Aspie Elitism

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This is all so true. I'd like to add that we all have talents (AS and NT and everything in between). What is particularly striking about my experience with AS is that I can be so sophisticated in a few things and so naive and clueless in others. Because I don't really know how to compare myself to others, I usually don't know whether I'm being too clever and technical or too dumb to deal. On occasion, I come off at the right level to connect to others, but usually I don't know when something is way off until it's too late. Having a limited ability to get a good frame of reference in which to measure social behaviors is one of my key AS deficits. It sounds like you have a strong logic system, that helps you with a disciplined way of assessing things. I am actually pretty weak in this particular area.

Some of us might think that an African American experience might be better than a white experience, because it is different from the norm. A value system that puts differences and novelty high on the ladder of "interesting things" might value that. Since my own value system is based on enjoying differences and novelty, it is natural for me to appreciate the "quirks" and "traits" of AS, and view them as positive instead of as "impairments" and "deficits". Someone with a value system that puts acceptance, security and trust high on the ladder of valuable things in life, might naturally view the differences and abnormalities of AS in a more negative way. So depending on what triggers our values and interests, AS can be either glass half full or glass half empty.

The condition itself, tho, is neutral as it is a physical, developmental phenomenon.



This is a difficulty issue for those of us who have been traumatized by NTs, who were doing things NT-like reasons that AS wouldn't be motivated by. In those cases, it's quite easy to like AS more than NT.

I don't think all "African Americans" see their supposed difference as better than that of whites. Some may, and usually the types of people I've encountered who do, don't do it temporarily, it's not a phase. And usually leads not to healing, but instead more racism. I say this as a person who was brought up in the black community. And as someone who does not support this behavior.

I would also think that there is a distinction between being proud of one's cultural and individual achievements, especially if one has or feels they have come from a disadvantaged background, versus being irrationally arrogant and blinded to one's faults and hailing undesirable characteristics as something positive when they are not. And that could be said for any group of people.

I would think, however, that it would be natural, initially, to develop a dislike of those that we feel we are wronged by. If anything, how can one like one's tormentors? How does one get out of a situation, if you can't condemn someone, at least, temporarily?

The problem begins when dislike is turned into hate for an entire group of people, rather than for the individuals, however many, that actually endorsed, supported, and carried out the negative actions. And too often, in doing this, the results are not temporary, and the minority group that feels or is victimized can only see themselves in a purely positive light. All actions are that of the victim and therefore never open to comment or evaluation. Any opinion is seen as a condemning judgement.

Yes, it would be a good thing if people could come to terms with their many realities and expectations. Sometimes people do. It's also unrealistic to expect that all will do so.

On the topic of newbies: Just how does one prove that one is something? If someone, genuinely, thinks that they fit a category, how would that person go about learning what that means, acquiring a diagnostic label-if they wish, and participating with people that they may feel some affiliation with?

Undoubtedly, there are people who try to be anything. People who try to be things that most couldn't understand even wanting to embrace. There are those who simply seek to attack, to undermine, to force their view on. There are those who find a group just to discredit a group. What should the criteria be? Even if to join the site, if it said, must have a doctor's dx, how could one know for sure? Even people diagnosed could have their status change, possibly.

It just seems like a big catch. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Maybe none of it is anyone's concern. If you're not verifiable who cares what you're seeking or not seeking. I'm just not sure how that works on a practical level.

There seems to be some misunderstanding as to why I question a persons condition when they are speaking to be autistic. It is not becasue I care what they have or how they behave or why they come to this site or anything at all like that. What I question is whether they truely believe they have a condition similar to that described as being on the autistic spectrum. Believe it or not some people actually do try to use autism, especially Asperger's as an excuse for their difficulties and/or failures in society and with relationships and they seek reinforcement from people who are actually on the spectrum. These are the types of people who don't need the support of autistics but instead need the support of mental professionals to accurately determine what conditions they have, if they indeed have any.

You are not necessarily talking about the same thing other people are then. It's likely you're not the only poster talking about what you're talking about though.

Objective biological impairment/dysfunction is not morally positive or negative, it just is. If to you personally, different is better than typical, then clearly objective biological impairment/dysfunction is likely to rate highly in your subjective valuations.

Arguably, if to me, biological impairment/dysfunction is not something I devalue, then I am not suggesting AS is morally or subjectively negatively when I assert AS is a real impairment/dysfunction, because to me biological impairment contains no moral information, and that's really the only thing I know these words/concepts to mean.

It's morally neutral, but it is not biologically or adaptively neutral.

garyww: I understand and respect your position on this. Thanks for the clarification.
It's so hard to figure out people's motives. People use conditions, that they rightfully experience sometimes, as a crutch, just as much as those who are just looking for an excuse, and never even had the experience.


ephemerella: I agree with and have had the experience of not being able to compare myself with others. And also doing something right for once, but not knowing how I made the connection. I once had an art teacher that praised what I did, and asked me how I got the result I achieved, and I said I don't know, I just drew it. And he told me that if you don't know what you did well, then how can you replicate it again. Now...I'm not sure if that's true all the time. But I think it's hard socially, maybe even more so when we do well, because I still don't know why or how to make it happen again, if I wish.

As far as logic, it actually gets me into a lot of trouble. I'm either constantly criticizing others irrational behavior and inability to see it that way-offline especially, or I just avoid socializing, because I can't even comprehend the motives for people's decisions, and it's stressful to participate in that world. I don't understand why so many people don't care about the "why" behind many things.

Interesting point about value systems that rate difference versus sameness: A norm, is just an average between two ends of a range. A norm, in itself, is neutral. The prevalence of a set of characteristics isn't indicative of a moral value. It may indicate a certain usefulness, but atypical traits, aren't necessarily better nor are they bad or worse. They have their function. Of course, the fact that people assign values to such things, is another argument, itself. But the existence of a viewpoint doesn't automatically imbue that viewpoint with validity.

People tend to value that which resembles themselves, to a certain degree. Even those who are different. If I'm different, it would make more sense to value difference in general, rather than sameness. And even when people may be depressed or vulnerable or wish to be that which they are not, or if they cross a border-so to speak, and find something-"normal" that they like, it doesn't negate their identity. Everything is a matter of degree. And even among homogeneous groups, there is probably more variation than realized.

You mentioned the half-empty, half-full metaphor--I always say that it depends on if the glass was filled half-way, consumed half-way, and if any of those results, plus other variables-like three-quarters full, etc. are verifiable. This one really gets the doctors, lol.

pandd: I agree with your post. Although, someone somewhere, probably thinks the very fact that things exist, confers some kind of moral position. Otherwise, why do people try to cure cancer, for example. Many people talk about fighting the disease, and speak of the people with the condition as victims, as fighters, as heroes. A serial killer could get cancer, I hardly think it would make them moral. But many people seem to elevate someone's status based on illness. It's irrational, yes, but it happens.

So, while I do still agree with you, and I think it's important to look at things as objectively as we can, total objectivity is a myth. I feel physically fine right now, but could be dying, for all I know. At least for myself, I find looking at things from a practical, utilitarian perspective, more beneficial than from a supposedly objective one. Does a thing work by itself and in a system? Is the thing-idea, feeling, trait, person, institution, living being, etc., beneficial to itself, in as much as one can be, and beneficial to the system? Is there a good reason to sacrifice an individual to a system, or a system to an individual? And how could that be determined? Should it be? And who gets the rights to do so? Most of the conclusions I draw, favor a system that does not reject the individual, but does not limit it to being a mere cog in a machine. I think the only thing that is most beneficial for all, in the long run-the very broad view of the long run, is that which both maximizes benefits to the specific being and the whole.

And it's precisely because I can't make decisions for a whole, especially when I wasn't elected a decision maker for any group, ( look at what elected officials of any kind do, for the most part, anyway ), that I don't make these decisions. I try to work on myself. If anything I say or do in this life does assist others, then good. If not, well, then it doesn't, but I don't deliberately try to harm things either. All I can do is exist, and interact with an environment.

I am not suggesting that moral valuations are not applied to facts that are morally neutral without moral valuation. I am not discussing whether that should or will happen.

I am suggesting some people might be discussing concepts that are prior to such an addition, and some might be discussing concepts that include such an addition, and hence, not everyone is necessarily discussing the same thing.

Ditto to above...
Being autistic (whatever 'level of functioning' - I truly don't know what this means) is hard.

There are selective advantages to being Autistic but I do suffer and struggle. There are times when I almost just cannot take any more but there's no end. One of the hardest aspects is being misinterpreted (by 'outsiders' /NTs) - they can be brutal.
Since I'm partly nonverbal I have other aspects to deal with too - KoR does understand. And meltdowns, etc.

I do think those on Wrong Planet show a kindness/compassion that others do not. I've been teased (yes, even at University) for stimming, for instance.

the anti-d i was on had the effect of reducing my anxiety which is very very high.
anxiety in me causes stimming.

citalopram for 9 years.
escitalopram (mirror flipside molecule) for 2 - terrible.
(both SSRI's.)

Last edited by millie on 15 Mar 2009, 2:58 pm, edited 1 time in total.

As pandd said, not everyone is discussing the same thing.

As an autist from the 50's, there were bad old days. I barely got by, but was excluded from life.

yes, I have my own little world, but it did not help to be shut out of the other one.

I had to learn about the world from books, and they still do not cover why people are so strange.

I did find places to apply myself, I am great with machines, computers, and living in NYC, being non social was a plus.

I had a lot of time to read. Some people have lots of friends, belong to clubs, organizations, go to parties, I read the history of the species. I am well versed in the developments of the domestication of plants and animal, and the inventions that drove the technology. They live in the moment, I live in all time.

As for the concept of "Functional level", by what measure? As I have noticed all of the bright and so loved social people who went out of their way to make life harder for me, have just lost half of the entire wealth of the planet, by being themselves, and seem about to lose half of what's left.

Would they be called, High Functioning?

At their highest levels, Government, did they recently think, I know, we will change the laws and destroy what has taken hundreds of years to build? Did they plan on creating a situation where after the loss it would take $10,000,000,000,000 of new debt just the keep the doors open?

Would that be, High Functioning?

If there is such a mass social agreement, where autists are singled out as not belonging, why were the last few elections 50-50? It would seem that basic issues, preserving the land we live on, our economy, the education and health of the next generation, should bring a common cause to the front.

High Functioning?

Our ability to fit within that group and be accepted with many friends and invitations to social gatherings is the measure by which we are judged to be High or Low Functioning.

I will take Low Functioning for $500 Alex.

In my Low Function world of isolation, I plod along, thinking mostly of myself, progress is slow.

At best I come to know myself, and build on what works, outside of a social world.

Where most are facing total loss, I am getting some great deals on machines for my world. As far as employment, I just got a promotion and a raise, and I own the business debt free.

Low Function means you have to think out what works for you in the universe, without people. I would be happy just to be excluded, but I have to protect what I have, because High Functioning people think they have a right to it, a right called theft.

Current economic conditions were caused by all of the High Functioning stealing from each other at the same time, and when the music stopped, they found all the chairs had been sold to China.

Low Function in the economic world means owning everything free and clear, missing all the leverage possibilities to invest in Collaterlized Debt Swaps.

Low Functioning Autism works for me.

I do not support Neurodiversity, it is the same reason I do not support High Function, self is enough problem for me. The only thing that has ever worked for me, is me.

Autism is a stand alone complex. I do like others that are like me.

It may be called Black and White thinking, but it is, or it isn't.

My group includes the people who never speak, and those that would if they were taught sign, given a keyboard, for when they do, I hear my thoughts in their words.

I learn from Danielismyname, KingdomOfRats, LabPet, Age1600, they are me, and so are a lot of others who have been hidden from sight.

As for Asperger, combining High Function with Autism, I still think he was a Doctor that came up with a plan, Little Professors to build Wunderwaffen fur der Herrenvolk, that kept him from being sent to the Russian Front. Things were not going well on the Russian Front, they needed any Doctor they could find.

One, he had very few subjects, all boys from upper class families, who when contacted years later, did not want to speak of it, they do all seem to be doing well economically . He asked a lot of questions about masterbation, and the subjects were just coming up to the age to join Hitler Youth, it was the first step to the army, and draft evasion comes to mind. Asperger came up with something between being sent to the army, or the gas chamber.

I tend to view history in the context of the time. They were being bombed, the war was lost.

Lorna Wang was next, and wondered why some Autistic ret*ds were so smart. It does contradict the Male Based Medical Professions. She also claimed Girls had Asperger's, another clue. She may have had other issues.

Autism is rare, Asperger's was supposed to be much rarer.

A college teacher in England first thought of opening an auto repair shop, but good mechanics are well paid and in high demand, his next venture was discovering that most of England had Asperger's, and as those with Psychology Degrees would do anything to get out of telemarketing, and do it cheap, he opened a clinic.

I imagine they do have Medical Boards, who brought up the fact that he was treating 20,000% of all autistics in the whole of the United Kingdom, for Asperger's, and he was soon on a plane to Australia, where the whole populaton is autistic, and not good at math.

Treatment is based on Pop Psych books and talk shows.

These are the Scientific foundations of Asperger's Syndrome.

After the sillyness of the 1990's, the DSM of Labels, thinking up new names for Infantile Psychotic Schizophrenic Autism, a hard product to sell, developing new Brand Names for better Drug Marketing, Asperger's, AAA, AAD, ADAD, DDAA, DOA,I think their mental keyboard was short a few keys.

Now in the new and improved post collapse of the world economy through the application of Psychology to markets, the new DSM is said to call everything ASD. That's, Autism Spectrum Disorders. My vote is for "Big A".

Spectrum was just thrown in to sound scientific, like Quantum Autism Mechanics, The Dynagraphics of Autism, Periodic Chart of Autism, Synergy of Autism. We don't have Schizophrenic Spectrum Disorders, Paranoid Spectrum Disorders, Automotive Spectrum Disorders, Psychology Degree Spectrum Disorders.

The new standard is, Autistic, More or Less.

Since they are still defining Autism as "A Differance in Thought and Perception", and have no idea what that means, or why some of those ret*ds are so smart, we are back at square one.

Like my story of running on two cylinders out of four, and how to get by, life is a game, like Bridge, and I was dealt a two suit hand. No Bridge player would call that a disability.

As my Sensi Danielismyname said, no one misses noticeing an autistic child, they are not good at covering it up. In my time it was just a case of Demonic Possesion, but times change, and no one who went through the school system in the last twenty years was not noticed, and did not self discover until high school, when they found the Wrong Planet website.

Evil as he is, garyww might be on to something.

Autism is not a good cover for social problems, we are not social.

Autism is not good cover for Neurodiversity, Paranoid Schizophrenics stand out here, just like everywhere else.

Autism is not the Genius Syndrome, socially misunderstood, Savants do not have a social life.

Being good at one thing is because that is all that is working, and the rest of life is a problem.

Genius is rare, Tesla was the last one.

Autistic is, no change, cure, and it will always be harder to work in the world. It will never be possible to know what others are thinking, but we do deserve a place in the world just like everyone else.

Above all, we deserve a right to communication, to break down the walls that have kept us hidden from sight. The Internet is our world. It works for business, employment, education, and we deserve those things. As such a small group, 0.66% of the population, we have contributed a lot to the other 99.4%.

We have a lot more time to work on things that we find really interesting, have great focus, will work for years, so of course we get results.

This mid ware, the high function, Asperger's, end of Autism, does not exist as a stand alone thing, Autism does, and it has been a very productive thing. It does have its down side too.

As a whole, humans are not very productive of original thought, low functioning autistics score higher. One, they do not do a lot of other things, Two, they think things through.

It takes a while, but if you want the fruit, you have to wait till it ripens.

Before the bricks come flying, sorry about your Asperger's Dx, it is being revoked, not by me, the DSM is doing it, and you are being cast into the lumpy brained Autism pit with the rest of us.

The way it works here is, no matter how your brain is lumpy, high IQ, sorry for you, because it means a loss somewhere else, as it always adds up to 100%. IQ and MR both refer to processing speed, not results. IQ is like a 13,000 rpm race engine, good for 500 miles wide open, and nothing else, MR is a one cylinder diesel that will thump away for fifty years.

For some reason people get upset with my company motto, "Simple ideas from simple minds."

High Function is complexity, Low Function is clarity.

One Autism for All, Laptops for All!

"Big A"

Sounds a bunch of apes. What medication? What do they give that helped with your stims?

AS is a collection of traits. Therefore, experiencing AS as "good" or "bad" depends on how one's accumulates a wide variety of micro experiences during daily life -- as positive or negative, as rewarding or abusive. That can depend on what kinds of experiences one runs into.

Maybe my experiences have not been as pervasively bad as others

My social experiences may not be as pervasively bad as some others have experienced. A long time ago, I learned yoga and I have always been somewhat athletic. This was not so difficult as I am a tomboy kind of female AS and my father was into sports and always wanted a son. The athleticism when I was young and learning yoga as a young adult, has helped me overcome most of the external physical symptoms of AS, including clumsiness and some physical reactions to sensory disorientations/overstimulations. My stims are mostly mild and fairly common ones, even if I am not often aware of them and they can be noticeable. Also, the athleticism has helped me be more attractive, which has overcome some of the social presentation issues in cases where I don't have to interact much.

For the above reasons, my physical, external symptoms of AS are quite mild and almost non-pathological. I experience really only the emotional, behavioral, social, psychiatric and intellectual symptoms of AS. My overreaction to sensory stimuli tends to be psychiatric, for example, affecting my attention and emotions and induce distraction, meltdowns or joy in me. Because I have few external physical signs of AS, I can pass for normal until someone talks to me more than a few times. Unless they catch me in an unguarded moment, someone has to get to know me, to start to realize that I'm "different". Then, most decide they don't want to be friends after all and reject me, or withhold acceptance in some way. A few have become secretly abusive and try to take advantage.

I know that if I had more external, obvious signs of AS that my experiences would have been worse and I would have had more pervasive bad social experiences. On the balance, my bad experiences due to AS traits might be less negative than with others for that reason. My negative experiences have been bad, like abusive exploitive situations with professors, but they aren't as pervasive as if I was ridiculed in public or shamed and humiliated regularly by strangers.

So it is on the basis of my experience, and the subset of AS traits that I experience, that I find my AS to be "not hellish", even though I may have had a few hellish periods in my life. And many of the traits can have positive sides -- like overreaction to sensory stimuli can be joyful if you can sometimes channel that into painting or other creative expression.

My experience of the collection of AS traits that I "suffer" from include both bad and good then: trait-related experiences that I experienced as bad and humiliating and some that I experienced as good and joyful. Probably if I had more obvious physical traits of AS, my experience as an AS person would have been worse. As it is there is good and bad and I can try to make it through the bad times and celebrate the good traits when I can.

This is like regular life (but with more challenges)

But isn't all life like this? NT and AS alike? We develop our bodies and our selves. Then, some of our traits are weaknesses and vulnerabilities and yet sometimes they are strengths and sources of joy. This is true of anything in life that we cannot control, like the rain or the ocean. Things that we cannot control can bring pain, destruction and weakness and they can also shower us with gifts. In my interpretation of life, NT and AS alike never enjoy a steady stream of pleasure or happiness or satisfaction. Rather, life experience is a collection of moments. Sometimes I view life as a game in which we try to develop and collect more moments of joy and self-realization than moments of pain and despair.

Mental abilities and neurological makeup are neutral things, a physical condition and status, neither intrinsically good or bad. What makes an experience of them good or bad is in the individual person's sense of that experience. There are many bad experiences that come with AS. I won't deny that. I'm not going to claim that better individuals can make lovely lives with medical conditions that help others degrade and hurt them.

But AS, along with some traits that lead to embarrassment and abuse, includes also a collection of very unique, strange and sometimes wonderful traits. In my opinion, getting in the habit of viewing AS as a bad thing opens one up to living in an unnecessary psychological rut. Both because projecting value judgements onto AS means one is engaging in a delusion of viewing neutral, physical and neurological conditions as "evil", "good", "bad", "blessings", and because one is in the mental habit of boxing oneself in self-limiting world views.

You can't control your traits enough to "cure" AS, but you shape how your sense of self grows

All these projections of value judgments onto one's physical condition cuts one off from the experience of hope, faith and self-esteem that are essential for good developmental experiences.

I don't think that the "AS is a brain-damaged hell" crowd are doing the kids on this site any favors. I think they are sadly passing on self-limiting, low self esteem disabled world views onto next generations.

Always a key issue.

Reading your post, ephemerella, made me wonder how much of an impact having a supportive vs abusive family has in outcome, everything else being equal.

And being able to hold down a job and pay the rent usually helps take the edge off.

Yes, I'm starting to recognize how insensitive I might be sometimes, to the kind of worse experiences others may have had.



I have a very abusive family. But they are a white collar family that hid its abuse. I think my sister killed my mother by manipulating her into being isolated and not getting good health care when my mother developed cancer. My sister definitely tried to cut me out of the will.

The family of an AS can include people who have sociopathic and other social psychological problems. I think my father is AS like myself. My sister appears to be a narcissistic sociopath. My mother was one of those idealists who attach themselves dependently to beautiful people (my father was very handsome despite his dysfunctions).



Well, the only long-term job I held was in the military. Everything else has been on the order of months. I have moved around a lot and just gotten by, despite the enormous amount of effort, planning and will power I have tried to apply to my life planning and work.

My husband is supporting me right now. But this is the first time in decades I haven't worked or been in school in some way.

is that why my dad said i was a traitor and as rotten as Judas Iscariot?
(true.)


I have discussed this with my mother recently. That is , the woman who roamed a broken down old house with 8 kids and no husband,(he left when i was 9) fixated on lists, clutter, and barely getting by with the the basics of bringing up 8 feral creatures on her own. My mother is autistic/ASD/AS - i don't really care about the label although i see no problem in the amalgamation of all under the great "A." She managed to cook and burn the food regulalry and do the washing and shopping. Barely.

It is my view 3 out of us 8 are autistic or whatever one wants to call it. Obviously autistic.
The problem was, my mother was too. Brilliant, wonderful, eccentric, without a friend in the world. Internal.
I ask her to tell me about my childhood and she can tell me a few things. But she also has to let me know that most of it she did not even notice. She cannot even remember my birth except for the fact my father came into the hospital with a tea cosy on his head instead of a hat. (true.) That defining moment - my entry to earth - is summarially referred to as the tea cosy night and NOT the goo-goo gah gah of a new and precious little lambie.


to this day, she is Mission Control and I am number 6.

so what does one do when one is not noticed as even being there?

you don;t get taken to specialists or doctors or healthcare professionals. You get left to fend for yourself, and the rest is my bumpy little life with prison, psych ward, the streets, shelters and institutions.

I think it also depends on who is looking...
my mum was too busy to look. She, like me and others in our family, was trapped inside her own little world. There were varying degrees of this, but i am told many years later it was obvious to all and sundry but not to our family because "abnormal" IS "normal."

and as i write, i am am in a small room that looks more like a nun's cell or kid's reformatory school bedroom with the social world of my Ex and his son whirling out in the corridor.
I will have to get up and feign engagement in a second - try to act like others, which rips the guts out of me.

I havent really noticed my son this morning, because as always, i am submerged in my own little world.
and i had better go and conscsiously work at it now - muster up some interest and try to get a feeling of connection before he goes to school.

We are a heterogeneous lot, for certain. the Inventor wrote something new, and this is significant: "Big A"

This is meaningful in that Big A now defines Autistic Culture, which has up until now been somewhat ephemeral.

Let me explain. In the Deaf Culture (which is recognized culture) they chose to write/sign 'Capital D' for Deaf, not d. And NOT 'hearing impaired' since, to them, 'impaired' implies....just that, defective. Instead, the Deaf Culture touts theirs is a different life experience and not lesser!

One example: The Deaf dance! They dance at their social events and it's interpretative dancing. True, it's known that amongst the Deaf some can hear, partially, to varying extents. True 100% Deafness is rare. Anyway, they Dance (with capital 'D') without music - interpretative. That is, their own varying 'levels of hearing' is not a factor; in the Culture of Autism (which is awakening), 'level of functioning' isn't (1) really defined (2) therefore not too meaningful (3) not necessarily indicative of much.

Ok Inventor - Lab Pet does disagree with one point.....(I know you were waiting): There are most definitely geniuses of today. And there is true Autistic Genius. If this is 'Elitist' then so be it. Quite a few (!) Wrong Planet Autists DO meet the critieria of genius (and that's not being pretentious). Not saying I particularly agree with this, but close enough: Diagnosticians agree that an IQ of ~ 145+ is genius.

Lab Pet contributes in this science world and I'm not even close to done yet. I have an obligation to do so and that's not elitist. In fact, the converse is true.

milllie: Your mother must be quite the lady! 8 kids to raise and alone, and with her condition. I like her as described, brilliant, wonderful, and eccentric. And she made you!

Ok, bearing that in mind, an Autist with a smart mind CAN excel and without those boundaries imposed upon by neurotypical thought. That's the NT downfall.

Autistic genius is infiltrating. And this is good. Then to share that with others! But we cannot if our heterogeneity is ignored by 'outsiders' who can clamp potential. I did read fairly recently in the Parent's Forum, just by happenstance, an example. One mother with a super-smart Aspie boy (grade-schooler) just got an assessment note back from his teacher (who admittedly knows nothing of ASD!). Oh no....the teacher wrote just about Aspie's 'pecularities' and how he might not fit in with others, etc, etc. The mother was massively frustrated - no mention was made that he's the best at mathematics, problem solving, applying his skills, etc. Just shows how he's shunned when instead he might need some encouragement. He's not exempt from encouragement, despite his Dx.

But even if ASD person isn't cognitivey gifted...so? There are other ways and means. NTs have a range too - likewise.

Big A. Yes, we are. 'A' in fluorescent colored glitter. So there.