Have you ever stood up for someone who also had Aspergers?

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A few weeks ago, this kid at my school who has Aspergers threw up in class. This girl in my class started to talk about how gross and weird this kid was. I get really irritated whenever someone gets bullied, especially when the victim has a disability. Also, I go to a school for children with special needs, so every student has either a learning or social disability. Anyway, I got so mad at this girl, that I turned to her and said "Leave him alone! He didn't do anything to you!" The girl looked at me, and said "Okay". She then stopped and continued her work. I felt good about myself afterwards. Have you ever stood up for someone with Aspergers?

Yes. I have stood up for a few aspies online back in my late teens, I also stood up for my aspie mate I had when I was 15 and 16. I thought my brothers were being mean to him because he told me so I went out and yelled at them for it not even knowing he was the one who did something wrong so they got mad at him for it because they wouldn't let him bully them around and do things that were dangerous. This kid had ODD so go figure so he was also a pathological liar.

I have spoken up for another aspie but I have had the opposite happen too-another aspie not understand what it is to be on the spectrum and not totally accepting that I may act and do different things and have troubles or issues with things and criticize it.

It is my job. I represent almost 30 children on the Spectrum, including Asperger's, Autism and PDD. I watch over these kids like a hawk and if anyone messes with them, I am usually the first to know about it.

I very often have to stand up to lousy deadbeat druggie parents on the behalf of the kids... that's always fun. I guess I like a challenge. I also like a good mental chess game, and some of these sickos are so manipulative that that's what we play.

I once knew a girl in high school who struck me as being on the spectrum somewhere....she was a bit rigid and would sometimes say things that would annoy others. Whenever I would see people misinterpret what she was saying and become annoyed with her, I would sort of intervene and say something like, "I think what H is trying to say is..." And another time when we were all gathered in a really hot auditorium for our senior class graduation, and H kept complaining about "why we had to do this" and how "some of us have lives" (and everyone was also getting annoyed then, cuz it was so dang hot and they didn't want to be there either) I told her, "Don't worry, H, they'll probably only have us rehearse the ceremony a few times, and then we can go home."

H and I were never really "close" friends (I knew her thru another friend I had) but I hope I helped her during the times I acted as her mediator.

I have two fellow employees at the place I work with strong aspie traits and yes, I do stick up for them when I can. Then again, I have always stuck up for the downtrodden and always tried to help those who were wrongly the object of ridicule and misunderstanding.

One of my biggest regrets is not standing up for someone with autism once.

I was on the bus home from work, and there was lots of traffic down one of the major roads in London which the bus went down, so it was really crowded on the bus.
A couple of stops after me, I'd occasionally see this guy who I assumed had autism or some kind of learning difficulty. He usually talked to himself and repeated where he was going ("Number X bus to [station], Xtime train to [location]") whilst rocking.
This time the bus pulled up and he asked the driver why the bus was late - he was obviously anxious about it and he stood in the doorway, repeatedly asking why the bus was late. Rather than saying "There's been an accident, so there's traffic." the driver ignored him, so he stayed in the doorway, repeatedly asking.
This went on for a couple of minutes. He also stated over and over that he had autism. The driver, under pressure from some passengers who started shouting things, tried to close the doors on the guy. He screamed out in pain, and got on the bus. Some people cleared out of his way, scared of him, and he sat down and was going over his route - he'd obviously missed his train by that point and was getting more and more anxious.

This woman standing near where me and the guy were sitting started telling other passengers "Oh my God, he's obviously got problems." and saying he was crazy and warning people to be careful. Other passengers started to shout at him telling him to shut up.
He was getting more and more upset and I wanted to say something to him and to shout at the woman who was making comments. I could feel this rage building up inside me..but I couldn't because that would mean making a scene and I was scared to do it.

Looking back, I'd like to think I've got more confidence now to challenge people, and I'm eternally guilty that I didn't do anything.
Now, I understand more about autism so would feel more confident explaining to people why someone was acting in a "strange" way, but I was too shy back then.

Poor guy. People can be so horrible and inconsiderate sometimes.

No. People are very nice at my school, so I never get a chance to stand up for anybody. I can't even recall the last time I saw bullying. I'm happy for that, but it also makes school more boring.

Sometimes I manage to catch on quickly enough to defend somebody else; but the biggest problem for me is that social interaction is so quick and I can't figure out who's trying to do what to whom while intervention would still be useful.

If it were really obvious, like somebody was physically attacking somebody else, I'd probably be able to figure it out quickly enough to act. Unfortunately, in that case it might have to be either calling someone in authority or physically getting in between them and hoping they would stop punching before I got too hurt. I can't fight; I'm not fast enough, and I'm very clumsy. But it's still hard to shift two hundred pounds of determined woman when she doesn't want you to do it. It depends on whether they seemed intent on hurting each other, or just intimidating and bullying. If it were dangerous enough I might just call the police, or pepper-spray somebody.

What I learned about altruism in psychology class is that in order to help somebody, you need three things: One, you need to interpret the situation as dangerous and requiring your help. Two, you need to see it as necessary to help--that is, if you don't help, nobody will. Three, you need to be able to think quickly enough to create a plan of action so that you are not too confused or afraid to act.

It's hard for me to fulfill those criteria on the spot. I have no problem with #2 because I never assume other people will help, because I never really take them into account (probably due to autism--it's too complicated mentally to always be tracking the hypothetical decisions of the people around me). But the first and third requirements are tough. Being able to recognize a situation as one requiring your help, and being able to make a plan before the novelty of the situation causes you to freeze or shut down, is a difficult problem. It takes a lot of thought, a lot of multi-tasking. The only reason I can ever do it is that when I really, really need to, I go into emergency mode, draw on adrenaline, turn on everything, flood myself with sensation--it's exhausting and I will absolutely crash and shut down afterwards, but if I need to, I can. I used to function like that routinely; but I know better than that now. Now, I only use it when I really need to.

I stood up for a young guy with autism when he was not around. People were saying that he was a sociopath due to him having some bad meltdowns. The unfortunate thing was that these people who were so quick to call him a sociopath in his absence all had AS themselves.

Sometimes I do not understand why people on the spectrum feel the need to judge others on the spectrum for their traits.

Today I explained to someone the meaning of catastrophism (as per the video posted a few days ago) in reference to someone at work that I strongly believe is spectrum. He was insulted by something I said in one of my "Sheldon Cooper" moments and overreacted. I tried to apologize, but it was clear that it would not help so I left him alone. We both came back from our respective deliveries and he apologized to me and accepted my apology, which is what I knew would happen. I was asked about it by an NT employee and took the opportunity to explain that people on the spectrum tend to be rather extreme emotionally sometimes and take things too far. I also told him it is one of the things I identify with that makes me strongly suspect I am spectrum and he accepted it. Hopefully it leads to a little more understanding with him as he has (in effect) called me a drama queen and has had confrontations with the co-worker I was defending in the past.

Amen!---I realize everyone is different and never criticize a person for it because I understand what it is like to live with it and try to survive with it-but I have been criticized maybe for good reasons(I do not believe in good reasons to build up ones self esteem and then rip it way) and bad reasons (maybe not on purpose but maybe for mean reasons) it is tough.

I did but I was as failure at it. This was in Junior High. I had a friend who was definitely on the autistic end of the spectrum, his name was Leroy. I was bullied and picked on but for Leroy it was worse and cruelty went on day after day. I knew his parents were very mean to him too. On several occasions I tried to explain to the school Vice Principle about this, that it was why he was have such a hard time because of all the home abuse and bullying. I could relate as I had the same problems just not as bad. My explanations were not very good as I was not so good at talking, nothing got done. He was a year ahead of me in school. When he when on to high school that's when something finally got done, I heard he was being locked for months at a time in a closet at home a other bad things.

Last edited by DoodleDoo on 15 Oct 2012, 5:57 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Yeah, I did that for some classmates (I don't know whether they had asperger's or not) and ended up by being bullied myself while they didn't gave a f**k.