AS on 'ER'!

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Those of you in the States who watch TV:

Did you see it?

A teenage girl from a 'special' school twists her ankle and ends up in hospital. Guessed straightaway she had AS and sure enough. Now that I understand AS I think I know what to look for.

Her story was she handled her emerging sexuality by acting out inappropriately (better than depicting us as unfeeling I guess) so the doctor (whom she was coming onto like crazy) told her parents to put her on birth control.

It was painful, embarrassing, to watch. Was I really that bad once? Am I still? I can see acting like that if you don't know you have it.

So if you saw it, do you think the depiction of AS was accurate or bogus?

I don't watch that show. The issue of sexuality in AS doesn't need to be sensationalized as fodder for the NT viewing public - however - would an AS girl really be coming on to a doctor so overtly. I think this just feeds into the stereotype of people with labels like AS/autism, MR or MI being unable to control themselves and that is probably not much better than saying they would have no feelings towards sex. What subtle image does this give people about males on the spectrum if this girl is acting out. The idea of putting girls on birth control just because they have a disability is a whole other issue too. Birth control pills are not candy - they are medicine and they do nothing to control sexually transmitted diseases.

Again I thought it was pretty accurate for somebody young and/or who doesn't know she has it. My guess is if she was going to a special school she knew but was young (and so had less self-control and was less able to pass as normal than an adult) and had a moderate to severe case of it.

Better than the depiction of AS sexuality on 'Law & Order' where a rapist/murderer had it!

As for birth control, sure, there's the whole Nazi thing of saying the different shouldn't reproduce but the issue here was this was a young woman who was vulnerable. Morality aside the doctor was trying to stop her getting pregnant, which because of her age and condition she probably couldn't handle well.

Again, not being moralistic about it, I feel it's better than saying people like us can never have/shouldn't have sex!

In a little way it was mainstream (NT) society acknowledging that we and other disabled people are sexual and have rights including the right to be wrong. Just like anybody else.

Which is pretty cool.

which season was this from and what was the episode called?

It's the latest episode, on this week.

what episode of Law and Order is THAT?! !! omg i've missed a lot of tv!! !

what was the ER episode called? "Heart of the matter"? or something else?

Pragmatically you're right, walk, and Christian morality backs that up.

It wasn't perfect and 'just a show' but least it showed we're sexual and not really screwed up about it like on 'Law & Order'.

The 'L&O' was a two-parter a year or two ago, starting on the main show and continuing on 'Trial By Jury', the now-cancelled one with Bebe Neuwirth as the bitchy district attorney. (Jerry Orbach was supposed to be on it but of course that actor died early on.)

In that one the man with AS was the son of a rich socialite who'd dealt with her son's puberty by telling the maids to service him! Outrageous. The maids were foreign so now he has a thing for that. So this guy rapes foreign women almost at random and kills one, then the lawyer has him DX'd and uses that as the defence, which doesn't work. He's convicted.

I don't know what the 'ER' episode is titled. Go to nbc.com and look it up under yesterday's date.

Here's more feedback on it from a LiveJournal.

Now that I've read that I can see that maybe she acted more like she had high-functioning but full-blown autism than AS but she was definitely on the spectrum.

Dod they mention she had AS? If they didn't then we can't complain about it because she could have something else then or they just decided to create a character with those problems but not even think of the name of her condition.

Yes, in the second scene with her the doctor says he called the school, which told him she has AS. He says this to another doctor and remarks that she's very forward sexually, and the other doctor says that can happen with Asperger's.

since when has this been true? how many cases of this are there out there? how else did they display this girls' "personality"? did she seem slow or in some immediate way disabled?

It goes along with "no boundaries" or "unsure where the boundaries are" which is common with AS.

Right, 'unsure where the boundaries are'. Unlike full-blown autistics she wanted to be social but went about it wrong. Maybe it was overplayed but as somebody with AS I knew immediately what the writing and acting were trying to get at.

Another thing: the parents subtly conveyed one attitude I think we run into a lot. And that is not wanting to deal with our problems and dumping them, and us, on some third party or institution instead. They didn't want to accept that their AS daughter is now a sexual person and take responsibility like, for example, good Christian parents would. 'That the school's job.' No, it's not, said the doctor trying to protect her. Practising Catholic parents of course wouldn't have OK'd the birth control but good ones wouldn't have tried to dodge their responsibility/pass the buck either.

(Though arguably - OK, here's the Catholic argument - giving her contraceptive shots and pills is dumping the problem on the hospital instead of the parents acting responsibly and learning how to teach their daughter to do so as well.)

I wouldn't say she was depicted as 'slow', just odd, halfway between the way you and I sound and the Rain Man (rattling off bus routes for no reason), besides the sex thing (whipping off her gown and saying 'Happy birthday!' when the doctor she's crushing on comes in to examine her). The LiveJournal link I posted earlier says more.

I haven't seen the episode, and I don't know, because I'm not an expert, but "acting out" would seem like a typical NT response to sexuality. As for getting the girl on birth control, well, in today's politically correct environment you could expect that for every teenage girl portrayed in the media, but I feel somewhat that forcing birth control pills on this girl implies that Aspies aren't capable of controlling themselves in even a most basic way. The case would be different for individuals with full-blown autism of course. But Aspies are high-functioning, are they not?

I don't watch much new TV these days. I think in most cases, when entertainment TV shows try to deal with a serious issue, they either sensationalize it, oversimplify it, or get it totally wrong. Even news/educational documentary type shows tend to do this. From the description, it sounds like this show did the same thing.

Although it is possible someone with AS would handle these issues this way, they may also handle it by doing the opposite. One example if someone showed interest in them, they'd push that person away instead of letting them get closer because they wouldn't necessarily understand. One example is someone tries flirting with an AS person and the AS person will instead interpret it as harassment and the two end up in a fight instead of a conversation. IT may not be true in all cases, but I think it is possible.