Are these people unsuitable for public speaking endeavours?

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I don't think I made this clear in my previous posts, but I will emphasise this now...I not only have a business relationship with him but a personal relationship with him, meaning that we also 'hang out' as friends. These two relationships, because of the nature of how our businesses are set up, have to both be comfortable if we are going to have a social relationship, and this means I have to be comfortable around him to a basic degree. This is why I already suggested that I would like to stop hanging out with him socially and only become a business contact with him, which will fully solve this situation, for me at least.

As I have already said before, I am an extremely self-concious person to the point where it debilitates me at times and often leads me to think about how others may think about other people to an obsessive degree. This is why I feel like I have to ''protect'' this guy, He can, however, still become a speaker and do whatever he wants, but if he does so, I can longer hang out with him socially and will only allow him to become aquainted with me in a business sense. I am fine with either decision, but he has to decied this himself.

He is completely fine as a speaker, but I do not want to be around him if he makes me uncomfortable.

I already mentioned where this sense of embarrassment towards comes from, and this is my current obstacle right now if I want to connect more with the autistic community rather the supporters of this community, who tend to think in the 'correcting' way because these people are NTS and have that view of disablity.

Although I, by no means, set the universal standard for speaking, all the NTs I have talked to about this issue took a similar stance to my mom in that when you are making your livelihood using a public forum, you have to protect your image no matter who you are or what disabilities you have. This is a paying job, and in order to satisfy your mostly NT customers, you have to adopt a certian image for them to feel comfortable around you.

Sadly, this is the reality of how things play in the world of professional relations, but I can't just suddenly decide to change my mind on the underlying value of these messages because the vast majority of the people are not adopting a different stance on them. I have to please the majority of my audience. It is not my job to change the way this audience thinks...that's what people like Ari Neeman do. I am not a policy maker here. I am simply someone who has experienced the autistic world at an earlier stage in my life, and my job is to tell people its not the end of the world and ways to manage things. That's it.

So I guess you have chosen to be a pawn within the corrupt system without thinking of steps to bring it to a different level. It is your choice and I am not the one to tell you that you should do otherwise. However, if you do continue the way you continue, you will never be acting in fully inclusive and accepting ways, since the current predominant system (the framework) is by default exclusionist and ableist. That is all.

What steps would you recommend though? I have been trying to think of solutions myself, but it is tough. I am trying to create ways in which I can be more inclusive, without sacrificing my majority audience and having them dismiss my views. Perhaps I can't do this since I am so afraid how others will react to it, just like how I worry about how they will react to the guys porn obsession, and unfairly question his credibility.

The underlying motivation that is making this choice difficult is that I have a strong need to be liked by people and to please them, and by buying that into that rhetoric I am keeping this audience happy. But by doing so, I am unable to push things forward, which is personally what I lean towards.

I am so torn. Maybe I'm the one who shouldn't be speaking since I just can't make everyone happy.

And not only that, but I am a poor representative of the autistic population. People should not look up to someone who pushed herself so hard to eliminate her autistic tendencies that she became anxious and essentially paranoid. Someone who is so concerned about people liking her and fitting in to the point where she is unable to convey the messages of inclusion that will serve as the real benefit to this community. I am a detriment rather than a benefit, and am not helping anyone.

I am such a great role model! (sarcasm)

Quit sounding so high-strung. No wonder you are a nervous wreck, you're worrying about it so much. Also who said you needed to make everyone happy? Do you think I come on here and expect everyone to be happy with what I have to say? What you need to understand is that people have agendas by which they want the world to work and if you say something that even scraches the paranoid circumference of their agenda then they will bite at you. Anneurysm you gotta stop worrying about people liking you and just do the things you need to in order to get by and make concrete sense of everything else you do and if no one else likes that then screw them! Quit thinking you are a detriment to anyone. You aren't a detriment. You were trying to do what you thought was right.

Anneurysm,

You have a huge and effective grasp of all that is required of you in terms of Public Speaking, sitting there in your own head. (and a Mom you can bounce ideas off and get good answers).

That is what we need from people. Dedication, professionalism and keen awareness of their own strengths and weaknesses.

Morally you are not obliged to get on anybody else's style of inclusionist agenda it will only backfire if you do anyway and when you accept payment, you also accept an obligation to the client that must be fulfilled.

Where you are falling down is in terms of personal relationships.

You need to ask yourself one simple question:

"Do I, the private self, enjoy and benefit from this person in my personal life?"

If no, you need to distance from them.

Because our personal relationships are their to be good for us, not a burden. You can maintain a professional aquaintanceship at a far greater distance.

It's only a matter of how you present yourself. You can say how your values have changed and what has caused you to change your views. You can also say that even though you have become the person you are now, you suffer these side effects.

It's a good idea to keep a strictly professional relationship with #1. He should realize that being the person you are now, you are not really on his level anymore and that he look up to you as a sort of a mentor rather than a friend. Perhaps it would make sense for you to generally not enter a personal relationship with anybody on the spectrum at this point, since their social "faults" make you feel uncomfortable. However, no one says that you shouldn't continue speaking about ASD. On the contrary, you are a valuable speaker since you have a much more personal connection with the subject than any purely NT speaker who presents on ASD.

I don't have a personal inclusionist agenda. I just see what autistic self-advocates are pushing so hard for and why. I am also familiar with the underlying ideology of the services that are designated to do good for people with ASD while in fact, segregating the same population even further. It's hard to not speak up about it when you are so aware of it and you encounter the direct effects of it every day.

I think this is a brilliant post Mathgirl...says it all.

But just to clarify...I did not see you as pushing a personal inclusion agenda...I was more refering to Anneurysm's perception of an inclusion agenda incompatible with where she is now being pushed on her...a subtle distinction, but a telling one. Perhaps I let it trip out a bit too easily without full explanation, because it is a concept I personally have to deal with *ALL* the time at different levels and in different contexts. Sorry about that.

Some great advice all around: I really appreciate it.

I do think that I should keep my relationships with people on the spectrum professional and focused on ASD related issues. When they are of that scope, I see them as an incredibly valuable asset in that I can use things we have talked about as a platform to inform people about the *real* issues going on in the autistic population...the stuff that professionals aren't even aware of.

MathGirl can recall that the situation with her counsellor is now being used as a concrete example in my sessions of how professionals who seem to be qualified can get ASD totally wrong. It is issues like this that I strongly want the public to be aware of. What I have to do is 1) spend more time discussing these issues with people that experience them and 2) push this stuff whenever I can in my sessions. The more time I spend doing this, the less self-concious I will be doing it.

I also need to place more emphasis on my own struggles with anxiety and warn people of pushing their kids too hard to make them 'normal', and what the repercussions are. The girl I mentor has been pushed too hard by her mom, and she has developed anxiety issues *in addition* to ASD, which I am helping her work through. I will never be 'normal' and by trying to rid myself of AS, I just created different issues for myself, which are just as debilitating.

If I had kept my relationship with #1 professional, I would not have issues with him. As well, I was asking the wrong question about him. I would love to support his speaking endeavours and believe he is a very professional and capable speaker, but our personal relationship needs to change before I can do that. Just because we are both in the same field does not mean we will be compatible as ''buddies''. I am planning to be honest and firm to him about this.

You will soon realise that all of us on here believe that the public and professionals have seized on to and created a ghost of what we really are. Though I think you'll find that many people are still in the gilded cage of diagnoses and impaired social communication that people put us in. It's clear even above from communication between Mathgirl and Zeraeph that they have the potential to be as social as any other human group on the earth. There's something I think you can see the professionals messed up with.


Well there is nothing wrong with this approach.

"Being social" is not about being able to intellectually devise and analyse PR strategy.

An update.

I've been chatting with person #2 and getting to know him a little more. Throughout this talk, I have given some clear pointers about knowing your audience and how the image you project online is important if you want to cater to people who will look up to you. He didn't take it personally at all and thought my suggestions were very helpful. I think that the main issue is that he is young and yet to figure out what his real passions are. He seems to be really into weed, and I suggested that he channel this passion into something productive for him (that isn't illegal!), like working at a head shop. According to my friend that knows him, he and this other AS guy cause a lot of trouble, and he was even arrested for stealing a car. He seems to really need a lot of guidance, and I am thinking that perhaps I could serve as a role model to him to get in the right direction.

Mom and I talked about Person 1 again the day before I was going to go talk to him. She suggested that I not do it in person, because it would seem like I am interrogating him. I have a tendency to explain every little detail of a situation too, and often it is more than the actual point or what the person really needs to hear. My mom also suggested that before I talk to him, I ask his GFs mom, whose email I have, about her opinion on the situation. I just emailed her and hopefully I will get a response. I originally suggested his own mom, but my mom warned me against that, suggesting she may get defensive about her son.

As well, she said that neither tell he nor his GFs mom need to know about my discomfort with having autistics as hangout buddies, as they may take it personally. I should instead explain that this pseudo-rejection is due to a personal issue I have. Essentially, and I would agree with this, the problem is with my own senstivities and not him. I bet if someone who wasn't as socially aware as me was in the same situation I was, they would not see the things that bother me about him as issues. He and his gf are largely isolated, and they really need more autistic friends who will truly accept them instead of subconciously picking them apart.

The problem is, he is texting me quite a lot asking to hang with him and his gf. It annoys me, and serves as a reminder that I really need to get this done.

Being social means communicating with each other willingly. Like what we are doing right now.

An draining hour or so a day publicly promulgating detached, intellectual text largely out of a sense of obligation to self and others hardly adds up to "communicating with each other willingly" let alone "being social".

Well since you're still willing to keep posting out of obligation then you must be willing to do it. Since you are communicating with people then you are still fulfilling that part too. Since being social means you communicate willingly with other people over a period of time that means you are being social.

No it doesn't...and one day I hope to are finally going to learn that you cannot "finesse" people into being who you want them to be rather than who they really are.

Finesse people? Now I don't know what you're trying to prove but I have never tried to force people to do anything. I told them what I think is right. If you can't say why I am wrong your best reply is not to accuse me of forcing anything. I have about as much power as anyone who isn't a moderator on the forum to force people to do anything: Zilch

Last edited by Gedrene on 09 Sep 2011, 6:16 am, edited 2 times in total.