POLL: Do you believe that Alan Turing was autistic?

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I think mental health professionals are restricted by a code of conduct that discourages open involvement in their client's personal affairs which probably includes public advocacy. There is a great emphasis on impartial and objective relations. However many do financially benefit from the imbalance faced by those who seek mental health services.

As well as the "outsider" denial that you wrote of earlier in this thread, AspieUtah, there's also IMO a "dog in the manger" phenomenon within the AS community itself, sadly, and it's a sad aspect of WP sometimes.

It's a nice sentiment but for at least half the adults on the autism spectrum their parents or carers are the ones who advocate for them.

Yes, I have read and seen spiteful attitude among autists themselves. Or, more specifically, a kind of controlling of the show, its players and its audience. Maybe I have engaged in spiteful behavior, too. I dunno.

In my own experience with political movements, I invited others to join in, but I have never waited on them to do so. Lawmakers both loved and hated that about me. But, it worked well for me in my communities, and, in just seven years, my friends and I accomplished the adoption of several LGBT-friendly laws in a state known nationally to be one of the most socially conservative communities. I admit that I was as precocious as I was prodigious; I admit that is why I was frequently described as impetuous.

That is why I admire such autistic advocates as Attwood, Robison, Grandin and Sinclair. We tend to strike out on our own. In my case, I amn't sure it was for the better, but things did get done.

One thing I've read about civil rights movement . . . that even with our community talking with a bunch of people, we don't seem to be making much progress.

And then everything happens at once, and it's amazingly easy.

This is one pattern. Admittedly, doesn't always happen this way.

This is a good point, and I will put on my thinking cap.

As it stands right now in the United States, there are parent organizations including both those we disagree with and those we agree with. And the self-advocacy groups are just a pale shadow of this. There's ASAN, in which I'm an inactive member and I don't know of much else.

Maybe things are further along in the UK.

Last edited by AardvarkGoodSwimmer on 29 Jun 2016, 4:21 pm, edited 1 time in total.

The one thing I have learned in 35 years of being in politics is that, to be effective, the focus must be on the "friction points" ... those individuals who can, through their opinions and actions, make change happen (lawmakers, business owners and media). Change doesn't come from Facebook or YouTube. It. Simply. Doesn't. Work. Convince the "friction-point" people, and you win. It is that easy.

In retrospective diagnoses, I often wonder what those who have been retrospectively diagnosed might have thought about their new-found understanding by our contemporary society. Would President Thomas Jefferson have disagreed with his diagnosis? Hugh Blair of Borgue? Even Alan Turing?

I argue that they wouldn't consider it to be insulting, offensive or rude. In each instance of Jefferson, Blair and Turing, there is evidence that they and their contemporaries either accepted the descriptions that others made about them, or ignored them. As with Turing, Blair's family members and friends wrote statements about what they considered quirky or strange behaviors. Turing's behaviors are part of this topic, of course, but Blair's behaviors included returning to his neighbor's homes at night for days after they had invited him to "visit" them. Even President Jefferson's cabinet members described how he would attend meetings wearing a bathrobe with one of his pet mockingbirds resting on his shoulder. Far from seeing anything odd about this behavior, Jefferson even kept notes about his success in teaching the birds to sing. Each man misunderstood social cues, were obsessed about their interests and admitted their behaviors openly.

So, I suspect that, even if other autists of their times or ours might feel otherwise, these three retrospectively diagnosed men appeared to have been quite comfortable about their oddities and behaviors. They certainly acted greatly in ways where it counted in their professional lives, so, being recognized by others as strange sometimes didn't seem to limit their abilities.

I wonder if we should see their abilities to be confortable about what others considered strange to be evidence that they would likely accept the retrospective diagnoses. I like to think so.

One singular event in Alan Turing's life is perhaps a startling metaphor for the kind of AS naivete (which some exhibit, not all) which is founded upon the idea of telling the whole truth of a situation: his arrest for homosexual behaviour came about as a consequence of AT himself contacting the police to report that his home had been burgled by a former lover.

If this is true (and it seems to be well validated) then AS can be said to have been culturally blind to the social and legal dangers that any NT would have seen with great clarity, and their priority would have been self-protection. Would an NT in that situation, era and context, have taken the risk of reporting at all? It seems extremely unlikely given the severity of the law and public prejudice at the time toward gay men.

Actually, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt had long enjoyed a long relationship with American journalist Lorena Hickok since Franklin Roosevelt's first presidential campaign. Eleanor trusted then-FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover so much that she and Hickok would share adjoining tables with Hoover and his romantic partner, FBI Associate Director Clyde Tolson, for Sunday brunch (and some lunches) at the Mayflower Hotel just four blocks north of the White House.

While one might fault all four parties for being seen so openly and publicly, and believing that not one of the four would disclose their mutual friendships or romantic partnerships, it seems to me to be just as mistaken as Turing was when he reported his theft to the kind of government workers he believed himself to be: "trustworthy."

So, yes, I would say that there were four NT individuals in that situation, era and context, who took the risks that were just as compromising as anything Turing did. I guess that makes me believe that most autists are no less risky than most others.

REVIEW: ‘Breaking The Code’ Of Alan Turing’s Homosexuality & Autism

It is not my habit to necrobump six year old threads, but the high quality discussion above touches on many issues relevant to the play’s topic. It is also a reminder of the former members I miss.

I voted ‘maybe’ at the time. I would probably vote ‘likely’ today, but ‘maybe’ is still fine.