Aspies as a discriminated upon minority group

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When will we aspies stop thinking about ourselves in terms of syndrome, disorder, disability, limitation, etc.?

Are black people disabled because their skin is not white?
Are English speakers disordered because they can't speak Swedish like the Swedish do?
Do artists have a syndrome because they're not good business people?
Is being a penguin a limitation because they can't live in the tropic?

NTs have advantages and disadvantages, and so do aspies. NTs can lie better, but we're better at analysing reality, for instance.

When will this minority group called aspies internalize that our problem is [i]only the fact that we're a minority[/i]? When will we fight like the homosexuals, the black, the Jews, the women, etc. for respect, equality and our pride?

I'm tired of the shameful feeling of answering AS quizes that mark me as disabled or having a "syndrome" because I answer YES to things like "Do you find it hard to say the [NT] socially appropriate thing?" or "Do you find it hard understand what someone wants from you when they're being passive-aggressive and telling you things in purposefully double-meaning ways?" (I exaggerated this last one, but not much).

Till when are we going to let the majority determine what is healthy and what isn't?

I think there is an autistic pride thing. And people with AS have all their rights AFAIK.
But I agree that it's not a disability in and of itself; it's living in a society aimed at NTs that disables us.

its been my experiance that in order to get respect (judging by the past) as a minority group some have to die for thier cause, to get ANY kind of mad props. i'd die for being aspergers exept im necrophobic

"it's living in a society aimed at NTs that disables us."

Biggest truth I've heard in a looong time.

more studies should be done on aspie behavior and learning habits. We merely speak a different language and understand a different culture. Think about it. Genetically, we are as much a minority as black people are in america. Maybe more. We have our habits and rituals. We find meaning in things from the simple to the surprisingly complex. We arent a minority. We are privelidged.
. We can do things that NT's normally cannot do. we crave peace and go out of our way to get it. Perhaps in ways, we are meant to be what civilization is supposed to be. It sounds good at the minute. Aspie for president!

A lot of us think our Canadian Prime Minister is aspie.

I see a lot of "aspie pride" here.I have more problems with blatant NT bashing because all NT's are not alike just as all ASers are not alike.To me that is a case of "illussion" that we do not need to sucumb to,just because some in the NT culture do it to us.Two wrongs dont make a right and are based on emotion and not logic.I know I have done it,out of convenience of communicating.I know I dont really mena ....all NT or all AS,when I make generilizations,but an NT who reads about NT's being superfical bigots may not realize that and it is still hurtful.

They are no more at fault for their brain wiring then we are for ours,why do people find it so easy to hate them for something that is beyond their control.My perspective is that their brainwiring causes them a lot of difficulty in accuiring qualitites that I personally respect.They can do it but it is difficult and society doesnt incourage them do to so.It acctually condems them for it.
I know I am not defective.I dont internilize their mesages about my brain being "wrong".I undersand that they really believe this because their brains make it difficult for them to uderstand my brain.Hating someone one does not actually empower you.It's a reactionary situation that results in sapping your power.So why bother hating NT's for what we perceive as "brain damage"?I think it is because they are in the majority and get to make the rules.

Sorry,got off on a tangent,lol.I dont think I am defective but my brain is wired in a way that makes it more difficult for me to accomplish as much as I could if the world was arranged around AS brains.So would it be a better world if it was,dont know,never lived in that world.Would be interesting to find out but I'm not holding my breath.

I gotta tell ya, I really don't get this "I'm being persecuted because I'm an Aspie!" thing. Until just prior to joining this forum I had no idea what an Aspie was (or an NT for that matter). Much less that I was one. And I like to try to keep reasonably well informed. I'm constantly reading stuff, particularly SciAm, Discover, etc.

What's the deal? Do you run around with a sign around your neck saying, "I'm an Aspie"? Do you tell everybody you run into?

You see, most people have no friggin' clue what an Aspie is, or that you are one. All they see is someone acting strangely to some degree. Oftentimes the strangeness is sort of subtle, not something they can put their finger on like Down's Syndrome and it's certainly not as obvious as being black, or effeminately gay, or any of the other "protected minorities".

You know what people see Aspies as? Losers. Just a garden variety loser living in his parent's basement playing video games and screwing around on the Internet instead of having an actual life. Or maybe like me; someone who has always shown a lot of promise and seems intelligent but can't ever get anything to work out right.

In order to be discriminated against you have to be part of an identifiable minority. You need to be visibly and obviously different from the majority in some way; skin color, vocal accent, etc. For most of us it's all internal; I can't do This, I have to do That, This freaks me out, That makes me calm. It's all about perceptions and behaviors. The closest analogy is probably being gay and look what fun they have being accepted.

i think most people here just want to get even because they were bullyed thats all

I, for one, marched with the NAACP (blacks) and JDL ( Jewish Defense League) in the 60's for women's liberation in the 70's and against the war in Vietnam when I lived in Berkeley, and then in the Gay Day Parades in San Francisco because I felt invested in their struggle.
I learned to counter act the shame my upbringing inculcated in me ( southern USA) in being with 'inferiors' and getting to know them as they were, not as my parent's upbringing had informed me, and in some way atoning my own sense of unfairness I had always felt when my parents carefully taught me to reject whole groups of people.
Please understand these are the same people that raised me to be a whipped puppy and submit to any domination by threat of corporal punishment. (those people just didn't get along with anybody!)



When I learned I was AS, it was a segment on National Public Radio, first person story about a guy whose young son was diagnosed as a high functioning Autistic and he felt a pangs of embarrassment about his son, that he was one of 'those' people. He was so remorseful that he felt shame for his little guy. The doctors weren't finished, though, they told him HE was AS himself. . .and there he was. . .stuck with his prejudice. . .like finding out he was black/Jewish/Polish/gay/Martian/ all at once. It hit me like the proverbial ton of bricks. It took me 10 months to ask myself "What was I embarrassed about. . .NT prejudices?" after they have rolled their eyes and laughed and pointed and cast aspersions and questioned my sanity on a regular basis? Screw that! Now, I just stare them down, or wink.

Let's have OUR parade, dagnabbit!

When they change the definition of it.



Depends on the preheld notions of the area/job/person in question.



If they aren't fluent enough there may be some difficulty.



Obviously not a syndrome. But if the world was made up by a majority of business people and expected you to have business skills, then you would certainly be disadvantages, as we are in this NT world.



Depends how much value the tropics hold for them. If it is a place they need to go, then yes.



Here we go again, more NT bashing. Lying serves an important function, whilst 'analysing reality' doesn't - unless of course you like learning how crap the world is. The advantages an NT has makes him perfectly suited to this world. Our 'advantages' are quite useless anywhere else but inside our own little worlds. Or, say perhaps you're obsessed with maths and want to utilise that in becoming a maths teacher, then our social disadvantages really wipe this out.



How ignorant. Being a minority is only the start of our problems. Simply: we lack communication skills - this is a social world.



We are disabled - we lack typical abilities; human abilities. If you're feeling so 'shameful', then don't take the quizzes.



lol, you say 'let' as if we are giving them permission.

Rod,

A lot of homosexuals are affected ONLY because they get in peoples faces. They speak of how straight people aren't "persecuted" in such ways. BULL!! !! Straight people often don't flaunt it and it is often considered inappropropriate.

Sinsboldly,

I am white and was raised in a predominantly white middle class area in the 60s. There was no talk of inferiors, etc... HECK, some people in my school were actually black. When I was in the first grade, it was probably 1-3%. In my last highschool, it was probably like 50%.

You make whites sound evil or something. We're not.

Mitch8817,

You make some good points, BUT....

"We are disabled - we lack typical abilities; human abilities."?

Speak for YOURSELF! Frankly, if left to my OWN devices, I could counter any supposed deficit with an advantage. Frankly, I would end up better. HECK, most things today are done with some assistance. EVEN those that appear to do things manually are benefiting through someone ELSES research.

Is a paraplegic disabled because he can't walk?

Er... yes, actually. That's the point. He's never going to be a track runner, that's for sure. Is it the paraplegic's fault he can't be fully involved in the world, or the fault of a world with stairs? The latter, that's why we have laws requiring that, where possible, accommodations be made for those in wheelchairs. I don't have an issue with having AS. It doesn't bother me in the slightest, I'm happy with who I am, but I'm also working in a crappy data entry job because I don't want to do the sort of work that would allow me to move farther up the chain - stuff that would involve a lot of face to face contact and phone calls.
The first major job I took was as a music librarian at a major music education facility. I was fired after a couple of months, for walking away from a conversation that I hadn't understood I was supposed to remain in. Had I known then what I know now, I might well have had some legal protections that would have prevented that firing. Heck, had I known, my superior might even have understood what was going on, and the law would never have entered into the equation. There are some things we find difficult to do. It's a disability. It's not something arbitrary like sexuality or skin colour, which has no effect on peoples' ability to do certain jobs.
There should absolutely be protections for those with AS so that their invisible disabilities are not used to discriminate against them in jobs which they're capable of, but that is precisely because they have a disability of a sort.

I would like you to take your own advice and speak for yourself. I was talking about my parents, and you certainly did not know them. Just because YOUR life included no talk of 'inferiors' does not mean that MY life didn't. Don't defend my parents. They were ignorant, bigoted and agressively abusive. They were the products of their social upbringing, environment and natural inclination. I would not and did not define their attributes by their race, you did, the fact that they were Caucasian was incidental.

Ultimately, we don't understand them anymore than they understand us. We expect them to know what we are thinking when they say something, they expect to see outward motions to show them that. It is just a difference in perception, and I think ultimately the goal should be some sort of understanding between the 2, but we are very separated from each other in ways of thought, and in that, there are some who struggle to understand very much so, but never really will... just as we analyze why they do things, and even if we find a reason that makes sense, we cannot really apply it to anything at all.

They make up the majority, plain and simple. That is not to say that some do not make accommodations for us willingly, or that they do not realize we think differently and it causes some confusion. There are people I have found all over willing to try and understand, but it is impossible to truly understand unless you can live somebody else's life. But that also means they are going to make the rules/laws of what is appropriate and what is not.

In decision making, does it make more sense logically to accommodate the majority vote, or to make the majority change for one person who is holding out or going against it? Even in a group of people with ASD, it would be the same thing, as we are not the same people. Just because we share a diagnosis doesn't mean we would agree on things, or that we have the same level of difficulties with everything, etc. There will ALWAYS be a minority group, and a group that feels oppressed. They may rise one day, they may not, but it still won't change the way that people view things and it may make it worse if anything first. Just because they have gained some laws of some sort, or have made a small change, does not mean everyone is going to automatically change and adjust to it.

As far as behaviors, since that is the basis on what "gives us away" a lot of the time with stims and such, how can we expect others to not judge us on this when it is such a high source of how they get information from one person to another? Of course they are going to look. I tried to imagine me carrying on a conversation with someone who ONLY uses gestures the whole time and facial expressions. This is how they must feel when talking to me. I would be seeing what they are doing, and getting nothing out of it-when they talk to me, they hear me saying things, but see nothing to go along with it. It is instinctive to make decisions based on how one carries themselves or whatnot to them, it isn't for us-instead we wonder why they don't question why they do the things that they do.

People believe things about others because that is what they choose to believe. It isn't like they don't have a choice on how to view someone usually.

Again, I just think understanding is what needs to change, but since everyone has different beliefs about virtually everything, I also think it is unlikely.

What makes you think so?