aspie men and sexual misbehavior

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The only thing I could think would be AS males might be more at isk for making embarassing sexual blunders, but, as with all social skills, it can be learned.

Of course, with the amount of woman-hating AS males I've seen on this site, I'm prone to wonder if AS men might be more inclined to misogyny, but that's a different topic.

As for AS men and child molestation, I think the media wants to emphasize the "oddness" of anyone caught having sex with children, so, while AS males may not be any more likely to touch little kids, the news will play it up if they do have AS.

--XFG

I find that if there's any area of life where a person can inadvertently abuse their privilege, it's like... everyone abuses it equally but autistic people abuse it more obviously. Whether it's male privilege, white privilege, (otherwise) able-bodied privilege, whatever, autistic people are more likely to be obvious about screwing up in that area than nonautistic people who are otherwise the same do.

Young AS males are sometimes sexually exploited by NT women who are adults.
I think this occurs far more than is known of generally.
That is, sexual harassment/exploitation can and does occur to males and females with AS.

Yes, there probably are instances where social misunderstandings lead to sexual harassment of women by men with AS (as well as of other men, and of men by women with AS). Counteracting that with the reduced social engagement of most people with AS, I am fairly certain that people with AS are less likely to be sexual offenders than people without AS - although it is possible that their offences are worse, and perceived to be more demeaning by their victims. To be blunt, it is less emotionally traumatic to be sexually harassed by somebody good-looking and charismatic, than by a loner with poor social engagement.

I also imagine that the balance of risk is against people with AS, who are more likely to be the victims of sexual abuse, sexualized bullying and harassment, throughout life. Adolescents with AS are at especial risk of engaging in sexualized play that escalates into peer sexual abuse, and sexualized play initiated by older peers and authority figures.

As for the denial of responsibility, I think that may be a problem (I have not noticed the threads referred to), but is entirely spurious. People with AS do not generally have problems with impulsiveness and tend to be good rule followers once rules are identified. A person with AS engaging in intentional sexual harassment is as culpable as anyone else and lawyers using AS as an excuse should be vocally opposed.

I would say that the first ever egg was laid by a fish or some sea dwelling creature. So the egg would have come before T-rex.

I don't think Aspie men are any more likely to sexually harrass someone than an NT. In fact and aspie probably wouldn't sexually harrass at all seeing as harrasment is about power over the victim and has little to do with sex.

Aspie men may just be more sexually forward than NT's.

Sick and disgusting. A f*cking embarassment to this community. I hope he blows his brains out. I would be disappointed if you did not say this.

Makes me SO angry.

Well the case which horus wrote about is very bad. I think that it is very bad when people with AS use or attempt to use their AS as a free pass or get out of jail card. I think that it is important for our community that we try to put our house in order.

I think that some people with AS might do some things which are missunderstood as sexual harrassment, I think that clear sex education for those with AS is a very good idea.

I would like to say that I do not think it is likely that the AS community has a higher than average percentage of sex criminals.

All of those here and elsewhere in the world who hate child molestors and paedophiles, remember one thing, you aren't so squeaky clean, you all have your secrets and skeletons in the closet. Your hating these molestors is your way of covering up your own messes, to divert people's attention somewhere else. Its also a moral and ethical crutch you have come up with, to villify someone else only to make yourselves feel better. Where am I regarding the whole child porn thing? I'm on the fence, I don't express an opinion, I just know it exists and it will always exist. I just get on with my life and don't think about any of it.

It is sick/disgusting and an embarassment to this community...I agree with you there. Nonetheless i'm afraid you will be disappointed in what I have to say about him "blowing his brains out". Hopefully you will understand that i'm just being honest about my feelings here. In what I personally consider to be in all good conscience, I am very reluctant to support death penalties or any other "cruel and unusual" (this phrase is used in 8th amendment of the US constitution and it prohibits the federal government from imposing such punishments) punishments for any human beings.

This is largely because I strongly lean towards "hard" determinism. Therefore, I believe that every human action, no matter how sick and disgusting, is due to the individual's nature and/or nuture. That is to say...I don't believe individuals have any ultimate control over their actions. The desire for revenge would only be LOGICAL if we can PROVE that humans have free will. Nobody has PROVEN that humans (unlike animals ofcourse) have a characteristic which could genuinely be defined as free will.

With all this mind...I simply cannot support the taking of human life (or any other punishments which would be cruel/unusual, like torture) IF doing so would be motivated by revenge. On the other hand, if there was no other way to prevent a certain human being from causing significant harm to others, then I would support the killing of that human being. I would support this for the same reasons I would support the killing of a grizzly bear which was killing people if, for some reason, there was no other way to stop the animal from doing so. To be clear, I could understand you wanting him to "blow his brains" out simply as a means to prevent him from harming other children (and pedophiles are difficult, if not impossible, to "rehabilitatate"). I cannot accept such wishes however when they are motivated simply by revenge.


This does not mean I don't support ANY form of punishment however. In fact....I think many of our punishments for crimes like this often aren't harsh enough. Still....revenge should never be a factor which determines punishment IMO. Punishment should merely serve as something which is likely to deter the individual from commiting future crimes and something which is should deter many others from commiting the crime in the first place. If a punishment is severe enough, it likely will deter alot of people from commiting the crime in question.

Therefore....punishment for anti-social behavior should simply be viewed as a somewhat effective form of behavioral modification. This in no way implies that humans have free will. After all, fear can alter the behavior of animals and prevent them from engaging in certain behaviors as well.

While I have many other feelings about this whole matter....they are a bit too long and complicated to mention here especially considering i'd like to share some more details about this story. I found out about all this the second time I met this guy at his AS support group meeting. The first time I met him was at a Halloween party the group was having at a local pizza restaurant. The first meeting at the restaurant is relevant to all this not because of anything he said or did, but because of the shirt he was wearing. It was a button-down Hawaiian-type shirt with Disney (he might have actually purchased this shirt at Disneyworld) characters all over it. Needless to say...I thought nothing of the shirt AT THAT TIME. Knowing what I do now however, I could imagine why a pedophile might be motivated to wear such a shirt. Obviously pedophiles want to attract children and wearing a shirt with disney characters all over it may make them more appealing to children.


Anyway.....he told me (in front of the rest of the group...who apparently knew about this already) he was convicted of possessing child pornography during a discussion the group was having about the woes of Asperger's. I shared my own problems and I guess this guy wanted to convince me that his own problems were worse or something. So he began to tell me the story about his conviction and what he claims led up to it. I was speechless during his whole explanation as soon as he told me he was convicted of possessing child pornography. I tried to act like I wasn't upset by this revelation, but at the time, I was just in a state of shock and really didn't know what to think or how to act. He said that he was so desperate for a friend that he got involved with some guy on the internet who was into child pornography. He claimed that this guy would send him images of child porn. He said that he just viewed these images as "any other movies" and didn't know at the time that there was anything wrong with them. In short...he swears he has no attraction to children and this was merely a case of bad judgement on his part which was related to his Asperger's. I find this impossible to believe and I can't imagine why otherwise intelligent people would believe it.


While people with AS might be naive to a certain extent....there is NO WAY this guy (who was 24 at the time of his arrest) didn't know these images weren't just like "any other movies". Essentially he was trying to convince me he literally didn't know the difference between Bambi and child porn This guy graduated with honors with a BS in environmental science from a respected university. As far as his own social deficits are concerned, he later was bragging about himself and he told me he could "sell sand to a desert". Well....i'd say alot of people with AS aren't exactly the most socially sophiscated people in the world and therefore, might have a bit of trouble "selling sand to a desert". Furthermore....if you just happen to be a person with AS who could "sell sand to a desert", I find it extremely difficult to believe that you can't tell the difference between child porn and "any other movie".

Apparently the other members of this group believe this guy's story, but obviously a jury/judge did not. If they don't believe it...then I guess they've just accepted the fact he's probably a pedophile and it just doesn't trouble them for some reason. The guy has a girlfriend (who also has AS) and she knows all about this. I left as soon as the meeting was over and I acted like everything was fine and that i'd be back for the next meeting. I knew then and there I would never return however...I simply will not knowingly associate with a convicted sex offender, particularily one who was charged with sex offenses against children. The authorities were alerted to all this by a computer technician who saw them after this guy brought his laptop into the technician's shop. He had hundreds of images of child porn including ones of children between the ages of 3 and 8 performing various sex acts on other children and adults.

After getting home from this meeting....I immediately looked him up on my state's sex offender database to see if he was telling the truth and well.....he was. He only served a few years (two or three I believe) in prison and I think he had been out for a year or so by the time I met him. He is currently on probation and he is not allowed any unsupervised access to the internet.


I always wondered why he didn't have a computer and I could only communicate with him over the phone when I wanted to find out about the group's meeting dates/times, weekly events, etc... (they also hold weekly social outings to bowling alleys, movies, restaurants, etc.....). Well....his conviction and subsequent probation explained that one....he is not allowed to have a computer in his residence.

There is something else which is quite unusual about this guy, but i'm sure it has nothing to do with his crimes. His facial features are somewhat similar to those of people with Down Syndrome and he also has a mild speech impediment. Down syndrome is caused by the addition of an extra (or part of an extra) 21st chromosome. This guy is certainly not cognitively delayed however as I doubt a person who is truly MR would be able to graduate from university (with honors to boot) with a BS in environmental science. Maybe that's not completely out of the realm of possibility for some people with Down syndrome, but I think it's highly unlikely. I verified all this too BTW....he did graduate with said degree from a respected uni in New England.

Nonetheless....i'm actually wondering if he might have Down syndrome and just happens to be one of the very rare people with DS who has few or no cognitive delays. Apparently such people do exist...but that is something I haven't been able to verify. Still....there ARE people with Rett's syndrome and Williams syndrome (mental retardation is nearly always present in people with Rett's and often present in those with Williams) who have no cognitive delays. At least when it comes to Rett's syndrome, some people with the Rett's-associated MECP2 gene mutation don't seem to display many, or perhaps any, of the phenotypes associated with RS.

I don't know if the same sort of thing is possible with Williams syndrome or Down syndrome....but it very well may be.


Anyway...this guy is the only convicted sex offender i've ever met (to the best of my knowledge ofcourse) and I hope never to meet another one. I felt like I was in the presence of something very ugly that night and the whole thing bothered me immensely for days afterwards.



I also admit that, however foolishly, I found it bit unnerving that the only convicted sex offender that i've ever met (again....AFAIK) just happened to be a person with Asperger's. Needless to say, my thoughts about all that were unwarranted and irrational as there is no evidence that people with AS are any more likely to commit sex crimes than anyone else. Still....not every thought we humans have is a rational thought and fortunately I can seperate the whey from the chaff when it comes to my own thoughts.


The whole thing kinda sucks for me personally too because his group is the only Asperger's support I know of in my area. I refuse to have anything to do with him though and would rather be totally isolated than spend a minute around a convicted sex offender. For one thing....i'm socially ostracized enough as it is because of my own AS/NVLD....I don't want people (who may very well know what he did thanks to the sex offender database which displays photos of convicted offenders and includes their current addresses) seeing me hanging around with a convicted sex offender.

What an awful story. I think I would have reacted exactly the same way as you- listening in stunned shock, swearing to never go back, and looking it up in the database to verify once I got home. Like you I also wouldn't have believed he had the level of naivete needed to be unable to distinguish child porn from those random but reputable youtube clips friends email each other. I'm glad the jury didn't believe it either.

I believe I described the situation in a very matter-of-fact manner. I am not interested in sharing my own feelings about pedophiles as they are not relevant to the discussion. I did share some (but they are my feelings about human misbehavior IN GENERAL and what I feel we should do about it) of feelings about them in my reply to hale_bopp, but these were relevant to what she said in her reply to my initial post in this thread. Others can debate your comments here if they wish....i'm not interested in going down that tiresome and pointless road.

Heh. I used to say that a lot until I got tired of saying it.



How about clear education for everyone about what is and isn't sexual harrassment, eh? There may be people with AS who could benefit from it, but there are lots of NT types who could also learn a thing or two, including the fact that failing to notice subtle hints that it's time to change the subject is not harrassment. A lot of unnecessary drama could be avoided if people could just learn to say things like, "I don't want to hear about your dingo fetish. Ever." Standing around feeling harrassed and hoping that the person will suddenly clue in to the fact that their behaviour is not appreciated is not very functional way of dealing.

While I agree with both the point about Aspergers not being an excuse as well as the fact the Aspies may be more prone to making missteps that lead to sexually uncomfortable situations, there's something else that should be considered.

NT women are most definetly not fond of AS men, and part of me thinks that NT women may be prone to taking any interaction btw themselves and an AS man in a very negitive way. The "Harassment" being discussed may be more along the lines of "OMG, that total wierdo just said hi to me, eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww".

Hence the high numbers...

Well said, and definitely the way to go. There was a recent (2006) UK employment case that relates to some of what is said here, in that clear workplace guidelines and mentoring can prevent entirely foreseeable misfortune:

Further, the tribunal found that the respondent [B&Q hardware store] had failed to comply with its duty to make reasonable adjustments. Mr Bowerman [a customer adviser with Asperger's] was placed at a substantial disadvantage in the workplace as a result of his lack of understanding of social interaction between his work colleagues, where there was an atmosphere of horseplay and sexual banter. A reasonable adjustment would have been the provision of a mentor. http://www.eortrial.co.uk/default.aspx?id=1093125

It has become increasingly common for companies in the U.S. to do just this to protect themselves legally because of harrassment suits.

You're missing the point. I am disgusted that this man is using aspergers syndrome as an excuse for his behaviour.

Someone who uses an aspergers diagnosis as a scapegoat for something so terrible in my opinion is scum, whether I have skeletons or not.