When is harming others acceptable to Autistic people?

Post Reply New Topic

I desperately need sleep but I must reply to this:

Now this really makes for uncomfortable reading! I agree that some autistic people might be manipulated into the role of [an effective] torturer - and some might torture without understanding empathically the consequence ... but I really don't want to think of Aspies being mean and cruel ... although I think I have read about such cases albeit a minority few.

I suppose I wish to identify with a group where such things are impossible and that might be clouding my mind to uglier possibilities. Maybe the diagnostic criteria could be changed to only accept "nice" Aspies.

I'm intrigued with the idea of Hitler being an Aspie though. I don't know enough about him to really analyse the possibility - though superficially at least I suppose it might be possible. I've tended to think of him as being more sociopathic than Aspie ... but maybe. He'd have to be a pretty twisted Aspie though. Maybe a dominator one also having Narcissistic Personality Disorder and schizophrenia and paronoid delusions and delusions of grandeur etc. Oh I really hope he wasn't. My self-esteem couldn't take it.

but if some guy tried mugging me or tried stealing my car i would be ok with sendind him to the hospital....not because i lack empathy, in fact after i would calm down i would probably feel bad but when you get me angry enough....

I do that too... my inclination is to say that I would have stopped as soon as the recording indicated that the person on the other side of the wall didn't want to continue. People hurt themselves for various reasons, for example, I happen to have a tattoo on my hip. Yeah, it was painful, but then the guy sitting in the other chair getting work done on his leg said "man I envy him, he looks like he's about to fall asleep"... and the hip is generally considered one of the more painful places to get one. So I know people have different tolerances to pain and given circumstance I would allow the other person to determine how much pain they were willing to endure. But I don't get the impression I would ever continue beyond the point at which they expressed that they wanted to quit, irrespective of authority. I'd like to think actually that I would not only abandon the experiment but that I would report it to the police under the thinking that it constituted abuse at that point.

I've never been in that specific situation however, so I can't say with absolute certainty that I know how I would respond. I do know that some years ago I had a data entry job briefly. Second shift got out a little before sunrise, no busses running and oddly enough a guy who gave me a lift home from work decided to stop off to rip off a few cars in the parking lot before taking me home. He was an idiot. But in retrospect I think he may have been expecting me to behave like a typical NT and just not say anything out of fear I guess. The next morning I asked my manager how long he'd been working there and then of course told her about the theft. He was also dumb enough to bring a CD player he'd stolen to work the next morning. It turns out the company had a fairly long history of problems with things being stolen and circumstantial evidence pointing to this guy, but they were never able to prove it conclusively. He was fired and I think he was arrested after that.

My level of empathy is conditional, depending on the righteousness of the person and whether he or she has hurt me in the past. As for the original question, I would usually do so in the cases of revenge and self-defense.

I could never accept hurting another person. I noticed when I was just a kid that I couldn't swing my fist with my full strength if I even imagined it would hit someone. I might be able to do it in self-defense or to protect someone else, but I would never consider it ok.

I think with autistics it's more that we can sometimes fail to understand how we hurt other people rather than that we lack empathy. It's the intellectual 'this is hurting others' part that's missing, not the emotional 'hurting others is bad' in severe cases like that.

I don't know if davros is referring to the same experiments that I read about some time ago, but in those experiments a big factor seemed to be the test subject's inabilbity to question the orders given by an authority figure. Once they accepted that the person giving the orders was their superior, they felt they had to obey, even if carrying out the orders made them extremely uncomfortable and upset. So rather than testing the subject's level of empathy, the experiment was testing their lack of backbone, and their unwillingness to stick their neck out by questioning authority.

Personally, I would be able to commit violence in self-defense, or in the defense of someone else (including an animal.) There have been times I've thought about how sweet revenge would taste if I were able to do some great harm to someone who has gone way over the line. But that always throws me into a long internal philosophical debate about revenge/forgiveness, the genesis of hate (I think it all starts from fear) and what can bring about a resolution and healing. Thanks to my poor short term memory by the time that debate's over, I'm frequently thinking about something else. So my violent impulses get short-circuited by philosophy (thankfully).

I think that people who can deliberatly plan to harm others, especially without provocation, are people who have never become fully human. Some part of their brain is stunted, and remains sub-human. It's not just a matter of maturity. Very young children, babies, can display empathy for others. I imagine that this stunting can present in someone on the autism spectrum the same as it presents in the NT population.

Another thought is what the creator of the "Doonesbury" comic strip said at some graduation ceremony: People try to get rid of their own pain by giving it to others. So if someone has been hurt and abused and humiliated for a long time, they may try to treat their pain by causing pain to someone else. There are probably some people on the autism spectrum who fit into that category, also.

I personally don't like inflicting pain on anyone, animal or human. Even when I'm angry beyond repair, I try to attack inanimate objects (the door always seemed to be the one I went for most until I learned to just prop my mattress against the wall and go at that). Once I punched my sister in the face out of self defense, and I felt so guilty afterwards, especially when she showed me the black mark I made in her mouth (that, and when she was unconscious for a minute, i was scared I really hurt her). Even then, she didn't show any signs of guilt for why I did that (she was on me clawing in to me, people at work afterwards thought I was attacked by dogs--not one dog, but multiple dogs...I had these huge scratch like gashes in my neck and chest). Yeah, but I'm the psychotic one. Either way...

As far as eating meat, I eat meat because the prey is the vegetarian, and the predator eats the meat. If I had to decide to be one, I would rather be the predator than the prey. I can't eat the meat if I visualize the animal I'm eating, and my sister used to describe the cow to get my piece of steak at dinner. I prefer red meat (I eat no seafood at all). I figure we are white meat. In fact, most things out there are white meat. The only animals that are red meat are obvious that they were intended for food. I would kill the animal if I had to, but I'd probably cry and vomit in the process.

As for the cat and mouse thing, I had cats before. One day, this bird flew in the house, and i woke up my cats because there's a bird. Diva, she was fast and a good hunter, instantly had that bird. I watched her and ghanja (my other cat at the time) play with this thing until it died. They'd toss it in the air and pounce on it's landing. The thing would squeak, even after it died. Then another bird flew in the house, and I could tell it was the male counterpart. He was first looking for his female friend until the cats noticed him. He was harder for them to get, and I felt so bad (especially since his beak was hanging down, I think because he needed more oxygen), I finally got him outside before the cats could hurt him, meanwhile his girlfriend was half eaten in the food bowl. I also caught myself feeling real bad when Diva came home with a baby bunny she couldn't quite kill. She kept swatting at it, and she was so proud of it. The look on her face. But I held that bunny until it died, and then I buried it and said a little prayer. Then Diva peed on the grave immediately when i was done. I know it's natural for cats to hunt and I expect them to hunt, but I do feel bad for the prey.

As far as driving...it's not that it's socially acceptable as much as I have to in order to survive. I'm in the country. You are talking a 30 minute drive for my hubby to work, and considering gas was 5 bucks a gallon when we moved here, I was trying to find the closest apartment to his workplace. I only asked it be one floor since I have toddlers (I didn't want the safety hazard of stairs), and this was the closest we could find. I can't prop car seats for the infant on a bike or horse, so I have to drive when I'm with the kids. When I'm not with the kids, I need to be able to reach them fast in case of emergency. I drive for survival, and if it hurts people, then maybe when Ford invents the electric car, they are doing the world a huge favor.

Torture? I don't believe in that. I couldn't even handle touring the torture spots of Puerto Rico and Mexico during the Spanish Inquisition. I don't care if it's ever socially acceptable, I'm against it. Now, if it were necessary to get a bad guy to talk about something that could save even one person's life let alone a bunch of people, then I'm for it within reason, but that would only be after psychology failed. I would have no problem performing the torture techniques in order to save lives, in fact, I'm almost ready to punch the guy in the face when I'm watching that crap in movies and the news.

Being said, I can have no problems, no guilt, and no bad feelings if I had to hurt someone in order to protect my children. In fact, if that ever happened, if I don't kill the person or animal, they will probably wish I had. And, if it were a person directly hurting my babies (like trying to mug my car with my kids in it), and I got angry which the idea of messing with my babies makes me very angry, and I were to accidentally kill them, I'd probably recucitate them back to life just so I can kill them again.

In order to protect other people I love, I would defend them, but feel a little guilty. I know because I've been in quite a few fights protecting my friends, and I had no problem doing what I did, but I felt guilty afterwards. But, there are ways to neutralize the enemy without completely injuring them, but it does inflict a lot of temporary pain. My personal favorite is hitting the nerves that makes people drop on the floor and twitch and often urinating themselves (although they will sometimes vomit, and that just sucks to change your clothes before you can go to breakfast), but I don't know what the risk of that move is if they had a pre-existing nervous or heart condition, so I try not to use that one unless I really need to neutralize the enemy. But when I'm fighting, I believe in minimal force, and I also try to keep my hands open and use all defensive moves, but if I'm against a dude, being a skinny chic, I probably would have to resort to some rougher tougher styles like a good punch in the face. WHen I'm wrestling around, I'm not aggressive at all in fear I might hurt the person, so I learn in a very delicate way. Now, there have been times when I accidentally hurt someone when they are tickling me, but I cannot control my adrenaline when it gets into fight/flight mode like that. I can't stand being tickled, and I usually think I'm dying because I can't breathe and I get very panicky when I can't breathe well (I'm a little clausterphobic, I'm something I can't spell...that's bad).

I was in the military, and I was ready to go to war mentally, or so I thought. I never went to Iraq or anywhere like that, but I've seen videos of what goes on, and I don't think i could handle it. I would just feel too bad because the mentality really is to shoot first and ask questions later. And, if it were a kid firing a weapon at me and my troops, I couldn't shoot the kid. Even with me thinking about my kids and abandoning them at my death, I still don't think I could shoot a kid. At that time, all I could do would be to start the Lord's Prayer cause I'm dead. If I did shoot out of desperation or by accident and killed the kid, I would be in a room with padded walls for the rest of my life. I would never forgive myself nor justify it.

As far as empathy, I totally agree with the statement about the intellectual part that's missing more so than the emotional part.

I also loved someone's signature that said, "Guns don't kill people. Gunshot wounds kill people." It reminds me of when I told my granola head cousin that smoking doesn't kill people. It's the cancer that will get ya.

secondet if someone tryes to take my car thats last think he never does

I am very defensive on account of my trauma experiences. I will beat the crap out of anyone who tries to physically abuse me.

I also have an extremely dim view of NT world. I think most of them are phony and corrupt and prey on others for gain. I see NT world as driven by Ego, delusion, narcissism and greed and if you don't keep them in line they will become quite abusive toward a helpless, vulnerable individual. As the Milgram experiment and Nazi Germany taught us, if enough people (or key insiders) of a group are engaged in sociopathic abuse or other bullying of a socially isolated individual or group, NTs do nothing to stop it (or join in).

For the above reasons, I strongly believe that in most cases of abuse, predation, discrimination, etc. "an eye for an eye" is what is necessary, in NT world, to keep abusers in line and your life under control, if you have a social disability.

So I believe in correctional discipline, on an individual level, when it comes to certain kinds of abuse, which is a kind of Constructonist theory of learning in life. If you don't hit back at people who hit for pleasure, they will continue and escalate their abuse, IMO, and that psychologically applies to NTs both individually and in groups. People who abuse most clearly understand the power dynamics of the abuse they dish out. So if someone attacks you by hitting you, to get the most correctional, defensive effect from your reaction, you should similarly hit them back (but harder and more painfully than they hit you). The best correctional defensive aggression is that which has the most correctional effect for the least amount of violence.

So I will hit back when hit, etc. But only in ways that I think are constructive. Mostly, this means verbal b/c you give feedback and information about what their behavior provokes, back to the person who offended you. And I have no problem attacking verbally someone who I think might be bullying me verbally, especially when my intent is to get them to leave me alone. I rarely let an insult, even implied, go unanswered, so people soon leave me alone if I don't like how they talk to me.

If someone attacks me physically, I will beat the crap out of them, which I am capable of doing even to men on account of my training and physical abilities. But only to the extent of getting them to leave me alone. So I wouldn't beat or kick someone when down, but would/will drive them off and incapacitate them as much as the circumstances indicate is necessary for me to be safe.

So to me, any abusive reaction (either verbal aggression or physical aggression) has to serve both correctional and self-defense functions, and then only enough to secure my safety or drive them off, etc. But within those parameters, I'm capable of unleashing a lot of fury in a burst, mostly when I feel in danger or threatened, on account of the energy from the PTSD.

In my natural personality -- i.e. pre-abuse, pre-trauma, I am extremely non-violent. I've heard some AS are extremely avoidant of inflicting harm on bugs, etc. That's me. I won't even kill flies that get into my house. I've gotten really good at catching flies, but if I can't catch one, he is allowed to live out his short life in my house. (That really bothers my husband). I'm not a vegetarian but I don't each much meat. When I do eat meat, it's in some nice dish or something. It's not really necessary for me to get a lot of my protein from meat, but I do think that it's important to have a natural diet and we evolved eating meat, so I don't exclude it from my diet. But it is something I've thought about. I don't like to kill anything, even plants!

It is because I'm one of those extremely pacifist, extreme nonviolent AS types, that I have such a structured system of measured response and defensiveness. I had to construct the system of measured response explicitly, to get sexual harassers, abuses, etc. under control for my life to be manageable.

A final note, and I want to add this b/c I saw in the news that the Seung Hui Cho (VA Tech shooter) emails were just released, IMO if anyone is being abused and feels they must act violently out of some delusion that it will do some good, that is a delusion.

There is no good to unbounded violence. All those male school shooters do who go on anti-bullying, justice-shooting rampages, have only internalized the evil aggression to which they were subjected by NTs and then by doing what they do, they become a part of that evil. There is no good in violence that purports to impose "justice". There is no "justice" in violence that mirrors abuse beyond that which it takes to defend yourself physically from physical abusers. To believe that one is an agent of righteousness or imposer of justice on the world is just another form of narcissistic bullying.

The NT world is fundamentally unfair, corrupt and exploitive. Trying to inflict justice on it through terrorism or violent attacks on those who didn't harm you directly, is to become part of the random evil of the NT world.

I think that some people have an oversimplified and dim-bulb view of AS. And those who keep trying to rationalize why Hitler did the things he did (some Jew abused him as a child, etc), are inflicted with an unrealistic Pollyannish view of the innate goodness of NTs and are trying to project acts of NT evil onto the victims. No, Hitler, as a charismatic speaker and polarizing, irrational thinking mystic, was probably NOT AS, he didn't do what he did on account of some Jew who abused him, and there is random evil in the NT world.

These Hitler explanations are droolings of dim-bulb naive rationalizers who make up these excuses for why evil exists in the world because of their own personal immaturity and insecurity.

I'm interested in this "revenge" thing.

I don't think I really have that inclination. Not intellectually. I sometimes get very frustrated by people - I want them to "understand" my point of view. I want them to "understand" that they're hurting me or being "stupid". I can be angry with frustration. I sometimes imagine shaking them and shaking them - not being able to get my point of view across to them. I can feel let down by people - specifically and generally. I might get satisfaction out of finally making someone understand something. But I don't think I'd get satisfaction just out of hurting someone because they hurt me. I don't know if that would even guarantee their understanding of having done something wrong or just of doing something to hurt me.

---

I did once strike back at my 8 year old neice as she was then. I think she presents many autistic traits including some impulsivity that I didn't understand back then - I didn't know much about autism and hadn't really explored the idea that I might be autistic/asperger's etc. Now I've been diagnosed and have learned so much I'm trying to encourage my family to get my neice diagnosed as I think she could benefit from some intervention. One day, for no apparent reason [to me], she suddenly kicked me very hard and very deliberately in the groin - and it hurt! She was sitting on furniture such that she was level with me and could get some real force into it. Instinctively I hit her foot [hard] that had made the transgression and I told her very clearly that should she ever do that to a man again, then most men might respond with more force. When I hit her, it wasn't thought out ... it was instinctive and possibly vengeful - though only for a fraction of a second. I certainly regretted my reaction moments later. She was only 8! Now I realise that she might not have been able to "help" her action at the time of course, I feel particularly regretful. I see the whole idea of acting out of revenge, for me, as a failure. I think we should try to be "better" than that.

---

I'm not saying that I'm not prepared to employ force or violence pragmatically for self-defence if I considered my survival that much more worthwhile over that of my assailant.

Of course ... I'm not a mother ... maybe if I was I might have biological imperatives that include revenge even ... I can't imagine.

I wondered how much of my ideals are down to me "personally" rather than me in terms of the general way my brain is wired up. There are so many different points of view presented here. Of course we all have our brains "wired-up" slightly differently.

I'm still not sure.

Oh, it's not "satisfying" or emotionally gratifying at all. It sucks. But when it comes to bullies, this is how the social dynamic works. It is not good or bad, it is what they understand and it is how to enforce boundaries with them. It is not good or bad to discipline a bully any more than it is to hit an animal with a stick if they come out of woods and charge at you. And it is not pleasant at all.



I think guys have told me that is is instinctive to hit or attack someone who hits your groin. Not really a rational thought process.



I do believe in stopping abuse immediately, if one has a social disability, and I've become quite defensive for that purpose.

I don't believe in "revenge". That is like believing in witchhunting justice -- that you benefit somehow from the suffering of an evildoer. To me, the notion of revenge is socialized sociopathy, like getting narcissistic currency from the disadvantage of another.

Only when in self defence or in defense of an animal or person who can't defend themself such as a child or an elderly person.

Why do you think Aspergers people are oh so innocent to where they can be manipulated? Maybe Kanners autistics can be manipulated. But Aspergers if anything are harder to manipulate because we are so set in our ways and so stubborn. I think it would be very easy for an Aspergers person to kill and totally enjoy it. Its obvious from being a WP member for years that there are several people on here that if you gave them a gun they would immediately go out and kill a massive group of people. Aspergers people can get so depressed and so angry at the world because of the way that they are rejected or mistreated that they can easily lose empathy or never develop it and would not think twice about killing even their own parents. Whether as you said you "really don't want to think of Aspies being mean and cruel" many Aspies are exceptionally mean and cruel to other people especially their own families, spouse and NT's in general. You may not want to think about it because maybe you are an exceptionally nice Aspie, moreso an exceptionally nice human being, but there are plenty of Aspies who are your exact opposite.

I totally agree, very good point.

Ephemerella,

I forgot to mention the bug. I don't kill the bug usually, except I will kill the fly because they always hang around sh!t, so I don't want them bringing in germs. That, and they are usually associated to an evil presence. Lately, I've been killing spiders that look Brown Recluse or Black Widow. I can't be too safe when it comes to the kids. And I did kill an entire ant colony recently with terro, and that was because they were living in my bedroom when I moved in, and it was a large colony as some were with wings (which those come about to help split a large colony according to the exterminator I called). I hated that one becauase I've always been intruigued by ants. I just think they are so smart. I usually tell kids when they are killing ants that it's wrong to do it because the ant never hurt you. But, when you wake up at 5 AM and have your wall and floor covered in ants, and there are ant hills on the floor in your room... okay something needed done. Besides, it's only natural to get territorial, and it's not like they were paying any of the rent. Of course, my landlady thinks the 5 stray cats that live here is a huge problem, but when I told her about those ants, "You live in the country, expect to get some bugs." I have pictures too as I have them in case I ever need them. I'd kill roaches too, but I never had any. Mice, I had once because of a neighbor, and I wanted to get a cat to kill them as I felt the traps were really inhumane. I was so mad at that one mouse because I think it scratched my baby's foot, but the mouse was a baby too, and I just couldn't bring myself to hurting it.

Also I didn't know PTSD would increase the fight in the fight/flight behavior. In my case, the military took away my right to self defense. I don't get scared in situations that remind me of the traumatic experience as much as I get very panicky when someone has that much control over my life like the military. I still to this day prefer the rape over a Dishonorable Discharge. I feel like I got my revenge since I was honest about everything with the psychologists, and PTSD fit me as a proper diagnosis, and it got me 30% service connection disability. That, and I did prosecute the guy that raped me, but again, I was very honest on the stand. While I feel like i did some good because he raped other girls, I also feel guilty because the guy that raped me was somebody's baby's daddy, and I'm sure he sent out child support, and I think he got reduced to an E1, so that would affect his ability to care for that family. I know he has a daughter who is like 3, and I feel so bad for that little girl. How could you grow up to know your daddy was a rapist? What I don't feel like I got my revenge is with people like my first shirt who wants to hate for whatever reason to the point where I couldn't defend myself without getting into trouble, and to the point where I had to wait for the the mofo to retire in order to report it. And I don't know what idiot kept dishing out the rank to the guy that raped me as it was very obvious the dude had a mental problem, and I'm sure females reported harrassment up their chain and was ignored for being female. They probably could have intervened with therapy. You can't beat those people up no matter how much you want to (although the TSgt that caused beginning probs between me and my shirt will get beat down if I ever see him in a parking lot late at night by himself, and if I see him in civilian public, I will spit in his face, and he's lucky if that's all I ever do to him). In fact, most of the time, you don't know which guy is the jerk (in the case of my T-sgt, I do know for sure). Do you love how I keep contradicting myself? Anyway, I just don't know how to always handle that battle. These people have no idea, nor do they care, about how their interoffice politics can negatively affect someone. Again, another perfect example on how the neurotypical condition cripples my ability to function.