Is neurotypical about being ''neutral''?

Post Reply New Topic

Some excellent posts, here. But I'd also like to mention something else: 'neurotypical' is a word that originated in online autistic communities, I believe. I suppose it was because some took issue with the label that disorder/disability/abnormality carries, and they refused to refer to people who ere not autistic aqs 'normal' people. But it's created this chimera of 'neurotypical people' defined as 'people who are neurologically completely normal' when we know that there is no such animal. It seems to me that the word 'neurotypical' was invented with a certain sense of bitterness; resentment (if only little resentment) toward anyone who was not autistic, and therefore supposedly didn't have the problem of lesser social skills, heightened sensitivity to external stimuli, lack of empathy, obsessive interests and so on and so forth- all the things aghogday and Callista just mentioned that may occur in lesser or greater form in people who would never be diagnosed with a disorder at all. Thus was created "the neurotypical", a fictitious entity who was at the same time admired and resented for being able to do everything we can't. It's an idealised concept of a person. And the worst part of it is that, in autistic communities on the net, the term doesn't even take any other psychological disorders into consideration. It's always spectrum disorders v. neurotypical. That's very insular thinking. "We" have invented the word, and all too often I see people pretend as if non-autistic people invented it to make life harder on autistics.

Insular thinking is dangerous, because while it may give us a sense of comfort of being protected from the world it also can isolate us from the world, increasing some of what are seen as symptoms of Autism like lack of empathy, simply because we expose ourselves to less actual social interaction. It also can make one's life much smaller that what it might normally be.

Living with Autism my entire life and not understanding it, I understood that I was different than others, but I also clearly understood and clearly saw the thousands of differences among other people unlike me that separated others from each other.

Just one small example that comes to mind, the last time I went to Super Walmart, a lady was telling her kids you don't talk to those kids they are trailer trash. I doubt any parent ever tells their child you don't talk to that kid next door because he might have Aspergers.

If the kids listen to their mother concerned that their child might be exposed to those less advantaged, they are going to miss out on an opportunity to learn many things from those children that might be surprisingly advantageous to mother, if she took the time to understand them. On the other hand if the youth next door that had asperger's did not have the motivation to seek interaction with the kids next door because the youth considered them as "NT" and assumed they wouldn't like them, they might miss out on the opportunity for a friend. Pre-conceived notions about groups of people hurt the people that hold them as well as the people they are directed at.

While there are terms of endearment there are terms of resentment; I think you hit the nail on the head here why people can get so emotional whenever the term "NT" is envoked. It's almost like a racial or ethnic term for someone that has felt oppresssed by another ethnic or racial group, but in this case it's been a 99% stereotype of the rest of the human race. While we all experience resentment in life, taken to excess, it's not a mentally healthy thing to do.

Do not say that Autistic lack empathy and NTs don't, because if NTs didn't lack empathy, would Autistics (and people with other disabilities) be shunned, misjudged, et cetera? No.

My argument is quite the opposite on Autism, Mirror Neurons, and empathy and the myth that all Autistic people are born without empathy; There was an opinion expressed yesterday in another post that all "NT" people have normal perfectly functioning mirror neurons, and I presented what I felt was evidence that many people in our culture don't have what might be considered as normal levels of empathy; I think, in general this has been understood as a problem in our culture for years now. I also expressed the opinion that it is likely that some people with Autism that have suffered at the hands of others, and have not lost hope on the rest of the human race continue to have more empathy than most others, whether or not they can feel it or not.

The problem can be, if we lose our empathy for all others because some have done us wrong, and we give up on all others, with a preconceived notion that they are all going to be like this. I don't see this as a reality in the majority of people that have Autistic traits; I've seen them as the kinder, less judgemental, more thoughtful people that I have met.

Unfortunately it happens, the Autism Supremacy thread we had a while back is a good example of the ideology, but I do think it is unusual for it to get to that extreme. The general idea that terms like neurotypical brings are stereotypical ones by definition. Humans, in general, don't fit that mold; it's all about variation.

And as I discussed in another thread yesterday; a loss of empathy is evident throughout society:

http://www.wrongplanet.net/posts168510-start15.html