Envious of other minorities

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Didn't say that, you completely misunderstood me. I definitely think those of us on the spectrum get treated as subhumans. I've experienced it myself.

Everything sounds much better when it's worded nicely, huh? They still ban aspies and other disabled people, though.
You have ASD, you don't get any kind of resident's visa. That's how it works.


The peak number of afro-americans lynched was some 50-100 persons annually, or 0.0007% - 0.0014% of the total afro-american population. How many persons with ASD face violence? Nobody really knows, but from my experience it's >30%.


That was very offensive. And stupid, as facts aren't on your side.

This site breeds hysteria.

Just don't be so hysteric about it.

I am not, I have way to much depression to care about almost anything.

The answer is no, not really. However it is a pity that for all the reasons which we are all painfully aware having autistic pride marches is not really an option, and thats where the gay community scores well. And good luck to them too.

Well we certainly do this side of the pond, its called the Autism Act (2009) http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2009/15/contents

In fairness, and during the last century Autistic people were tortured and killed in the US, don't believe me, read Neurotribes for (and with respect) the idiots guide. And thats before we get into what a certain Austrian gentleman (sic) did during the the period preceding and during WWII. So there is genuine context here. I certainly don't think thats retched organisation Autism Speaks helps the paranoia for some folks either to be honest. Thats said in the UK there is certainly no discrimination of autistic people for being autistic, quite the opposite in fact. Thats is not to say everyone understands, they certainly do not.

What about employment rate?

And this hasn't really stopped.

Autistic boy needs hospital treatment after ‘bullies’ leave plank of wood impaled in his head

4 in custody after mentally disabled man tied up, tortured on Facebook Live

I'm not exactly 'envious' of other minorities but I do feel that the LGBT community, especially the hard-left "SJW" wing of it is treating the autistic rights movement as somekind of branch office rather than as an independent movement. In a way this is a good thing as it means that we have more 'allies', but it also means that autistic people are encouraged to "identify as autistic" as an alternative to obtaining (or at least trying to obtain) a scientific diagnosis; which sounds harmless enough until you realise that what it actualy means is invalidating decades of autistic activism and research; turning autism into somekind of meme rather than a medical fact.

That's a good point. It's rare to see overt, agressive anti-autistic discrimination here but we still have our own version of the glass ceiling.

So, is this a matter of "identifying as autistic" VS "being autistic" similar to "identifying as gay" VS "being gay"? In all honesty, I'm still trying to understand this whole thread. All of this is new to me, and I was relatively unaware of the amount of violence and mistreatment happening to autistic individuals.

If it is the case of identity vs being, then it sounds similar to discussions I've seen on "How much does your sexuality define you?". For some, they are quick to point out that their sexuality is only a small part of who they are. However, this can sometimes backfire as by pointing out how much of a small part it is of them, it can also make them come across as insecure about it, or that they see their sexuality as a negative thing.

But, at the same time- I get it. I'd hate to be suddenly introduced as "the gay friend" because that would suggest that the only interesting thing about me is that I'm gay (I certainly hope this isn't the case. ). Yet, if I wasn't gay then I would be different as a person because I would've had different experiences.

(Spoilers ahead for Degrassi: next class)

Sometimes people prefer to say things like "I identify as gay" rather than "I am gay" because they don't want to be seen as just that, and only that. I think Degrassi: next class covered this well with the character of Miles (who is bisexual) when he gets into a writing program only to find out that he was chosen partly due to his minority status since the writing program aimed to boost young writers who weren't considered to be part of the majority of writers in order to promote diversity.

Miles is understandably annoyed at this because he sees it as tokenism, and he doesn't just want to be some token bisexual guy that they accepted to make them look progressive. So, when he goes to be interviewed, he intentionally deflects the conversation away from the topic of his boyfriend, and tries to get the interviewer to focus on his written pieces. The interviewer isn't impressed as it's clear that Miles is purposefully playing down how much impact his boyfriend has had on his life and his own sexuality.

Although he never pretends to be straight, he plays down his sexuality and aims to prove that he is no different than some straight writer to try and show that he should be treated similarly to one. When his English teacher finds out that he has been purposefully hiding information from the interviewer, he decides to convince Miles to reapply, but this time to be more honest.

The class take part in an exercise that points out how different each student’s life experiences were from one another, and how Miles’ writings actually helped people from backgrounds that you wouldn’t expect, since his unique experience made up out of seemingly small things (the abuse his suffered from his family, dealing with supporting his boyfriend ect.) actually added up into a larger picture, that larger picture being who he is as a person.

Sure, Miles isn’t just bisexual. He isn’t just a victim of abuse. Likewise, he isn’t just someone overcoming addiction problems. Or a carer for his disabled boyfriend. But if you took away any of that, his experience of who he is would be very different. His character has learnt different things from each of these things in his life, and by doing so he is able to give valuable insight and advice to others that they perhaps wouldn’t have otherwise considered, which can benefit other people’s lives as it lets them see the world from another perspective and potentially learn from it.

So now that we’ve covered why someone might want to “identify” as something rather than “be” that thing in terms of sexuality, let’s talk about autism.

You bring up an interesting point, about how sometimes the word “identity” can be somewhat invalidating. The word makes it seem more casual and ignores the impact autism can have on an individual, since anyone can identify as anything but not actually be that thing, so in a way the word has lost its credibility. You’re right, sometimes people can use this to make something a joke.

I’ll admit that I wasn’t aware that there are people pushing others to say they “identify” rather than they “are” in terms of autism. I knew that this is sometimes the case in the LGBT community for being gay VS identifying, but I was unaware it was going on to those with autism. Personally, I’ve never come across anyone who has told me that they identify as autistic, usually people say that they are autistic.

Anyway, this whole thread has given me a lot to think about.

It's more about identification vs scientific diagnosis, the process of how you show to others that you're autistic rather than how it defines your wider personality; which is a shame as you've written alot of interesting things about it!

The act of identifying as autistic is not a casual one; indeed many are very passionate about it. The casualness takes form in a larger, unintended way. By "identifying", they are making Autism a casual thing which is devoid of objective signs for diagnosis. Instead of being a tangible medical fact, autism instead becomes a kind of fashion, being whatever you want it to be- a social meme. Like you said, anyone can identify as anything but not actually be that thing.

The problem is that the people from this far-left "SJW" wing of the LGBT movement are so accustomed to the concept of 'identification over all else' that they fail to realise that it's neither relevant nor helpful to the subject of Autism. It's not your job to identify with autism, you can't identify with autism anymore than you can identify with a broken leg; it's simply there whether you like it or not. (for the record, I'm NOT saying that autism is as bad as having a broken leg, it's just an example )

Part of the root of this issue is that these people are career anti-establishmentarians. They see the medical establishment as "gatekeepers" to diagnosis. To oppose this, they feel that self-diagnosis should be an alternative or perhaps even a replacement to scientific diagnoses. Like I said earlier, this sounds all nice and good until you realise that it's invalidating autism's place as a scientific entity with decades of research behind it via the scientific method. And just to be clear, I'm not talking about people who have had difficulty obtaining a diagnosis, I'm instead talking about people who don't even care about getting a scientific diagnosis because they're apparently too good for science. We should certainly help and accept people who are attempting to obtain a diagnosis, but selling off our scientific credibility is not the way to do it.

There's also a factor of alienisation happening. I've seen multiple autistic activists being criticised or even rejected by this political group. They're very absolutist people, they'll treat you as if you're an alt-right homophobe even if you're a left-wing liberal person who supports LGBT rights. The thing is, you may be left-wing and pro-LGBT, but you're probably not left-wing and pro-LGBT enough for them. And this is all despite the fact that autism is not inherently left or right wing; infact a lot of influential autistic figures are capitalist entrepreneurs. This is one reason why the "SJW" wing has attempted to criticise and marginalise some great people such as Temple Grandin who have done a lot to help the autistic community.

Ah, my bad. I thought perhaps that people were just referring to how it affects your personality, how you view your sense of self, and how you show/present that to people, ect. Yeah, hopefully I didn’t go too overboard on that. Sorry if I did.

So, I take it this is more of a matter of people identifying as autistic, but not taking any steps to get an official diagnosis. Well, now I feel a tad silly.



So, you’re concerned about people twisting autism to be what it isn’t, basically. I suppose you could compare this to what’s happening in the asexual community. The definition of asexual is someone who doesn’t feel any sexual attraction, however there are individuals out there who claim to be “asexual yet have a high sex drive”, which in itself is highly contradictory. You can’t be asexual (someone who doesn’t feel sexual attraction) and have a high sex drive. The two terms just don’t fit together.

Some people view it as a spectrum, and that demisexuality should be classed under asexuality. However, others disagree pointing out that demisexuality (only feeling sexually attracted to someone you know/ have been in a relationship for a while with) would probably fall under normal hetero/homo/bisexuality. Then there’s the whole debate over whether emotional attraction and sexual attraction can be separate, ect.



I’ll admit I was somewhat judgmental and hesitant to reply to your post when I saw the abbreviation “SJW” since often times when I see that term being used, it’s often to throw the whole of the LGBT movement under the bus, since some people can’t seem to separate the extremists from people who are more moderate.

I see a similar argument when people ask “How can you identify with being gay, when it’s simply something you are? It’s not like you had a choice in the matter”, and yeah- that’s correct. I never chose to be gay, I didn’t wake up one day and think “Huh, maybe I should be gay now”, despite what some people might think.

In theory, being gay should be like having brown eyes, just one trait of many that an individual might possess. But the main difference between the two is that people don’t get disowned for having brown eyes, psychologically tortured, or thrown in jail and/ or killed. At least, not usually anyway. Many people around the world go through such treatment for being gay.



There are conditions which I think I might have, but I am cautious not to say that I have these conditions because I’m aware that until I get a diagnosis, I can’t be 100% sure. I’m currently in the process of talking to the disability support group at my University, trying to arrange for testing to see if I would qualify for a dyscalculia diagnosis. I hope that I can finally get on some kind of waiting list, it’ll be good to one day be able to know if both mine and the people around me suspicions are correct.

I just hope I passed maths this year, and if I haven’t- then I hope I can get some kind of help, because I’ve tried all kinds of things to learn maths and none of them have seemed to work for me so far. Teachers would often try to convince me not to seek a diagnosis, because they worried that I’d take it badly and that I might stop trying if my confidence went down due to the diagnosis.

But really, I wished I’d been tested when I was still in school, maybe I could’ve received more help that way. I spent four months revising for my maths exam, and this was at a point where I was doing three maths lessons in a row every week, but I still managed to fail. I hated it when some teachers would suggest that I “just don’t try hard enough”, that’s all I do! I push myself to achieve because I know I have a weak spot in maths.

Personally, I think it’s up to the individual if they want to pursue a diagnosis in something, but I think if they’re not diagnosed then they should mention this to people. It annoys me when my parents go around telling people that I’m dyscalculic, yes- I display a lot (if not all) of the symptoms, but I can’t be sure if I have it or not until I get results back on testing, and right now I haven’t even got a place on a waiting list, but I’m working on changing that so hopefully in the near future I will have one.



I’ll be honest here, I don’t know much about politics, so I can’t really comment much on this. I’m still learning the basics and figuring out where I stand on issues and such.

No need to feel silly, I know that this is already a complicated subject at the best of times.



Yes it's a lot like that. They may be well-intentioned but when looking into the details of it it's actualy quite invalidating and dismissive of what asexuality really is. It's like when people say "well everyone has a bit of Autim in them", when what they really mean is introvertness.



Indeed I feel hesitant to use that term myself. I could say 'safe space culture' but that still sounds as if I'm talking about anyone and everyone who uses safe spaces rather than those who abuse safe spaces to further their segregatory politics. The problem is that the....."SJWs" don't actualy have a name for themselves, which means that we're left with little alternative than to use that term which is unfortunately co-opted by right-wing homophobes.

I guess the reason for them not having a name is that they expect to speak for the entire autism community, and thus they will just see their political movement as 'autistic' or 'anti-ableist' rather than the recent, university-born thing that they are in the wider autism community.

Edit: 'ctrl-left' is a better name. It means essentialy the same thing as SJW except that it has more balanced origins rather than being a tool of the far right.



Do you mean that gay people identify as a way of showing pride?

At least in my experience 'identification' is more common to be said by trans people rather than gay people, though I still believe what you say. A trans member of this forum could explain what identification truely means to them as a trans person; and that's exactly the point, they are speaking about what a word means for the trans community.
Being trans isn't the same as being autistic, and thus the same politics and words don't always work in the same way. You can be trans and autistic, but they are still two different things. The safe space culture instead takes a 'once size fits all' approach without thinking of the details that might entail.




I'd recommend that you try to work with your disability support group as much as possible, as once you leave education it can be significantly harder to obtain a diagnosis.

I see your fustration, the feeling that you could be treated like a failure when you weren't given the help that you could have gotten.

It can be a complicated issue; it's right that people treat their suspiciouns as a provisional diagnosis, yet at the same time we shouldn't treat non-diagnosed people as 2nd-class aspies as there can be a lot of reasons why someone hasn't got a diagnosis, many of which could not be their fault; such as a lack of local funding for diagnosis professionals, poor autistic awareness in their region and people mistakingly treating a girl as NT because they think that autism is a 'guy thing' despite the fact that one of the most famous aspies (Temple Grandin) is female.



Fair enough.

Last edited by TUAndrew on 17 Aug 2017, 4:03 pm, edited 2 times in total.

It all depends on what passport you have. I'm not getting the official diagnosis just to avoid legal discrimination.

Talking about the SJWs, just think of one thing. These guys are all for the "individual is nothing, the society is the only thing that matters" idea. And autism - well, it means the lack of social integration (and the lack of urge to be a cogwheel in the social machine, in the first place) - just by the definition. I think this is the main reason whey they don't give a sh*t about us.