Why isn't AS taken seriously?

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I'm puzzled by the fact that AS is so controversial on the Internet and yet in real life, it seems that no one has heard of it. Maybe the people with whom I interact just aren't online much or don't frequent the parts of the Internet where AS is discussed?

I have often wished that people who say crap like that would even attempt to live in my body for a day. Most couldn't handle it anywhere near as well as I do, yet most that I wish this on, have chastised me for not functioning the way they do.

If it's clinically evident [whether diagnosed or no], it's serious. In fact, when they first started talking about the label around the time is was implemented, it was made clear to professionals that it is indeed a serious disorder, and that it shouldn't be taken lightly. Whether professionals listened to this or not remains to be seen; I know the GP down the road had the biases before seeing me ('it's just a label they made to give geeks!'), but her tune has changed dramatically with seeing me, post-diagnosis (she looked it up and educated herself).

(This is assuming that I have Asperger's in the way Gillberg describes it.)

I like this quote, which was from around the time it was implemented:

It might be helpful if the words disorder, disease, and low-functioning aren't used to describe AS or Autism too It takes education and understanding. People with AS aren't disordered, diseased, afflicted or debilitated. It is a different way of being from people who do not have it. There are people out there trying very hard to educate. Unfortunately alot of them don't have AS themselves, but some do and they are doing good work. Check out williamstillman.com

This site and others are invaluable to people with AS. Self-advocacy is important. We have the ability to teach. We can be positive models in the face of so much misinformation. That's one of the reasons I am here. I want to help change the societal view. I want the world to be a more educated and understanding place for my daughter. I want the world to be a more comfortable place for me too. Whatever the issue is, from economics, to gas prices, to war, to AIDS, Autism, Spinal Cord Injuries, whatever it is...there are also people advocating differing views based on THEIR understanding of huge and broad situations.

Instead of creating the idea that people with AS are so different from the norm, the idea rather that we are more alike and "normal" than not might be helpful. One we create that understanding of sameness but different, people will have to stop ridiculing people with AS as they'd be in turn doing it to themselves.

It's due to the awareness, ironically. People are skeptics and if they start seeing too much of something, they question it. It's human nature.

My nephew, visiting from out of state, overheard us talking about autism and he said "Oh, sure. Now, everyone has autism." He's a high school student, from FLA and is not diagnosed with anything. Yet, this is his viewpoint. This means he must be seeing more of it in his school or overhearing adults talk about it disparagingly-something.

Our adolescents reflect society in a big way, honestly. When they speak, we should listen. They are blunt and many times reflect what is really going on.

Not enough correct information, that stupid mercury myth, the fact that stupid people laugh at how the name sounds kind of like Ass-burgers. Haha! Funny! Yeah, never heard THAT one before...

This is what happens when any concept is shoved down people's throat, especially when doom and gloom is attached to the subject matter. Autism has been probably for thousands of years. It would not surprise me if it were discovered that most major contributors to the human intellectual base had some form of autism. The only thing that has changed is the fact that all the previous form of autism were not recognized as autism. Many autistic people were wrongfully diagnosed as being mentally ret*d. This is EXACTLY what happened to ME. If it weren't for my mom fighting against this label, I would probably be carrying that label to this very day.

One reason why I am not so quick about wanting to lynch Michael Savage is due to the fact that he, like your nephew, has had autism advertisements, awareness, and doom and gloom shoved down his throat that he is tired of hearing it.
Aspergers is also a relatively new label, so when all of the sudden when lots of people are labeled with it, people wonder where and why this has only been recently mentioned. If Autism Speaks would instead of scaring people with numbers just point out different behavior that people with autism MIGHT display, then people would be much more accepting. Another factor involved is when news companies report someone being excused from criminal punishment simply because of autism. People tend to thing that autism will become the next "get out of jail free card." When I speak to people about autism, I try to point out the things we have in common with non-autistics. I also like to point out things that NT's are generally superior at as well as things autistics are superior at. I point out that in most cases, autism is just a neurological DIFFERENCE.

I agree. It's the media shaping the viewpoints. If autism were understood as a way of being, eccentric, RARE (which it is), then it wouldn't be so interesting. Yet, it's pushed out there in raw form by researchers who need money to back their research. So here we are in the midst of it all, advocating and moving against a current of misinformation. Meanwhile, the spectrum is understood as some kind of euphemism for spoiled. : ( As if it weren't hard enough to make people understand. It'd be better if they didn't know anything at all. No information is better than misinformation. NO, it's not an epidemic. Epidemic is a loaded term and scares people so it is used to attract and draw attention.

i had RA when i was like 1-2 yrs old... luckily, it went away... im 26 now and don't have the best knees in the world but im fine atm... though i do worry it'll come back.

I think someone else put it best.
It's not quantifiable. Unless they can see it, somehow experience it in a tangible way, most people are just not going to believe it. And from little they do know, they might pass it off as either laziness or being ret*d.

My father overestimates my normalcy sometimes because he does not believe that Asperger's is a form of autism. He believes that it's a more isolated disorder like ADHD. I think this is because the media depicts autism as something that is always severely debilitating; people compare aspies to the autistic kids they see on talk shows and don't understand how they could be related.

I'm sure the generation Y overachiever culture contributes to ignorance regarding younger aspies. When intelligence is gaged by standardized test scores and college applications alone, the appreciation of more fluid forms of intelligence, such as savantism or creative talent, goes away. I am not trying to get into Princeton, therefore I am ret*d and not worthy of notice. US News and World Report must die, thought MissPickwickian.

And, of course, some people are just plain uninformed or misinformed.

I agree with many of the posters above that say that, due to the fact that it isn't immediately visible or apparent, people like to dismiss it. I recently read an entry on a blog I frequently check dealing with physical and mental problems, and a lot of commenters with "invisible" disorders and problems (like autism, anxiety, depression, chronic pain) face flack from strangers and families due to the fact that they can't see it and therefore they refuse to believe it. People without these problems often try to equate these issues to feelings or problems that may occasionally show up in their own lives. These people who have no experience with these issues assume that the breakup that bummed them out is the same feeling that people with major depression deal with, or a shy person's trouble going up and talking to a group is the same problem that a person with AS has when, instead, they're being completely dumbfounded by a social heirarchy with rules and placement that people to seem to get without even trying. It would make sense, in their completely wrong logic, then that these people claiming these disorders are "overreacting" or lying.

To get out of this thinking people have to be educated and change their thinking to realize that people do have problems outside what they've experienced. Sadly, there are a lot of people who will never make this step.