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While you are a well-written individual, what continues to strike me is that you seem to have a very, very narrow perspective from which you view AS. Your "quote" above would not fit everyone with AS. Not everyone with AS behaves in hurtful ways, yet you persist in portraying it that way, even though it has been pointed out to you repeatedly. I understand that personal experience flavors perception, so I do recognize the fact that I have had the privilege of knowing a number of benevolent, kind Aspies has probably skewed my perception to first expect the positive, but you appear to have little insight into the fact that your negative experiences have probably skewed your perception to first expect the negative. Or at least that is how the majority of your posts read.

I also don't understand where you see yourself. I thought at one point you said you were not on the spectrum, but now you are referring to "us" and "we" as if somehow we are the same, and I don't get that. It is very confusing, but I suspect that it may be a tactic to decrease the defensiveness of others by "making us on the same team." So that your opinion will somehow be more digestible and no one will argue against you. So you can "win." If that is the case, I find it--frankly--offensive. Or maybe I am misreading you and you have found yourself to be "spectrummy" all along. But that seems to be in contradiction with the contempt you seem to have for parents/adults on the spectrum. Or maybe you really don't know. I thought I was NT until someone with AS asked me if I had AS. The possibility had never occurred to me, but once it was posed, I realized there was no denying that I had traits, though I am certain I am not diagnosable.

Very confusing, you are.

Yeah, what she said. ^^^This

I just read the rest of the thread.

First of all, I am caught between wanting to roll my eyes and sneer in disgust.

To be honest, Tarantella64, you appear to misread other people more frequently than they misread you. It seems that you have a very clear understanding of what you wish to communicate and when you are given feedback that that is NOT what you have communicated, you hold to your conviction that you DID communicate and it is the other person's shortcoming that caused the breakdown of communication.

I do not teach children, nor do I write curriculum for K-12, but I do teach adults and I do write curriculum for grown-ups (and I have a master's degree, as it appears to me that you would immediately discredit me if I did not share this information up front, and I did graduate with high honors just to demonstrate that I was in the top of my class, not the middle or bottom). I also have been a mental health professional in a previous life. What I know to be a fact is that communication is a two way street and if you are not successful in delivering your message, then YOU are not successful in communicating your message. So, if you are being told you are being unclear, then you should accept that as a fact. You are being unclear. And if other people are consistently "misinterpreting" what you say, perhaps you should look at your message and not their interpretation. And instead of insisting that you are clear and the other person is too *whatever* to understand you, as a teacher, you ought to know that the most potentially fruitful option is not to blame the miscommunication on the receiver, but to find a better way of communicating yourself.

Now I'm just getting irritable and ugly.

I'm happy to work out communication issues when people aren't intent on seeing slights and attacks where none exist. If that's how they feel, despite assurances that there's no ill will, then there's nothing I can do, and no, I'm not going to go on trying to sort things out. It doesn't matter whether the hypervigilance relates to ASD, or religion, or anything else. It's just not worth the candle.

You also mistake me when it comes to degrees and qualifications. It doesn't matter (to me) what letters you have. What matters is whether you know your s**t and how quickly you pick up.

As for AS/NT - the more time I spend here the less interested I am in getting a baseball cap for either team. I think the binary is probably silly. If I really wanted a diagnosis, I could probably find and pay someone to give me one, but I don't see the point. When it comes to day to day functioning, though, I'd probably have trouble getting someone to say there are significant problems; I manage better than most under chronically difficult circumstances. Anyway. The team mentality goes right along with the hypervigilance, so again -- I'm just not interested in playing. Sorry.

So....all the absolute, negatively-toned language you use to describe autistic parents...when you say that they are bound to effect their children with their absolutely impaired ability to parent due to what you see are universal core deficits that involve selfish, hurtful and sometimes brutal behavior...all that is really directed at yourself? When you speak of the harm wrought to relationships by people on the spectrum...all that is really directed at yourself? When you describe people on the spectrum as being basically unable to act in the best interests of their child and forgo their own drives and desires...all that is really directed at yourself?

I am pretty certain that in the past you have said "I am NT" but that you had "other issues." I don't have time to find it now.

If my memory serves me correctly, either you are someone who is just coming to grapple with your own atyipical wiring, or you are a sheister. I am not sure which at this point. But if you have a child on the spectrum, I hope it is the former, because if it is the later...well...then I hope you don't have a child on the spectrum. For your child's sake.

You're doing a terrific job of making my point for me.

Everyone who disagrees with you seems to get that type of condescending response.

aaand curtain, roll credits.

Apologize in advance if I'm way off base, since I've skipped most of this thread, and am responding mostly based on a few things on this page:

There is simple solution to the bolded, that I've taught my son: "I am sorry what I wrote came across to you as me slighting you; that was not my intent." In other words, acknowledge the problem and apologize for the hurt your words caused without putting blame on either side.

There does not always have to be a winner and a loser, even though you seem to have a need to find one. Sometimes disconnection just "is," and there is no blame. Much better to let it be, then, than to insist it can't be me, it must be you (or people who share a diagnosis with you).

Whether or not some of the behaviors specific to any individual, when there is no ill intent, end up hurting someone is never a one sided equation. It always involves the shape and form of both puzzle pieces trying to connect. ALWAYS. Give me almost any behavior, and I can find someone who will not be hurt by it (again, when there is no ill intent). As a result, for you to say you need people to admit certain ASD behaviors ALWAYS cause hurt is inappropriate; they only cause hurt when the person on the other side has different needs than what is offered. Obviously, finding compatible pieces is more difficult when someone does not fit the social norm, but that does not automatically always put them at fault; it makes them really difficult to fit. Should they acknowledge that? Of course they should, and I think people on this board DO have that understanding, for the most part.

I think the reason you continue to confuse people is because you need to hear something that no one here can give you. We aren't the people you need to hear it from, and we can't be stand ins for the person you do, because we are not him. I know you have a situation that cannot be resolved, and you need to find a way to make peace with that that does not involve trying to put the entire ASD population into a singular box. The membership here is comprised of unique individuals who share nothing more than a diagnosis, either in themselves or someone they love.

I believe Tarantella is on the spectrum and I think she has certain traits that are more pronounced than the rest of us. She may have recently discovered this within herself. Tarantella has had certain perceptions that color her perceptions which are: her life growing up, her father and her ex-bf. Another thing is that she probably has had issues at her workplace because she was told she was too blunt and inadvertently hurt people including her own daughter.

She does not want to hurt people including her own daughter who I believe is NT. I believe Tarantella is even more literal than some of us and because of her theory of mind deficits she pulls no punches in what she is. In her mind, maybe her dad inadvertently did cause a lot of harm and hurt and maybe her bf as well. What is crazy is that she may not even realize some of the traits her ex-bf and dad has she may have as well.

I bet she is fiercely protective of her daughter including from herself which is a noble and admirable quality but could possibly turn tragic. She could end up hurting her daughter anyway by this very paradox. I do not think she is a sheister but a woman who is on the spectrum who is in a lot of pain and she is angry. She is angry at certain people in her life and angry at herself.

In addition, she has seen so much crap at where she works and she has seen students who she felt were being bullshitted and conjuled into doing things that were not in their best interests. Her perception of her experiences color her responses. Honestly, when it comes to her job, the students and where she works I understand where she is coming from and see her point. In her mind, she believes she is doing good towards her child and her fellow man. She does no evil intentionally because it is her perceptions of her varied experiences that help to shape who she is. She is working under assumptions that help to shape her perceptions.

This is to Tarantella. Others can join in on this if they wish. You're being inconsistent with your actions and what you expected of your ex-bf as to his beliefs and behaviors. I'm paraphrasing here but He expected others to take him for what he exactly said in a literally manner. You state that he should not be doing this and should go by how others would take it and perceive it and he can't expect what he is expecting. I don't logically grasp this inconsistent logic that you have because it seems like you're behaving exactly like the claims that you make of your ex-bf. Because of my own AS, this is something that confounds me and causes me confusion. You're holding your ex-bf to a standard that you don't seem to uphold yourself to. Why? Why is this? Why does such an inconsistency exist with you on this? What is the rational basis for these contradictions that you seem to hold? I'm confused.

This has been a very interesting thread!

I was also confused by the big difference between some of Tarantella64's posts which seem to declare very strongly "I am NT, no doubts about that, and I lived with an AS dad and that why I know X, Y and Z about you people..." and other posts (particularly about work) that seem to be very much affected by AS traits and come from the perspective of an autistic person struggling with an NT workplace. I had also noticed the "we" language in discussing aspects of ASDs lately.

Your analysis makes sense, cubedemon6073.

My tentative conclusion was also that Tarantella is on the spectrum, but has complicated and ambivalent feelings about that. I think it is interesting to consider that the fairly vitriolic condemnation of aspies as parents may have been a mix of anger at her father and self-directed anger.

Wow. Some of this stuff is thousands of miles wide of the target, DW and cubedemon. This seems to be the land of the idée fixe.

DW, I have no idea what you're talking about when you say I "need to hear something from someone" or need an apology or some such. I am looking for no such thing; that's your own invention. And at this point I think I've spilled hundreds, possibly thousands of words assuring you of this. In fact, this thread started when you flipped out at me and I wrote back saying, "whoa, nelly, you've got the wrong end of the stick." What I've been saying all along is very simple:

1. It is possible (not necessary, but possible) for AS traits in a parent to be harmful to the children;
2. It is disingenuous and to some extent cruel to sweep that under the rug or assign the harm to other problems when people show up here (or anywhere) noting that this has happened to them.

That's all.

What I see from here is that there are some people who are so terrified of the notion that AS can be correlated with any harm that they will wig completely at the suggestion and decide that the speaker:

- is a bigot
- is damaged
- owes apologies
- is responsible for their own black and white thinking.

I have never said, nor would I say (and I'm repeating myself here for maybe the eighth or ninth time) that AS is necessarily harmful. I have not said, nor would I say, that having AS makes one a bad person.

I have also already apologized for having upset ASDmommy and cubedemon (and maybe even you, DW), and done the earnest thing of explaining where the misconception lay and that there wasn't need to be upset, and I'm not going to apologize for these things again. If you don't like the apology, don't take it, but don't say it wasn't offered. I certainly am not going to apologize for not talking about AS in a relentlessly positive light just because someone else is an activist on behalf of aspies.

I really am done with this subject. I'm a professional writer and actually quite good at putting words in order to mean particular things. It's why I'm able to support myself and another person. I think it's time for you to look at the possibility that you are not in fact reading words in order, and taking in their meaning in context, but are instead seeing a word over here



[ ] and a phrase over here


[ ] and connecting them to invent new meanings in your own mind. Meanings that the writer didn't put there, but which perhaps have to do with your own favorite subjects and fears. And no, it is not the writer's job to prevent you from doing that -- unless the writer is trying to manipulate you with propaganda or advertising, in which case it is. But I'm not a propagandist, so if you want to misread, that's your business, not mine.

------------

Cubedemon, once again you've got a logic puzzle, but this time it's not a hard one.

Yes, my ex-bf routinely says and does things that he thinks means A, but which signal B to most people. He's unaware of the connection between his actions and B, and that makes real problems in many parts of his life. He just knows that people get upset and angry at him out of nowhere. Often consequentially -- friendships and relationships lost, housing and jobs lost. The key feature is that he can't see where he's going wrong.

I'm aware of what's happening here, why DW and ASDmommy get so upset. They're deeply invested in a certain picture of AS, and a certain way of speaking about AS, and to some extent are AS activists. To them, speaking negatively about anything to do with AS signals "enemy of people on spectrum", and they're off to the races (ASDmommy more hotly than DW_a_mom, whose name sounds faintly Old-French when I type the whole thing). What they want me to do is to reform my speech so that it's uniformly positive, or at least pleasantly neutral, when it comes to AS. But I have no particular interest in doing that, no more than I have in speaking relentlessly positively about, oh, feminists, or Jews (catch the news about Rapfogel this morning?) or writers, or mothers, or any other group of which I'm a part.

I'm just not a team player that way. I know, it takes a long time for the idea to sink in. Sometimes it takes years for the other person to tumbles the idea that "won't carry the team banner" is not the same thing as "enemy" or "bad person" or even "deeply mistaken". I'm the recipient of a lot of belated apologies, but it's cool. People is people.

(My ex-bf is aware more globally of what the problem is, btw. He doesn't like to talk about it, hates the label, and won't go near the idea of diagnosis. But nobody knows that much about AS by accident, and I think that's probably a pretty good generality. It's the adults who suspect it in themselves who go googling and self-testing down the rabbit hole late at night. I think our first conversation involved an AS joke, come to think of it.)

Oh, and about my job -- I don't mind the bit about having been told I'm too blunt, am just faintly despairing in advance at what it'll take for my boss to accept that that part's not going to change, and that the smart money's on adapting my job to fit the skills available. I'm also irritated in advance at the Christian forbearance coming my way. I'm in the wrong environment, is most of the problem. Extremely courteous and passive-aggressive regional culture; genteel industry in which directness = career suicide. I grew up in east-coast newsrooms and political offices, where bluntness works much better. But the employment options are what they are for the meantime.

What I do mind very much is the sneaking and backstabbing inherent in academe, and it will eventually drive me out. I can see that there isn't any other way for universities to work, because no one's formally in charge. Academia's rabidly hierarchical -- god forbid a lecturer should tell off a full professor, or, worse, claim to know as much as a full -- but when it comes to how universities actually run, a collection of people who more or less can't be fired has no functional organizational structure. The only way to make anything happen is by continuous politicking, a well-timed foot in the aisle, making networks of allies that hog opportunities to themselves (not that you can really trust anyone), etc. And most of them take their careers and identities as professors deadly seriously; also, they can't leave, they can't make a decent living any other way. They can't even move to different universities, most of the time. Many of these people actually lie awake at night fuming and scheming over how to destroy the careers of their colleagues. Others are waiting for colleagues to die and hoping it might happen soon. That's not a joke, that's quite literal. And a healthy percentage of academics are actually nuts, like diagnosable nuts. So people are extremely circumspect in what they say (except when they lose it, happens reliably, like popcorn kernels popping all around the university), and when they try to make something happen, it's generally via back channels. You have no idea things are happening until (a) you get walloped; or (b) a spy/ally/friend brings you word of Things Afoot. Not that it's easy to find out what's going on. And the fights go on for *decades*.

The pity is that it's not more interesting. There's a whole genre of fiction about this stuff -- writers often wind up in universities temporarily because there's money, so we get an eyeful, also subjected to the unhappiness -- but in the end unless you're really a dab hand with mean farce, like Kinglsey Amis, or you're willing and able to drive straight at the psychological horror, like Edward Albee, there just isn't much of a story; it's overpaid children with tin stars making each other deeply unhappy, is all.

Anyway, I've rambled, and now -- hrm -- I'd better get ready to go teach.

oops - Adamantium, just saw your reply. No, I haven't gone around waving a flag, nor do I intend to. As I've said elsewhere I'm circumspect about the binary AS/NT thing, and think the label itself is probably of dubious value. I know people come on here and say, "This explains everything!" but I don't think it explains anything except to say "there's a fair number of people who're like you in how they relate to others." It's why I'm more inclined to talk about "AS traits" than "aspies". But I think mostly -- in the context of this board -- I'm uncomfortable with it because I've yet to see a group affiliation go well for me. Invariably the group definition turns out to be pretty flat, characterwise, and...well, I don't know. As above, I just don't get any charge out of being on a team, it doesn't solve any problems for me or make me happy. Maybe because I've seen too many teams. Or maybe because if you come in with a strong enough identity of your own, eventually you're bound to be at odds with the team and stay that way. I guess I'm down with loose and temporary confederacies, and that's about it.

oh. appreciate the free third-person-invisible analysis, but no, I'm not angry at myself. Am very much a pragmatist and accepting of what is; been fortunate in always having had a rock-solid "background sense of self", as Damasio puts it. And I yam what I yam. The grind of having to make things work so that we don't wind up homeless is something else, though, and I chronically work much harder than most -- regardless of how they're wired -- and with less rest in order to keep everything going. That's just a function of the single-mom/no-support thing.

also, I don't know how many times I have to say it -- we're back to fixed ideas -- but no, I'm not angry at my father. It's a sad situation, but there's nothing I can do there. Yes, he's done a lot of damage, but not intentionally, and it's done. It's nobody's fault. We don't speak, and his estranged wife's warned me away, telling me to focus on taking care of myself and my daughter. Which I do.

(and, before I get out of here, would like to point out that "T. has said things that are not positive about AS in some parents and/or boyfriends" has taken the group conversation from "T. is some sort of bigot" to "T's probably okay because one of us, but must have psychological problems that make her say such things." This is a very long way around to go in order to defend against the idea that AS can (not must, but can) create real problems for people related to those with AS...

...and I see what the problem is, I think.

There's an equation here between causing harm and being despicable which I think is misguided. When I say, "AS traits in me may harm my rather social and socially-attuned daughter", the presumption's that I must hate myself. That's making a mistake. Of course I wouldn't be glad to hurt her, but no, I'm not angry at myself for things beyond my control. What I can do is be aware of the potential problems, listen for them, and try to mitigate them. Similarly, a guy who's well down the autistic line and treats his wife horribly because it seems reasonable to him isn't a despicable guy, but he is causing real damage. And now I'm late.)

This is the clearest thing you have said thus far. I have no issues with point #1 and I think you are incorrect about #2, so we agree to disagree, yes? I don't think either of us will be persuaded differently.

You will be happy to know that my opinion of you has not changed from "Not OK" to "OK" as a result of you acknowledging having AS traits. My opinion of you has not changed at all; Not that I put it on the "OK---Not OK" spectrum. I find you to be confusing and inconsistent, which is not the same thing. I don't view you any differently, no fears, there. I don't evaluate people based on neurological self-identification.

I don't think everything said about AS has to be positive, just that it should be balanced and truthful. I don't apologize for providing that balance when I feel it is necessary. You don't agree, and that is fine. No one is trying to silence you as far as I know. I provide counterpoints, yes, but am not attempting to silence you.

No one is making you choose up teams. You can identify however you wish. It is the seeming inconsistency that is confusing. Viewpoints don't always have to be consistent as they can reflect thought evolution and/or looking at things from different vantage points, so I don't mean inconsistent necessarily pejoratively, either.