Neurotypical Privilege

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I keep hearing this.

What is silicon valley?

Wikipedia is your friend...

no I mean uhm.

How does that relate to NT priviledge? I'm sorry, my cognition is low right now. I don't get why silicon valley has to do with this..

It seems that the majority of successful Silicon Valley companies are owned and/or operated by people who exhibit characteristics of HFA behavior.

In other words, Silicon Valley may be run by High-Functioning Autistics in general, and "Aspies" in particular.

Oh. Ok, thank you!

And what if it is harder to earn those things when one is not neurotypical?

Here's an explanation of privilege in general:

http://www.lib.odu.edu/ojs/index.php/cs ... ewfile/1/1.

When you encounter people just flatly denying its existence, you're either encountering someone who hasn't given it much thought or is reacting defensively to the idea that they might have such unearned privilege.

Fnord, for example, tries to position several things as "things you have to earn":

But he does not mention that many people have easier access to these things and that many others have to work harder to achieve these benefits for little reason other than obstacles and challenges that other people (not like them in particular ways) do not have to face.

For example, education is not a simple thing for all autistic people. Just going to college or university is not always enough. That's why accommodations exist - to enable people with disabilities and atypical needs to have the same chance at getting that education as abled people (assuming all else being equal). Employment is similar. All available statistics indicate that the majority of autistic people at all levels of the spectrum are unemployed or underemployed. This doesn't necessarily just reflect an inability to work, but often reflects excessive difficulty in finding work or at least finding work one is qualified for (rather than work that requires lower qualifications for lower pay because that's all they can get hired for).

Another issue with employment is accommodations to enable them to work as efficiently as other employees. Say giving them a quiet place to work instead of in a noisy area which may be overloading. I used to work in a call center and I was constantly in a state of overload and partial shutdown and the only thing that enabled me to function at all was that everything was scripted. I had no accommodations. In that job as well as other jobs, I would also get reprimanded for taking too many restroom breaks, even though I'd need to get away from all the noise and just have some quiet. Not enough quiet, either. Maybe 5 minutes at most. Because the workplace did not accommodate my needs or even recognize that my needs existed.

And of course you need employment for credit, houses, cars, etc. Or you need to be born into an affluent family at least to just get them. It's certainly possible to get a car (used) inexpensively or a relatively inexpensive house assuming you can make the payments, but the money still has to be there. Which goes back to the previous.

I'll just say that the people denying privilege is a real thing are wrong.

Work harder.

Don't forget; I was likely HFA by 1960, and received my official diagnosis only 4 years ago - that's almost 50 years as an undiagnosed "Aspie"! I had to work harder than those NTs around me just to earn the same grades, but I've also surpassed many of them by many measures of personal success. While most of my NT peers are still stuck in Michigan, hoping to be hired at Wal-Mart for a little over minimum wage, I am working as an electrical engineer in southern California for over 4 times the minimum wage.

Struggling with depression? I've tried suicide.

Struggling with being dumped? I've been divorced.

Struggling with responsibility? I've been a father.

Struggling with overbearing authority? I've been in the Navy.

Struggling with phobias? I've been in armed military combat.

Struggling with unemployment? I've been homeless.

Struggling with abuse? I've been beaten so hard that I've had broken bones.

All these things, I have overcome through hard work and determination; not through demanding the same "privileges" that someone else has earned, but by earning those privileges for myself.

This is one of those blandly ignorant things people say. It's right up there with "Just apply yourself."

The point being that you have to work harder than other people to achieve the same or inferior results that they do.



That's great. I'm glad you're successful despite the obstacles you had to deal with. Not everyone is you, however, and do not always have the same opportunities or the same capacity to "work harder." When I work harder I quickly end up unable to work at all - which makes both employment and education quite difficult because 'work harder" is generally required for me to keep up with the work at all.



Yes, I've tried suicide as well. My depression has compounded my other problems at times, to the point of being nearly nonfunctional. The only thing that kept me out of a psych ward at the time was hiding the suicide attempts.



I was in an abusive relationship.



This kind of makes it sound like you're trying to assert you've had it worse but still managed to get over it. I suggest again that not everyone is you and possibly has different reactions to these things or has greater impairments in other ways that make it difficult to achieve things the way you did.

It's also trivializing for you to list these things like this. Phobias are a mental illness that can be quite crippling, whatever your personal experiences may be. You're not the only person who's been homeless. You're not the only person who's been in the military. You're not the only person who's been divorced or abused or been a parent or what-have-you. The problem here seems to be the idea that since you've had these experiences you get to dismiss other people's experiences without understanding them.

It also comes across as competitive. One thing I've encountered when discussing issues of abuse with other survivors is that generally, people don't try to compete over who had it worse, but accepts that abuse is always bad and that one doesn't need to have broken bones to carry lasting scars from it.



You still don't get it. Did you bother to read the link I gave you?

No one's demanding to have the employment or the car or the house or the family or any of the other things that you have. What people are talking about is the fact that it is harder to achieve these things because of barriers and challenges that exist for them but not for neurotypicals. Not just personal impairments but a lack of accommodations and environments that not only fail to accommodate but often times aggravate the impairments we do have.

There's no functional use in advice like "I worked hard for it, so can you!" That's just one-size-fits-all reasoning that doesn't work for everyone. It simply can't work for me because trying to do that has led to burnout and increased impairments every single time.

As long as you keep battering that "You're demanding everything be handed to you" straw man, I don't think we'll get much worthwhile discourse here. Clearly, you're more interested in bragging about your achievements* than understanding what you've been told.

* This likely mischaracterization is no less reasonable than the claim that people are demanding they be handed things on a silver platter out of unbridled entitlement. Or perhaps I should say "no less unreasonable."

This may be relevant: http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt179659.html

It's a potential disservice to try to educate someone about neurotypical privilege because there are people out there with undiagnosed or other conditions and enmeshed in other societal variables who may think they are neurotypical and find some of these criteria don't apply so well to them. It's more productive to educate why some are disadvantaged than why some one is not disadvantaged.

The concept of privilege only works if we stick to generalizations. The people who coined the term "white privilege" never intended it to mean something that all white individuals benefit from; they were talking about overall societal treatment people receive. Too many people have gotten it mixed up and use it as a baseline to start making assumptions what an individual's experience must be.

All people struggle in some way or other, I think.

A lot of NTs are down on their luck, no job, poor health, family breaking apart, verging on homeless.

Misery is a human condition. Not a result of neurology.

I am white and I am NT but I have to say I don't especially believe in "white privilege" or "NT privilege" because these days everyone is down on their luck equally or so it seems to me.

I think HFA is a benefit in some types of jobs. Emotional NTs cannot do certain things, emotions cloud the way. Also, intense focus is really a plus in a lot of fields. NTs don't always have that.

I don't mean to sound insensitive; I know I haven't walked in others' shoes. But neither has anyone else walked in mine. I'm just saying how I see it.

I do of course realize that not having autism possibly means that the NT does not face any of the 'challenges' that can come with it; but, they could have a lot of (other types of) challenges themselves, which may or may not be apparent to the casual observer.

Is it easier socially though? (To be NT.) Yes, I'm sure it is...although I was a bullied introvert so I can't say it was for me. (And, you know, in places like Silicon Valley - would a very extroverted NT really fit in?)

Or what more often happens, people misunderstand what's going on in the conversation when privilege comes up. Such as has happened in this thread repeatedly. Case in point:



No one in this thread claimed that some people never struggle, so that's not really relevant.

I actually made a point to describe multiple axes of privilege and marginalization, most of which do not have anything to do with neurology.

Privilege/marginalization isn't about misery, and people aren't saying that being neuroatypical means being miserable.



That's not the case. White privilege is still a thing and probably won't be going away any time soon.

NT privilege is still just as much a thing.

When you say these things, you're saying them from the position of someone who has not been on the receiving end of racism and at least not disableism related to being autistic. It's easy to say something like "everyone is down on their luck equally" but it's really not true. I can see people who are down on their luck to varying degrees from having a home to barely holding on to what they have to having nowhere to live. People who can't get work or can't even work even if they could get a job, people who are trying and failing to get disability benefits because of said inability to work.

As far as white privilege goes:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/m ... cher-black

There is no way that in the past three years such economic disparities have been resolved. They still exist. Or how about police harassment:

http://community.seattletimes.nwsource. ... ug=1515751

Or how about police unarmed black men being shot, and the perpetrator not being convicted?

http://www.theroot.com/multimedia/beyon ... nd-unarmed

Or how about when black women go missing:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... n-U-S.html

We are nowhere near everyone being equally advantaged or disadvantaged. Nowhere.



Obviously. This is something I already pointed out earlier in the thread. I tried to make it clear that there are more factors than being autistic or not.



Silicon Valley, like everywhere else, is primarily populated by NTs. There is a higher rate of autism diagnosis there, but this doesn't mean that being autistic is privileged in that area.

Neurotypical privilege is real but also inevitable since most people are neurotypical. I don't see this in terms of what somebody earns/doesn't earn or suffering/not suffering but rather how the manmade enviroment is set up. The enviroment is set up with the assumption of neurotypicality and always will be (unless the "aspie evolution" camp is correct and in the unspecified future most people are on the autism spectrum). This is unfair but it is also necessary in order for human society to function. Accomodations can be and should be made but they will always be that- accomodations. The manmade enviroment can't be set up as though most people are not neurotypical unless most people actually are not neurotypical.

The manmade enviroment is organized as though most people do not have sensory sensitivities, do have good executive function, are able to read body language, are able to interact effectively with most people around them and probably a bunch of other stuff I haven't thought of. Creating the enviroment with these assumptions is the essence of neurotypical privilege. It is not a conscious decision. It is a default of most people being neurotypical. There have been many threads discussing the alternative- what would society look like if everybody except a few people were on the autism spectrum? Society and the entire manmade enviroment would of course be structured very differently. These threads always contain long lists of the probable differences, such as "no parties" or "people would always say exactly what they mean and not communicate nonverbally". And those things would be a default if most people were AS. But they can't work if most people are not AS. Thus there is neurotypical privilege- a structuring of the manmade enviroment so that it works for how most people are wired. An enviroment structured to work for how a 1% minority are wired could not function.

If most people were AS, the current situation would be untenable. Accomodations can be made such as not requiring somebody to go to a party (referencing another thread where somebody was going to be forced to go to a party) or using words rather than gestures and expressions to communicate with an AS person. But these are accomodations rather than nullifying the privilege. There is quite a bit of difference between NTs making an effort to use only words- and only straightforward words at that- and NTs doing the same with each other even if nonverbal communication would work better between them.

I think this has a lot in common with other able privilege but not so much in common with other privilege (such as white privilege, male privilege etc.) other than the concept of privilege. It might have something in common with straight privilege insofar as society will always be set up with the assumption of male/female pairing so long as most people do just exactly that biologically. The reason I separate this from white or male privilege is because those things are conscious decisions to structure society a certain way rather than the biological wiring defaults of the majority. They had to be conscious because in neither case do the ones with the privilege have the majority. A majority will drive the manmade enviroment one way or the other (as in the case of neurology, bodily function or sexual orientation) but if there is no majority and things could go any way, then a decision is made and enforced. An NTs using only words and only straightforward words with an AS person is an accomodation. Black and white people holding the same jobs (finally) is not. Yes, I realize that AS people spend their entire lives making accomodations to NT society by struggling to learn body language etc. This is not fair. It is the inevitable consequence of being greatly outnumbered.

Consider other forms of able privilege. The manmade enviroment is created as though every single person is able to see. This is sighted privilege. It is not fair to blind people but a manmade enviroment that was not made with the assumption that everyone could see would be untenable unless everyone was blind. Accomodations can be made in the form of braille and speech-to-text apps and sighted people saying things instead of pointing etc. But these are acommodations. Sighted privilege is here to stay because almost all people are sighted. It is the same numbers game that it is with AS. The world is also set up with the assumption that all can hear, that all can walk etc. And it must be thus. It isn't possible to structure a society that won't work for the majority and have that society function.* Accomodations can be made for those for whom it doesn't work, but the privilege will always be there and must be.

*Now and then there are societies which can be argued are unworkable for the majority. But they are so dysfunctional that they always collapse from their own instability. North Korea has only been the way it is for a few decades and I doubt it will continue along the same path for too much longer. It is too dysfunctional since it seems (from the outside) to be an untenable society for all but a few elites. It also stands alone as the only country not in contact with the rest of the globe. At some point possibly in the next few decades, this unstable situation will fall apart and be re-built. I realize that since civilization began, it has been the norm for societies to be built with the majority in poverty. But that isn't really the same thing as an unworkable society. The elites have their elite privilege but the poor go about their lives in a workable-if poor-fashion. It isn't the same as the unique dysfunction of North Korea.

am not sure am able to believe NT privilidge,or if its attached to another group; common ones heard are white/hetrosexual/male and all of them are sometimes said together.
it isnt just us who cant help being us,NTs never asked to be born as NTs either,its naturaly what happens when one group is the majority because everything gets adapted for their strengths and weaknesses.
adopting privilidge to specific groups just feels rather resentful towards them instead of working on making a difference by raising awareness to people with power;plus raising awareness at grass roots level-people need to know of the 'barriers' everyone on the spectrum face when in society or using community facilities otherwise how do we get recognised as needing to access the planet to? no one else is going to do it for us.

The problem with the idea of NT privilege is that Autism is an invisible disability. We won't have rocks thrown at us by strangers because we're Autistic if they don't even know about it. We aren't systematically oppressed in very many places. Most of our disadvantages come from the symptoms of our disability.

Now I admit that there have been a couple of places where I've been treated differently because of my Autism and I didn't have the right to say what I needed. People told me what I needed and forced it on me. It happened in day treatment. The psychiatrist wouldn't give me a say in my own treatment plan. She said that something was better due to my disability and even if I disagreed I wasn't listened to. Apparently I didn't know what I needed. Apparently other people knew what I needed more than I did. I'm the one with the disability. Why shouldn't I tell you what I need? Don't tell me.

In elementary school it could've been justified. I was a kid and I didn't fully understand my disability. I still had no say in the accomodations I got. Everything was decided for me. Some made sense and others seemed unnecessary to me. If I thought something was unnecessary it didn't matter though. I had no say. If I thought the transportation accomodations were not only unnecessary but they made me stand out even more than I already did I couldn't choose to refuse them.

There was this one worker in high school that treated people with AS like children. Even we could hear the condescending tones in her voice. It was that obvious. Why do I want to work with someone who doesn't treat me with respect?


Outside of places where my diagnosis is known to professionals I'm not treated differently for having AS. I might be treated differently for acting a bit odd but I'm not treated differently for having AS because I'm invisible. That's the limit to any oppression that people on the spectrum might face. If we were travelling in wheelchairs it would be a lot different but we're not.