Neurotypicals- What do you think about people with Aspergers

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I'm not an NT, but the NTs I know have different opinions of aspies. One thinks they are mentally ret*d, one thinks they are freakishly intelligent. A girl I know from school is an aspie but our classmates don't know that...they seem to be of the general opinion that she's "weird".

I don't have enough time to give you every instance where Dan has left me standing in the middle of nowhere. The reason I didn't bring up the wedding to him for 2 years is because I gave him the benefit of the doubt for that long. Friendships are the most important things to NT's. It's pretty obvious that not everyone here puts the same price on time and energy and emotions invested in them....Well maybe except for one.

pensieve, you could knock me over with a feather...

I live in an apartment and will for the foreseeable future. I'm gay so all I can get is really a "civil union", but I'm not much interested in that, and have no particular drive to seek a girlfriend (if I ended up with someone compatible I'd be okay with it, but I'm not lonely). Putting me behind the wheel of a car would be a disaster: I'm epileptic, can't sit upright for long periods, have severe enough visual processing issues that I've missed the fact that cars were heading straight towards me, frequently freeze in place and can't move for and can't reliably hold onto the meaning of the sensory information around me. Putting me behind the wheel would probably kill me or someone else. And I can't afford one anyway, I can barely afford what I need.

I have no desire to be normal. Nothing against whatever people fall into that category. It's just not who I am, and I don't see a reason to force myself to be something or someone I'm not. It sounds like all the autistic people you've met (I'm not specifically an "aspie" either) were very self-hating. Or maybe just the first few were and your mind filtered out any details that would contradict the judgements you'd already made about the rest. It's hard to tell given that you seem to be willing to judge millions of people based on probably dozens at most (and probably fewer than that). How would you like to be judged on the most materialistic and shallow NTs I'd met?

As for giving me a date with anyone's daughter, I'd hope that anyone I was dating was old enough that their parents had no say in the matter. I just found my first grey hairs, I'm not exactly underage anymore. But if I had to ask permission and someone declared me incapable of love because I'm autistic, then yes that is exactly the same thing. It's judging one person based on experience (or a little experience and a lot of brain-redirecting of information to make all later experiences feel the same as the way the first few were believed to be) with a relatively small number of others who share a particular characteristic with them. Being autistic doesn't make me incapable of love any more than being gay or poor makes me incapable of love. And plenty of people (friends I've had for years, even an ex-boyfriend from before I came out) can vouch for that about me. Missing social cues doesn't equal missing love.

And about you being a minority... not really relevant. I hadn't decided either you were or you weren't. It's not like being a minority makes a person immune to prejudice. Even autistic people can be prejudiced about autistic people. It happens all the time.

So now you can count one autistic person who doesn't fit your description at all. If you continue to insist that we all have those characteristics then I'll know that real life examples don't matter to you.

Last edited by anbuend on 24 Jan 2011, 10:25 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Very wise and rational way of dealing with a post to try and teach someone.

You missed the point of why I told you I was a minority...

I copied and pasted this part of your post. What was your point then?

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Last edited by 19jc69 on 24 Jan 2011, 11:06 pm, edited 3 times in total.

Most adults who grew up with an autistic brother or sister will recognize that my son has autism in about one minute.

The best word to describe my seven year old is uninhibited. He expresses himself and his ideas very freely. He will walk up and talk to anyone. He has no sense of shame or embarrassment. He will hug anyone at any time.

Absolutely, that is my experience too. I can imagine plenty of my family thinking it's just my big excuse for how I am.
They are baffled and outraged, but still won't want to accept the simple and obvious answer. I know that because years ago my sister thought she had it, and that's what I thought. I feel so bad now I know more. Now it's me that has it, and I am a LOT more tolerant of her oddities

It's a real doublethink isn't it?

He sounds Holy. Bless him

Is it difficult to be direct?

I told you, I'm not an aspie. I'm not a man, either. I'm a woman.

A woman who grew up with language comprehension problems so severe that I did not know what words were or what they meant or that they could have meaning until I was over five years old. I thought they were just noises that you repeat back because otherwise people get mad at you. It took me many many more years than that to get the full meaning of words to where I could tell what they meant on a very literal level. It took me even longer than that to figure out how to make words consistently mean what I was thinking. It's like wrestling with one end of a giant lever that has a life of its own and always hits some word other than the target.

But I go back and I do it every single day of my life. No matter how many times I get called stupid, no matter how many times I get told I totally missed the point, no matter how many times I hear people around me say that I have the mind of an infant or child. Don't think we don't hear all those things you say about us because I hear those things every time I leave the house. I look like a stereotypical person-who-doesn't-understand-what's-around-her so everyone talks around me like I'm not here. And I come back anyway. And I come back because I care about other people.

Being able to love and care about people doesn't make communication with nonautistic people easy. It doesn't make my reading or hearing comprehension magically get better. It doesn't make my ability to communicate magically get any better. It doesn't magically do anything other than make me keep coming back and trying over and over again no matter how hard it is and how many times I hear crap about how I'm either an idiot or an unfeeling monster just because I couldn't read the mind of someone who's not communicating directly or in a way I understand, or just because I couldn't figure out that I was going to offend someone. I almost decided not to post again though because you didn't answer the question of the person before you. You just said stuff like "well just read it and it will make sense".

I. READ. IT. TWENTY. TIMES.

Then I came back and tried to write this post all over again. More than twenty times. I lost count. And then deleted it because I was afraid yo'd think I was stupid. And then tried to write again. And just kept crying (and I don't normally cry) because I couldn't figure out what you wanted or what was going on no matter how hard I tried, and couldn't figure out what to write no matter how hard I tried either. And wondered whether to just stick to the point (all autistic people are not like you say) or to get into the comment I didn't understand and then worry about the whole conversation jumping the rails and not being able to get back to the main point. Then I looked again and it turned out it was true. Because I made one false move, one misunderstanding, then I'm stupid, don't care about people, unloving, and totally prove your point about how all autistic people are materialistic jerks who use women for the status of being normal and aren't capable of love. And then you talk aabout how much you hate having to explain things to us. (Seriously, try having to predict a zillion social cues and hour and explaining will look like the easy half of the job.) Because if I were who I really am, a reasonably loving and caring person who doesn't mean badly, then I would be able to understand all sorts of social cues that I can't understand, predict your responses to what I say, etc. That's not how reality works for autistic people. Caring just means we keep trying, it doesn't mean we get it right on the first try. It doesn't mean we magically grow abilities we don't have.

Anyway, I'm sorry I offended you. I didn't mean to. Please don't hate me for it. I'm not who you think I am.

anbuend, you don't owe the troll an apology and you don't have to defend yourself. If anything, the troll owes you and everyone else on here an apology, though I wouldn't count on ever getting one.

Anbuend already explained all the ways you are incorrect in your assumptions about her (I don't fit your assumptions either, for that matter).

You've come onto a forum populated by people who have varying degrees of language difficulties - expressive and receptive both. These difficulties are neurological in origin, which means that many of us either do not understand or have to stop and think through possible ulterior meanings before being able to read between those lines. It is not always automatic. Many will take your words literally and at face value. If you do not wish to accommodate that, why are you even here in the first place? Why do you say that autistic ways of comprehending language and communication are personal flaws to complain about? Is it really so much hard work for you to be explicit and make as much of the subtext into text as possible?

That frustration and extra energy you put into communicating with autistic people? It's the same going the other way for many of us, and as Anbuend said, one mistake is enough to be dismissed or mocked or bullied.

Honestly, I couldn't tell whether you were trolling or serious. If you were serious about what you said, it was clear you were generalizing what you thought all people with AS are like on the basis of what a few or even one has said and done to and around you. Such as your friend and the way he referred to you as a Christian accountability partner. The thing about that is, you assumed that meant he didn't value as a friend, and were hurt, and then held onto that for how many years? Before you finally asked him. Odds are, he told you the outright truth when you explained it. Unfortunately, your assumptions about whether you can tell that he is lying or not based on reading his verbal and nonverbal cues? Are probably wrong. In my experience, NTs tend to not be able to read me correctly at all, even though they seem to love to assume the worst, and refuse to believe what I say about my own thoughts and opinions when they decide they are capable of reading my mind.

That whole thing you described, though? I've been through it. Your friend probably meant exactly what he said when you asked.

But now you've decided that all Aspies are terrible people because of that, and that all of us are the same. That we have the same opinions, the same goals, that we use language the same way (to spite you, apparently, even though you're largely irrelevant to us beyond your attempt to engage us here). And that we have to communicate with you on your terms.

And that last bit? None of us do. None of us owe you that just because you came here and started complaining about all of us because of the actions of a few of us that you probably misinterpreted. If you want to talk, try communicating on our terms and stop with the insults. Stop with the prejudice.

And when I say "on our terms" I mean be explicit. Don't play with innuendo or double meanings or accuse anyone of being too stupid to get the point when they fail to read between your lines and find your subtext. We have to do this every day in the rest of the world, the least you could do is make an effort to do the same here.

You missed Anbuend's point about being a minority. She may have missed yours (I don't know, her point seemed clear enough to me). All she said is that being a minority does not mean you cannot hold prejudiced views about minorities. This is absolutely true.

Oh, and lay the heck off Anbuend. She's pretty amazing. So far? You're not.

Last edited by Verdandi on 25 Jan 2011, 4:30 am, edited 1 time in total.

Don't feed the troll.

And to answer the OP's question, I think that people on the spectrum that I have met offer a pretty good representation of the full diversity of the human condition, with all of the emotions, personality types, strengths, weaknesses, joys, sorrows, likes, dislikes, introverts, extroverts, full range of IQs...everything. There are some pretty amazing people here, and yes...there are some trolls too. I believe it is wrong to generalize about people regardless of neurotype. Every human being is unique...no two are exactly alike, just like snowflakes.

anbuend, verdandi, pensieve, league girl, everyone...please don't be offended by the troll, and for god's sake please don't be fooled into thinking the troll represents all NTs. There are some pretty nice NTs in the world too, even if you have to look very hard to find them.