Is there pride in autism/asperger's?

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it absolutely depends on your semantics behind 'pride'. if they are what i would say are the correct ones, absolutely yes. Which is basically a sense of positivity and embracing your strengths, and also working around your limitations to the best of your ability, by knowing them. I strongly disagree with the 'call' to indifference, but perhaps i am misunderstanding what they mean by that. The definitions of pride i would disagree are any feelings of superiority over others because of our differently developed cranial tissues. all differences are to some extent a trade off. for me i feel it is important to celebrate and embrace my peculiarities, i dont understand why that would necessarily correlate with silly superiority notion, but if so, may the distinction be made.

Pride for the most part these days is basically saying you're tired of yourself and others like you being treated as inferior and you and your kind of people aren't afraid to be yourself.

Pride sometimes also can be arrogant and the complete opposite of defensive. Like "White Pride" and supremacists. You are on the oppressive side and wish to eradicate all whom you don't value as good enough for this supposed delusional supreme race.

I personally am not proud of my race. I do however take pride in my achievements and the leaps over the hurdles which has landed me on my face so many times. I don't give up...I do retreat but I get back on my feet.

So in essence, I am not proud of things I have no control over. I am however proud when I do things I thought I could never do.

I am not proud to be autistic. I have no control over it.

Shame! I can't look people in the eye and I can't get past a job interview. I have no Friends and will probably never be in a relationship. I blame this on aspergers.
The aspies that chose pride probably have a talent or wrote a book about autism. I don't understand math,science or computers and have no talent.

I don't understand the whole "autistic pride" thing at all. In my opinion, you can only be proud of things that you have achieved. Being autistic isn't an achievement, so why would you be proud of it?
If you're proud because, say, you have achieved x, y and z in spite of your difficulties, then that's a different matter. But being proud of the autism itself just strikes me as ridiculous.

It's the sort of thing of which NT's are often proud.

It makes no sense to be proud of something that isn't in any way a result of your achievement, but many NTs are fiercely proud of their ethnicity or even country of birth. But then, NTs aren't very rational.

So I can understand the question. Being an Aspie is the sort of thing you can impagine people being proud of. Its an intrinsic part of you, it confers significant and often positive material consequences, and you can't be rid of it. Embracing it (it being a non-voluntary trait of this sort) with pride is a common response.

There's no real problem with being proud of your Autism. The only people it is likely to bother are either NTs intolerant of your difference (and you probably don't care what they think), or other Aspies whose internal logic you've offended (and, let's face it, Aspies aren't so common that you need to worry about running into them all of the time).

If it makes you happy, wave the flag. It might even have benefits for the Aspie community. Recall how gay people, before they gained broad acceptance, first showed very public pride in their homosexuality. They still have parades about that very thing, I suspect because it was such an important step in their difference being viewed as something other than a mental disorder.

I hope Autistic can come to be accepted similarly.

Sylivius,

You make excellent points, my friend. Once again someone else on this board was able to reword my thoughts properly. I've thought about "waving that flag" and I don't want to do it in a way that alienates people. Maybe I'll wear the autism awareness pin in April and maybe try to do some fundraising and get donations to give to the research of autism. Things like that. It's not shoving it anyone's face, but it let's people know that I support autism awareness without telling them that I'm on the spectrum

I have shame because what's the point of being a human if you can't socialise, when humans are supposed to be social creatures?

I don't think "pride" (nor shame) has any place in the shirt for Aspie/Autism idea, but a shirt of some kind might be good. I say this, because I don't believe there is any cause for pride, when the subject is something we can't control and didn't create. Do not be proud of being an Aspie, or White or Black, or Gay or Straight. Be proud of writing the best essay, or of having the cleanest car at the car show, etc etc. Or be proud of a family member or friend who did something difficult and successfully.

Charles

I'm proud that, unlike many NTs, I say what I feel, communicate honestly, and don't do passive aggression.

I think the final moments of not knowing are getting to me. It won't be long now. Once I know one way or the other, I'll still have to deal with everything, but the wait will be over. Waiting is hard. Whatever I'm told tomorrow, we'll see then what my attitude is.

we are much smarter than NTs and we are mysterious, and interesting. the person that will find the cure for cancer/aging will probably be an aspie. and i do believe we are braver sometimes. because i heard a lot of aspies are drawn to high risk jobs. and we are stronger simply because we deal with being different and we are more independent.