For those who think AS/autism isn't a disability

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It is a small, yet vocal, minority of autistics who believe in the "aspie superpowers" ideas.

Although I unreservedly dismiss it, I am not unsympathetic to persons who hold to such viewpoints. When people have been bullied, and have internalized so much abuse and victimization, it is not to be unexpected that they would, almost in defiance, adopt the idea of having, as you wrote, "superior strengths."

Now, in my 50s, I can easily reject the superpowers construct. However, if I had heard about it as a kid, I would likely have accepted it myself.

Actually, when they bother studying self-help skills, there's "surprisingly" little correlation between academic and self-help skills in autistic people. I have "surprising" in quotes, because I can't even tell what they're supposed to have to do with each other, but other people seem surprised by it.

Well, I listed intelligence and self help skills separately NOT only because the DSM does so, but because they ARE different types of abilities. There are movies showing smart people with poor self help skills, and there ARE some pretty dumb people that don't have problems. I guess it is like Math, Logic, Vocabulary, Coordination, and Social endeavors, which one would THINK are related, but AREN'T. I guess it is like muscles where having strong arms doesn't mean you even have enough strength to walk.

Indeed, and a far larger group of us who get tarred with the same brush, merely for discussing the fact that there are some strengths peculiar to being autistic (that don't make us superior, that doesn't mean denying we have problems, and that are more subtle than something like "math" or something), and/or for not wanting to be cured (which doesn't mean denying that we have problems either).

I sometimes feel like there's a bit of a time-divide in the autistic community. I showed up in the online autistic community when there were only three email lists specifically by and for autistic people, and a single web board that almost nobody posted at. Only one of the email lists showed any particular slant towards viewing autism as non-defective (not at all the same as non-disabled, since disabled doesn't mean defective).

The biggest proponents of the view that autistic people did not need a cure (and mind you, they'd been developing this view for longer than I'd been around), were people who had serious trouble taking care of themselves on a daily basis. Campaigning for better services for autistic adults was always one of the main things on their advocacy agendas, along with finding ways of navigating the world as autistic people instead of non-autistic people. They openly rejected doing things in a way that merely outwardly performed as looking "normal", because they knew this was preferring form over function. They never were insulted by the idea that autistic people had trouble doing certain things, but they did also believe that autistic people had certain abilities other people didn't necessarily have (and a lot of those were borne out by research), and they also believed that there was no reason to go for a cure since there are ways of living a good life as autistic.

Most of them were diagnosed with autism, not Asperger's, because the way-before-my-time point at which they all started getting together was a time at which the diagnosis of Asperger's didn't exist. None of them fit the current stereotype of someone who needs no extra assistance with anything, or even someone who needed just barely any.

And so, that was always factored into the no-cure stuff with them.

Some parents openly embraced that message, but other parents rejected it. The "functioning levels" of the children of the parents in question were not different one to the other, it just reflected different attitudes. Among the parents who rejected these messages, they routinely accused the autistic people in question of being far more capable than they were of various things. Some of them accused the autistic people of not even being autistic, and in some cases this resulted in slander campaigns and harassment of not only the autistic people but people close to them (some things never change, they just keep picking a new person to be their target of the day). This began to build up a myth that those who did not want to be cured, were all these super-capable sorts of people who didn't really have any problems and may not be autistic at all.

And since then, there've been a lot of people who've seen the no-cure thing and run with it, but not understood the nuances of it for a person who has real difficulty doing a lot of things. And there've been a lot of people, including some autistic people, who've seen and read the myths about autistic people who believe it, and then just assumed a whole heck of a lot about those of us who don't want a cure, and attached all these things to us that we don't actually believe. It's made it nearly impossible to talk about a cure without hearing that we hate NTs, that we don't understand "real" problems (a lot of us have more of those "real problems" by typical measures than people who say that about us, but of course never mind that), that we have no sensitivity to people with "real" problems (same...), that we want to force everyone to believe exactly as we do (apparently expressing an opinion and explaining it is force, hmm... whereas a lot of us who have prominently had these views a long time have been threatened with all kinds of violence and death for a number of years as well as other forms of actual illegal force and had to learn to live with all that if we want to say our opinions), etc.

I'm sure there are some people who really fit that bill.

But I get more and more the sense that the existence of those few people has been used as a means of ignoring the larger number of us, and those (before my time, which means way before WP's) who came up with a lot of the basic ideas, whose ideas are not so... cartoonified and easily refuted, as the idea that we hate NTs, consider ourselves elite and superior, and don't have any real problems, and that if we do have real problems then our only option is apparently to support a cure, even though that's never been accurate.

If you're interested in more of the history of this part of the autistic community (there are already other things about other parts), you might want to read:

Autism Network International: The Development of a Community and Its Culture

That is a GREAT way to put it! There is a REASON why so many with AS(And YES, many DID get professionally diagnosed!) took so long to be associated, or even diagnosed, with AS! That is that, despite having problems and seeming wierd, our biggest problem deficits seemed to be NO WORSE than NT failings.

If NTs are SO great with social things, then why do SO many do SO badly? Heck, the divorce rate is like 50% or more. Some women marry JUST to get money. Porn is BIG business! Companies like GE(I won't give them free advertising) make LOTS of money to try to get people married. I could go on...

If they remember SO well, or are so great with math, etc... WHY is there so much cheating and lying? You would be SHOCKED at how many people lie on their resumes. Even "TEACHERS" are falsifying education records to get more pay! By doing that, they reduce the integrity of the diploma and that lowers the value of the school which even brings the "EDUCATION" into question! So they are devaluing EVERYTHING including the value of their class, to try to get paid MORE!?!?!?!? So much for LOGIC!

I don't say this to say ALL NTs are evil, bad, or stupid. I don't say this to say ALL AS people are ethical, nice, or geniuses. I say this only to try to bring reason to the discussion.

Thank you very much for that well-written, nuanced posting. I downloaded the article you recommended. So far, I have scanned it. I will read it more thoroughly later.

I have been trying to think of how to express this idea without offending anyone. Unfortunately, I have been unable to come up with a method, so I will just try to say it respectfully.

Perhaps I am wrong, but, speaking as a guy who will be 52 years old later this month, my impression is that most, if not all, of the people who post messages on "aspie superpowers" and the like are quite young. As I said before, given the constant bullying I experienced, I could imagine being attracted to the idea myself when I was a boy.

I don't even really know what you mean by "superpowers". The most fantastic things I have read were not attributed to ALL AS people, and some definitely DO have them. Still, I wouldn't call them "superpowers"

Most people here ARE young, but a number ARE 30+.

When I was interviewed along with another autistic person, we were asked about that particular set of views, and the other person (who's 50) did mention that it's mostly teenagers.

Okay, then that is a good way to explain it. Without engaging in adultism, one could simply say something like, "Most teenagers, autistic or not, are trying to come to terms with their own identity. The "aspie superpower" idea appears to be a way in which these teens are trying to build up their self-esteem."

In the postings I have seen on WP, those who have claimed these aspie "superpowers" believe that they are superior to NTs - like the next stage in evolution.

Kind of ironic! I felt worst when I was like 13. The feelings I had about social problems were about identical to the fealings I had 20 years later when arthritis rendered me nearly an invalid!! !!

Sorry to hear about your arthritis. I have it, too, but, fortunately, I have almost no symptoms with the anti-inflammatory I take.

A lack of self-help skills, even in a "mild" form that those with Asperger's are supposed to have (it's only in childhood where one doesn't need age appropriate self-help skills for Asperger's; they neglect to mention in the diagnostic manual our big failure in adapting to the adult environment--we're still at the level of children in many ways), is one of the big reasons it's a disability.

We're good as "children", not so well as "adults".

Personally, my hunch is that those with Asperger's ("mild" autism) will improve as they become older, much like with autistic disorder (midlife onwards), since it's not as severe (Asperger's to autism), the improvement will be far more pronounced and "normal" in appearance.

Well, the stereotypical aspie IS supposed to be much better in certain areas. Are they better overall? Maybe not, but they can be a lot better in some areas.

Not every step in "evolution" takes off. Still, do you remember the episode of the twilight zone(or was it the outer limits?) where the son went to take a test and, because he was deemed to be too inteligent, he was killed? Aspies don't want THAT kind of thing.

Still, that isn't to claim superpowers.

MINE was due to osteoporosis.(The cervical damage caused hand/arm/neck problems, lumbar caused leg,foot,hip problems, and others just caused malaise.) LUCKILY, I managed to get it to a very manageable level. For a time, I considered major surgery.

I always think the "next stage in evolution" stuff comes from a lack of understanding of how evolution actually functions.

Genetic diversity on the other hand, I can believe. Along with every other form of genetic diversity including ones most people would consider "useless" or worse. But that's within-species genetic diversity, it's not like we're a different species. (Although the idea of not being human did appeal to me as a teen... why am I seeing a pattern here?)