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NTs can be so skewed and uninformed about Autism!

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SocOfAutism
Veteran
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Joined: 2 Mar 2015
Gender: Female
Posts: 2,936

13 Jun 2016, 1:39 pm

Abyssalrider wrote:
SocOfAutism wrote:
I just had a little fantasy about Luke Skywalker being autistic and it totally fit.

Back to the topic- I try to mentally catalog the conversations I have with other neurotypicals about the autism spectrum. It's sometimes pretty useful in figuring out where I'm having trouble getting things pushed forward with my research.

One of the worst things I ever heard was from a former special ed teacher. I asked her what she thought of the idea of having autistic young adults (college students) mentor autistic teenagers. She said she wouldn't think that parents would like that, because they would want their kids to "get better", not have more autisticness rub off on them.

Hearing that someone who worked as a special ed teacher said that, makes me want to hit the person right in the face. She should already know there is no cure, and therefore is no "getting better" only learning to manage the difficulties better when they arise, and i say who better to help with that than someone who deals with similar problems on a regular basis?


Yes it took me aback to hear that myself. Usually people know my point of view and would not say this to my face, so I was actually grateful for this random interaction with this stranger. It's sort of like how when you're white you sometimes overhear other white people saying racist things, because they assume you're all on the same team and wouldn't be offended. I need to hear what people really think though, if my research is going to have any validity.

I don't know how prevalent this kind of attitude is. I have looked pretty hard for academic literature about autism "discourse" (the ways in which people talk about autism and autistic people). Almost all of it is about how autistic people stress non-autistic people out, about how the autistic people are failures at this or that, and praise is often a veiled insult, like that a person "isn't that bad." But there's nothing saying how many people are bigoted against autistics versus how many are friendly to neurodiversity.



Varanga
Emu Egg
Emu Egg

Joined: 13 Jun 2016
Gender: Female
Posts: 3
Location: Shangri-La

14 Jun 2016, 2:43 am

When I tell people that I've got AS they try to prove that it's not true. Later they call my behavior weird. So telling them anything is usually pointless :P But there comes another thing...

I'm glad to see some people who try to raise awareness about autism, but I don't like how they do it. When I read an article about people with SA are presented as poor losers who desperately need help, because they are lost in this world. And okay sometimes it's true but not completely. When I meet new people and tell them that I've got AS (and fortunately they don't try to convince me that it must be a joke) they are shocked that I'm not a dirty, ugly, crazy genius. "You are not like in the books/movies", they say.

And I'm wondering why aspies are always shown as losers - disabled people who can't have friends or fun in their life.