Temple Grandin's view on Asperger's

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i think she is suggesting that at a certain point, a certain threshhold, when it's common enough, "different" starts becoming "normal." and that is certainly hard to refute.

i am however personally the only AS spectrum person i know. so it's hard to believe i'm at *risk* of getting lost in a sea of quasi-NTs.

i think, having spent years trying to pass for normal and failing, it's alarming to hear someone influential seem to suggest that our (my) worst fears might be true - that i'm not neurologically different, only of different social character. e.g. i'm being thrust back into inferior membership of that genetic whirlpool i've never felt a part of, that increases my sense of alienation - again.

however i don't'think that's what she's *necessarily* saying. it's worth pointing out that what's quoted is a snippet of a larger conversation, not necessarily taken in context. i think she is observing the obvious in typical AS frank fashion -- that at a certain point in the numbers game, the abnormal stops being so different and becomes the part of the norm. and logically, that's hard to argue.

I do think the past was better for aspies in ways. They didn't have all these roadblocks to getting jobs and back then anyone could just get one I have read. You also didn't require experience or a degree for work. Now pretty much all jobs want to hire someone with experience and more jobs require a college degree or education. It's also harder to get a job if you are a drop out and back then lot of people didn't finish school and it was normal. I think people were more tolerant and Temple Grandin wrote in her book about hidden rules in relationships how things were in the fifties. Of course there have always been mean people and jerks and closed minded people. So I think the aspies just blended in and they were just seen as weird or a geek or a nerd. I think that is what she was saying. It was maybe more acceptable then too so we blended in.

But because times have changed and so has how to get a job, it made us more disabled and life harder for us. It's like how when they change how they teach, people who don't learn the new way now are now learning disabled and need extra help in school. Mom told me school work was more concrete in the days and I would have done fine then and kids helped each other with homework. So I may have gone unnoticed too and just think I am just a bit weird. But since I was speech delayed and kept having ear infections and then went deaf, I don't know what would have happened to me then. Back then kids were locked in institutions and it was the norm so the same thing could have happened to me and I wouldn't be where I am now unless my parents kept me out and helped me instead.

Sometimes I think disabilities are created by society. If hand gestures and eye contact and being nice to people and then talking bad behind their backs became unacceptable, then the NTs would become disabled and would struggle through life.