Syndrome and/or diversity? How do you reconcile them?

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I find that highly unlikely. However, even if it were true, it’s quite irrelevant. I do not consider my need for oxygen and my inability to extract it from water an impairment, even though I concede that this would be problematic for me if I were living on a water logged planet where the only means of survival were to either not need oxygen to live, or to be able to extract oxygen from water.

There is no “Planet of the Aspies” and even if they were, those creatures who do not dwell there, would not impaired by virtue of the fact that their characteristics are not suited to living there. Having characteristics unsuited to some environment that does not exist or that one does not dwell in or have any need to function in, is not an impairment in any meaningful sense of the word.

An Olympic athlete is characterized by better athletic performance than unimpaired people who do not have the level of athletic aptitude needed to perform at Olympic levels. That does not make everyone who lacks Olympic levels of athletic aptitude impaired.

A person who is blind from birth generally has aptitudes that most other people lack. That does not make people who are not blind impaired. It does not mean that being blind is only different and not an impairment or disability. It just means that being impaired or experiencing disability is not the same as being completely worthless or useless, nor the same as not having talents, nor the same as being unable to manifest exceptional talent, nor any of the other things that one must assume if they claim that someone is not impaired if they can perform or function more effectively or to a higher level than average in some area or domain. For this reasoning to be true, it would have to be true that being deaf cannot be sensibly described as a disability or impairment, or that every deaf person is quite incapable of having any above average aptitude or talent. I do not accept that either of those premises is true.

Typical species functioning is actually a very sensible means of determining whether a trait is exceptional or not. Whether a trait that is exceptional to an organism’s species typical function, is neutral, positive or negative to that organism’s well being and function within their environmental niche is what determines whether the trait is merely a difference, an impairment or an exceptional aptitude/talent/function.
Social skills are abilities, and they do facilitate the achievement of things.

No, that is one possible thing that could be achieved through the use of social skills. It is not the only thing, and further gaining the approval of others can itself be a means to important ends, including ends that may not be easily or plausibly achievable without that means.

The approval of others is actually of some importance to human beings. Lack of such approval can have significant impacts not only on what one can achieve, but also on individual health and well being. Gaining approval of others can promote individual health and well being and facilitate the achievement of an individual’s goals. It is not a negligible capacity for human functioning and well being.


None of which actually magically makes one not impaired or disabled.

Your claim is facile. People judge each other all the time, and many people who are treated negatively because of how their social conduct is perceived or judged by others, actually do not have any impairment or disability whatsoever.

Without anyone judging me, I am missing out on information in social exchanges, and this causes me discomfort, and unnecessary stress that constitutes a burden on my health and well being, while also resulting in my performance and functioning_being negatively impacted by my inability to extract information in the same easy and efficient ways those around me are able to in such contexts.

So even in the absence of any actual judgment occuring, I am still impaired.

One could say the moon is made of cheese, but that does not mean the moon actually is made of cheese.

Being a women is well within the range of species typical states/traits/functioning.

If a woman in those times, performed and behaved socially identically to a man, that would not have removed the negative impacts of being female in a social context where being female is discriminated against. This is not the case with AS. People do not respond to me as they do because they know I have AS and they have preconceived ideas about how I should behave or be treated. There is a distinct difference between people enacting prejudice about some trait regardless of the behavior of the person they direct their prejudice against, and responses to one’s actual behaviors.

Some random person might posit such a label on such a person, but that is irrelevant. The same random person might also claim the moon is made of cheese, without having any impact whatsoever on the composition of the moon.

Plenty of people have poor social skills and do not have AS. Plenty of people can and have been socially rejected without having any impairment or poverty of social skills. Having poor social skills is not AS, and AS is not merely having poor social skills.

One could use the term NA or Neurologically Atypical. This would, however, include other categories, such as PDD-NOS, NVLD etc. So to clarify, you would have to say NA (Asperger type) for example.

The fact that I think of NA (Asperger type) as a difference, does not mean that I do not recognize the challenges this implies. These challenges are due to the traits themselves (along with the benefits) as well as those imposed by a society which is mostly Neurotypical.

I agree. And as AWA's director for my country, I don't see why I should go about arranging meetings with the influential people in the field and arriving to the meetings to talk about ASPERGER'S SYNDROME only to afterwards push for recognition as diversity and types. I'd be confusing them and giving them reason to argue with me. I'll never refer to Asperger's and Neurotypical as anything other than type A+ and type B+ neurology, unless someone in this thread can convince me I'm wrong.

NT A+ ----> what I called NT till now.

NT B+ ----> what I called AS till now.

B = B only because it was identified later than A and represents a smaller proportion of the world population

Future generations will probably add NT C+, D+, E+ etc. as they discover other interesting neurologies.

I can appreciate your intended purpose, and your new terminology is admirably concise. Getting people to adopt it (or even understand it without explaining it everytime) is the problem. How about "Aspergian?"

Well, if all else fails, I can use the Godwin - this is Israel afterall.

Greentea, I'm glad to see that you like my proposed terminology. What does the + sign mean?

I generally agree with Pandd here. I believe that there is a severity of traits that can add up to clinical impairment, and that is the disorder. However, that does mean IMO that one can, over a lifetime, go from having the disorder to not having it, depending on the stage of one's life and how much one has been able to successfully adapt under the current environmental circumstances. So I believe that one does not necessarily have an ASD for life, but one may have Type B+ Neurology for life.

You also have to remember that autism spectrum disorders are considered to be developmental disorders, not just a plain disorder. What does this mean? In short, it means that what happens once one has developed (i.e., when one grows up) is largely undefined.

I repeat: the threads are there for anyone who wants to see - I've been advocating for this blood type kind of terminology for months.

Sorry I missed it. Then I am glad that we have had parallel thoughts on this matter and my recent use of this term has brought this to the forefront of your mind.

Third time: my blood types idea is in the threads for anyone who wants to see. You've tried to pull this trick of missinformation from one thread to another in the past too and you gained nothing from it back then either. Not to mention that, as AWA Israel director, my writings on the blood type comparison have been published in several places already.

Second time: I have never read your idea before. I am glad that it jives with mine. That is all I said. You can't tell me that I didn't at least jog your memory on your idea with my post in the self-diagnosis thread which was posted a matter of hours earlier than this one?

You really need to stop being so actively hostile against me. I am not out to get you.

One can have a different neurology, meant to be different, meant to work in a different way, and still be able to do less than most people. I would for example consider people with down syndrome to have a different neurology, much like people with Asperger's do; they were meant to operate the way they do, and aren't missing anything any more than we are. You don't have to be unimpaired by your difference to consider that difference a neutral thing.

Like George Orwell said, we're all equal but some are more equal than others.

That is a gross misreading of Orwell. That statement is intended to shed light on a political situation (the Communist hierarchy). It has nothing to do with people's (actual) abilities.

To paraphrase from Madeline L'Engle's A Wrinkle In Time, Equal and Alike do not mean the same thing at all. Disparities between individuals' abilities are inevitable, but social exclusion and ostracization are not. Look up the social model of disability. It is perfectly consistent to say that autistic people are disabled--because of social arrangements and expectations--but that autism itself is not inherently a "disordered" way of being.

But with AS, there can be certain abilities and strengths that allow one to do more than most people in certain areas. AS isn't only about impairments. That's why I see it as a 'different neurology' rather than a 'disorder.'

Right, and sometimes those abilities can overshadow the disabilities, or the disabilities are simply mild. In many cases, that's called "giftedness" in schools (though I think it's also possible to have an NT neurology and be in that program, too).

This is exactly why I don't understand people callling it a syndrome. Do we talk about artist syndrome, politician syndrome, blue eye syndrome, blood type A+ syndrome? They all mean advantages and disadvantages as compared to others in the same category.