A lost Generation of Autistic people?

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I also live my life on my own terms. I've ignored every bit of advice to appear as normal and I do not regret it.

This is the point I was making: our determination of what is "normal" is political, not scientific. It's the same with handedness. In a world where most everything is built for right-handed people, being left-handed can indeed impair everyday functioning, and can thus be considered a disorder if we wanted to call it that.

I agree with that premise; I am 60 ( I will be 61 this month) and I am still dealing with the fact that I am viewed as a little ret*d. I have been referred to by almost every negative epithet that can be thought of in my lifetime and I have often wondered if my life would have turned out differently if I would have crossed this bridge earlier. I realized I was different but I didn't know in what way. Maybe this would have been easier if I had known about HFA at an earlier age.

Surf Rider posted, "Something that's strange to me is that, even though homosexuality occurs about as frequently as autism - about 1% of the population - homosexuality is not considered to be a disorder, while autism is considered to be a disorder. Why is that?"

Homosexuality was listed as a disorder in the DMS until 1973 when it was removed.

Yes, I recently learned this. The APA voted 5,854 to 3,810 to remove it, which supports my case that "disorders" are in some ways political constructs based on society's worldview.

Typically, teachers did notice that we were different. But, when I was a kid, the only resources available were for "slow" kids, so they weren't to offer any special assistance. I'm not convinced that the assistance is really helping the younger generation. You have normal people trying to make them normal, which seems like a reasonable goal.

It would be better if you had Aspies working with other Aspies to identify what they are good at, and develop those first, to properly build up their self esteem. Then you could tackle the tough problem of teaching social interaction despite obvious sensory and cognitive deficits.

Even without assistance, I think a surprising number of older Aspies managed to do OK, especially when compared to how the younger generation is doing. We had more free time, which allowed us to gain confidence via our special interests. I think the younger generation spends so much time trying to be normal that they lack the time to develop marketable job skills.

Homosexuality WAS very definitely considered a "disorder" even in my lifetime. Gays were often given shock treatment for it. And it was not removed from the DSM until 1973.

As was pointed out above the numbers are not equivalent. About five percent of the population is gay, and about another five percent is bisexual. Only 1 to 1.5 percent are autistic.

Left handedness is about 10 percent of the population ( about the same as gays and bi's combined) and more than autistics. But in my parents' day the public schools would try force children to use their right hands. Though they didnt quite go so far as to put you in the loony bin.

But I kinda get your drift that what is considered a "disorder" is quite relative to the culture and society of a particular time and place.

For example one of the most debilitating traits a person can have today is dyslexia. The ability to read and write seems to us today to be as basic as the ability to eat.So dyslexia is considered a serious disability. But for most of 200 thousand years that the human species has existed there was no such thing as writing. Written records (and thus history itself) didnt exist until 3000 BC (even then it was only in couple small places like Egypt and Sumer), and it took thousands of years to spread to the rest of the world. And even after it spread to the world with in society reading and writing was only practiced by scribes and aristocrats (only a minority of folks even in literate civilizations). Gutenberg invented movable type in 1450 making mass production of books possible which slowly abetted the spread of literacy within society. But it probably wasnt until around 1850 that literacy became the norm of the common people in advanced western countries. So from the stone age all of the way up to only six generations ago a dyslexic person would not have stood out as having dyslexia, or stood out as being in anyway different from anyone else (much less as being "disabled" in any way).

There are certainly fashions that come and go in regard to the measures of "normalcy" but we still have low odds of ever being the model citizens. However, the Inca were fascinated with cross-eyed people, and China thought women should have smaller feet, so there is some hope if you want it.

Perhaps it is time we stop doing the "poor me" thing and simply oppose the constant defining of us as unacceptable by the "normal" culture. Temple Grandin said that, "if it were not for aspies, human culture would still be sitting around a fire at the mouth of a cave". This is very true.

Certainly, much technical progress has been driven by aspies, and they were the inspiration for Hans Asperger to define us as worth saving from the ovens but they are still a small minority of us. Many never find an interest that is worth including in the textbooks. Many more remain frustrated by the communication difficulties. I made a prototype vehicle with thorough integration of chassis and suspension that is still being written up thirty years later, while the rest of the industry slowly creeps along in that direction. Mustn't upset the buggy-whip makers!