The Autisnob

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I think Aspies that are able to have a job and support themselves and look down on other Aspies who are unable to get jobs and keep jobs are the real snobs.

I think it's partly both.



So it's fallacious to say that non-autistic people don't tend to innately have an easy time understanding autistic people?



That only works as an analogy if it can be somehow be shown that autistic people's brains are not working the way they were designed to. This requires knowing how brains are designed to work, among other things.



Can you provide evidence that there is a particular way brains are "supposed to work", that you know what that way is, and that autistic people's brains do not work that way?



I don't happen to think there's anything automatically "wrong with someone" for being autistic (or for being disabled in general for that matter), but a person isn't required to share that belief in order to grasp that the communication gap between autistic and non-autistic people is two-way in nature.



And using a broken telephone as an analogy presupposes that the autistic brain is "broken" in some manner. It doesn't actually show that the autistic brain is "broken" in some manner.

For technological analogies, I would compare it more to assorted different operating systems.



It means exactly what it sounds like it means: Neurological configuration that is not the most common one. It's not meant to carry any connotations beyond that, so if you bring any, go ahead and drop them. If you can come up with a more concise way of saying that in a neutral manner, be my guest.



There's no place anyone can go to and have no communication problems.



I think I said all of that already, and you claimed to disagree with it for some reason.



First off, if we're going to be precise about words, I'm not "an aspie" in the first place (which is why I've pretty consistently not used the word "aspie" in this discussion).

Second off, if none of us "speak autistic", why is it then, that I at least seem to have no problem (or, more precisely, no more problem than non-autistic people tend to have with each other) communicating (when using words or when not using words) with a particular subset of autistic people, or they with me?

Why is it that this has been often immediate, instantaneous, and without any prior preparation or special knowledge about each other?

Why is it that I am currently sitting in a room with someone who can tell more about me in a glance than many non-autistic people can in weeks or years worth of in-depth conversations -- and vice-versa?

Why is it that the serious communication problems only tend to start when non-autistic people walk into this apartment (and then they occur between me and a non-autistic person, or her and a non-autistic person, but not between two non-autistic people and not between me and her -- and the communication problems are pretty spectacular when they happen)?

(And I'm getting a lot of time to observe this discrepancy, because I'm stuck here on her couch on a doctor's orders until I get over a nasty and persistent bug. Between us we have at least six non-autistic people coming in here on the average day.)

Why is it that, in fact, this person and others who can actually read me have been told, before, about me, by different non-autistic people, multiple times, "You can't possibly have seen that much about what she's thinking -- there's no body language there to see!" or "You can't have seen that much about what she's thinking -- you only had a second to look at her!" (Even after I confirmed several times, in writing, that their split-second judgment of my thoughts was totally accurate.)

Why is it that with another autistic guy I know, we found each other instantly able to read each other in many layers -- as in, "What he feels like," "How he feels about feeling that way," "What he is covering over that feeling with" -- when even most members of our families can't read us that well?

While there is no single way to "speak autistic", there do seem to be many "dialects" of autistic, some of which seem to be easily and instantly comprehensible between people within the same or similar "dialects" without specific training.

If there is no way at all to "speak autistic", then why is it that the common ground people tend to share who "speak these same languages" is being autistic and generally not any other particular factor (such as male/female, cultural background, personality, etc)? And why is it also that if a person knows one such "dialect" they seem to pick up other "dialects" of autistic more readily than they pick up many non-autistic "dialects"?

Because it seems to me right now that if it's just me and the other person in this room right now, then we communicate just fine.



You can't make an accurate comparison of a non-autistic person to a set of stairs.

You can make a reasonably accurate comparison of:

1. The communication styles that are seen as the only necessary ways of communicating in a society where most people have non-autistic styles of communicating (and autistic people are not particularly powerful as a group within that society), and

2. The various forms of building entrances that are seen as the only necessary ways of doing it in a society where people who can't easily climb stairs (who may be legless or a number of other things) aren't considered particularly important users of the buildings.

Or:

1. Non-autistic people.

2. People who can climb stairs easily.

But you can't compare non-autistic people directly to flights of stairs without things becoming nonsensical pretty rapidly.



The analogy is screwed up anyway (in the ways I already described).

And believe it or not, lots and lots of people in several countries have been "dumb enough" already to believe that the construction of stairs-and-only-stairs is the problem for people who can't climb them (or can't without significant hardship to themselves), and have long since passed various laws declaring in various ways that stairs are disabling barriers for some people and that alternatives need to be provided whenever it's feasible to do so (and exceptions are made for places like, say, Mayan ruins, where it's not feasible).

There's a difference between stairs and building entrances, and also a difference between stairs and ways to get upstairs and downstairs. Similarly, there's a difference between the most common forms of communication used by non-autistic people and communication.

I use a wheelchair part-time, so I'm pretty familiar with the laws about these things, and with the issues, and the history of disability politics for that matter.

While some non-disabled people do in fact get "ticked off" at having to actually include physically disabled people in their conception of the world (and not just blanketly consign us to nursing homes or back rooms or other "special" places and insist that stairs aren't a problem, that if everywhere has stairs it's our own problem, even if we end up dying for it when just a bit of a design difference can make that totally unnecessary), that's becoming less and less the case as time goes on.

Most always-walking people I know get ticked off about stairs when there are no alternatives. They also get ticked off on my behalf if I keep getting hung up on when using a communication device (and giving people fair warning that I'm doing so), and then continue to get hung up on when I switch to a relay service. They often get more ticked off than I do about those things (sometimes I just want to get whatever it is done without dealing with having to fight to do it). Once people grasp what these barriers are to people, they don't want them to be there either.

You don't seem particularly aware of (or imaginative about) solutions to these things, either: The idea of using interpreters is not something you've brought up so far, when that is exactly how things tend to be handled with both speech-using linguistic minorities, and deaf people.

The whole point of interpreters is that there's a two-way communication problem that the interpreter steps in to solve, and the communication problem usually involves a person on one side speaking the majority language and a person on another side speaking a less common language.

Since you haven't seemed to bring up interpreters in their most common (and, in fact, legally mandated in some circumstances) forms, you are likely completely unaware of the existence of people variously called cognitive interpreters or (in some cases) English-to-English interpreters. They interpret between cognitively disabled people of various sorts and non-disabled people.

I have been successfully using various such interpreters for ten years now.



I'd say, more precisely, equal ranges of levels of social skills, or equal potential for social skills to be developed. On average.



I don't say that autistic people have no deficits, I just think that non-autistic people also have deficits, and that the combination of skills and deficits in each can easily clash with each other.

I also am not sure how you account for the fact that the things that seem (in studies) to differentiate between autistic and non-autistic cognition aren't specific to social situations or social skills, or the fact that autistic people seem (also in studies) to have skills non-autistic people lack.

I am not certain that non-autistic people can always acquire the same social skills as autistic people find easy, or vice-versa, but I do think that each can acquire skills to communicate more effectively with each other, and that these skills are useful in many situations that are far more universal than autistic/non-autistic communications. (And these skills range from simple to complex ones.)

I don't know how it denies the relative deficits of autistic people to say that non-autistic people also have deficits relative to autistic people.



I'm not surprised you'd say that with such certainty.

I might actually be expressing it poorly. If I am, it's likely because I'm exhausted (I'm actually writing this stuff in bed while ill, it's an interesting way to pass a huge amount of time), and because the topic is complex, although I will try to do it better. The problem is it seems to take a lot more work (and words) to challenge common assumptions than to defend them, because a person arguing the points you are arguing can fall back easily on stuff that amounts to "just because" (or typing common assumptions in capital letters) without getting called on it as readily.

But I am pretty sure that you would not put up with me saying to someone else that if I don't understand what they're saying then they're expressing it poorly. (I would hope in fact that you wouldn't, because I don't think it's a good idea to trust one's powers of comprehension so absolutely.)



And non-autistic people's neurological deficits never get in the way of communication?



How is it counterproductive?



I'm not going to argue analogies in which on one side you have a human-to-human comparison and on the other side you have a human-to-staircase comparison. It doesn't work.

And I do happen to think that in communication situations, then there's a responsibility on both sides of the interaction, unless one side is actually incapable of comprehending such a responsibility (which I don't think non-disabled people tend to qualify as).

An English speaker doesn't have to learn French, but they do (if they want to communicate with a French person) have to recognize that they don't speak French and work to find ways to compensate for it at the very least. I speak some French, and when I was younger a shopkeeper in a tiny one-woman shop, recognizing that she did not speak French and that a customer did, made an effort to find someone in the store who spoke any amount of French. I helped translate enough for the transaction to take place. If I hadn't been there, she would have had to make an effort to come up with some sort of gesture or drawing-based system that worked (which was also being used at the time). One thing she didn't do was say "Sorry, I only speak English, I can't help you."

When I was older (and had re-lost speech again), I was at one point locked outside. My communication device was locked in my apartment. I spoke only English but couldn't speak and have gestures that are difficult for most non-autistic people to understand, the woman who handled situations like this was non-autistic and spoke only Spanish (a description that described the majority of people who lived there, so I couldn't just go find someone who knew English), and the security guy she was calling spoke only English. We still found a way to make that work, and it wasn't by any of us deciding "I don't have any limitations here, but this other person does."

I am curious what you think of the use of interpreters, because it's my most common strategy when the amount I can bend my communication style for someone still isn't enough. And it's often quite successful, and doesn't require anything more of the other person than that they grasp that there are things going on with me that they don't understand (otherwise why would an interpreter be necessary?).

If hearing is a "crucial" ability that is "required" for "human communication", then are you saying that deaf people's communication is not human, or that it's not communication?

If deafness is to be defined as a lack of a particular skill, then that skill is hearing, not communicating.



Are you aware that there are deaf people who don't ever have to communicate with hearing people?



I don't think you understood cas's analogy there. The two of you are talking about two separate things.

You had brought up the existence of the potential for autistic-to-autistic communication trouble as proving that autistic people had specific communication deficiencies.

cas brought up that non-autistic people can have trouble communicating with each other as well.

You then said that NT-to-NT communication problems aren't the same as autistic people experience on a regular basis.

And the thing is, the problems autistic people experience on a regular basis are mostly autistic-to-NT, not autistic-to-autistic.

My suspicion, and also cas's, is that autistic people have the same innate range of abilities to understand each other on average as non-autistic people do with each other. But that the severe communication problems come in the most often when it's communication between autistic and non-autistic people.

That doesn't mean that individual autistic people can't have trouble communicating with each other, or that specific non-autistic and autistic people can't have good communication between each other. It just means in general autistic-to-autistic communication and NT-to-NT communication are both on average less severely compromised than autistic-to-NT communication.

I hope I haven't just contributed a bunch of word soup there.



NTs do tend to lack some skills that either come naturally to autistic people or autistic people are more likely to learn.

Coming naturally to autistic people are things like certain particular perceptual skills that non-autistic people just lack. (Ones that point to, for instance, a probable ability of autistic people to keep higher-order thought from distorting perception some of the time, something that non-autistic people just can't do. And other things described here.)

Autistic people are more likely to learn how to communicate with someone of a very different neurology than ourselves, because we're more likely to have to learn it, not because we're innately better at it.

I don't understand how it is foolish to acknowledge either of these things, given that the evidence points to them.



Yes, we are, but I don't think that's what cas meant by deficient. I think cas meant something close to uniquely deficient in social interactions (with non-autistic people not being deficient in anything).

All people are deficient in something.



If your analogies hold any weight, then when non-autistic people use standard non-autistic communication strategies to try to communicate with autistic people and fail, the problem doesn't reside with the autistic person at all.

Whereas I would say that it's both, and that neither autistic nor non-autistic people are so rigidly defined and specific as screws, screwdrivers, keys, and locks are.



This isn't about hurt feelings (and "sorry if it hurts your feelings" isn't a real apology). And cas didn't say that autistic people have no deficiencies, just that every difference getting called deficiency is not a good or accurate way to look at things. And it isn't.

Autistic people are not non-autistic people with parts cut out of us. That doesn't fit what most of us experience and it doesn't fit the research either. We do have deficiencies but they are caused by a different configuration (and some of our deficiencies are even caused by our skills, just as non-autistic people's deficiencies are rightly already pretty much seen as caused by their skills).

And there's a lot of stuff in the research that I'd really like to see how you can explain with the ideas you promote.

And, by the way, legless people can do things people with legs can't, too. Like, if they wear prosthetics (as one woman with no legs pointed out in a lecture I saw), change their height and various attributes of their legs at will, and have legs that have attributes no person with legs could possibly have (such as -- and I've seen these all owned by one person -- cat paws, see-through legs, legs specially designed for running that look nothing like legs, elaborately carved decorative wooden legs, etc).



And heaven forbid that autistic people ever decide that we're worthy of being communicated with as effectively as possible, that'd be getting wayyyyy too dangerously uppity or something.

Seriously, I think most of us are already experienced enough not to demand perfection. Most non-autistic people I know don't find it nearly so dangerous and scary as you do, when they find out that autistic people have ways of communicating that they don't understand. They react often much like Kath did in the Donna Williams quote in one of my earlier posts -- they are excited to see that there are ways to interact with us that they haven't learned yet, and eager to learn them. They don't see it as insulting or threatening or anything.

Deaf people cannot hear (adequately). That doesn't mean that they are "communicatively disabled," just that they cannot interact in all the same ways as hearing people can. They can communicate perfectly well by other methods than spoken language. If someone who can hear but not sign were to find himself among a group of deaf people who know ASL, he would be the one who could not communicate. The cause of his inability to communicate with them isn't that they're deaf, it's that he doesn't sign.

Similarly, someone illiterate will have a lot of trouble on the internet, but if he speaks fine, no one will say that he is unable to communicate (although clearly he is unable to communicate in writing); he is just illiterate.

Whether or not it hurts my feelings to be called deficient or it is "PC", you're wrong that it is a deficiency. The problem is not in autism. It's relative to the group communicating, not living in one person or other. Privileging one kind of communication (the spoken language and manner common to the majority group) over all others seems to be natural, but to call anything other than that an absolute deficit in communication is not correct.

I disagree very much. The resentment and frustration is there already, whether or not we think that others are not doing their part. Maybe not for you, but for me and for others I've seen. Knowing that I am not the only one with the problem gives me a more realistic idea about myself and about them than I used to have; and I expect much less than I did. I am both better able and better motivated to communicate with other people.

Also, with regard to your telephone example to anbuend, unless you can point to where something has gone wrong (aphasia from brain injury, for example) how can you say that we aren't working as we were designed to work? (Are women deficient men? What if the only shirts available are shirts designed for flat chests, are they then deficient men?)

Okay, moving this to a new thread, since we are now talking about whether autism/AS is a "disorder" or not. I will borrow some quotes from here in the new thread, but did want to respond specifically to two things here.

Yes, yes it does. Their condition renders them UNABLE to recieve certain types of communication. It doesn't render them totally aphasic, just as the disabilty of losing someone's foot doesn't render them totally immobile. But to say they don't have a disability that affects their communication is just.... patently and demonstrably false.

I could have phrased what I said better... I said "No matter how much you PC it up, she is missing one of the crucial abilities required for human communication."

Perhaps "primary abilities used for human communication" would have been better phrasing... "required" was an overstatement.

Sorry, I didn't see that anbuend had replied before I did.

Yes. And because same-type miscommunication is not limited to autistic people, then that proof is either also proof of NT communication deficiency, or no proof at all. It does not prove that there is a special autistics-only fault when both NTs and autistics experience trouble communicating within their own groups as well as between groups.




That is also what I meant. Usually when people say deficient, they mean "You are not good at this, but everyone else is." Very seldom does anyone mean "You are not good at this, and we are not good at that, both of which make this thing we are trying to do hard." Everyone can be called deficient in relation to something, but I object to one side being called "deficient" and needing "accommodation" and that is that.

I think there is a flaw in this scenario: When I don't understand him, I am deficient. When he doesn't understand me, I am deficient. When I make an effort to understand him, I am learning to communicate. When he makes an effort to understand me, he is accommodating my communicative disability.

I still argue that it affects method of communication, not communication itself. (Like illiteracy.)

It greatly impairs their ability to communicate, even though they have other avenues of communication they can use to compensate.

Some more snobs:

The self-diagnosed type: are sure they have said disorder, even though they haven't seen a professional, they then take it as a slight when one points out that they might not actually have said disorder, or someone says that self-diagnosis doesn't equate to certainty. They trot out the usual, 'I know myself better than any professional!' 'Professionals are wrong,' and '... how can you be certain that the professional is right?' Tends to talk for others with the disorder too.

The "high-functioning" type: are sure they don't have a disorder in relation to those who're "low-functioning", usually fail to grasp the meaning of disorder and disability (even though they're "high-functioning"). Many of the self-diagnosed type reside among these too. Thinks they talk for everyone with autism when they move their high-functioning fingers.

In a clear way, YOU are elitist and a snob. It is interesting. I, for one, won't publically talk like I should be given any big allowances (There are little reasonable ones I have ALWAYS asked for simply because of reason and not because of any thing like AS. I didn't even know about any such thing as AS.)

As for talking for others, I really haven't done that either. I think few do. There are many things I never claimed to understand, and groups I never claimed to really know. You, on the other hand, seem to claim that some people AREN'T AS or autistic, because they don't meet gilbergs criteria, etc... Some people brought up failings people with AS often have, and I was shocked to realize I had them too!(I have just compensated, etc..., for so long.) Happily, I DON'T fit some of gilbergs criteria though.

At least I know AS is real, and will treat it as such. My attitude towards people has changed. You can be happy for such things. Who knows? Maybe some day it will even affect how YOU are treated! BTW just so there is no misunderstanding, I am not speaking simply about myself and my ideas there, but OTHERS that also may have a similar change of heart!

I didn't read it that way, I saw Danielismyname's post as an observation and I didn't get the idea he thought he was better than anyone else, I think he was just looking at a fact he has observed.

I guess I was just reading it along with other posts he has written along these lines.

He seems to be the most vocal one along those lines. I, just like all of you I am sure, DO hate those claiming they have AS simply to get benefits, sympathy, or get out of jail. Many aren't in that group though, and I am not.

If many others WERE found to somehow have something else, I would think others would be a bit happy just because the group of people with certain problems was bigger. After all, if 70% were found to have sensitivity problems, the other 30% would be more likely to take notice, and react accordingly. I thought long and hard about getting diagnosed, but it might not be that obvious anymore and, if my employer found out, my employer's perception of me might change. I think I'll wait.

Anyway, whether due to AS or not, I have trouble reading between the lines a bit. I can NOW see hidden meaning and potential between lines FINE, simply because of all I have seen in my life, but it is possible that the person authoring those lines never even CONSIDERED such potential. If I am seeing unintended things, I truly AM sorry.

I don't know him well enough to judge him, but I've seen Daniel accuse the owner of this site of not having AS. I think that's a bit too far. He absolutely hates anyone who is not diagnosed.

Daniel is a demon. Daniel is the Devil. Daniel is a pawn of the professionals. Daniel eats babies. Daniel, Daniel, and Daniel!

If you wish to presume things, and to at least appear like you know what you're talking about, you both, should at least find where I say these things; you won't find such because they don't exist.

Sorry but you simply cannot know what anyone else is feels. I state again that I really don't think this is true, I believe it more to be a matter of truth seeking and clarifying. Anyway, sorry to Daniel for talking about him in his presence.

I am going off to eat lunch now and continue with my maths

Depends on your definition of "smarter". If you mean IQ, many of us are. If you mean "common sense", I'd score zero!



Difficulty finding/keeping a job has nothing to do with snobbery - it's more a result of the inability of NT's to see past the "social skills" thing. Personally, I do have job, & have no desire to live on welfare.



I wouldn't have put it quite like this, though I don't generally have any problem in communicating with other aspies. I just can't be bothered with trying to learn any of the silly pointless "rules" that NT's expect you to abide by.



Not at all. Some NTs are creative, so are some aspies.



It has been said of me that I "have an extraordinary ability to believe two conflicting things at the same time"! This is a direct result of the logical outcome of one set of beliefs coming up against the logical outcome of a different set of beliefs, i.e. both conclusions were derived perfectly logically from two widely seperate starting points, but cannot both be true.

While this may make me more "logical", it's hardly rational or functional!



No, of course I don't! What I do object to, however, is NT's not realising that we are not all like them, and therefore ascribing the wrong motives to our behaviour through assuming we are NT.

(I do NOT mean "NT's in general", just the ones that act like this.)

So it's not a question of "aspie superiority" - OK so I was brought up to believe I was superior, but this was not my fault & I know better now - but NT'S ARE NOT SUPERIOR EITHER!! !! We are two different types of human, but neitehr is superior to the other.