I felt rather frustrated after today’s thread about whether to take a stimming autie on a plane got taken down.
For me, as the mother of an autistic child, it is very important and enlightening to see what people really feel about my child. Scary, negative, but presumably realistic.
The thread got pulled to allegedly save the feelings of autistic people and their parents. I can’t support this idea at all. There were lots of honest, but frankly upsetting, posts by people who are not comfortable being around autistic people. The thread being pulled cites concerns about the feelings of people who are autistic/are parents of autistic children; I agree with these concerns but think the opposite effect was actually achieved.
Lots of posts on that thread were upsetting for us, but I don’t think the answer is to pretend it never happened and I think that deleting the thread doesn’t negate the many negative comments that posters have already read. It’s more helpful to leave that interaction up there, for autistic people and their families to understand how they are (not always) accepted in society.
To my mind, taking down that thread only protects the people that wrote thoughtless and unkind comments about our children with disabilities, it doesn’t allow us autism parents athe voice to better explain our children’s needs.