Aspies are normal too!

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You're getting too technical. He's just talking about fitting in.

I thing I generally side with Joe. Why is 'normal' defined so narrowly?

What DandelionFireworks said.

"Normal" merely means "adhering to a statistical mean." A rough synonym is "average."

"Normal" does not inherently mean things like natural, acceptable, desireable, or good.

All one is saying by stating, "I am not normal" is "I am not like the average person (assuming such a chimera truly exists.)" Any moral or value judgments layered over that statement are just that: layered over.

I am an outlier. I am a multiple outlier, in fact, since I have asperger's and have an I.Q. four standard deviations above the mean. Value judgments might declare the former "bad" and the latter "good" but I have just as many problems from both conditions and, as I have slowly come to learn, just as many joys from both conditions. It's not bad that I'm autistic and good that I'm smart (or, more accurately, do well on standaradized tests.) It just is -- and while much of my life quality stems from these two conditions, neither "makes my life hell" or "makes my life bliss." They are just two examples (among many) of how I am not normal and it's okay.

I like what one autistic person I met online says: "normal" is a setting on the washing machine.

It's just a default setting. Some people hit that statistical mean in some aspects of their life. Some hit the statistical mean in the bulk of their life. Some rarely come close to matching a statistical mean for anything, even something simple like hair color. But normal is not inherently a judgement call.

So..... Joe. Can you re-write your original post but instead of using the word "normal," do some soul-searching to determine exactly what you were using the word "normal" as a symbol for. Figure out what word is most synonymous with what you were trying to say by using the word normal and apply it to your original post. Not so you can re-post it here,but so you can understand more precisely what it is that you were REALLY trying to say.

Because when you're "different", you know it.

I like that answer. In fact, what you have just wrote is exactly what I was trying to explain myself. Just because things can be more challenging for Aspies in life, doesn't mean we are not nomal. I've even read that phrase somewhere. It's a very complicated thing to explain really. We are all normal, as in we can do normal things and live life normally, like NTs.

It's where the mild, to moderate, to severe comes in. I lean a lot more toward severe. I can never pass as normal.

3 great quotes and signatures I found that have a good say on "Normal".

2 of them were from this site:
#1 Being normal is vastly overrated
#2 Normal is a point of view.

The last one was said in my speech class:
"Normal is boring anyway".

I can agree with this!

When you can't hold a conversation or talk effectively with someone, it isn't normal.

I'm going to guess that activities of daily life are sometimes a struggle. For example, I'm going to guess that when you walk into a store you're sometimes treated as a valued customer and you're sometimes not. And it shouldn't be that way.

And even more so with jobs. We as people on the autism spectrum, whether severe, moderate, mild, have all kinds of things to contribute. And yet, that's not the way things are. For starters, a degree of unemployment seems "hardwired" into the system. And there are widespread beliefs like "well, the employer needs a good pool of applicants . . " it overwhelmingly seems defined from the perspective of the employer. And then are schools really teach us to fit into a world of scarcity. Woe-ess unto me if I'm the outcast, I see it vividly right in front of my eyes. And it shouldn't be that way. For starters, it shouldn't be one teacher supervisoring 25 kids. You wouldn't have 1 senior architect supervising 25 junior architects. And these are people who want to be here and who are adults.

I am 'always' a valued customer when I walk into a store. And I couldn't care less about a woe is me "I'm a cast-out" number. To look at me, no one would perceive me as such. The problem is virtually invisible, until I try to communicate. Not only communication problems for me but also extreme sensory hypersensitivities which preclude me from many advantages and opportunities, and which most people evidently can't begin to imagine exist in the first place.

Last edited by Meadow on 02 Oct 2010, 4:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Because of my difficulties to be about to explain things properly, I just had to use the word ''normal'' as a shorter word for ''able-bodied/able-minded people''. Or maybe I should explain it even more logic than that, because the word ''normal'' can be a very complicated word.

Just think of a white sheet of paper. It is a piece of paper. If you scribble paint on it, it is still a piece of paper, but with paint on. But it will always be a piece of paper, paint or not paint on. That is my logic explanation of NTs and Aspies. Imagine we are all a piece of paper, (meaning we are all average humans), and the pieces of paper with paint on are the Aspies. The paint indicates the Aspie traits and symptoms what makes the Aspie slightly more self-aware and finds things slightly more challenging, but the paper indicates that the Aspie is still normal, but with a few more things they find difficult.
So the pieces of paper with paint on will always be a piece of paper, except with the paint on.
So, the same goes to what I'm explaining, NTs and Aspies are all average people, except the Aspies have a few difficulties what can be diagnosed by a doctor. But as soon as the doctor diagnoses you, it doesn't mean you can walk out of the surgery saying, ''oh I'm not normal then. I'm not a proper human,'' because the doctor might just aswell say, ''oh you are not normal and never will be.'' But they don't ever say that, and probably never even think it.
If you get a wart on your hand, you don't suddenly look at your hand and say, ''oh my hand isn't normal.'' Do you?
I don't know if I've explained that properly or not because I'm not very good at explaining things.

I know that sounds stupid, but all you Aspies seem to be able to explain things better than me - I always use the simplest words which make me sound misunderstanding, so pardon me if I sound a bit simple here.

Not to mention being completely and utterly inept, socially.

Yeah, Meadow, you seem pretty skillful here.

I think you explain things fine. And I like your analogy about the piece of paper.

I was also abused many times in the workplace. People can't seem to handle it when someone is more or less completely silent. I would undoubtedly die very quickly if I had to be subjected to all the stresses on a daily basis. It is best for someone like me to be shielded and protected as much as possible, and to be allowed to do the work they 'are' capable of, and also receive any assistance necessary to see their work manufactured, reproduced and/or marketed, for the benefit of our greater society to better educate them around their limited understanding concerning what disability means, in all facets, not just the profoundly disabled who can do absolutely nothing for their own sake.