NPR did a story on me and my blog

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... as well they should!

Fine job all around.

I found the story on NPR's Facebook page and listened to it last night. I thought that it was very well done! I also experience a number of the things that were mentioned.

I have also had some expereince with the comments that were made. I think that it is the anonymous nature of the internet, people will make comments just because they can. One of my childhood friends (who was diagnosed with "borderline autism amongst other things) is a beloved public official in our area who brought his community back after a flood devestated most of the community. He was in the local paper and on the TV news often during that period. I was deeply disappointed and upset by some of the comments that people made about him and his community. I even got into an argument with a person in the comment section of our local newspaper about him. Come to find out later, many of these people that wanted to stir things up didn't even live in his community, know anything about his community or didn't know him personally. They were trolling in the comments about the story just to stir up the fecal matter or to create their own truths. I know that many of these comments deeply hurt my friend as well and caused him to retreat from public life.

I do think though, regardless of what people say, people with autism/AS need to put themselves out there and what we are capable of.

Agreed: awesome job!

As a tribute to solidarity, I've decided to show my mug in public now too.

Well done, good job and stop worrying.

There's always going to be someone out there that wants to be heard, and usually their method is going to be contradicting someone we really want to hear from - don't take it personally.

I've been speaking with Alex (Founder of this site) and it looks like he'll be interviewing me some time soon.

Expect another girl aspie video on here soon!

Congratulations Callista.

The rest of the story topic

Excellent.

I had pictured you as being very slim. and I have no idea why. Pardon me, I was never good at imagining anyone.

Well done Callista (cool photo ). I'm a bit angry on your behalf that they didn't at least ask before making such a personal article though.

Heh No, from my voice you'd think I weighed about a hundred pounds; it's actually close to twice that--much more "round and solid" than "skinny and frail" for me! I don't know where you got the impression, but the "starving artist/writer" stereotype might have something to do with it. I'm not offended or anything, but it does interest me; you're the second to have mentioned that you were surprised at how I looked.

Fixer_girl--Aspie girls represent!

I'm overall satisfied at their editing, but there were two things that annoyed me a little; first, that they used the one time I admitted I thought it might be interesting to be NT, and that they gave the impression that I thought autism was incompatible with reproduction. I was saying that it might be interesting to be sexual/NT, though I didn't mean that I wanted to be NT... had they asked, I would also have said that I thought it might be interesting to be dyslexic or mentally ret*d or synesthetic or left-handed or male... It's a matter of wanting to understand other minds, not wanting to be normal.

And then the example I used with the nerdy cave-man--I simplified it quite a great deal; the reality is that autism decreases reproduction, not eliminates it, and sticks around because autistic genes in the gene pool are useful. (Baron-Cohen said "there's no natural-selection explanation for severely disabling autism", but that's bunk--I gave an explanation during the interview and in the blog post that sparked the idea: The same reason sickle-cell anemia exists, because sickle-cell trait protects from malaria. When too much of a trait can stop reproduction, but less of it will encourage reproduction, then the trait will stick around and the "too much" variant will stick around too. Simple as that...) Anyhow. I should stop complaining; all in all, I wasn't misquoted, and even the spin they put on it wasn't against the spirit of what I was hoping to communicate.

Whatever you do, don't put your medical records in public or send it to people who are hostile to the idea of you being autistic. I made that mistake, and all that happened in the end was it gave the bullies more material to pull apart. They didn't even believe me when my mother made a video where she stated out loud that I was autistic, and she was there when I was diagnosed. You really don't want to give out such personal information to people like that. You will regret it later. It's okay to give it to legitimate media people who are checking into your background (they might also interview relatives, talk to professionals who diagnosed you, and do other things to verify it, that's the sort of thing they did with me anyway, they did relatives, professionals who diagnosed me, professionals who know me now, case managers, staff, even old friends), but don't give it to anyone else.

Also, if you get into discussions with people who basically do this thing... get out of the discussion, don't get sucked in. This thing is... ask you a question in a hostile manner to suggest that you are fake but that if you answer the question you might convince them you are real. If you answer the question with the real answer, what they do is they ask two or three more questions for every question you answer, all designed to call into question your reality. When they do this, they're not looking for answers to convince them you're real. They're looking for ways to invade your privacy. Don't cooperate in any way with such people.

I have more advice but my ride is possibly here now, so I'd better go. I'll let you know more when I get home. I've been there and I know how scary it is.

LOL, I just used the same exact analogy in a discussion with my husband; Henry Gates was just on TV discussing how he had the positive sickle-cell variant. I'm very interested in the evolution idea; I think it's a very valid way to look at the entire spectrum - I think many people are confused about the 'disability' aspect of it - speaking in very broad generalities, from what I've gathered, a lot of what NT people respond to are more compatibility issues, as though NTs are PCs and AS folk are all Macs (or, more accurately, like PCs and Macs were back in the day.) We don't speak the same language, especially nonverbally.

Now you know why you should not do that to others like you do all the time.

Pull over! Aspie Police!

Dude, chill out and way to go on failing the 'congrats award'.

Seriously, chill out and stop being grumpy.

Oh I'm just reminding the OP of how much they do it whenever someone makes a point they disagree with.

Zach

You need a hug and a shake.

So here's a hug and a shake, jiggle!

Smile poppet.

I visited your website - don't be so down angel face!

oh wow
cool

Congratulations...interesting blog