Poll: Diagnosed status and view of AS as a disability

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Same here, though I also have non-social stuff that is disabling.

Yes its like we differ in neurology probably for evolutional sakes. Looking at the most usual structure (typical NT) makes it easier to measure the difference. Between me and the typical NT there is a world and we can differ so much that it becomes scary because its getting close to impossible to understand each other. For example their morality or how they switch from one thought to the next cant even be explained to me sometimes. Listening to a typical NT can make me think he/she is completely unlogic and that therefore anything is possible. Scary because too many solutions involves the negative once too.

It's a different brain structure that also happens to be a disability.

My friend with CP, who uses a motorized wheelchair, has told me that she doesn't want a cure for her CP. She knows she's different and she's fine with that. She also considers herself disabled.

Her sort-of boyfriend, who has a spinal injury and uses a manual wheelchair, has gotten into shouting matches with people who want to pray for him to be cured. He finds the idea downright offensive.

Neither of them refuse special help that they need, though. They both ride the disability bus and get accomodations as disabled students. They just don't think needing accomodations is the same as needing a cure.

I can handle day to day.
I can manage money and am relatively good at keeping myself groomed and healthy.
I can put on an act and fit in - for a while.

But I have also experienced the boss saying: "you've gotta go because people here don't like you" which was mentioned by one of the posters above.
I have also experienced those times where NT family imposes upon me their interpretation of my life: "Oh you must be so lonely"
Or the belief (to the point where it's insulting) that I must feel a certain way about a situation and the parties involved stress that "it's okay to admit it" and ignore the true way I feel.
There remains, also, a canyon... dividing me from any understanding of the concept or value of social standing and social posturing.
Many other issues arise in the "human interaction" side of life.

Now I see the word disability as
"preventing, or demanding substantially more effort, the achievement of desired accomplishments or goals". Were it not required or expected of me to interact with the general populace on more than a minimal level.... I would say it is not a disability.

Considering that, as a member of humanity, in a world where daily integration is the expected norm, and where the majority of services and employments are bound in the cloth of human interaction, I have a difficulty being accepted and understood (especially in the long term, by family, friends, employers, co workers and etc)... I must state that I find it quite difficult to achieve my long term desire to acquire and maintain financial independance (among other things) due to my social impairments. I have in fact been informed (by the "authority" involved) - often directly - that it is my social impairments robbing me of these goals.

Thus... it is a disability.

If I'd been identified sooner, and had some extra training and help, some guidance towards education that would have led me to appropriate (solitary) career training, back when I was young enough that fighting for survival wasn't a daily battle... perhaps I could call my ASD an "inconvenience" ... but as it stands, the problems have compounded, the social mistakes one might overlook in a younger person, and the lack of desire amongst the medical, social, and community officials to assist an older person in repairing the past...

That inconvenience has matured right along with me, and become a problem.

Last edited by OddFiction on 09 Aug 2011, 9:04 am, edited 2 times in total.

I think I would literally refer to ASD as a difference. However, it can be a disability. Every case is different, and every person is different. One can turn the disability into a strength with the appropriate amount of self introspection and compensation.

For example, many of my NT friends are far more socially awkward than I am, simply because they aren't as confident. Through learning how to read body language and learning conversational techniques I've boosted my confidence enough to come across as happy and social.

I still need to wear sunglasses wherever I go due to light sensitivity, but eh, you win some, you lose some.

Some things about Aspergers I consider good, others I don't really like.

A black person living in 1850's USA is "disabled" and has a "difference".

No, not the same thing. Oppressed (or in this case enslaved) groups are not disabled because they are oppressed.

You can remove a person from an oppressive environment and they're no longer oppressed. You can move a disabled person into an environment where they are accommodated, but the disability still exists.

Disabled people can be oppressed as well, though. So, getting rid of the oppression means the disability still exists, but the disabled person is treated as an equal.

I don't think that disability should be considered a negative thing. Right now there's not that much of a space between the idea that disability exists and that disability makes you a target for oppression. If we can widen that space and remove the oppression, then people will stop thinking that the solution for removing oppression is to remove the disability (or perception of disability) from the person.

"If I were NT, people would hire me..." is like a black person saying, "If I were white, people would hire me." Might be true, but it's beside the point. The problem isn't the black skin or the autism; it's that there's prejudice against black skin or autism that's stopping people from hiring perfectly competent workers. We've got to get rid of this idea that if you're disabled, then you'll naturally be an object of pity or a second-class citizen. We got rid of the idea that black people are automatically second-class citizens; we should be doing the same for the disabled.

Yes, absolutely. I wasn't trying to neglect that point, considering that it is central to my point that it is not like racism.



Much agreed.



Also much agreed.

I don't consider it a disability. I'd rather call it a disorder. Disorder implies that something does not match the typical blueprints for the human brain, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's bad. AS sometimes makes things difficult for me, but I still don't see it as disabling and would rather not label it that way.

For the record, I was professionally diagnosed in 1994.

There does look to be some correlation here but I don't know if its statistically significant. I'll see if I can find someone who can figure that out for me, as I'm really weak in statistics.

I am diagnosed with Asperger's, and I view it as a difference.

OP, are you asking whether I see it as a disability or difference in ME or in people with ASD as a whole?

Because I try hard to only speak for myself, and for me, it's obvious to anyone, sometimes without even having to speak to me, that I have a disability.

As far as people who claim that it's not a disability, I question where their significant impairment is that is necessary for diagnosis. But, to each his own, and I'm not going to get that far into that.

I meant as a whole. Not whether everyone who identifies with AS is disabled, or whether you yourself consider yourself disabled, but whether you associate the diagnosis "Asperger's Syndrome" with a disability.