Is anyone else interested in forming an Aspie Union?

Post Reply New Topic

Sometimes you have a fold a losing hand (concede a battle).

OP has a good idea in generating good outreach and PR, but I just don't see an Aspie Service Organization generating that much of a change in public relations. Say the "union", let's call it the Turings (after Alan Turing), gets a front page spead in the (random paper) Omaha World-Herald. In that unlikely event, the AP newswire would carry the story, but how much interest would it get in say....Toledo?

Other's milage may vary.

Just start it already and see how it goes, eh?

Uniting ourselves is counterproductive as we're effectively separating ourselves from society. we need to be as much a part of the community as possible and try our best to shine a bright light on things.

No, I will not join this union as it's not necessary. Nor do I see why it's a good idea to go around with a badge on that's indicative of a mental condition that most NTs don't understand nor will bother researching.

I'd like to do something about the general climate of reactionary hate, fear, and intolerance that is the human race.

LiveAndLetLive.org, or something.

Other than that-- Honey, I'm sorry. I've got four kids and a spouse to think about. If I was alone I might be all for sticking my neck out there. I like to imagine that it would then please me, in my "old age," to risk making myself a martyr for the cause.

Well, I'm not. It doesn't. I toted the neurodiversity banner for over a decade, before there was such a word as "neurodiversity," simply because I knew autism research was new and that the things they were saying were not true of me. It didn't change much (or anyway I don't see the changes).

Disclosure did, however, threaten my family. It did land me suicidally depressed.

I don't want to go back there.

I want to help, but I'll be doing it on the down low.

No. That would segment people with Aspergers away from the population more and they will be attacked more often by crazy right winged conservatives. Unfortunately, since we are a minority not enough people will care enough to support us since they are supporting the lgbta community and the racial equality community.

I also have not had much success in disclosing. At one department store workplace, I disclosed and the longer term employees, including one seemingly and otherwise 'nice' person, used this as after-the-fact justification and explanation of why I didn't go along with their bullying behavior. They were year-long employees, I was primarily Christmas help, and they had shabbily treated me.

Now, when I told my Mom and Dad way back in 1989 in my mid-twenties that I had OCD, they were accepting and positive. Even though my Dad is often a negative and hostile person. I later decided that this fit his authoritarian religious outlook that I was acknowledging a "problem" and working on a "problem."

When I told my parents in either 2006 or 2007 that I was pretty sure I was Aspie, they were against this. My Dad seemed to view it as a type of giving up.

Yes, some people will have a type of fatigue, or feel put upon being asked to care one more time, or some people will even have a certain smallness of spirit. But, but . . . I think other people will be able to make the connection in a positive way. That it is a good thing for a person to be authentically himself or herself, even if different.

For example, on the topics of jobs and employment, if we can advance the discussion that persons who are in hiring positions should look for reasons to hire rather than reasons not to hire, and advance the discussion that we should expand the box of what is considered quote 'normal,' that can potentially help a lot of people much broader than simply those of us on the Spectrum.