How can it be the Wrong Planet?

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Groupish topic

There may be at least 2 reasons why autism is not "found" there

Autism Genes are not expressed, because they are not in the Amish genome.
Autism is not recognized by the Amish, or is not reported because it poses no problem.

The Amish are very group oriented, with large families. Every behaviour in the goup is connected. Anyone who might seem unusual may be asked to leave the group, so there is no Autism within it. Selectively weeding out differences, conscious or not, happens.

As a child in the late 50's, the only vaccines I received were for polio and tetanus. The pertussis one was not perfected so I did not receive it. I did get a smallpox vac.

There was only smallpox vaccinations around when Hans Asperger did his research. There is no smallpox vaccine given now, at least since the late 80's. The youngest did not receive it. My kids did get the MMR. All my kids are NT.

Let us lay the vaccine thing to rest. People are born autistic, just as they are born gay, geniuses and the like. It is a genetic difference.

I wasn't trying to make a vaccine connection. I was trying to make a society connection. And particularly the unreal pressures and stress placed on people (Aspies, auties, and NTs) in industrialized societies. Why do we run up debt to buy stuff? There's more wrong with society than there is with us.

Well, the Amish are a closed gene pool, generally... if they have been self-selecting against introverted or independent individuals for a few hundred years, it makes sense they might weed out many of the autistics along with the natural rebels. I don't know how this idea could be proven, though. (Nothing against the Amish. I just have a feeling you do not fit in very well unless you are very community-oriented.)

We do see similar autism rates in under- and non-vaccinated parts of the world, where vaccines are scarce and medical treatment is not easily available; but it only shows up when doing a direct survey of everyone in a community since in these areas, autism would also be under-reported or there would be no official system for reporting it at all.

The words homosexual and lesbian remain tainted by that medical background, ( as something "unhealthy" ), have a far less positive image in the public eye, except as something to be careful about respecting in the workplace.

And are woefully narrow, limited. They bear very little relationship to the huge variety and multifaceted nature of human sexuality, ( exactly in the same way as the terms Autism and Aspergers do not convey the real and immense range of our lives ).

Wrong Planet expresses something that is about as "true" about auties and aspies as "queer" ( in its original sense of strange, peculiar, something a little or a lot wrong with it, disturbing, etc ), is about homosexuals and lesbians.

That is to say it is partly true, and yet that it is not, ( or need not be if given the right surroundings ), a negative thing.

In the film "Back to the Future", ( which I think is a hymn to aspieness ), Marty McFly discovers that the way to get through to his obviously aspie father, ( when his dad is a boy in the past ), is to pretend to be an alien. It is as if his father is on another planet. And yet the film shows not only what he is good at on a daily basis, ( reading, academic stuff, and writing), but also what he is capable of when called upon, ( fierce courage/desire to protect, and loyalty/fidelity ), with great affection.

And Marty himself is probably aspie; always late, obsessed by his music, fumbling socially with strangers, hanging out with the local , ( and probably AS too ), "mad professor", and the son of an aspie dad, etc, but creative and gentle and dedicated.

Being on another planet need not be viewed as something negative. The way the thuggish boy in the film treats Marty's father, as if he is not "there" enough, is the negative version.

I agree that the fact that more and more "AS" are being "diagnosed" in childhood, ( something that I think is a double-edged sword ), has changed the way most people view us. Whereas previously we were seen as wilful, aloof/snooty/selfish, and/or generally stupid/inept, if brilliant at certain things, now we are seen as helpless victims of a genetic accident who need curing, as if we are no longer part of the normal range of humans with all their faults.

In that sense I understand that you think Wrong Planet is too gentle a name, but I don't think that using the medical terms is likely to help.

What did the gay/trans/bi community do with the word "homosexual" in the worst years, from 1920, ( or even earlier ) to 1965? The word meant illness/disorder. Did gays ever really accept it? Did doing that have a psychological cost? ( I think so, having read something about the frequent/chronic depression amongst homosexuals caused by believing that they were sick, diseased, etc ).

When was the word "gay" first used publically, and reliably, to indicate homosexuality? Long before "queer" was, I think, but it was a first effort to find some name that wasn't of medical origin. And "gay" is not exactly a combatitive word. It was a stage on the way to (re)claiming "queer", which is considerably more assertive.

I think Wrong Planet is a wonderful name for AS community, perhaps the equivalent of "gay".

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