False Dichotomy

Post Reply New Topic

I don't think that non-autistic people in general have particular deficiencies in long division or in communicating ideas on a somewhat higher intellectual level than a punch to the stomach. But I do think that they, like all people, have strong and weak areas, and that pointing out that the weak areas exist is not bashing any more than it's bashing autistic people to talk about our weak areas.

I think, though, that many people (both autistic and not) have a belief system where if you have more trouble doing something, you're automatically inferior. For instance, autistic people being inferior to non-autistic people in general, because of things autistic people have trouble doing. If you tell someone with that belief system that non-autistic people generally have trouble doing certain things, even if you're totally truthful, they'll take it as "bashing" non-autistic people, because when you say "Someone has trouble doing this thing" they will read into it "...and having trouble doing things means being inferior, so that person is inferior". It can be very difficult to communicate that having skills doesn't mean general superiority and having difficulties doesn't mean general inferiority, just like it can be hard to explain that saying what you're good at isn't always bragging and saying what you're not good at isn't always being hard on yourself.

Oh I don't know. From past experience I don't get along well with any extremists if the conversation moves on to the very topics people hold these extreme views in. I just... the viewpoint is not supposed to be logical, is it? That's why any logical arguments don't do it.

The big bad thing about being social - or trying to be social, I try to be, but I'm not sure I manage that well - that suddenly everybody ought one to have an opinion about every topic possible. People asked me whether I had sudden fits of insanity, because I kept changing the opinion I voiced all the time. Fact is, I'm really lacking opinions. (Obviously, making up for it by inventing opinions for the sake of smooth communication isn't working very efficient and it does get one in trouble. Me at least, it gets me in trouble a lot.) I do know what I want, I for example don't want a cure and I don't want to kill of all NTs on this planet, as it really would go against my basic understanding of humanity. I rather enjoy the fact that people are human. Of course I hate a person that does something bad to me, but it's just that single person, isn't it and I wouldn't call human nature that did brought that person to do something horrible to me in the first place as vile and beneath me. I might not like the outcome, but I'm glad that people are weak and strong and good and bad by being human. Why oh why all the emotional opinions about good and bad?

In a society, everyone's supposed to have strong opinions about likes and dislikes and of course, opinions of how much higher and how much lower other people are in one's peck order. Everyone asks: How good am I? How bad are the others so that I can define how good I am?

I feel so lonely (despite loving the propect of living alone until the end of my days, oh well) because I don't give a thought about how to classify people emotionally, though I love doing it academically and linguistically to get a clear definition of the world I move in. (I always want to know the exacts of how things work.) I realise that a pecking order makes you feel not-lonely in a world in which it's all about WHO you are. Everything must hold an emotional percentage that tells about importance.
I guess I might as well be a psychopathic mass killer, because I really don't know whether my mom's more important than my friend or my cat. Or which friend, as I've got more than one friend, is my best friend and who my least best friend and who is my friend at all. That love thing... what's the matter with it? I love my friends, my mother, my cats, I like them all equally and I wouldn't mind making out with one of my friends though I like this friend no better than the others. How can a person have an favourite auntie or a favourite doggie?

Sooo, I figured either the world is making it all just complicated by emotionally classifying all things possible or it's just me that has next to no emotional range and is indeed not that sane. I know a couple of people who'd attest to my insanity if needed.

I now think that I totally missed the point of the question after my first 15 lines...

I suppose I could have just said: No, sorry, I'll never get what it is about NT bashing and NT conformity being such important things to some people, autistic or not. What I view as important is elsewhere but not in which extreme view I should pick up, as in my case, it doesn't change me for the better or for the worse. And I always figured changing for the better was the whole point of having an opinion. I'm just... plain Sora, flowing in other spheres definitely.

Sara, there is a simple explanation. NTs bash us, I point out the hypocrisy of it.

You mentioned the possibility of being a psychopathic mass killer because you like humans and animals equally. Instead, I think of it as being a great person. Loving someone from another species shows virtue and generosity.

I don't want to bash anyone, except the slow @#$ in the lane in front of me..
I'm just people. I have some differences, but I can still function. And there are more like me where we came from...

I sincerely despise the "for us or against us" philosophy. Everything becomes partisan, everything becomes a fight. No actual discussion, no sharing of ideas, just the formation of war camps and flame wars until someone gets banned.

I'm a strong critic of NT-bashing, and that mostly puts me on the pro-cure "side." I tend to choose the pro-cure side over the anti-cure side, if I'm being forced into a camp, though I do enjoy my neutral-ish middle ground. Though that had it's own sety of problems. Ironically, it was the pro-cure side that accepted that I wasn't for or against them, and the anti-cure side that declared me a "traitor" a "suck-up" and other inventive names, not to mention forcing me into a pro-cure position. Not here on WP, of course, elsewhere.

I had a blog, and it was fairly middle ground. Sadly though, it was an anti-cure advocate who caused it to fail, and thus why when confronted with for or against, I mostly choose against. Just a casualty of that stupid black and white view.

Pithlet, Lumina, good points, and I agree.

My thoughts on the NT-bashing and the AS-bashing; Neither are good, nor do they serve any good purpose. It simply creates hatred. That creates discord, arguments, fights, and worse. It's as useful as shouting racist epithets in public. It's not a good plan in the short term, or the long term. Blinded by hatred, and will fight anyone who says it. It gives them purpose, or a feeing of pride, short-term, selfish benefits.

Remnant, being different out of personal choice, and being different because of an actual cause, are completely different. Different to the point where they give the cause a name. And I don't know about you, but I find that being educated on proper social etiquette to be good. I'd prefer to be polite than be rude, wouldn't you?

We are not entitled to be within soceity, yet not held accountable to the rules. As they say for law, ignorance of law is no excuse for breaking it. Are we equal, and to be held to the same standards as everyone else, or are we above them, and have no need for their rules?

Because that's the nature of the human race. We haven't taken the time to really do something about the angst and the fear that creates the hate you are talking about.

As it stands at present - it is impossible to hold middle ground (be a centrist if you like). As the world has moved closer together because of massive advances in communication, cultures clash instead of mixing up and assimilating. In Australia I think we're the closest to it - and even then it was only just last week that we FINALLY got around to making a formal apology to the Aborigines here.

I'm all for the multiculture. The trouble is we get too many fools who don't and they try to not just rock the metaphorical boat, but sink it. That creates the two sides - and we've been doing that for centuries.

Even within the ASD culture we have our problems - as you alluded to, Deacon. I've been right amongst it, and main reason is because I have a wealth of actual life experience - and yet it gets disrespected in favour of the theories of some well meaning young people. Now I'm all for theory - but not when it doesn't and can not work in practice. And I would only ever make a claim like that if I'd actually seen it, or better still it has actually happened to me.

There is no greater teacher for an Aspie than personal experience.

I don't remember the context, but I liked it when someone on the forum a few weeks or months ago likened ASDs to a bell curve, i.e. although there is a lot of diversity in the human population, few people are either extremely autistic or unautistic.

I strongly dislike the notion, common here as well as in the literature, that having an ASD is as distinct as having a broken leg or a cold.

The thing is though that are brains are not designed to process their sorts of rules. It would be far better to come up with ways to live in society that would suit AS people than try and force people with AS to live by rules that they don't feel comfortable with as a natural part of their cognitive processes.

Just because we are human doesnt mean that the rules were designed with us in mind.

Joeker, living outside of "rules" may well be an entitlement. I haven't touched on that subject in this thread, but it is part of personal freedom. Even when we are talking about that which is illegal, most people break the law when they think they're not going to get caught. I do it to keep from being mashed flat on the trafficway.

Social etiquette? What part of social etiquette is violated when I state an opinion here? If there is such a thing it should be done away with.

What rules exactly? There is a subset of the human population that seems to have the rest by the gonads in an iron grip. They only obey the rules that are convenient to them and they impose different rules on the rest of the population that are actually illegal under the U.S. constitution and probably a few other constitutions. The rest seem to "go along" when they should not only rebel but put those bastards under lock and key and feed them through the keyhole. When I saw a ten year old boy one time directing my punishment by a teacher who I sort of liked before the incident (I will despise her over 30 years later) I knew that this was the Twilight Zone at best. Or maybe the Outer Zone. Which ones of us would assert the reality that should be in place rather than the one that the bullies have created?

People disagree with you, Joeker, because you really don't know. You have your little subset of how things maybe ought to be, and you don't take into account the larger reality. In the larger reality police really will beat people down knowing that those people are having health problems that cause them to behave strangely. Your views conflict with my observed reality, I tell you this, and you go passive-aggressive like you're so picked on? It's no wonder someone doesn't like you.

What exactly is in mind with the design of those rules? I don't think that NTs do so well with them either.

That actually doesn't put a person onto a pro-cure or anti-cure "side". Most people I know who are against a cure are critics of NT-bashing. A large proportion of people I know who are against cure are, in fact, NT. A much larger proportion than most people on either side seem to mention. I even know a lot of anti-cure people who are not only against NT-bashing, but have a much more broad definition of what constitutes NT-bashing than I do (as I said in my other post, I don't consider it bashing to point out a limitation or bragging to point out a skill... but a lot of people do, mostly (IMHO) people who haven't fully divorced the idea of ability from the idea of value and/or hierarchy).

In fact, the main thing I see among people who get into a lot of NT-bashing, is that for whatever reason they don't tend to have had a lot of time to think it through -- either because of being very young, or because of not having had the chance to think about the issues for very long, or because they don't know a lot of NTs beyond ones who bully them (and falsely believe that those who bully them are everyone, and also the idea that everyone who bullies them is NT is potentially false as well -- many of my bullies were neither NT nor autistic, and a tiny number were actually autistic). Those people tend to put "NT" as a sort of gloss over all the nasty things that happen to them, and eventually that becomes obviously false and/or obviously unethical.



Doing those things to you isn't good, but it doesn't force a person to take the opposite position. If that were true, I would be switching sides on various issues every time someone on one side took a black and white stance on them. For instance, politically I could switch back and forth from conservative to liberal several times a day based on the amount of people who take those views in a manner that says you either believe the party line or you're on the other side.

It also helps not to see one side or another as monolithic. You say that one side accepted you and one side declared various nasty things to you, but really you logically have to mean that some people on one side accepted you and some people on the other side declared various nasty things to you. I see both sets of behavior you describe, on all sides of any issue. This is because those sets of behavior are about human nature. Some of the things that other people who are against cure do disgust me, and I have friends who want a cure for themselves or for other people, and who would never be mean to anyone. And some of the things that some people do who are for a cure disgust me, and I also have friends who are against a cure. (And the things that disgust me include behavior towards me as well as just behavior in general.)

Ultimately what decides me on the issue of cure or any other issue, is what set of ideas I have, and what choices I make in terms of what I believe is right. And because of that, I am also pretty quick to, instead of switching sides when someone otherwise on "my side" becomes nasty, I'd rather tell the person that they're being nasty and that this isn't okay.

For instance, I recently got pretty mad at a bunch of people who would all consider themselves supporters of 'neurodiversity', and who are supposedly on my side, but who were first ridiculing people for their spelling and then justifying it as because poor spelling shows a poor knowledge of the area. I showed them my mother's very non-standard spellings of several words that she would have been using several times a day in her particular profession (spellings where often she spells it differently every time), and reminded them that both spelling trouble and outright dyslexia are part of 'neurodiversity' too (as well as often markers of culture, class, and formal education, that ought not to be laughed at either). But despite the fact that people do that sort of thing and call themselves proponents of some of the same views I have, I would not distance myself from the views in an attempt to distance myself from the behavior of some of the people who claimed to hold them. And neither would my mother.

One issue that I seem to be on neither side of is abortion. I'm not sure I'd say I'm neutral, because I have opinions, they're just not neatly falling into either of the two main camps. And there are also things I'm undecided on, in which case I'd probably be neutral. I am mentioning that issue because it is several times more inflammatory than cure. I would never choose to be pro-choice because some people calling themselves pro-life try to kill abortion providers. Nor would I ever choose to be pro-life because many feminists consider it impossible to be a feminist without being pro-choice. Nor would I choose either side based on the fact that my political views were conservative or liberal (and for some reason unfathomable to me the issue has been framed as a conservative vs. liberal issue even though I can't see any connection between the issue and the actual political views of conservatives and liberals). And when I do choose a stance on that topic in the areas I currently have no stance on, it will not be decided by the behavior of people with the opposite stance.

And a big part of that is because I recognize that people have some pretty standard human failings, and that a person can become dogmatic and even outright evil over any view a person could possibly hold. And that's a standard human failing. It's not a failing of any particular stance on cure, abortion, or anything else.



Equal does not mean being held to exactly the same standards as everyone else. Blind people are considered equal, yet are not considered rude for not being able to read a person's body language. People with cerebral palsy are not considered rude for not being able to reproduce standard body language, but are still considered equal. Autistic people should not by default be considered rude for difficulties in perceiving, interpreting, remembering, and/or reproducing standard body language either. It is possible to be considered equal, and at the same time be cut slack for the innate difficulty or impossibility of doing any particular thing the standard way. And it does not take a sense of anyone being superior to anyone else, to think it fair to give slack to people who find it difficult or impossible to conform to a particular set of rules that did not take the existence of people like them into account when the rules were being made. In fact, I think that for real equality that is necessary -- otherwise the people who can do some particular thing will always be put on a superior tier in society to those who cannot. (And I am aware that some autistic people can learn most of the rules, and nearly all can learn at least some of them.)

Some NTs bash us. I'm personally acquainted with at least four NTs who do not treat autistics as intrinsically inferior. (It may be more - I don't know most people well enough to tell whether they're NT, ASD, or what.)

You treat all NTs as a single, monolithic entity, with a single mind and intent. And you complain that this mass creature treats us the same way. May I gently point out they hypocrisy of your cries of "hypocrisy"?

Joeker, you say that being against NT-bashing makes you assume a "pro-cure" stance? Why should that be? The one position does not follow logically from the other. "Pro-cure" does follow intrinsically from a position such as that assumed by another user, that NTs are automatically superior and we should be doing everything we can to emulate them, but I, for instance, do not hold with bashing entire groups for the behavior of a few, yet emphatically reject the idea that I need to be "cured" of anything (except possibly my androgenic allopecia, but there doesn't seem to be anything to be done about that...).

Anbuend, well said.

How many NTs are you acquainted with, Deacon Blues? Four is not a very encouraging number. I might know of four if I sit down and think about it.

Most NTs bash us, Deacon. There are good ones of course - as per the four you thought of. With me it's even more than that. But the majority hate us. I tolerate the ones who just avoid us and do their own thing - that's fine as long as it doesn't interfere with what I want to do, but there are the other ones who hate us so much they refer to us as "crazy" and mock the crap out of us in many different ways.

Most NTs don't even know what we are. Most people in general see us as inferior in some manner, but it would be misleading to say that trait is about NTs -- it's more about the hierarchies our societies have, and autistic people learn those hierarchies just as much as anyone else do. They're just fewer of us. And it's part of a general problem of ableism, which isn't an "NT thing" or a "not-NT thing", it's just a thing our society, all of us, deal with on a regular basis, and a lot of us hold those attitudes just as much as anyone else. (Think for instance of all the autistic people who think they're better than people with intellectual disabilities.)

anbuend has it much better than I can do, but I'll try anyway.


In real life, I'm friends, life-trusting and horribly annoying friends, with NTs only. When they first met me, each one didn't like me, none of them, as they thought of me as odd, as weird, as downright rude and 'a little behind' teenage life. Of course, this is no surprise to me now, as that is a few things of how many people perceive me from a first glance on, how they think of me when they do not know me. I've been told that all in all, people think I'm inferior to them, because that's just how they perceive me as a character they do not know yet. That's how my own autism mixed in my character looks to people - no matter how far its from the truth.

When they get to know me - well, I have yet one of my friends complain about any autistic behaviour. They endured it, they invite me along over and over again and their popularity with NTs is awfully stressing me out. Do they think of me as inferior because I told them I'm autistic? Although I have only told two so far, as they were interested in why I was so unlike other people, both were shockingly... accepting. They read newspaper articles, one asked me questions about it between trashing McDonald's and discussing a trip to London and they just accept. (Because they have a grasp on what it is.)

Overall, I'm left little chance to get to know people, because as I said, they think I'm beneath them and few people actually willingly to associate with people who they think of as inferior. I'm not even in job-life yet, but I got a pretty good idea of how people react to me already. The usual kid goes to two schools, I've been to six and I never had a friend in there for the first four. I was the very highlight each day, all year long for the kids in my class, bullying me no matter what I did just for being not like them, not at all. They put a stuttering kid in my class once - she left after a week because people were nasty to her.

So none of them knew I had autism. Does it excuse their behaviour, thinking of me as an odd, horrible NT that they can treat on equal ground with unequal measures? No, I don't think it does, but it explains a lot. To me. Not to them, because they don't know that A) I'm autistic, that B) what autism is because C) nobody will ever tell them about it. And they ain't mind readers.
The NT world doesn't know about it and autistic people usually complain loudly when an NT tries to understand autism and the autistic world is doing a lot but little enlightenment. Instead it's accusing parents that they don't what autism is and thus are maybe even hurting their children.

It just doesn't sit right with me at all. If I were intended to make a change, I'd rather go out into the city, stand there and spread flyers about 'autism' if I could do that than coming up with thousands of example of how autistic people are mistreated to display immense anger only.

Most NTs 'hate' you and you and you and me because they take it we're screwed NTs that are weak and silly and totally out of our minds. In order for them to stop thinking this, they'll need to experience what autism can be (as there's so much that it can show itself by). And shutting NTs out isn't going to manage that. Or despising them all for that matter.
NTs do the very same all the time. Rage war, kill people to get their opinions across and win and how is it right to take the same stance if the very idea of doing so is actually fighting the violence? It's like doing a protest against the violence and death in a war by killing all soldiers that participate in war. Like: You dare cut of my leg and I'll cut off yours because I feel bad about loosing mine. Huh?

I don't like it how a fair share of those hf autistic people I met are going on about being smart and better than people with down's for example. There was a topic in which down's were mentioned. When I discovered autism on youtube, one of the first things I watched was a video in which all kinds of people with down's-syndrome explained that they want to be treat equal and good and just fair. Why dare autistic people mock them? That's just not right.

Maybe it's because...

Few people have an idea of down's-syndrome. It often goes along the lines "ret*d, unable to read, write and do arithmetic, looking funny and a couple of things I intend not to write down. So obviously down's-syndrome is horrible. People can't live a good life, because they can't care for themselves."

I think it sounds mighty familiar to what people say about autism. So it's no wonder autistic people think that because they're not "drooling ret*ds" (hah, I actually heard this one) they're better. Not disabled maybe. And higher up the social ranks than these 'disabled people'. It's just about what people know of autism from TV or tales from the sixties and fifties.
There's little opportunity to go along and find out what down's-syndrome and autism mean in reality, because first people would have to know that they don't know. And that's no easy, especially if the knowledge seems to be of no importance in your daily life.

And since even disabled autistic people will need to educate themselves on various disabilities and they don't do it, because it's of little importance to them, what makes anyone think an NT suddenly thinks it's important to learn anything on disabilities if he's never needed to know it? You never change masses and only ever individuals, which is rather advantageous, because a mass has the ability to tear you to shreds and a mass always has itself to rely on. To educate an individual however is the only way to change anything for the better.

But generalisation always go against masses, so generalisation don't help to help NTs shape a newer and better opinion of autism. And all kinds of disabilities. I don't mind being associated with a person with down's-syndrome, with a mental disability or whatever else. It's not very smart, because I can't possibly know how a particular disabled person other than ME feels, but if someone asks me I'm not going to fret. Or if someone puts me into a group with them at a project day. Or if they expect me to help them.
It's not like NTs are in a different 'class' or any the like. I don't feel good or bad about being put with NTs either. I'm comparable to any person, because I don't see how it's offending, it's just that I can't read anyone's mind and probably experience the world very differently and I will say so always when asked.


Gosh, how many times did I have to edit language for dialect now? Thanks mom for no standard Oxford's. Not my day, definitely not a day today.