how do you feel about the term "asperger's sufferer

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I suffer from my autism and yet I want to be autistic. My thoughts and feelings concerning my autism and the issue of 'suffering" comes from my trait presentation and their expression in the context of the world. I feel great about my autism when I do not have to engage with others, when the contextual/environmental issues are so suitable and amenable as to mean I can function at optimum with all the zooming brilliance and joy of my creativity and fun brain. If I get approximately 6 hours a day alone and quiet, I can then function. If that six hours is reduced and there is the demand for dynamic engaging with others, reciprocal communication, noise, people, etc, then I suffer meltdown very quickly.
I know I am disabled and I am on disability yet again. I spent most of my years on disability and then had a few years off it and now I am back on because I cannot sustain the pressures of life. (The years I made money out of my painting, I had two to three breakdowns and was buoyed by the financial boom in my country. I'm proud of myself that I did it, but I am also relieved and saddened that I could not cope with what other artists manage to cope with comparatively easily. In order to refrain from necking myself, I opted out - not that I opted out of much, as most of my career was done in isolation from home far from the big city. Email and phone were the method of communication as face to face was too much. And occasionally I did media stuff. I still do my work, but not in the sense of career. I loathed that whole scene..was never really accepted and even when I was, I didn't know how to take it because I do not feel things like acceptance and inclusion the way others do. My brain is wired for solitary..... )

My trait presentation - particularly in the area of faux-pas and "foot in mouth" episodes, typical AS "whistle-blowing," expression of fairly fervent opinions etc. also means many in the non-ASD population doesn't quite want to put up with me. I am hyper-verbal but with poor pragmatic language skills and with an impaired ability to employ necessary Theory of Mind skills (eg...internal editing while in conversation) which means I say the socially unacceptable thing quite often.

And yet I would not want to be something other than what or who I am...even with the suffering.

I don't like the term "Asperger's sufferer". It sounds ignorant, pitying and patronizing. Would neurotypicals like to be pitied for being "neurotypicality sufferers"?

I don't like when people assume things about the sufferings involved in having certain disorders, differences or disabilities. I know that some people do suffer because of Asperger's syndrome, but there are also many don't suffer from it, so I don't like when people generalize about it, for example by calling us "Asperger's sufferers".

Actually, even those who do suffer usually don't suffer as much from the actual symptoms/disorder as they do from the way they are treated by neurotypical society for being different. So in a way "society sufferers" would probably be a more accurate description for them than "Asperger's sufferers", although I just don't like using the word "sufferer" at all, as it makes too many assumptions.

Not true for me. It's the executive dysfunction and sensory issues that cause me the most suffering, and I can't blame those on other people. My social impairments are very much there, but I don't care about social stuff enough for them to really hurt me.

this is about how I feel, that's why it's difficult but I don't want to be NT. I think it's amazing you have sold your work.

aspergers does cause me to suffer, so I don't mind the term.

Better to suffer, than to be an abortion statistic.

Yes CockneyRebel, I agree. Beter to
be alive than dead. And the aboltion
issue is a very good anology to draw
here.

Many of us in the spectrum are governed
to some extent by our black & white
thinking, so that if something is right
something has to be wrong. Consequently
the issue of disibility v difference
becomes a battleground of condtradiction
rather than complementarity.

As for me, I dislike the term.

I admit that I may suffer from some of my AS traits, but not from them all. So it's not a suffering as a whole.

I can say that I suffer when getting overloaded eg., but it doesn't make sense to say that I "suffer" from being able to focus on a subject, having absolute pitch, a good memory or such.

I don't neccessarily agree with that. If the suffering has outwieghed the good, then maybe it would have been better to have been a abortion statistic.

AS makes everyday life pretty difficult at times, but I don't suffer from it. I just have to deal with it. Besides, if I didn't have AS, I'd be someone else. I happen to like who I am, and so do a few good friends.