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They were not simply asking a question - in that case, they could've dropped the second part, which had exactly the same implication as my sarcastic reply.The intended implication was that the typical "parents of" Facebook group does not count as an autistic community. In my experience, the alleged "autistic community" has always turned out to be something of that nature, but I've only found that out after a lengthy back-and-forth. I phrased the question how I did, because I've found that being more direct puts people on the defensive (more likely to lie), and being less direct doesn't get an answer (less likely to give relevant details). You are the first person I've spoken to who has responded affirmatively.
If I had intended to imply that you were acting in bad faith, I would have dropped the first question, consulted the news guidelines, deleted my entire comment, downvoted yours, and then moved on with my life. I did not.
I apologise for how it came across, but this is one of those fake apologies because I really don't know how I could've done better.
> I'll also point out that, maybe the reason you don't encounter many autistic people who want to be "cured", is because people like you - who so strongly oppose such research - make us feel like traitors to our kind, and so we just shut up about it, and feel isolated even from the one community who we shouldn't feel isolated from.
Eugenics is a wonderful idea that of course we should be doing. However, history suggests that humans cannot be trusted with eugenics. Most autistic people, no matter how worldly, no matter how cynical, just don't get how large groups of predominantly-neurotypical humans behave. You know that innate sense of right and wrong you (likely) have? The closest thing (most) neurotypicals have is a sense of honour, and… well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honour is not the same thing.
Most people only care about doing the right thing if other people would find out, or if people they personally know and care about would be affected, would they do the wrong thing. For a good while, the prevailing academic thought considered autistic morality as evidence of an autistic deficit in theory-of-mind: autistic people clearly don't understand that they're allowed to do wrong stuff whenever nobody could ever find out! (I've lost the paper I learned this from, but https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4834434/ describes autists as having "atypical inflexibility in morality" – which is damning enough.)
We cannot trust most people, but academia is at its core about distributing knowledge (or "knowledge") as far and as wide as possible. The people most likely to act on this kind of research most immediately are organisations like Autism Speaks, who prioritise stamping out autists over the welfare of actual people. (Exercise: compare Autism Speaks' genetics research budget to their marketing/"outreach" budget. Compare that to their torture-"therapy" budget for trying to coerce masking behaviours out of three-year-olds. Now compare that to the money they actually spend on helping actual people live their own lives.)
No matter how much we want the outcome, we have to fix society before we try to research things like this. And I have no idea how we can fix society enough that we can do eugenics without… well, without https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_eugenics.
The ultimate goal of the eugenicist is to eliminate the people who are not like them. This is how it has always been. No matter how they dress it up in smiles and sunshine and roses, this is the beginning and end of their goals.
It is only safe to research eugenics when these people have no power, and there is no expectation of them ever getting power again. (I fear we may never get there, but that sentiment will be a self-fulfilling prophecy, so I continue to act as though things will be better within my lifetime.)
That's why we have the taboo. Hopefully this information helps you talk about your feelings without triggering the taboo. You are right that you should not feel isolated for the way you feel. (I expect that, among the most vocal enforcers of the taboo, are those who feel the same things you do, and for whom pride in their identity forms part of a coping mechanism.) I hope that it is not anybody's intention to exclude you for disliking your own inability to process certain stimuli.