Is asperger necessarily a disability?

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Within every movement big enough, you'll find unreasonable individuals, but - having both myopia and AS - I can say: I just need my glasses and not being treated badly for wearing them. Most of us do. That does not mean someone out there does not require a surgery - but give us access to well-fit glasses and acceptance for wearing them - and for really many, it will do.

To be clear: I am not saying that autism is never disabling.

But, if you've met one autistic you've met one autistic. I don't think people should assume autism has the exact same impact on all autistics--there is a range of severity. Based upon my personal experience I am quite willing to believe that some mild cases experience autism as awkward but not disabling. Your mileage may vary.

Notice how I didn't say anything about disabilities.

I consider my level of autism to only be a disability when it comes to handling modern day overly social society.

They were more polite to people who liked formality and distance. That was indeed their social norm.

People who like formality and distance shouldn't be pathologised over it.

I agree with this.

Severe autism is a disability.

Calling everything autism was a mistake.

My mom would probably agree, she disagrees that everything is autism so I say if schizophrenia spectrum can have different labels like schizoaffective, Schizoid personality disorder, schizotypal disorder, etc. why not autism and make up a bunch of different labels for autism spectrum and not call everyone on it autistic? Like we already had Asperger's and we decided to call it autism not too long later after it became a diagnoses, same as with PDD-NOS and then people decided to start calling it autism as well. Now they have made it all autism officially.

I wonder how. Or why.

I wonder, whose fault was it to merge a very inconsistent and contradictory sets of conditions?

But then the argument or reason given was that, the fluctuations and inconsistencies between the same individual over time;
Unlike myopia or almost any conditions, one does not wake up one day and it gets better for a whole day or year then one becomes blind at next.
Then after a month of so, this person is no longer blind. Then a week or so this person has 20/20 vision, until it went severe myopia after working too hard.

This isn't my opinion, this was an observation given.

My own opinion was that either people are too lazy or that they may not give a damn or just too clueless.
Thus why I'd rather solve what 'autism' is.



So... Why or which?

Why or which actually is just a bunch of labels crumpled together into what is called 'autism'?
Etc.

While I get to observed why an autism is deemed as disabling or not to an individual; yet it doesn't say why or which.
Only that it's called 'autism'.

We used to have aspergers.

They took it and lumped us in with severe autistic people.

I think if you're slightly aspie like me, that shouldn't really be a disability/diagnosis. It's just a way of being which could benefit from being in a small school and with people who are more distant/less overly familiar. Schools shouldn't be hundreds of students anyway. People shouldn't expect strangers to hug them anyway.

Only disability I have from being aspie is my light sensitivity and other sensory sensitivities. But these days that has a diagnosis for NTs: sensory processing disorder.

The people that took away the Aspergers diagnosis kind of agreed with you, they felt Aspergers was being used as a way of over diagnosing Autism and felt that by getting rid of Aspergers Autism diagnosis would go down and not uncoincidentally save insurance companies and school districts money.

That has not worked diagnoses has not gone down.

That said a lot of us “Aspies” are closer to becoming “more autistic” then we care to admit. All it will take is enough stressors over a long enough period of time.

Some burns are an annoyance some are crippling. All are considered burns. Nobody seems to have a problem with that and most other conditions, but they certainly do with autism.

Switching gears I agree with you that smaller is better for people on the spectrum.

Yes i agree

The knee cap has limited ways of manifesting a problem, just pain & not working

The brain however has huge combinations of manifesting faults a lump of these is classed as “ASD”.

But what is ASD really? A 1940`s medical parking space for symptoms science did not understand at the time. In the 1940`s at the time Hans Asperger & Leo Kanner officially discovered ASD planes had propellers and computers were the size of a house and scientists knew very little about the brain.

In the future they will and ASD will be broken up into multiple genetic diagnosis, each with their own potential treatment or lines of research

IMO ,rightly or wrongly, Asperger's is much more heterogeneous than Asperger's = ASD level 1. There's a good number of people who may share the diagnosis with me, but we're miles apart in how we're doing. I'm not severely disabled re the ASD/Asperger's side of things, but also I'm not a high flying 'just a little bit awkward and quirky' type. For benefit purposes I am regarded as 'severely disabled', but that is due to the severe mental illness as it was pre getting the Asperger's dx.

If someone has bad eyes, there's a problem with their eyes.

If someone has a burn, something hurt them.

If someone has autism, it's not always a problem for them.

Trying to shift it so that they are a better person to fit into a certain society is the problem.

You guys might not like yourselves. That's your prerogative. I don't believe there's something inherently broken in me or my neurotype.

And actually all kids can benefit from smaller classrooms - that's why labour constantly push for smaller class sizes in state schools and why classes are so small in private/public (like Eton) schools.

What's interesting is the term "autism" already existed long before Leo Kanner discovered it. The same doctor that coined the word "schizophrenia" also coined the term "autism" and it meant "self." It was originally a schizophrenic term as well and then in 1943, Leo Kanner described the condition and it became called autism. I guess no wonder people were confused and mistook autism as childhood schizophrenia. I also wonder why they never called it Kanner's syndrome or Kanner's disorder?

It is called "Kanner-type" autism sometimes.

Eugen Bleuler used the word "autistic" to describe the self-absorption of people with dementia praecox (the old-fashioned term for schizophrenia).

I don't believe he actually coined schizophrenia---but it was coined soon after 1911, when Bleuler used the word "autistic" in the above sense.

I much prefer this metaphor. Upon further thought on this I realized that if you had said astigmatism, instead, I would also be an example of someone with this level of vision trouble. I have eyeglasses and usually wear them--more so, as my eyes get older. In recent years I increasingly prefer to wear the glasses when driving even though the Motor Vehicle Administration says my eyesight is good enough that I am not required to.

I believe getting rid of my not-too-serious vision problems would improve my quality of life more than getting rid of my ASD-1 (but not enough that I'm interested in laser eye surgery).

Folk might find this interesting: "The History of Autism". By that timeline, in reverse chronological order: I've had an ASD-1 diagnosis for 2% of my life; I fit the criteria for ASD-1 but didn't know it for 9%; I didn't know I fit the criteria for Asperger's Syndrome for 29% of my life; and I was just "different" for 60%.

And current genetic research on Autism suggests more changes to the definition of Autism should be coming. My understanding is that any one of the more than 150 genetic variations might, by itself, correlate with autism. If each genetic variation causes slightly different results then the spectrum might have a lot more colors than currently realized!

Right there. Thats the flaw in your reasoning.

Stevie Wonder does not likely "hate himself" because he is blind. In fact his blindness probably INFLATES his ego...look what he achieved despite being handicapped.

Its not about being "broken". Its about being handicapped. If you're born with a handicap then you're handicapped. It's not your fault. And for precisely that reason you're exonerated from feeling that there is something "wrong" with your character.

In general, people seem to dislike anyone who is "different". There are all kinds of differences that can cause that: religion, height, hair color, skin color, facial features,... People with those kinds of differences aren't inherently disabled or handicapped but their difference can cause them trouble in life.

The psychological assessment that said I met the ASD-1 based it on: I don't interact socially the way people expect me to, I don't communicate with other people the way they expect me to, and I respond to sensory input differently than people expect me to. I'm ASD-1 because I don't act the way people expect me to and they don't like it. It appears the abilities I lack are to behave like other people. Yet, I have done better in life than many NTs have. Problems caused by my ASD-1 are, I think, in other people's heads.

But, if you've met one Aspie, you've met one Aspie. All of the above is just me.