Secret

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I thought of something about my being diagnosed with aspergers since I never tell anyone I have it besides friends and stuff I thought of magical beings like Sabrina Spellman she never tells anyone she is a witch or anything anyone else think this is cool? as well as having nld nonverbal learning disorder it is a secret like her being a witch

The title may be a secret, but the outward manifestations are not. People say "he's got something weird about him", that's all.

An AS sufferer pretending to be normal is like a man dressing up in drag and running for Miss America.

As my father always says: "You are what you is".

I totally agree with you, but the market is full of the books and stuff that sell the illusion that you're actually wrong. And the forums are full of people claiming that Aspies can overcome enough to pass for NTs. What these Aspies don't realize, much to their pathetic appearance, is that they look like the pigs in Animal Farm, walking on 2 legs to look enlightened enough to have become almost human. Ridiculous. (If you haven't read Animal Farm, run out the door right now and at least rent the movie. It's awesome, about people's desire to become what they're not and never will be, and the extremes of ridicule they're willing to go for the illusion of it).

You might be surprised to find out how good some are at doing this. You might not be able to tell that the person is actually a man dressed in drag.


I suppose it depends on how deeply you are affected and how deeply you are trying to be in society's rat race. I don't particularly like races, so I steer clear and feel that I am better for it.

If you go around not trying to put on a show, it has been my opinion that you're more likely to be accepted as a true and genuine person. That's how we ultimately should be accepted, right?

I also think it depends on how you perceive yourself. Self-perception begets your level of self-confidence. If you are more confident, others are more likely to accept your quirks as quirky and not unpleasant or creepy. Self-deprecating humor (a form of humility) also goes a lot way to increase positive perception.

See, I consider the market to mostly be full of white noise. It just simply doesn't resonate with me.

does anyone suggest that instead of trying to blend in with NTs, that Aspies amp up their aspergerian traits/characteristics and declare total independence? carry themselves with pride and demand total respect? could a separate category of rights-bearers be established, based on neuro-typology?

Keeping it on a need-to-know basis is a lot better than hearing "You do not have Aspergers." or "That's a fake disease." or "What the heck is 'ass burgers'?"

Shadfly, absolutely. You either pass off completely as NT, live in their world and uphold their values and get the benefits of it all and are happy that way, or you better be who you are without apologizing for it. The worst is living life trapped in the middle. I say this from experience; half a century of living a painful life in the middle, losing on both sides and ending up always broken from both sides and empty-handed. If there's one piece of advice I'd give young Aspies apart from wearing sunscreen, it's DO NOT LIVE LIFE IN THE MIDDLE. Gauge your abilities and desires as soon as you feel they're crystallized enough to bet on them, stick to the side that suits your abilities and desires the most - and then never look back. Most of all, never try to be what you can't be because of your neurology. If you can hardly pass for NT and with a lot of struggle, DO NOT WASTE YOUR LIFE TRYING. It never gets better enough to justify all the effort it took to reach that level of NTness. This is why I recommend Animal Farm - because it shows that the pigs never learn to walk on two feet comfortably enough to justify enough the effort it took. It's just too far from their nature.

Your father is FRANK ZAPPA? Way cool!

As a philosophy, I think it's pretty sound.

Yes. An unapologetic weirdo often gets accepted because people don't see him as vulnerable to criticism, and he falls more easily into the "eccentric" stereotype than the "loser" stereotype.

Even average NTs, who wouldn't mistreat you anyway, seem to do better when you are open about your weirdness. NTs like it when you're predictable, and being just a little off normal seems to scare them a little because they keep trying to predict you by normal standards and keep guessing wrong; and they're not used to that, because they're very good at understanding each other and depend quite deeply on being able to do so for communication. When you act in such a way as to make it obvious that you're not normal, and shouldn't be expected to act normal, the NT is forced to find a new framework for you, one under which they might be able to understand you reasonably well.

We actually already have our rights protected because we're in the category of people with disabilities; and as such we're supposed to get decent education and not be barred from working by the lack of a simple accommodation. Beyond that, of course, the same rights apply to us as they do to anybody else. All that really remains is for autistic people to get the point across to the general public and to the people in charge that we do have those rights and we'd like to see them respected.

Quoting Fiddlerpianist

I don't agree with you on this, Fiddler. I don't think self-deprecating humor is at all like humility and certainly not a form of it. I hate to see people cutting themselves down and feel very sad for them when they do. It makes me very uncomfortable because I think it's evidence of low-self esteem and a feeling of inferiority, whether it gets a laugh or not. I used to do this quite a lot myself, thinking "I'll cut myself up before they do". It's a very sad thing really. I will not do it anymore. It's a promise I made to myself when I realized why I was doing it and what it really meant and began to have some compassion for myself.

Sorry, double post

Last edited by cosmiccat on 26 Oct 2009, 11:13 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I suppose it depends on how you do it. If I have the ability to laugh at myself when I make a mistake (and openly do so with others around), that is me admitting that I am far from perfect and make mistakes just like everyone else. That takes a decent amount of confidence, but at the same time it humanizes you.

If I go around at work, say, holding everyone to a very high standard of quality, and then at some point I do something myself which doesn't really live up to the quality that I expect from others, I have two options. I can pretend like I was right all along and make up some excuse about why the particular thing I did in fact did not violate those standards, or I can suck it up and say, "Oops. That was both stupid and hypocritical of me, now wasn't it?" If I do it in a particularly humorous way, it shows others that I don't take myself too seriously (in a good way).

If I am cutting myself up to get attention, that's another matter entirely.

Sorry, Fiddler, I missed your point. My definition of self-deprecating humor is different than yours, and I read your post with my definition in mind. I understand what you mean now. Thanks for clearing that up. It did seem unusual and puzzling coming from you as you always struck me as being a confident person by the nature of your posts.