Harder to be gay, or autist?

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for me it would be infinitely harder to be gay than to have asperger's syndrome because i do not find men to be even remotely attractive, and i was born with AS so i do not even have to try to be AS.

Teaching an autistic communications skills that leverage their intrinsic differences rather than suppress them and doing so at as early an age as possible.





ALL wrong? You really need to strip absolutes from your arguments. You have some strong (and often valid) ideas but you cloud them with hyperbolic rhetoric.



What you are doing here is contextualizing 'socializing'. In the big picture, aspies cannot socialize in the group settings that drive this world with the same fluidity that NTs can. Crunch some numbers. According to THIS LINK. (this number may be argued but for this conversation it will do) we are told that 4 in 1000 people have Aspergers. What is the likelihood that each of those will be as intelligent as you? For that matter how likely is it that they will categorized as of superior intellect? Since IQ tests are suspect, especially when applied to autistics, their validity can be a complete dicsussion in itself, but I think it is fair enough to assume a similar distribution pattern among aspies. So if you are in the 99th percentile among aspies, then you are a rare individual. And yet you casually generalize your capabilities to all of those with Aspergers. To carry it further, what is the frequency of two or more aspies in the 99th percentile actually socializing? Out of 1 million people, only 4000 are aspie and of those 40 are in the 99th percentile. This would be compared to 10,000 NTs in the 99th percentile in the same population. While you can argue the specifics of intelligence distributions, the point is that even brilliant aspies are outnumbered by more than two orders of magnitude by brilliant NTs.



Again, you are creating the context that makes your argument true. These contexts DO exist, but they are not typical. In fact they are vastly outnumbered by the contexts that inform the behavior of this world.



There is much research being done regarding this. But no clear conclusions as to why nor as to how much of this is just better diagnosis.



This is nothing but conjecture. And you over generalize. Not all aspies are good at technology. I'm surprised, given your fierce individuality, that you so readily buy into that stereotype.



So a world run by NTs finds a small sub-population that happens to be good at a specific task and seeks them out to perform it. Nothing new here, other than the software/aspie connection. Will these same NTs allow them to grow out of these tasks or will the stereotype be enforced? I've worked in a corporate world. It has been my experience that the same social rules that create hell in junior high school are still in play all the way up to the board rooms of the corporations that run our economy. They are just masked behind levels of nuance that make the ugliness less apparent.

Hmm. I'm on the fence about that until I get more precise information.



That number is highly suspect, all the other ones I've heard are much higher - 1 in 300 is the number I go by, but even that I doubt, because in real life, Aspies are actually very common.

You also assume I'm somehow super-intelligent. The egotistic part of me wishes that were true, but it isn't. I'm not exceptionally intelligent at all, and I've seen a lot of smart people on this forum who are in fact more intelligent than me. And yes, IQ tests are bollocks.



Yes, but if there were more Aspies than NTs, the context would be a lot more common.



Fair point. But I do see a lot of Aspies around in day-to-day life.



You appear to misunderstand. I didn't say that all Aspies are good at technology, but it is true that there's a higher percentage of Aspies who are computer experts than NTs, which makes sense considering our naturally logical thought processes.

Therefore, with brains more apt for the job and a relitively high percentage who have interest, a lot of us will have skills that can be used in our highly technological world.



A world run by NTs? What world is that? It certainly isn't this one! Look at all the successful, influential, famous and brilliant people who, at the very least, have Aspie traits.

Besides, who the hell do you think makes all this software in the first place? Especially within startups, which Microsoft and Apple once were.

Even within the economy itself, there are Aspies. Have you heard of the Aspie hedge fund manager who predicted the financial crisis and made himself $100,000,000?

Good job of proving my point.

What you say is so outside of reality. So far as I can figure, the only way you can get to the idea you seem to have is if you really don't understand just how low functioning, how disabled, some people with autism are. I do. I have an autistic nephew. And he's just as much a part of the autistic spectrum as you. And doesn't fit at all with your idea that the ONLY (your emphasis) reason people with autism as seen as disabled is because something different is the standard. Leave out that word "only" and I agree with you. But you not only said that's the only reason, you emphasized it.

Last edited by Mysty on 06 Nov 2010, 12:37 pm, edited 1 time in total.

This is all true, but you still are taking specific data points and extrapolating to the general population.

Look at the school system you are in. Is the administration mostly NT or aspie? How about the mental health system? Or the motor bureau?

I won't argue the ability of aspies, sometimes to fantastic (maybe even better than NT), results. Aspies will always be a minority. But it should be a valued minority, IMO. What the brilliant aspies bring us far outweighs what ever perceived "burden" low functioning autistics create.

And don't sell yourself short. You may not be a genius in you r own mind, but you are clearly on the high side of the bell curve.

So before Darwin came along people didn't have social expectations, and judge others for not meeting them?

I never said that. I said it became scientific from that point on.

Social expectations are a cultural phenomenon, you behave to a certain set of rules and habits and you are accepted. It's culutural because is it's differentiating group A from group B, thus different behaviours between A and B.

Judging someones shortcoming to the point of not meeting the requirements, you are tolerated but not accepted as someone who can do so - if not both you probably won't be certain of your life if revealed, for example pedophiles. Although acceptance goes both ways, you adept to them and they adept to you - the latter part is only going to work through public recognition or becoming the majority.

Luckily we have sooo much in common with the other animals on the planet, that makes human behaviour just a more complex version of existing ones. Here is a article about our relations in behaviour to monkeys, don't get caught in the negativity of the article - we can know different, the monkeys probably can't: Link-->Monkey Sphere<--Link

Cheerfully,
Wallourdes

I'm sorry if someone has already said this but, what is the point in this thread?

This is why v

I am a bisexual, biracial aspie female. And I don't find any of it hard. I'm not somebody who feels sorry for myself. I am who I am, and I don't have a problem with any of it.

Every person alive has people who judge them or dislike them, even if they are born wealthy, healthy and attractive. So it's pretty stupid to pretend you are targeted because of being aspie or gay. And everyone has strengths as well as disabilities, so I'm sick of seeing people complain about having Asperger's.

Exactly.

See, this is why it can be hard to compare experiences and relate to others. You do have a point, that everybody has abilities and shortcomings, and everybody experiences problems with people in one form or another. But...where was a I going with this? Oh yeah- this kind of thing is highly individual. Some people have some traits, some don't. And the traits two people have in common can vary in how they manifest, and how strongly it impacts them. Then, there's somebody's outlook on life, and their innate resilience. I know we can't ever know for sure, but I still want peoples' opinion on what they think is harder to deal with, even if there's no single answer.

I think the answer is it's obviously harder to be autistic. I guess if somebody is autistic and homosexual it could be a whole other category of hard, but as separated I think it's harder to be autistic. homosexuals don't have to walk around and be targeted for being different. The only ones who are targeted for abuse are really the ones who make themselves blatantly obvious in the wrong places. Really having AS, wherever I go and as normal as I try to be... someone always knows there's something just not correct about me. Also autism is a permanent disability where as being homosexual is an option. I'm good with my AS... I just understand it has disability tied to it. I am not homosexual, but I'd assume it's like being hetero but for the same sex... and really if I didn't want people to know I was hetero I'd just not talk about being hetero

Since most NT's think most aspies are gay it's a double hit discrimination hit right their!

It's not helped when you have your mother living in your own home that you own , a bit like Mrs Skinner living in Seymour's house . and yes mother has the big bedroom .

If your a freak you have no idea who Seymour Skinner is , his a character from the Simpson's ,.

I actually meet one of these freaky people the other day ( 1 st ever) who claimed they hated the Simpson's, yet they seemed quite sane....

I'm sorry, but I do not think being gay or having Asperger's is hard to deal with. Being paraplegic is hard to deal with. Having people misunderstand you is part of life. For EVERYONE. Why have a pissing contest about who is the most misunderstood? That is just silly.

I can make a long list of things I've been judged for & names I've been called.. but then, I've never been overweight or had a speech impediment or had bad teeth or been mentally slow or poor at spelling, etc. There is always something for every human being that will be ridiculed by others. Sitting around wondering who has it worse is ridiculous. You should be sitting around wondering how you can learn to love & accept yourself regardless of what anyone has to say about it. The people who are able to do that have it the easiest. Nobody is perfect.

I'm both, I'm not sure what to think.

I think it's harder to be autistic, I saw my gay friends in the past and they got along in life just fine. They would get builled and bothered by homophobes but hardly by others. I get bothered by homophobes and NTs for my abnormal behaviour. I also don't fit in with groups of gays because I feel uncomfortable and I don't get along with "normal" group of gays. I don't get along with people pretty much, so I'd say it's harder to be autistic. You'll face misunderstanding from just about everyone except others like you. There are more gays than there are autistics and others on the spectrum probably, so if you're just gay you'll have more people to get along with.