If society changes to accomodate my AS... is it still AS?

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FutureIsAS
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07 Jul 2017, 11:34 am

I mean, AS is largely sociological and triggered by environmental factors... though there are genetic factors involved as well. I dunno what happened while I was practicing social skills, the entirety of society seems to have changed to make it so that these "skills" come naturally to me. I have an official diagnosis and I still seem to have an autistic mind, yet I don't seem to suffer any of the deficits associated with it and feel more typical by the day, even though I know I'm not. Could someone help shed some light on my situation for me?



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07 Jul 2017, 3:11 pm

Interesting..., I myself, overtime, have progressed, and have been granted to progress much further than where I was socially and functionally, and thus on occasion I too find that the sense of otherness and alienation from other people has significantly decreased and that social connection is becoming more natural for me.

It has caused me to sometimes wonder if it is appropriate to still say I have AS, since the above consists and consisted of the majority of the factors limiting me.

And yet, on other occasions, my remaining difficulties with AS emerge, and so I think perhaps it is appropriate to consider myself AS..., since it encompasses a broad spectrum.

Ultimately, I suppose it depends on how you define AS in the above scenario you pose in the topic's title. Do you define it by certain quirks that set you apart? Do you define it by the difficulties inherent that could limit you? Do you define it as a certain neurological configuration?

If it is defined by the difficulties it creates, and if society could hypothetically change to accommodate the difficulties so completely that they are a non-issue, then is it still AS or is it just a typical variation that one can expect?

I think such questions are an interesting consideration as to just what AS is.


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sos72
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18 Jul 2017, 8:54 pm

I don't think society could ever truly be able to accommodate AS.

So you have a planet full of NTs that we call Earth. Those with AS and AS-lie traits are not from planet Earth yet reside on planet Earth. The problem is I feel we all come from different planets. The number one thing we have in common is we are not "Earthlings". Yea... we share a lot of the same traits. But we can be just as different from each other as we are from NTs.

/blathering


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shortfatbalduglyman
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18 Jul 2017, 9:12 pm

in some ways, society has already changed in ways that are favorable to autistics. for example, the Internet allows autistics to communicate, without verbally speaking. for me, at least, that makes it much easier.

lately, statistics claim that there are more autistic children than there were in the past.

but that could just be b/c more children are diagnosed with autism than in the past. and parents know what symptoms to look for.

furthermore, some countries accommodate AS more than other countries. some countries are just more extroverted than others. in Japan, for example, making eye contact is not considered proper social protocol.

but yes, if society changes to accommodate AS, it is still AS.



kraftiekortie
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19 Jul 2017, 11:38 am

Nowadays, it's sometimes difficult to diagnose somebody on the Spectrum.

Before 1994, though, autism was a one-dimensional disorder with very characteristic symptoms. It was not a spectrum disorder. It was autism no matter how much society deigned to "accommodate" the autistic person.



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19 Jul 2017, 11:47 am

It doesn't change the fact that many people on the spectrum have non-typical skills and deficits. A common deficit is face blindness. A common skill is an unusually good memory in one fashion or another. Such as memorizing numbers.