Asperger's Label No Longer Relevant?

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May I send you the doctor bills from my testing then?

This is very true. However, I have worked (and still do) in corporations with award winning diversity policies and programs, that still manage to effectively discriminate against AS workers unintentionally. This is purely due to a lack of awareness and knowledge of AS traits. Nobody can make the office AS friendly if they know nothing about AS. Could you make an office wheelchair friendly if you had no concept of what a wheelchair looks like?

For instance, as IT engineers, we are valued for our obsessive dedication to getting the technical details to work. Problem solving and design are our passion. However, over the last 10 years the emphasis has shifted to compliance tasks. The legal and accounting needs of the business require ever more checking and rechecking of settings and user accounts, reporting of activities, productivity indexes, etc. %70 of our workload now amounts to unskilled clerical work, basic data collection that could be done more cheaply by junior admin resources.

For the NTs, it is merely annoying. For the more AS of us, it is soul destroying. The management can only see that it needs to be done, so if you don't like it, move along. We have lost many of our best workers this way, which puts further pressure on those of us still here.

S

Little tough love in my saying is do the job. If you are capable of diverse behavior yet dislike it welcome to the real-world. I don't want to sound nasty but people with severe autism simply cannot multi-task function. People of all kinds dislike, are not good at and feel underutilized in certain tasks.

I think this discussion goes into ethics and here is what I interpret of it in conclusion.

Autism is a disability that prevents gainful employment. When you can adapt despite rigidity your disability is no longer preventing a typical life. In my advocacy I focus on just getting people to be able to experience just a fraction of what you get to experience. I don't get to experience it and I am of the highest functioning serviced by social services. You are much better off then myself and others and I'd hope for your support in utilizing your work environments for those who cannot achieve it without yours and other peoples support.

The Aspie folks need to help with this. It is in part what I perceive your purpose is. Not just for yourself but in service toward the community of autism like so. This is just my mentality and not a governing judgement of ethics and the community culture sphere.

Nathan Young

For one that goes to such pains to avoid stereotypes and generalizations, I'm surprised you fall into this one. A person missing a leg only needs a prosthesis for support. But they still have a disability.

My wife has CFS. She does not need any social services, but she cannot work.



An even worse generalization. I do not require any special services. Partly because my family fills in many gaps that other services might meet and partly because I function "well enough" that I am expected to take care of myself. It doesn't matter that I have impairments that materially affect my success in life and have left me marginalized. Since self-actualization seems own of your primary motivations, even someone as "functional" as I as been held back by my condition.



You are commendably servicing a specific niche. Their needs do not define the needs of others not so significantly impacted. Nor should the needs of those less impacted be ignored.

Again an item of ethics. If a person typology who are not substantially disabled should they be accommodated to have only specific tasks in a job despite being able to do it. A person in a wheel chair does not use these arguments. A person in a wheel chair may not like a job task and feel discriminated against falsely for doing something he or she can do but does not want to do? If it was a task that insulted a person like the aspie gets to pick up the dogie pooh from the rich employees pet poodles and not be given a chance at any other thing this would be different.

Instead you have a IT job that pays far more then what people with substantial autism get or likely will ever have in a year to live by. Where is the injustice? Is the substantial injustice the priority or is not liking certain tasks the social priority because they can and more often think about injustice. I just really see this online and sometimes offline advocacy catering to the very high functioning whilst they leave out in advocacy those already left out as an imbalance of priorities.

If you want any bit of my priority and others priority in autism advocacy for the substantially disabled you got to also help us.

Now you are pissing me off. How dare you judge my life without knowing any of its details?

I did not land a 'decent' job until I was 42. I was at one point homeless, drifting without any support or direction. I have been of marginal psychiatric stability and the only success I have managed is because the formal services that fill the gaps of marginal functioning members of this society were filled by my wife. Remove my wife from the mix and I am some homeless freak living under a bridge, And YOU have the BALLS to suggest something about ethics and the outcome of my life in the same context.

Ethics suggest that society is best served when EACH of us maximize our potential and maximize what we return to society, If the maximization of my potential has been compromised by no fault of my own where is the justice in that?



Sorry if I'm not autistic enough for you. Do you have ANY idea of what I do or do not do in regards to advocacy?



What?

How DARE you! What f*****g planet are you from to even begin to know what I do with my time and money and to further deign yourself capable of passing judgment on that? Because I don't SPECIFICALLY support YOUR organizations, you assume I am not doing ANYTHING?

Get a grip. Get off your holier than thou pedestal. Abandon your thinly veiled anger and contempt. It serves no one and only feeds your own sense of self importance.

It seems as if you have made a transition. If you present many people are like you in a job and do not like what your assigned and expect me to be psychic about your entire life then that was your assumption. Psychiatric mental illness differs from autism. However being geeky and really good at something does not denote autism.

Take the swear words, the expectations of my and others being psychic and your life story to another post if your going to get like that. Bottom line is still in your job your getting by and functioning unlike many others. What would you have myself and others do? Advocate that you only do what you enjoy in your job or else your being discriminated against?

The bottom line and very simply put without the nasty is what?

Stereotypes about religion have no place in this conversation.

What a piece of work you are. You are the WORST of stereotypes. Arrogant and judgmental, hiding behind vocabulary and pseudo intellectualism. When someone disagrees with you, you accuse them not trying hard enough or of submitting to labels and generalizations. When presented with ideas that contradict you cherished beliefs you automatically assume yours to be superior. You fill space with impenetrable prose and blame OTHERS when they don't understand.

And sometimes swear words are the best descriptors. I can provide a list for you if you wish to enrich your vocabulary.

That was what you were just doing to me but in the end you forget about this conversation and so do I and do other things. In the long run it's not important. In my post I expect a certain discourse and I want to get to the bottom line so I don't have to generalize anymore because the individual facts are found. This can be resisted by some which is a discourse that gets to the bottom line. We have two different points of views and I asked that you help those less fortunate then you and then got nasty. Theoretical thought is part of the discovery processes. Everyone has assumptions. Yes I am a piece of work with a different approach. I don't get into these micro-circumstances my job is to assist people to experience normal and that's it. As far as ADA and A.S that is for attorney's. You won't win this conversation and neither will I.

I am not trying to win I am trying to find the bottom line and you keep getting more nasty as my priority is not your concerns but those less fortunate. Start an organization advocating about the needs of very high functioning individuals in work settings and I will do my own thing. If you wish to redefine the image of autism for corporate integration reasons it may conflict with the societal image needed for simply experiencing normalcy.

High and mighty checking out here.

I certainly appreciate how lucky I am, and there was a lot of luck involved. Even though I am good at many things, I have always had specific problems caused by AS. These have been frustrating and depressing at times. Twice I had to pull out of University 3/4 way through the degree, & ended up as a security guard for 3 years. I only managed to get into IT because I offered to take a job well below the pay I had as a guard.

There is a kind of disability snobbery I have seen at times. If you are not obviously impaired, you have to just shut up & "deal with it". I see my work on neurodiversity as a bridge that should benefit everyone. I may be starting with the IT industry, but awareness spreads.

S

Neurodiversity as I've said before is a beautiful concept. As a modality however it may conflict with other awareness needs. Autism is perceived as a disability within diversity. On a strictly cultural approach in methodology leaving out abortion and lacking confrontation it can serve as a great bridge. However as the movement has been used for abortion issues the idea of human diversity I've chosen is best in what I do. Autism being a spectrum and the diagnoses criteria now changing which I'm not an expert of and I've even read it and don't understand it those diagnosed with A.S before might not be diagnosed again should they seek it.

A society that appreciates and includes the inborn differences of all of it's cultural members is better off.

You just keep telling yourself that. You cause conflict (shall I point to other places on this forum as evidence?) and never accept that you are the source of it, or worse, use the conflict as evidence of your superior position as a soldier for good. Your circular reasoning is clear to everyone but you, but you use challenges to your reasoning as further evidence that people are arrayed against you.

When you are ready for an open conversation, you just let me know. You are too enamored with your own thinking. This has nothing to do with autism, and everything to do with your humanity. Yup. You are just like everyone else. You have an ego. You just hide behind your autism when it is actually your ego in play.

I wonder why some others perceive the moral talk the up and tightly. It's easy to reject it in certain circumstances simply because of conflict of interest. for instance if a civil rights movement were to capture other peoples minds how would it not offend or disagree with someone out there. I constantly challenge myself but constantly taking things personally is not going to work either. It seems everyone wants to demand a certain point of view. My mentality is figure out what others are talking about and avoid conflict potentials.

It may be that since I do not have a hardened point of view it is not acceptable. That thinking about how concepts and ideas interact with bias, ideology, beliefs and social frameworks is not acceptable. It seems as well that people may get upset if I often change my mind. I don't think one strict point of view is going to cause change. I think instead it's going to be the acceptance of many different points of views and the law. My intent is not to re-mold points of view but find risks and proper approaches that will be compatible with a myriad of view points in the diversity which comprises society.

Getting nasty is a defense mechanism I've done that before. It is a common human trait. However in context I just feel the poster had allot more in life then many others do. If I don't like a certain task but do it thus resulting in my ability to work and choose to not live without my rights being removed like saving and owning a home I'd be well off. To me very high functioning means an ability to sustain employment and this reflects the law.

I don't believe neurodiversity should necessary collide with other forms of advocacy. However some advocates and then within groups advocates use it as a tool of conflict. That is why I am hesitant about it as it is political and has a long history now of confrontational usages. One cannot force anyone to accept something they do not wish less it breaks the law to not accept it.

The perfect world is impossible.

Contradict my assessment of you with evidence and clearly reasoned logic. I can point to many posts of yours that support my view. I suppose I could cloak my colloquial use of language in flowery prose, if that renders its underlying meaning somehow more palatable to you.

You diminish the power of your advocacy when you adopt an intransigent posture regarding anything that challenges your own ideas about autism in particular and charitable work in general. Imagine the work that you do, only orders of magnitude more effective and reaching a larger population of those that need your services. It could happen if you would spend more effort trying to understand than forcing yourself to be understood.

I'm not here to advocate for the most part but to study and this is an interactive study for the most part. I am here for the sole reason of prevention, conflict management and ideological understanding studies. Offline is much different then from here. In offline advocacy in new situations which I don't often go out of my routine I bring a behaviorist to help interpret what's going on. She is an assigned consultant.

I will not capture the global knowledge that governs this autism community in how it behaves. I will figure out and have for the most part the things I need to understand. I won't be posting here forever as it is a distraction. Progress will not be made here but offline.

Also I am not an autism expert. I just go by the law and what is considered substantial disability.