Love complicates life even for the autistic

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I thought this article was really bizarre. It was posted recently on one of the parent groups and seems to me to be very demeaning by even wondering that people with autism could fall in love.

http://www.abcnews.go.com/Nightline/Hea ... 736&page=1

Well, you have to understand. People often jump to wild conclusions when they don't properly research things. I find I usually have to clinch my teeth when a new article or newscast on autism comes up, and hope they did their research.

This article seems rather presumptuous to me, but really this just reflects common attitudes towards autism in general. It's also very patronising.

They are talking about someone with classic autism, not Aspeger's Syndrome. This guy has to live in a group home because he cannot support himself. That you should give you an idea of the level of his disability. It's much worse than AS.

That's irrelevant. The article assumes many things about the inner world of an autistic person, that even we wouldn't assume. And who is to say that any person's love is lesser than their own form of love? The only conclusions you can draw from are based on external appearances.

i did not like the article at all.

Thanks for the observations - it seemed like I was the only one so far on the parent group that was offened by this. And as someone else here posted I had a similar observation - how do you define love and who gets to legitamize someone else's feelings. It makes me think that they feel a person on the spectrum (even if they may be more severely affected) has to get approval or permission for their feelings. How many NTs claim to experience "love at first sight" or love someone who does not reciprocate - anyone could challenge their perception or definition of love too. I could be reading way more into this than is there though but that was my initial reaction. I would have thought that while reporters may be clueless that parents even if they were NT would realize that their child could love.

The is the kind of bumwipe journalism we are used to seeing come out of the US. Sometimes I turn on tv and watch the US news horrified by the phoniness and lack of depth. It's all terrible.

Canadian news is only marginally better.


When I visited England I was amazed by the apparent quality of the BBC news. There was much more worldwide coverage and visual images from far away war zones. Also, the depth of the coverage was waaaaay higher quality.

The writer John Donvan should be ashamed of himself.

This article simply portays that those with autism don't feel anything, which is wrong because we do. I also found it to be patronising and it made me cringe a little to read it. 'Who would have thought an autistic could fall in love?' Oh puuhhlease! What an assumption to make!

I think the Article was a good one if You read it carefully. Even joined there forum even posted and gave link to wrongplanet.net.

I don't like how the article belittles the love of an autistic. It implies that there's a normal way to love, and that autistic love is inferior to this. Plus, like Fiz said, it's just plain dumb that it makes such a big thing out of autistic love.

And the worst part is, the person who said that probably has no idea why it IS offensive.

Love is not simple. It's very poorly defined, and can mean so many different things.

The idea that within that range, that the Autistic can experience it is somehow a startling revelation?


Then again, it probably shocked and amazed people back in the day when they saw that Black People could read.

An autistic man fell in love, Now that's news. Maybe the day I fall in love it will be covered by all colombian tv... ¿¿¿Will I be famous???