Aspie ethnogenesis - the formation of the Aspie indentity

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Are you sure some of the differences expressed between various races have nothing at all to do with genetics? I mean obviously we are all human but there are differences between different races/ethnic groups. physical differences mostly...but I suppose enviroment could be one of the main reasons for that.

woah hold on a minute....people with aspergers opinions don't matter when it comes to whether or not to create a aspie-ethnic group(which really makes no sense)?

how is a mental disorder the basis for a culture? I don't know about anyone else but I am not 'aspergers' I am a person with aspergers. I mean lets look at sub-cultures for examples. A lot of them are based on a simular intrest in music and the a specific clothing style might develop. But the basis is a common intrest not a common trait.

Our skin is white because a specific gene is inhibited to synthesise melanin by a non-coding switch. Our genetics are different only in what is controlled by switches not actually in gene composition.



Ethnicity relates to population groups who have evolved in geographical isolation. If Aspies in Silicon Valley formed a breeding population over many generations then they would be entitled to call themselves an "ethnic group" if they want.



I wans't aware Temple Grandin considers herself an Aspie? in her videos she refers to herself as an HFA.

And it is my opinion that it is not happening except in the over-wrought imaginations of a minority of people with Asperger's.

There is nothing pre-ordained or magical about culture. The way a person with Aspergers or autism approaches life is quite different to an NT, could easily be the basis of a new culture if like minded people decided to form a interacting group.

The X-men inspired model for autistics forming their own colony is plausible if not currently feasible. The current obsession with high IQ in "some" Aspies and HFAs masks a special quality that all autistics and especially LFAs have with interpreting the world. Cyberspace is the first medium which autistics of all levels of the spectrum can meet and may be the catalyst for a Magneto among the autistic community to emerge.

*sigh* How many times must I point this ought, an ethnic group and a proto-ethnic group, with the potential to become an ethnic group, are not the same thing? Nor does ethnicity have much of a genetic basis; you're thinking races.


You called?


If that minority is big enough, it can form an ethnic group, without the permission of the rest.

As long as they don't insist that I am part of that group simply because I am on the spectrum, then have at it. But doesn't that fact that some (many?) aspies don't want to form an ethnic group mean that what you are talking about is a sub-group of aspies? It is not an aspie ethnicity at all. It is an elite group, not an inclusive one.

This conversation is caught up on the word 'ethnic'. Wouldn't community be a better word... in the strict dictionary sense?

There is no precendence for creating an ethnicity based on a genetic variation. If there was a redhead ethnicity I would have claimed membership years ago. And, before the Irish jokes start... I'm not Irish. Red hair is a naturally occuring recessive genetic trait in every culture and ethnicity on the planet. It is common in some, exceedingly rare in others but every group of people on the planet bears this genetic trait. We don't get an ethnicity...

Have some synonyms for further consideration:

association, body politic, center, colony, commonality, commonwealth, company, district, general public, hamlet, locality, nation, neck of the woods, neighborhood, people, populace, public, residents, society, state, stomping ground, territory, turf, affiliation, alliance, clan, clique, community, comradeship, confederacy, coterie, fellowship, fraternity, guild, kinship, league, society, union

The OP specifically invoked "ethnic" as the premise of the thread.

"Aspergian-American" will never find its way onto the U.S. Census.

I see no evidence of any "process" of this sort occurring. Yet you seem to presume that it is, with what is almost a leading question. Could you elaborate?



What evidence are you drawing upon when you make that "plenty of people" claim? I've never met anyone or read anything by someone on the ASD who thinks of their condition as an "ethnic identity," never mind their "prime" one. Quite simply the claim does not match my personal experience or observations, but I must admit it is nothing I've ever thought of in those terms, so perhaps I've simply missed the proper cues. I guess what I'm looking for is empirical verification that some Aspies do think that way, and the numbers who think that way amount to a figure far greater than some statistical outlier, IOW your "plenty."



"Drive the process along?" That has a rather ominous ring to it, something akin to Lenin's "Revolutionary Vanguard," perhaps? Anyway, why would the process need driving along in the first place? And what would happen to anyone who had no particular interest in being so driven?

The way a person with depression approaches life is quite different then the way someone without depression does.....that does not mean its the basis for a culture or ethnic group(which I still do not think mental disorders are ethnic groups). The fact that people with aspergers have the same mental condition does not mean we are all like minded individuals. Not all NTs are like minded individuals. And I am not intrested in an autistic community, the disorder does not define me there are some things I even like about it but it still does not define me or the type of community I would like to be in.

LOL! we tried to introduce the Jedi religion at the last Australian census. The then prime minister warned anyone caught putting Jedi under religion would be fined.

I don't think so, since this thread -- at least as I understand it -- is premised on organizing based upon having a condition, from which anyone without this condition would be automatically excluded and would never be permitted to join.



Perhaps not, but an idea like "genetic variation" is one of relatively recent vintage. I think you could make a case that the nonsense spouted by Count Gobineau (link), Houston Stewart Chamberlain(link), H.K. Guenther and Madison Grant were all imagining something very much like it as a dividing line between races, but in vague terms like "blood" or "ancestry." And I think only Grant stepped outside comparing only European groups, FWIW. In other words, to Gobineau the natural rulers of France were "Nordics" who had to keep the lazy and shiftless "Meditteranean" types in line.

After reading Guenther Hilaire Belloc even wrote this silly poem....





I'm fairly sure red hair entered Ireland's gene pool quite violently via wave after wave of Viking invasion. Celts were described by some Roman or other as fair skinned, light-eyed and dark haired, a description that would fit the average Irishman of today fairly well.



I've never heard of a pure-blooded Australian Aborigine with red-hair, but I'd love to see pictures of it. Ditto the African Bush People and Pygmies. 'Course the problem with all three groups is that they've been on the receiving end of genocide, and their numbers are nowhere near what they once were. So maybe they're now too few to kick out the occasional odd-ball red-head. And apparently the people adjacent to where the few pygmies still survive view their flesh as a tasty snack that confers magical powers. link So in their case the genocide is a present tense not past tense thing.

That's crazy! Are they allowed to put Scientologist?! Same difference...