Outrageous asperger myths and stereotypes

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1. Aspergers isn't real (and I've heard people be bold enough to say that even LFA isn't real). People who say they have it are just making excuses for not having friends.
2. All forms of autism are LFA (goes with #1) and all people on the spectrum fling poop and are ret*d and hopeless and...
3. should be pitied.... thanks Autism Speaks! You're partially responsible for this "Oh! Pity them!" attitude.
4. All people with autism are savants and have eerie powers. Even though everyone knows that all people with autism are ret*d, all autistics are geniuses at math and can count cards and do complex mathematical equations in ten seconds
5. Autism is caused by vaccines and can be cured with a simple diet. Thanks, Jenny McCarthy! Just because your fat ass was cured (though I wouldn't say completely...) with weight watchers doesn't make you a neurologist.
6. Lots of famous people are TOTALLY autistic even though they've been dead for hundreds of years and we can't prove it (insert string of names here)
7. People on the spectrum are "pure" and "innocent" and "naive" and "childlike" and incapable of lying. BS. I've met some really conniving jerks who are aspies.
8. Give up all hope of athleticism if you're on the spectrum because you'll be lucky if you can even button your own shirt. Such rubbish. Although motor clumsiness is common, it's a generalization and assuming that everyone on the spectrum drops things and can't play sports is a cruel thing to say to the gold medals I've won in gymnastics and karate.
9. People on the spectrum are CRAZY! Stay away from them! The men are rapists and the women are inferior to NT women because they're not social and women are SUPPOSED to be social!
10. Spectrum people can't talk. If you can talk, you don't have an ASD (a psychiatrist actually told me this. I said I had aspergers and he told me I talked to well... )
11. They can't use imaginative language at all. They suck at metaphor and figurative language. The best poetry that came out of my college classes were written by the spectrum students. Suck it, NT profs!
12. We're all gay (I've heard this backed up in a "study"... according to the study it was something about testosterone in the womb causing lesbianism in females and AS in anyone so... yeah. They couldn't explain homosexuality in men. It was a joke study)
13. Even if we were straight (which of course we aren't), none of us could ever get married or have kids because none of us are social at all. We're all hermits. (this doesn't explain those of us who inherited it from one or both of our parents....)
14. And being a hermit kills us! (not for me. I like being a hermit )
15. We spend hours on the internet... okay. That one's true. hahaha
16. It's a childhood disease only. Once you reach a certain age, you outgrow it (I've seriously seen a website about this, but I can't remember the address. The angle of the website was "Why don't we see any adults flinging poop?" Therapy. That's why). That attitude is horrible because it makes it difficult for those of us diagnosed as adults to get any help. I can't get anyone to help me with my sensory integration issues because they look at me like "Huh? That's not fixed already? You should have had that fixed as a kid!" Well I didn't know what it was as a kid... which brings me to...
17. It's incredibly easy to diagnose (is not since there's no definitive test)
18. We're all robots and have no feelings and talk like robots and think we're robots. It's okay to treat us like robots, too.
19. There's a "look". If you don't "look" aspie or autie, then you don't have an ASD. The look can mean anything from finger length to height to penis size to clothing style.
20. You can't go to college if you're on the spectrum. In fact, you can't even graduate from high school in most of the cases.
21. 1 in 150 people has low functioning autism.
22. And that's more devestating than being killed in a car crash!
23. We're godlike in our powers because our senses are so enhanced. We have better eyesight than birds of prey and our other senses are... hypersensitive... and you can imagine how nifty that is (it's not nifty. I have to wear earplugs all the time and avoid most places because of the smells. Although the birds of prey thing isn't technically accurate, our visual acuity IS enhanced)
24. You're a woman? Okay... MAYBE you can have LFA, but it's rare... you don't have aspergers. (said to me by a psychiatrist)
25. You're too smart to have autism/you're too dumb to have aspergers

and finally...
26. A GLORIOUS DAY FOR SCIENCE! WE HAVE THE CURE! (no you don't... and a lot of people wouldn't want it anyway, but I'll take half to get rid of the sensory symptoms )

My grandmother has a lot of prejudices against autism in general. Asperger syndrome doesn't seem to be known in France, most people don't know it exists (well, things are changins) and almost no professional diagnose it. (Anyway, if I were to be diagnosed, I wouldn't tell it to my grandmother).

She thinks that autistic people are egoistical and individualist, they only act and think for their own interests, are in their own world and don't care about people in general, that they never talk to anyone even when they have learnt language.

My mother told me many autistic children were kind and lovely from what she's seen on TV. At this time, I start thinking that I'll have an autistic child later. I don't mean I'd like to have one, I really thought -and sometimes still does- that I might have "accidentally" an autistic child.

People tend to think autistic people are violent, dumb and dangerous.


On the Internet, I've read that "Asperger isn't real", especially on French forums when they says Asperger is the disease of those who wants to have the "benefits" of being called autistic to justify their difficulties.
I've even read an aspie who said that people started to think they had this disorder because they were lost but didn't think that people who wonder about schizophrenia, dyslexia were wrong.

Some psychologist and psychiatrist deny the existence of asperger, especially in adult.

Some people think autism is a child disease and that autist die sooner than the other or have some kind of trisomy.

AS only affects children and teenagers, never adults.

People with AS can't drive.

People with AS don't change.

Because a person acts different from other people, they must be ret*d.

Autistic means ret*d.
That's a ret*d steriotype cuz in the math/logic area we're generally more intelligent.

Actually, having poor skills in maths makes you be called "ret*d", at least in my country... And I think that everyone has their own intelligence. I don't really know what they mean by ret*d, it seems that people use this word whenever they like. "You're not as succesful as I am, you're ret*d !" "You are different from me, you are ret*d !"

But it's in the word; the prefix "aut" or "auto" means "self", as in "automobile", "automatic", "automaton" etc.

Here is the Dictionary.com entry:

auto- or aut-
pref.

1. Self; same: autogamy.
2. Automatic: autopilot.


[Greek, from autos, self.]

These are just some quotes from a non-fiction book that I was given for Christmas. I don’t know really what to make of the writer’s true intentions at all. I just wondered what you folks think about these quotes.

I understand what the writer is trying to say, but I wonder if perhaps these things could have been written a little more tactfully?

Oh dear and I was enjoying reading the book so much up to that point.
The writer made so many good cultural references and allusions.
The writer seems to be so well read and culturally astute, that I was taken aback by some of her extreme points of view.

Such a shame, but I guess she is entitled to her right to freedom of speech. I don't want to get into trouble over this. It has been bothering me for a few days.

Just a taste of some of the stuff that’s out there in the literature anyway.

Shortly before I told a friend I had AS I asked him if he knew what it meant and he said "Isn't that where their smart but socially ret*d or sumin?" or something along those lines. And actually I guess thats quite acurate compaired to some...

Apparently asd's are contagious , because I was sick after I gave blood one time and someone who was working at that particular blood drive said that

.

lol she even had a facebook group to spread anti autism propaganda, i stopped her though . incidentally one of the misinterpritations i have experienced is that we were called ass pie's as opposed to aspies lol

artistic dont forget artistic!

Hey, I've given blood... if that's the case, the recipient might get my AS to... LOL... this is facepalm...

My manager asked me if i would infect the other employees with my disease. Strange little man...

You should have licked him and told him to find out for himself.

I agree with you, AS is like some annoying sibling following me aorund. But I don't think it's a curse either, it's just there, it just is.

I once read a grossly misinformed book of fiction. The Asperger's character made up a pretend game, in which he was a cult leader and led the other children to torture and kill small animals. Way to stigmatise a disability/a community, you idiot of an author.

This character was also described as clumsy and having no empathy/feelings. [sarcasm]Yes, all ASD people are soulless monsters. [/sarcasm]