Asperger Syndrome and Culture?
RadioHead wrote:
Please understand that it is not that I am unhappy with being a Chinese, neither am I saying that Chinese culture is inferior. All I am wanting to find out is whether different cultures makes AS any more or less of a disability.
Im a Chinese living in Sydney, Australia with AS. I have grown up here all my life.
I can say that from my point of view, having AS makes your peers think of you as weird or different cause of your odd behaviours. It also makes it very difficult to cope with a lot of stress and relationships. I've found that NT people have been quite judgemental about me on what they observed. It does hurt a lot, cause I've lost jobs and relationships.
Honestly, I'd imagine asian cultures to be a bit more accepting of AS cause most of the time is spent studying, playing video games or doing other indoor routines.
RadioHead wrote:
When communicating, Asians tend to be more indirect, while Westerners choose to be more straightforward.
I certainly do refer to everything indirectly, but I grew up in America, so I honestly don't know how I would have been if I grew up in Japan. When I refer to something/someone indirectly, this is basically a test for me to see how they think. But now that you mention it, I think I do it intuitively now.
The interesting thing is that my mom's parents didn't know I'm autistic. If they did, they'd probably kill me. My dad's parents were Christians and I don't think it would have made any difference to them. I suppose I was more favored by my parents as "the only kid who gets good grades, but somehow doesn't try.'" while my brother was frequently yelled at for his report card.
I still think my parents favored my brother because he wasn't autistic. As a fellow Asian, I think neither of us will really know.
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vk2goh wrote:
Honestly, I'd imagine asian cultures to be a bit more accepting of AS cause most of the time is spent studying, playing video games or doing other indoor routines.
In my point of view, certain symptoms of AS would be more accepted in Asian cultures (no eye contact, seeming emotionally distant, special interests, etc.), but the condition itself isn't because Asian parents would think that it implies there's something "wrong" with their child.
On a similar topic, I live in an area in America where there's quite a large population of Asians, and I've noticed that AS symptoms in Asian tend to go unnoticed since they might make you seem like a stereotypical Asian.
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