Alex Plank, John Robison, and Ari Ne'eman are NOT Autistic

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Hah, way to cut out the bs.

This is not the first time I have heard people call BS on the three people mentioned above as not "truly" being autistic. Usually, those people believe autism is really the lowest of low functioning only. Many times it's a parental b***h session with parents who have kids who will be lucky to live in supportive house. You whine your kid can't make friends or brush his teeth? My kid will most likely never get out of a diaper, so yeah I resent what limit SPED funds is spent on mild kids. Those kids function 80% above mine. Wouldn't it be better work with my kid to keep him out of a group home, than worry about your kid going batshit crazy about a tag on his shirt?

That opinon is not new. Many people were really pissed when Aspergers got morphed into Autism. They felt what scraps their kids were getting would be even less. Whether it is true or not, I don't know. Feelings aren't reality.

Anyway, OP... if you look at the DSM V criteria for autism, there are 3 catergoies. Level I is still pretty life altering. No where does it say if you can tolerate being in a group situation or speak publicly that excludes you from the diagnosis.

Daryl Hannah and Dan Aykroyd are both out about being autistic. I'm guessing they have to speak in front of people and deal with crowds. Just because they can do that well doesn't mean they aren't autistic.

Carry on.....

That's one of the biggest problems about having HFA. You're always trying to hide your symptoms because you know that in the eyes of others(NT's), that sort of thing is not acceptable.

Think of it like this. It's like being a singer, and you're singing in front of an audience, and sometime in the middle of the song, your throat dries up raw. Do you pause in the middle of the song to get a drink of water? No! You keep on going until the end, even if that dried throat of yours is affecting the quality of your voice, and of course, is causing you a lot of pain as well. Why? Because the audience is a bunch of unforgiving jerks that demand that you sing perfectly. Even in spite of the fact, that pausing for that moment for a drink of water would improve your voice at the end.

I hear lot of them lip sing.

HA! HA! HA! Funny, but you do have a point there.

Or mine.

OR just another "They never suffered as much as I did, so they may as well have never suffered at all" thread.

It's like when I broke my foot as a kid and had to spend a weekend in the hospital, a nurse took me over to another part of the hospital just to look at kids with missing limbs. Then she told me that since they had something to really complain about, I should just shut up.

I think low functioning classical autism and Asperger's Syndrome are two different things, however the powers that be have decided to roll Asperger's Syndrome into "autistic spectrum disorder". Well, whatever.

However one feature that had previously separated Asperger's Syndrome from autism was speech development. A person with autism is someone who had clinically significant speech delays, while people with Asperger's Syndrome did not have clinically significant speech delays, and were, in fact, often noted to be quite verbose.

Even a person who has a diagnosis of autism and who does have clinically significant speech delays, can occasionally come to develop good verbal communication skills. I know of an individual who has classical autism and was non-verbal until he was 10, who has come to possess very good verbal communication skills, and lives independently.

Now I must ask, are you on the spectrum? Because if so, you are obviously capable of communicating, and because of that, there are people who are only familiar with low functioning autism in which the person is non-verbal and can't communicate with spoken or written language at all, and those people would be liable to think you are not autistic.

This is something surprisingly common. Leaving aside the obvious part about devaluing/invalidating somebody else's pain or experience I wonder where is this "who has it worst" competition coming from and why it's so common. Maybe it's some form of reverse-competitiveness for those who feel they can't participate in the regular "I'm the best" sort?

I also wonder if it brings any kind of relief/satisfaction to those who engage in it? It's strange to me to see that even autistic people (or so many of them) attach value to thoughts and feelings only in relationship/comparison to others.

Well said, this is a common theme in many threads and in our society at large. I keep many of my stories to myself, since being tarred by that brush is unpleasant.

Note: I have learned much from John Robison's journey to understand and recognize emotions.

I've noticed too and I've been thinking a lot about it lately trying to understand, it seems to me this must be significant. I'm not trying to be provocative, but unfortunately many people get defensive and I couldn't gather a lot of insight from those doing it.

I instinctively attach intrinsic value to people, thoughts, emotions, experiences, even art. This seems to go against the norm, even amongst autistic people and value, be it positive or negative, is attached and even reversed in relationship with others. I wonder where such a radical difference is coming from.

Are you describing quantitative versus qualitative reasoning. Qualitative requires more emotional understanding and is much harder for me.

I score most things using quantitative analysis. This is problematic. Emotion is very important and I make big mistakes by excluding it. Tony Attwood talks about this subject in some of his articles.

I am tempted to start a "Shameless Bragging" topic just like I see on Facebook.

What a horrible nurse!

Some people on this forum (not you) is the main reason why i think they should be separated again. Or a subset of the diagnosis should be added: "Inexperienced Egocentrical Worldview disorder".


Seriously, i have nothing in common with the description that fly around here sometimes "We can't get jobs or girlfriends and have no empathy, the world sucks and a dog just peed on me"

Sorry - but i do not have most of those problems, i feel sorry for you, but don't generalise with the words "we" and "us" when describing yourself.

I never had any type of romantic or sexual relationship, lived at home most of my life, had a mild speech impediement most of my life, had good rewarding jobs and got along with my co workers great, had long periods of unemployment, went out to clubs and bars by and all sorts of places by myself and often enjoyed it. I have been bullied, excluded, respected really liked. I never gamed, I do not have the fine motor coordination to even be minimally competent at it. I watched the original Star Trek when it came out all the time, really liked it, watch repeats on occassion and have watched a few of the movies and never ever have watched any Star Trek series without the original cast. How do I fit into into the stereotypes of horrible burden 24 hour 7 day a week autistic or Sheldon aspie. Answer I don't, what else is new?

So am I not real autistic?, not a real aspie? I identify as Aspie, Autistic or Aspie-Autistic, that is my story and I am sticking to it.

I don't understand the point of the who has it worse or worst thing.
Maybe it has to do with who wants more attention.