AS Performers and Performance

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Lately I have been watching the extraordinary performances of Robert White, a man of many diverse talents on the spectrum, who wowed the judges and public on Britain's Got Talent and won second place in the final.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... got-talent

I have sometimes noticed a false assumption/stigma/stereotypical myth (not just here) that AS and successful performance careers are mutually exclusive. Yet there is a lot of evidence - not only Robert White - that this is not true.

It saddens me when I see AS people believe myths like this. I know that some subscribe to the myth on the basis of reasoning that goes like "Well I don't have that talent, I don't know anyone who does" - overlooking the fact that most NTs also don't have that talent and most don't know people who are extremely successful in it.

Successful performers are a minority in any group of people, NTs or AS or what ever, just as very accomplished novelists are, or very accomplished musicians or scientists. It's not a reason for AS people to promote the myth themselves that AS people can't succeed in the performance group. We can and we do. I can't, but I totally applaud those who can and do. It's also wonderful PR for the entire AS population, in my view.

Honestly, if it were that easy then Asperger would have never have been classified. Why classify a disorder that's not a disorder?

I think average AS person has more training at performance then the average NT person bt necessity .

^ YES

Nothing to do with the subject.

Winning on American Idol, or Britains got Talent, or even winning a Nobel Prize, doesn't have anything to do with whether or not you have a disorder, or a disability.

The success of Ray Charles, and that of Stevie Wonder, did not cause society to stop classifying blindness as a handicap, and a disability.

Nash was looney tunes, but he still won a Nobel Prize for mathematics.

Yes I misunderstood the question. My bad. I thought the op was referring to performance IQ. In terms of being "on stage" I always found it easier than talking to people individually. My audience is captive, so I have more control. Plus, when you have a lot of people they tend to aggregate into a kind of order, so they are ironically more predicable.

As for winning a noble peace prize or whatever, it doesn't surprise me that autism people could compete with the best of them, because such prizes are awarded to people who engage in a specialize task, where their disability need not interfere.

Same here. Back when I was playing in bands, I would get a little stage nerves, but nothing like the anxiety of the after-gig party! On stage, the social contract was easy; I had licence to put forth whatever I wanted to express, had practiced expressing it, and did not have to compete for attention or to raise a subject of interest. I was much closer to being the "real me" on stage than I ever could have been while masking in order to cope with mingling socially. I stopped doing it only because the social side of gigging burned me out very quickly, especially when playing gigs out of my home town; too many unfamiliar people and places, and inevitably, the gig organiser both putting us up for the night and hosting the after-gig party, so no escape from it.