I'm proud to be autistic, you should be too

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I was aware that PETA euthanizes animals, but these articles would admittedly appear to suggest that it takes place on a much larger scale than I previously thought. One thing I will say, though, is that I think euthanising an animal is the lesser of two evils compared to allowing it to suffer in a "research facility" (as that third article somewhat euphemistically describes a vivisection lab).

To cheer me up, my mentor once commented that an Aspie's mind is like a super fast and fancy car.... It's very very impractical to drive! It's too beautiful to drive around in the muck with all the gravel and stuff chipping at it, the glass the ornaments.

I have a medal, I got for helping the poor for 10 years, the Albertan government gave it to me. So I brought it to China to impress my dad with it. He was only impressed for a short while. now because I removed it from the saftey matrix of my room/desk, and it has travled all the way to China with me, it was dented a nice shiny smooth medal, (it's gold painted, because gold is too soft a metal, they use hard center and the outer is Gold). Now I'm depressed. Because I have to hide it from a totally psychotic step mom, who has tried to cut off my cat tail with knife (until dad wrestled her down), I brough other souviners to show dad, who I haven't seen in like 15 years. Juding how she torn down a RARE poster I ganked from the olympic village's computer room (It was end of games, and I figured meh why not?), she tore that down, thank god she didn't throw it out. So knowing her impluse control problems. I hid my souviners. Again. the RARE treasures tarnished in the regular normal NT world. Dented medal, faded reflective paint on my Vanoc uniform. I should have stayed in Canada, sheesh. No money is worth this insane abuse.

Anyways, the treasures the valuables like my medal, or the car, or the poster, are valuables that are cool (Aspergers), and the damages or potential for damages is NT's "Normal world".

Well....in all honesty, I think your thread title is a bit presumptuous for one thing. When it comes to things like this at least, I don't feel I have any business even suggesting what others should/should not be, do, have, etc.....


For another......I personally cannot look at this or much of anything else as a matter of pride. I am a determinist and therefore do not believe anyone has a legitimate ( i.e. rational/logical) reason to take pride (or it's opposite) in anything.


Saying one is "proud/ashamed" to be black, white, gay, straight, neurotypical, etc......makes no more sense to me.

Nor do I see any reason anyone should say they're "proud/ashamed" to have Down syndrome, be a member of mensa, to work for Microsoft, to have attended Harvard, etc....


IMO...all these things (and everything else for that matter) are issues of complete neutrality when it comes to "pride" and "shame".

We simply are who and what we are via nature and nurture....it's as simple as that IMO.


Oh....one more thing. I would suggest that before you say things like "autism is a gift", you might want to say instead something like "autism is a gift for me", or at least, "I believe autism is a gift".

That way it doesn't sound like you're making or implying some objective statement about something which is clearly anything but.

Some people with ASD's believe just as strongly that it's a curse. Who is anyone to say you are right and they are wrong or vice versa?


From the strictly logical AND deterministic (since even those of you who believe in free will can't possibly think we "chose" to be autistic or neurotypical) perspective, nobody is "right" or "wrong" here.

Yep, I'm gay. I don't understand gay pride. I mean... I get it, I think, but I don't think it's all that logical.

It doesn't seem like those were the only available options.

Same here (both). Gay pride always seems to get presented as an "in your face" demonstration to everyone else that we're not going to be cowed into a corner, or something; hence the noisy and embarrassing demonstrations/parades of people wearing lots of pink or dressed in drag - but that's nothing to do with being gay from my viewpoint so to me, it always seems to just show lots of noise and silliness about something I don't recognize.
I feel about AS in the same way I do about being gay - I just am.

Gay pride parades aren't an issue, they're really no different from things like Mardi Gras or spring break or Carnival.

Yeah, agreed - from the "let's all get silly and have some fun" angle that's fine; I can see that - but it's the underlying "and we're proud of it!" angle with gay pride stuff that doesn't make much sense to me (and/or seems way over the top anyway!).

im not proud. it's not an accomplishment. but im not ashamed either.

Sometimes it is double-sided for me. I'm glad I am autistic because that's who I am and how I am and it just makes up who I am! But there are times when life can be really difficult because of it and I slip into these brief moments when I wish I was "normal" because sometimes it is REALLY hard to deal with things in life. My mind just moves slower. It takes longer to process things and I have sensory issues sometimes near to severe and severe anxiety. Basically to me it feels like the world moves too fast for me to keep up with it. I do things at my own speed and it isn't fast enough to keep up with this face-paced world. Then again being autistic makes me who I am and yes I am proud of it at times. It makes me detail-oriented and although I have deficits in some areas I am really smart in others.

I just read someone's post that we shouldn't be proud at all, that most of us don't have jobs or lovers, that we have hardly any friends or can drive or go to college. And NT people think we're nerds and we're all just a bunch of losers even if we don't want to admit it. Th OP said they'd take the cure if there was one.

So I guess if one person feels that way, the rest of us should as well.

Great. I guess I'll just go kill myself, then.

Good One. To let you know Autism isn't always a gift. I love having Autism. Autism is a pretty neutral thing for me.

Autism for me is both good and bad.

Sure, I'm proud to be autistic!

If I had a choice of whether I would rather be autistic or NT, I would stay autistic, so in that sense, I am proud.

I would also choose being Autistic over NT because it's all I know and it's who I am. I like how I view things and understand things logically and sequentially and outside the box rather than socially. But Autism is exceptionally challenging for me in many ways because I live in an nt world. I am proud of many things that I have been able to accomplish and my Autistic traits have helped me accomplish them but I am not proud of being Autistic. That to me is as ridiculous as if I were nt and going around saying I am proud of being nt. If someone told me that they were proud of being nt, I would wonder proud as opposed to what? If you are proud of being nt, would it make you not proud if you were something else? I think some of us might even get offended if someone went around saying how proud he was to be nt. I see no difference in being Autistic. If I were to take particular pride in being Autistic, would that mean that I would be ashamed if I had Down's Syndrome? I don't see any reason of being proud to be what we are born being. I am not proud to be black or to be a woman or to be a human being. My accomplishments can make me proud but the things that are just part of who I am are just that, just part of who I am. I did not create them or accomplish them. It's like saying I am proud that I have brown eyes. Would I be ashamed if I had green eyes? It just doesn't make sense.

Speaking as someone who didn't talk for the first 7 years of life yet was not diagnosed until age 64 , I feel very strongly that the worst handicap of autism is not knowing you have it . Getting the diagnosis was the most liberating event of my life because now I can finally begin to understand the massive amounts of confusion , doubt , pain and needless suffering in my life . Am I proud of being autistic ? Not really but I sure am relieved to know why I think , feel and act the way I have . Am I ashamed of it ? Absolutely not , in fact I think it's a gift if you know how to use it . I compare it to having a brand new 450 HP Ferrari where none of the switches or gauges are labelled , the windshield is fogged up and you can't find where to put the key . We don't need a cure , what we need is an owners manual that helps us understand , sort and make sense of the overwhelming amount of information we can access .