What's your favorite part of being an aspie/autie?

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oh yes, you've got a point there. I think we can all realate to that at some point in our lives.
I do feel sorry for those teenagers who don't just want to be a white sheep in the herd.

I bet there are more similarly affected NTs wanting to "not follow the crowd" than there are Aspies. So the indiviuality thing may be a 'good' aspie thing, but it's something that many NTs have.

Once you get into late 20's ,early 30's that notion of "you've got to do that, everybody does that", goes away, and people generally grow up and become more individually minded anyway. So the argument then breaks down.


Good point ; but just remember that many NTs also have this. Maybe not the majority of them, but still a lot of them.

So an individually-minded, well educated, honest neurotypical still has everything in his/her favour. Even if such a personality only is a few percent of the NT population, such admirable personalities (who are also non-AS) still outnumber us.

So good argument, but I can't see these as being *exclusively* aspie advantages.

Understood, but I wasn't trying to argue that my favourite Aspie traits are particularly exclusive. I just listed a couple of them and explained why I like them so much. I would have thought that with a spectrum disorder such as AS, it would be difficult to find a unique trait. Nor am I arguing that we're superior to any other group. It's nice to feel superior to NTs occasionally because it's such an antidote to feelings of inferiority, but to believe we are superior or especially advantaged in absolute terms, as people, would never do.

One point of clarification on IQ and related matters: you can have an incredibly high IQ score and perform far better than average in certain academic tasks with just a high "crystallized" intelligence and not a particularly high "fluid intelligence." What I'm driving at is there are different kinds of intelligence that most IQ tests don't measure for or weight heavily. Fluid intelligence in aspies is an active area of research but it is already known that is far more likely for an aspie to have exceptionally high fluid intelligence than an NT. It is still being studied but we know that someone with exceptionally high fluid intelligence can see connections between seemingly unrelated things and see patterns that most others can't. We also know it is far more rare to have exceptionally high scores in this type of intelligence than in crystalllized intelligence.

Chris, I do not believe that many of us are comparing positive aspie traits to that of "sub-par" NT's. Even traits that can be found in both aspies and NT's are sometimes found at a much higher frequency and intensity in aspies. Some might view it as a price to pay to possess some of these traits. For example, I listed extraordinarily sensory capabilities which do come at a "price" but this price does not negate the amazing positive gifts an aspie can have because of them. Same with fluid intelligence.

The honesty "to a fault" as some would view it is a trait that I quite like in aspies. Thanks to the poster who mentioned this one. But here is good example of a trait which may seem like a major positive to one person but a negative to another. Glass half full vs glass half empty.

Whether your answer to this question is "none" or you have a list of things you truly like about being an aspie, I think it is important to strive to be as comfortable in your own skin as possible. Makes life much more enjoyable!

There are many good things about being an aspie but I just don't see an opportunities to use these features. The system that we are living is absolutely built for NT's. We can only imitate being a part of it but in reality we'll never experience the neurotypical life. That's why aspergers are disattached, seek for independance.

It vacillates between being a gift and a curse for me, like everything else in my life.

The impaired/disordered auditory processing perhaps as that influences how I hear music and I do seem to hear it somewhat different from most people. I think that I once read something about a connection between ASDs and perfect pitch which might be part of how I hear music.

I also enjoy the upside about my "incorrectly" working memory that (despite the major difficulty to commit useless things to memory on purpose, likely because of my ADHD/impaired ability to focus on one thing) leads to that I memorise massive amounts of content (from music to texts to lines of films to whatever I otherwise heard, saw, tasted, felt or smelled) without meaning to.

Sure, being able to memorise everything that I want to keep in mind without any real effort would be a lot more awesome... but how many people can do that exactly? And I can't do that, so whatever. I'm not going to be sad for real over not having that.

I personally didn't interpret that statement to mean a superiority to NTs - I understood it to mean that the person who posted it enjoys having intense, narrow interests and an imagination. I think you're over-analyzing it.