appeal for Amanda to keep on copying me that way.. if she thinks I'm fake.. and you know when she first saw my website (I was up to the streetsign rattling post at the time:
http://droopyssafespace.blogspot.com/2006/10/things-i-like-outside-of-my-apartment.html
Amanda didn't quite register who I was and had seen my page and withoug knowing who I was (that I was THE autistic she'd been sourcing), wondered if I was a fake.
I distinctly remember this and how odd it was.. why would Amanda be questioning if somebody else, if I, wa a fake? She never did give me a straight answer on this, after much pressing she only said it was 'something she was going through' and for me to nevermind it.
It was Laura Tconsik who informed Amanda that I am the autistic, yes that one
But let's let them think I'm a fake..
I've been waiting for these Einsteins (that IS what you all think you are too ins't it, admit it) to finally work their way around to this..
When there's nowhere else to go and the truth of what Amanda is flies in their faces.. attack the one who tells them...
so,
If I'm a fake..
What the hell is Amanda then?
HAHAHA I find this whole concept to be very funny and I have been waiting for you dopes.
Tell her I'm a fake, tell her to move on, she woopsed real big time, shoulda stuck with Sue Rubin (Sue's been on CNN too but she hasn't written a book to my knowledge anyway and maybe she wouldn't have noticed you copping her life story for yourself...
There you go, time to move on Amanda, you don't want to be copying a fake like me now do ya?
You heard it, from "anonymous' there I can't be real I type too well!
Guess you'd better lose that windbag wannabe Charles Dickins thing you've got going there (and gat the neckbrace and play the physical side of things more), you don't want me or my life, you don't want to be caught faking a fake do ya?
You can go leave me and mine in peace now
WOOHOO!
Droopy, Amanda hasn't learned that you're the Queen of the Elves yet, has she?
Fore Sam said...
"Droopy, Amanda hasn't learned that you're the Queen of the Elves yet, has she?"
Actually my proper title is "Queen Others Mother God of the Elves"
but shhh Fore Sam, you're giving away all my secrets!
(and I have laughed so hard in the last 15 minutes or so that I have managed to entirely lose a little red cardboard box with the instructions on how to finish making my little tv dinner entre thing here in my apartment somewhere.. now that's real autistic elven magic at work!)
I think your both fakes. Both of you seem to be very disturbed individuals. I've seen LFA's and Droopy does not appear to be one and neither does Amanda. I think your being played John.
waitaminute, it requires a name out of a book too doesn't it?
My bad, I was distracted by the missing TV dinner instruction box (all my pesky Elven Others must have snatched it back to the woods in my mind darn them), but my full real name would have to be, in good keeping with the syntax then "Yoko Ono, Queen Others Mother God of the Elves"
(I HAVE read about her in books so she counts, right? and I have a picture of me where people think I LOOK like Yoko Ono so therefor I must be her if I read about her and not just one but two whole somebody's said I look like her, then yep that's me "Yoko Ono, Queen Others Mother God of the Elves"
Here's a picture of me BEING Yoko.
http://oneoriginal.blogspot.com/2007/06/been-there-done-that.html
Nevermind the writing underneath, I was confused then, yeah that's right that's it, I was misremembering and somebody told me I wasn't Yoko and I was so eager to please I was just SAYING I wasn't really "Yoko Ono, Queen Others Mother God of the Elves" but we're the same height and it was just a switchback in my life, one of those you know because really I am, I am "Yoko Ono, Queen Others Mother God of the Elves" see?
got it straight now?
Anonymous said...
"I think your both fakes. Both of you seem to be very disturbed individuals. I've seen LFA's and Droopy does not appear to be one and neither does Amanda. I think your being played John."
That's fine with me that you think that, short of the 'you're being played John" part, the rest of it I have no issue with. I am here because somebody's been making a lot of fun of me, using my life to lie and I want it stopped.
If people have to deam us both liars for that to happen, I don't care. I'm not here trying to sell anybody anything, I'm not the asshat who propped my life all over international TV and uses it to say and do things I would never do.
If people think we're both full of shit is what it takes for this to come to a close, I'm not upset. I wasn't out there with something to gain and there's nothing to lose from my perspective.
As for 'playing John Best" I don't think so. I don't agree with all the stuff he says and he knows that, and he might have his doubts as to whether I am real or not too, but again, that's not the issue.
I have never lied to him, never made false promises to him about his son or anything else based on my lot in life, and I won't. Doing that is exactly part of what I take such issue with Amanda doing. She uses my life to speak on behalf of autistics and she's not autistic.
I use my life to NOT speak on behalf of autistics. I just live it. Go figure.
Its a sad thing that this guy and his website seem to be the only one who gives a shit about the fraud being performed on everybody by her. Politics makes strange bedfellows they say, so here I am, the one place speaking out about it and the one place Amanda's lawyer buddy doesn't seem to venture when I talk about it.
Go tell more people that both Amanda and I are fakes. You won't see me getting upset about that sort of thing.
I know who I am.
If you can get her to stop the crap with some sort of guarentee its over, really over, then that'll save me having to write a book, go to autism conferences and this other to try to combat her doing it to me. I'll be all too happy to blend back into obscurity but only with assurance that nothing like this is ever going to happen to me agian (so I probably will be writing that book, mapping it ouit, making sure people in the autism community that don't already, know who I am, as insurance either way) and then hopefully it'll be done.
You can actually expedite that, even though there's enough people out there who won't buy it who know me and that I'm real etc, if you can spread a rumor that I'm not real or whatever, it can't hurt as I see it, it can only help my situation, so go for it.
When/if I ever try to sell you something or sell you ON something, then you've got to worry if I'm real or not, otherwise its not an issue to me and shouldn't be to you, but you can help by doing this actually.
AFF/NEURODIVERSITY/AUTISTIC LIBERATION FRONT HEADLINE NEWS:
AN ANONYMOUS POSTER AT HATINGAUTISM QUESTIONS BOTH AMANDA BAGGS' AND DROOPY'S CREDIBILITY'
Okay maybe its not much, but spread the word anyway. It can only help.
I've had months of being aware of and under the thumb of her and this situation, months to think about these things and I'm well ahead of you on this one,
There is a method to my madness'
but you don't have to believe that either, in fact I'd rather you didn't...
I'm droopy, but to you, that's "Yoko Ono, Queen Others Mother God of the Elves" thankyouverymuch
Most of Amanda's blog consists of explaining all her'symptoms' and 'malfunctions' in excruciating detail. She writes about sensory problems, pain, constipation, eating problems. I don't know a non autistic who is so exquistely in tune with their own body and all its functions as she is. Yet she said on her blog that it was only a couple of years ago she realised that she had a body and that people were judging her by it.
How do you go from being unable to tell a doctor where a pain is to what she can do now, in just a couple of years.
There is one inconsistency after the next in her obsessive telling of her life.
Droopy, make up something majorly weird and see if Amanda copies it. But be careful, she reads this blog. LOL
Droopy said..
"and that's another thing, claiming to have been institutionalized like I have, milking a couple of months in some luxury mental hospital and a very extravagant children's grouphome as a teenager"
You're right, Droopy:
April 1998
"I have been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and PTSD, and a couple of years ago I was receiving residential treatment at a now-closed centre. It was a nice place, not very restrictive at all, on a small ranch. I got a lot of therapy (far more than in a hospital, say) and a chance to socialise with other adolescents with mental/emotional problems."
"is there any truth to this, somehow she went from directly quoting lyrics and reciting conversations to a wannabe author who wrote like she was practicing to write "Never Promised You a Rose Garden Meets Go Ask Alice" somehow all at once at age 14 and we missed the first part somehow? I couldn't find it, can you?"
No, I can't find her quoting lyrics at all in any of her messages, except in her signatures - David Bowie mostly. And the only reference to the Beatles is, as you said, her watching "Sergeant Peppers Lonely Hearts", in 1994.
Droopy has added to the growing evidence that shows Baggs to be a fraud. It may seem like strange bedfellows to some. The fact of the matter is I love a young boy with autism and I hate what it has done to him. I have been advising other parents how to help their kids since long before Generation Rescue was formed. I've been fighting with the idiots who run my state since before David Kirby ever heard of autism.
Unlike the treacherous band of scumbags called Neurodiversity, I want to see every autistic person get all the help they need. So, if there's something I can do that's useful to Droopy, I'll do it. And, I like her, if that's OK with anonymous critics.
Watson,
Compare what we know with this list of stuff Amanda claims to have *personally* observed and experienced.
http://ballastexistenz.autistics.org/?p=97
In ten years from now when she's 36 and I'm 52, is this still gonna be going on?
I realize this situation didn't happen overnight, in fact its been ten years in the making with me oblivious to it save for the past 10 months, but is it gonna be ten more uears, or the rest of our lives with her milking my life and just wantonly making up shit like this based on it?
I get the feeling she seems to fully expect exactly that, for this to go on forever with no end in sight. Somehow this situation just going on forever exactly as it is seems to be perfectly okayfine with her and I just can't understand that.
You´re hilarious Droopy, I read your comments on "Past, Present, Future by Amanda Baggs" video. Good that you're letting other people know about her :-)
Droopy,
You want my opinion? No, it won't be still going on. Amanda will one day get bored with having to be non-vocal, and move on just like Jasmine O'Neill did.
We know that at one time she enjoyed talking, her friends have said so. She wasn't just a talker, she was talkative, so she won't keep up the elective mutism for too much longer. I get the impression that being silent is one of the hardest things she has to do.
For a talker, it must be. Perhaps that's why she writes so much.
I don't believe that Amanda has experienced or been direct witness to more than half of what she says on that page. Most are deliberate exaggerations.
I don't believe that she used to spend "a good deal of her time being totally immobilized and tortured". She never mentioned restraints, abuse, or torture in any of her messages to the google forums, and I am absolutely certain she would have done. It would have given her something else to talk about.
If those are photographs of the ranch where she stayed I don't believe it was "the worst "institution"" she'd ever been in. Unless she associates that ranch with the death of a fellow patient, a young boy her age who committed suicide.
She mentions his name in her diary, and his death imo may very well be one of the reasons she has PTSD. It must have been a very frightening and traumatic time for her. And I have only 'heard' her talk about that incident once.
I don't believe that all the professionals - doctors, psychiatrists, nurses, "staff" - have been evil, but that's the impression she gives. I have no doubt that a handful would have been power-trippers, and perhaps unkind. We have all come across people who take pleasure in bossing others and giving orders. But read what she says in her diary about being "very grateful to the doctors and staff at Shepherd for making her better". Read what she says about the psychiatrists. She looked forward to her therapy sessions, and wondered what she would discuss with them next time:
"We always find something interesting to talk about."
She gave no indication of living in fear of them, and I'm sure that if anything untoward had happened to herself or another patient, she would have told them about it.
And I'm also quite sure that her parents who quite obviously cared for her, would have instantly removed her from any of the facilities or hospitals that they placed her in that were dangerous. They would not have allowed their daughter to live in a place of torture. What loving parents would?
"I get the feeling she seems to fully expect exactly that, for this to go on forever with no end in sight. Somehow this situation just going on forever exactly as it is seems to be perfectly okayfine with her and I just can't understand that.
Activists will use any and every means to get their message across. The end to them justifies the means. Neither truth nor the people they hurt along the way matter to them.
P.S.
The ends justifies the means. That is exactly the same rationale used for the vaccination programme. Eradicating disease is their aim and in order to achieve that goal they are willing to sacrifice children along the way. Our children.
Dead babies and brain-damaged children are nothing more to them than collateral damage in their war against disease.
I wonder if Anna is coming back to defend her old friend. Maybe she read some other opinions here and decided her old friend is out of her mind.
"Activists will use any and every means to get their message across. The end to them justifies the means. Neither truth nor the people they hurt along the way matter to them."
I completely agree with this in general, but is this what Amanda is about? Activism? I think with her it is about being the centre of attention. I think it is about her as opposed to disability rights. I have met people before who worked with the disabled and who claimed they cared about individual rights, but what they really wanted was for others to see their work and praise them for being such heros. At the end of the day it was all about them. Amanda said on her blog that she met Dave Hingsburger and he said it was "an honour" to meet her."
Dave, you were snowed by Snowcake.
Anonymous said...
"I completely agree with this in general, but is this what Amanda is about? Activism? I think with her it is about being the centre of attention."
Very likely.
But her lesbian lover Laura T is a political activist, and the Neurodiversity movement, for their agenda, desperately needed a "low-functioning" adult "autistic" who could write well.
Amanda looked the part, had the right attitude, so she was chosen.
Anonymous said...
http://www.usc.edu/CSSF/History/1998/pictures/pic_s11.html
Cut and paste the above. If this is her she looks nice enough. Intelligent too.
Yeh, thats her, alright. But that picture doesnt do her justice. She's really very good-looking, with long, flowing, wavy dark hair. A cute, petite body with sparkling eyes, and she must wear contacts now. As nice as her hair looks, it doesnt look so nice on her arms and legs, as the girl doesnt shave, at all. Her arms and legs kinda remind me of Klinger, on M*A*S*H. There was a reason they had that sign covering her legs. Heh.
Droopy said:
"In ten years from now when she's 36 and I'm 52, is this still gonna be going on?"
I think in ten years, she'll be writing about how Muskie took over her life, and made her do all these things, abused her over and over, and used her as her own personal hand puppet to perpetrate fraud on the autistic community and the world at large. A sick relationship has a way of turning on itself. Mark my words.
Have any of you been to the Autism Speaks boards? They have just banned this very smart man named Abe Lincoln. Does anyone know why?
Lisa, I don't suppose Autism Speaks would let anyone tell the truth on their boards when they shut up their own daughter. Is that a good guess about what goes on there?
Yes John. I had forgotten about what they had done to their daughter. I just thought it was interesting that as soon as this nice man, Abe, mentioned Amada Baggs he was banned. It sure seems that she has alot to hid and there are alot of people helping her hid it.
Cheers Anons! To answer your questions on:
Why's Droopy so smart if she's LFA?
Ahem. Because of a few simple reasons. First, LFAs aren't stupid. They just aren't your average suburbanite with a house, two cars, and 1.5 children.
Second, Not speaking doesn't mean you're stupid. Try to say that to Stephen Hawking. You see?
Third, do you even know any Autistics, or are you just looking up "Autism" on Wikipedia?
Lastly, LFAs aren't exactly the same, little symptom clones. There's variation in symptoms. Like rolling dice, you won't turn up the same numbers every time, but the dice are still dice.
Lisa: I was there a long, long time ago, for a little while, but I've no idea. I remember him. He was a smart, sharp, funny guy. The Mods hated him.
Watson said that 'Past, Present and Future' was written by Amanda Baggs "to speak vociferously against any intervention and treatment for autism".
That is not so. She wrote that activist autistics are not advocating stagnation, but "true learning and true growth that takes the whole person, including the autism that will always be there, into account."
"Thus supporting the ND bottom line," Is what I would gather Watson's point to be.
ND sees intervention and treatment as murdering the unique individual, or am I wrong?
You are absolutely right, Joeker.
Philip's quote is totally meaningless and useless tripe. It's propaganda.
In this piece Amanda was supporting Dawson in her stand against ABA for children with autism in Canada - the .
You are absolutely right, Joeker.
Phillip's quote is totally meaningless and useless tripe. It's propaganda.
In this piece Amanda was supporting Dawson in her stand against ABA for children with autism in Canada - the "Auton case"
I was hoping dmd would comeback and tell us how Amanda looked and behaved in college. Was she in a wheelchair carrying her voice box and wearing diapers, pulling her hair out and flapping her hands?
I myself would be quite open to hear about what Anna has to say on this. I don't think she'll be able to concoct a good enough story, given that she's fled with a silly excuse for not continuing, over implacability. Of course, it's ironic that she herself has made it clear that her mind is set.
Also, it came to my attention through random browsing that Amanda has a Masters Degree, I think, in Psychology. What can this say about knowing human minds? Getting people to back her? She knows just how to convince people, she knows their minds perhaps better than they themselves do. Has she ever used her Degree for anything? Perhaps she's just using her education to mimic being LFA, to get whatever she would thus be entitled to?
Degrees are nothing to be sneezed at, especially from insitutions for those who are academically gifted.
Amanda does not have a Masters degree or any university degree.
http://mustang.doe.state.in.us/TRENDS/cestats.cfm?subject=6004&schl=1437
Hm...
Records, Philip. Records.
Fact. Evidence. Learn to use it.
The Amanda Baggs listed there is a teacher at Wilson Middle School in Indiana. She is a different person than the autistic Amanda Baggs who has a blog called 'Ballastexistenz'.
I googled AB and a masters degree after reading your post, Joeker. Philip is right. Amanda Baggs is a common name. I feel sorry for anyone who bears it. LOL.
She attended the John Hopkins Center for Talented Youth, at age 14, to earn a degree. I wonder if the folks at CTY would have a list of those who graduated certain years, and what degrees they earned, at this college for only the best and brightest. If she's, what, 26 now, that'd be between 12 and 8 years ago, I would guess.
According to the information on the 'prelude to becoming autistic' thread, she attended college for only one year, took LSD and ended up in a psych ward. I don't think there is any question that she is intelligent. But why is she growing facial hair thse days? She said something on her blog about being mistaken for a man at the hairdressers.
With those breasts, how?"
Still, even the fact that she attended a school for the gifted shows that she's no idiot. Though she may not have earned a degree, she had still attended for a year, and one could only expect great marks, in a school for the gifted.
Baggs may not have been an idiot when she attended the college but, that was before she used LSD 4 or 5 times a day.
There is a huge difference between being able to get great marks in school and having ordinary common sense. Also, some highly intelligent people are mentally ill.
Is Amanda mentally ill or is she doing this autism thing to collect the social and not have to work, or is the whole trainwreck a cry for attention?
It is a very strange way to get attention. Why aren't her parents here defending her and why does he choose to live across a continent from them. You would think they would want such a disabled daughter close by to check on her.
Well, I have to admit, you have a point.
However, was she in diapers while attending? Was she nonverbal? How about in the wheelchair?
All of this confusion and conflicting fact muddies the waters, and keeps people from coming to certainity. It's hard t oarrive at concrete conclusions when there's so many conflicting facts and opinions.
Joeker said...
" It's hard t oarrive at concrete conclusions when there's so many conflicting facts and opinions."
Conflicting facts? I don't see any. What are the facts, Joeker?
I see "elves" in second life who claim to be autistic and polygomists.
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