"Malice and Asperger Syndrome"

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I was fairly malicious as a child. For a time I loved playing practical jokes. I also liked running through people's backyards. And I also hated my little brother and bullied him whenever I got the chance. Since then I've grown out of all these things. They're long in the past.

Once at around 5 or 6 I yelled "MOM, DAD, HELP, ALEXA (sister) IS THROWING UP BLOOD!" after she spat out a red checker. I thought it would be a funny joke, I guess. I think I remember it being my idea, planning it with my sister beforehand (she would have been 2 or 3.) They came and I honestly expected them to laugh, but they were too busy letting out the huge breaths of air they had taken on their way up the stairs. They told me I'd scared them very much and not to do anything like that again, so I didn't.

So I'm wondering whether seeing as I was able to carry on an apparently normal , apparently" NT", life ,while this distancing device was in place,( "not taking other people into consideration",) until everything came crashing down on me as a result of the first truly intimate relationship that I had as an adult , and various explosive devices like Andrea Dworkins book "Intercourse", and stuff like lots of alcohol etc reaching critical point,( the breakdown being manic-depression over 3 years or so), perhaps people on here are genuinely likely to be less prone to malicious behaviour because they have never made this bargain with the devil , ( obtaining relative freedom from the worst aspects of their disability in return for not considering other people ), OR if they ever made it they have broken at the same time as discovering their ASDness.


I feel like putting on sound effects like evil cackling. It's like a horror film back to front!! The most malicious/cruel/heartless "NT"s are actually ASD sufferers who've cut down on fuzzy data enough to seem like NTs by no longer caring about people!! !
Just a mad thought!

This reminds me of my brother... I think I need to do some research.

THAT attitude is where your only help and hope comes from if you are an Aspie unlucky enough to be born in Sheffield?

FECK!! And I thought we were seriously bad in Ireland...

Am I the only one who sees how very inappropriate and weird that attitude and article IS from a man in his position?

Apart from which, I was always drop dead gorgeous, and I never got away with diddley, so it can't be THAT.

M

I think people are rather missing the object of the article, perhaps given the slightly misleading title.

I believe what Tantum is doing here is trying to identify sub-groups of aspergers, given how broad the spectrum is, and how varied our capabilities etc. He appears to be trying to explain how some people can have an AS diagnosis, yet lack some of the most obvious facets, and also explains that the bahaviour is only classically malicious from a certain point of view.

Take the baby-poisoning one as an example. Yes, the act of pooisoning the child was carried out with malicious effect, but how many of us have done something stupid, just because we wanted to study the outcome?

He goes on to explain about the attention-seeking/avoiding aspects of such behaviour as well, and appears to come to the conclusion that this "malicious" behaviour is not simply spiteful, but a variation on a defensive posture. Acting like a twat in a classroom effectively covers the fact you do not know how to act normally. He also points out that extremes of behaviour tend to create extreme reactions, and of all reactions, the extreme ones are the easiest for an aspie to spot.

What he ISNT saying, is that we are all bloody-minded little horrors who do twatty things for s**ts and giggles.

Methinks THAT is an NT thing, because I notice that the list of "malicious behavior" covers just about every form of bullying, and a lot of us have copped for that, from the NT kids.

I'm willing to admit one. Note that I have never been in trouble with the law, engaged in illegal acts and whatnot.

This is also more cruel than malicious, but it should serve as an example.

We lived on a acreage, and it was quite open(no trees around). A thunderstorm brewed and I told my sister that lightning was attracted to the color red(she was wearing a red windbreaker) and that she should get down low and crawl home.

Being younger and trusting, she did just this. I took great pleasure at telling her to "get lower!", as I myself stood there. She was near tears, and was crawling over gravel.

I always associate this with a realization that my words and actions could have an effect on people. Perhaps I realized it later in life than most kids.

It was cruel, it was fun, and it served no purpose but my own enjoyment. I had no malice towards my sister, nor do I to this day. It was very much a 'study' thing.

Last edited by Fuzzy on 12 Oct 2007, 9:15 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Well these people HAVE to bring up the most severe negative examples if they are going to get money


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Any malicious things I did were generally fuelled by a seemingly unstoppable supply of anger as a child. I did some bad things to animals which I dearly regret when I was about 10-13 years old.

This is what labels do to and for people. I never hear on the news about someone who robbed a bank and the person was neurotypical. You do hear about bullying but never do they say, these boys were normal.

This skews people's perceptions into pegging all in their classifications as someone who will respond the same way and when it comes to this site in general I view it as these people are exploiting bad behavior and painting a bad picture for everyone with that label just so they can make money. Exploiting parents fears, exploiting children=profit.

It's a shame they get paid. Oh but they just want to help! Right. They aren't helping anyone but themselves.

Also, why did they have to change their organization name? usually when that happens it's to run from a shameful outing. I wonder if anyone else saw through their BS and made others aware so they had to change their name

Aspies ain't more or less likely to be malicious than anybody else. But I can believe that it would be harder to understand the motives behind an Aspie's malice.

I don't believe malice is a fair word to use. Malice implies the person is doing something harmful deliberately. I don't believe auties/aspies are doing it deliberately. I think there is a disconnect. The ones with issues here have yet to develop empathy and compassion which is vital in keeping someone from doing these types of things. Think about a 3 or 4 year old who has not yet formed this. They act in the same way, but we excuse it as "they are still learning". I believe auties/aspies are "still learning" until mid-adulthood.

This article is BS.

I know plenty of malicious NTs. It is stupid to apply a trait that is common in human characters across the board and imply that it is more common in autistics.

Malice is human.

I think that AS people can be malicious because they can lack a primary empathatic link with those around them.

I have done some malicious things in my life but mostly I have had a pretty passive position socially and I think that has taught me compassion.

NTs on the other hand can be very connective and empathetic, (sp?) but if they perceive someone to be any way different, they can conveniently switch OFF their empathy circuits.

It is all pretty silly really. Everyone has the potential to be bad.

It's strange to think that if my parents ,or my sister, or those friends who saw the worst behaviours had known about this kind of autistic spectrum disorder symptom I might have been diagnosed many many years ago.( Just like the examples in the article , for persistent disruptive behaviour and teasing-experiments!) As it was I passed as just another of those "awful" NTs ! !! Until the breakdown anyway.

Now I can see that it was a side-effect (! !) of having cut caring about people out of the equation many years before.( in order to deal with all the data, and "appear" normal, even gifted! as my parents so desired!)

Been wondering what data I may have been getting in infancy that led my ASD mind to think that this strategy would function. ( within the framework of ASD type logic in which future gain does not easily compensate for short term discomfort).

To begin with I think white middle-class faces are some of the most mixed up faces in the world. There's often more than a dozen feelings struggling with each other on them. Half of them being various kinds of fear about people seeing the other feelings! As an ASD child ( a gifted child Alice Miller called them , before aspergers was so widely known about) I probably saw all that. And to make sense of all that AND care about people nearly blew the circuit.

I think there must have been some kind of confirmation that I could "safely" stop caring about people in order to cope better in general. Like having parents who were aspergers like my father (! !) ,or a mother who dutifully obeyed the clock for feeding her baby. Both of them almost unnaturally "good" at routines.

I may have received actual feedback that seemed to suggest that behaving in the world as if other people had no feelings was normal. ( I suppose there's actually quite a lot of evidence for this all round, perhaps Aspies disguised as NTs being the greatest offenders at making the world look like this too ?! ! )

And the very act of dismantling the "coping" structure , as a result of suddenly ( at age 29 )understanding compassion, that pain/hurt resides in each body/everybody, almost immediately made my AS Disorder visible.

That's what's freaking me out so much. The thought that the relatively nasty(! ! I exaggerate, a little ), selfish(! !), charming ( ha ha !) NT was actually an ASD sufferer all that time!.

(And since then I just haven't been able to get the charming person back on the road again!! I keep trying.

Maybe those "transformations/conversions" in the bible refer to this kind of thing? Worldly,unscrupulous characters becoming strange obsessives with tendency to write lots and lots of dubiously black-and-white logical arguments threatening terrible things if don't heed the rules!! !

Last edited by ouinon on 13 Oct 2007, 11:37 am, edited 1 time in total.

That, I believe, is the point of the article. Not to make out we are all malicious at all, but rather to isolate some of the possible reasons why aspies can act in a malicious fashion

Its fairly hard to work out why anyone would commit certain malicious acts, and this article is an attempt to give reason to certain of OUR malicious acts, rather than just pegging them down to being a bastard.

Consider: We dig up our parents yard for what we think is a perfectly good reason, not understanding that we shouldnt. Our parents go ballistic, and put it down as plain unadulterated maliciousness. Or they have read this article/had a dx of this variant AS/ understand better about us, and instead of punishing us in a way we will probably find inexplicable, do something that actually has an effect.

Or: how many people may miss out on a decent education for malicious activity that is NOT done just for the hell of it? Better that people know there is a reason, and act upon that.

Hes not saying we are all s**ts. He syas that in the opening paragrah, quite clearly. Hes saying that SOME of us act in what appears to be a malicious way, but actually isnt. In the same way that an epileptic cant help if he has a fit, Tantum is saying that perhaps some aspies cant help if they act up.

I think the point of the article isn't to say people with Asperger's are malicious, but that they can be. He's saying that when people look at a person with severe asperger's, they see a small child. It was how my brother was observed, an adult-child completly incapable of the acts he comitted. What this article discusses are people who use their condition as a cover, manipulating others into thinking they're these innocent individuals, while hiding the things they've done. At least, that's how I see it.