Aspies, are you proud?

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I'm proud to be an Aspie for sure I love the idea of being mentally different and viewing the world in unique ways!

It's not a disability but a different ability that you should learn to embrace

I am. Definitely.

I'm loud and proud!

(tl;dr at the bottom)
To give my thoughts on the matter, I figure I may as well start out by spitting out a few of the definitions of 'pride'. (Taken from dictionary . com)

1.a high or inordinate opinion of one's own dignity, importance, merit, or superiority, whether as cherished in the mind or as displayed in bearing, conduct, etc.
3.a becoming or dignified sense of what is due to oneself or one's position or character; self-respect; self-esteem.
4.pleasure or satisfaction taken in something done by or belonging to oneself or believed to reflect credit upon oneself: civic pride.

I opted to leave out a few of the definitions like "something that causes a person to be proud" due to their irrelevance to the topic at hand. Regardless, let's move on.

The layman's terms of those definitions are more or less:

1. thinking highly of your accomplishments
3. feeling good about yourself because of something you deserve to feel good about
4. feeling good about something you've done, own, or something that you feel you're responsible for

So if you need to sum it up to an even more concise, simple definition, it would be that pride is:

'feeling good about something that you, yourself had some kind of hand in.'

Because of this, it's pretty silly to feel proud about something you had no control over, such as your sexuality or being either lucky or unlucky enough (Pick your poison) to be diagnosed with something such as Asperger's. You didn't do anything that made you have autism or be gay, you were just born that way, and the benefactor/culprit of that is genetics.

To give an example of situations that could constitute pride in relation to the previously mentioned two: Coming out of the closet to others is warrant of pride, due to the courage it takes to be open about yourself in spite of any social taboo that goes with it. Simply being gay isn't anything to be proud of, though, as you've done nothing yourself that made you gay; You just were. That isn't to say that you should be ashamed, either, since being gay doesn't make you better or worse than someone who's straight.

Similarly, gathering up the courage to do something that's hard for you as an individual with Asperger's is also pride-worthy, such as (content may vary for specific individuals) taking the plunge and asking out that cute <sex> who sits infront of you in math, or maybe going to a social outing with friends. Those are things you could be proud of. Again, however, simply being on the Autistic Spectrum is not pride-worthy. You had no say in whether you were born autistic or not. Consider yourself lucky to be given the gift of good genetic intelligence if you have it, and unlucky for the curse of bad socialization if you feel it as such. You were just born the way you were born and have genetic outcome to thank/blame for it.

tl;dr You have nothing to be proud of simply for being autistic. You also have nothing to be ashamed of simply for being autistic. Pride and shame can only come from something you had a hand in, not in something beyond your control.

Yes, with a passion! Down with social expectations!

Ok, maybe not with social expectations. NT's can expect all they want, I'm going to keep being me. And there's nothing they can do about it.

Yes. It has it's ups and downs but I'm proud to have it. I think logic is a better skill to have than socialising anyway and people who know me automatically like me so I get the best of both worlds.

I am!

Not in a million years.

If it wasn't for my Aspie meltdowns, I wouldn't have caused my mum to have a nervous breakdown and be rushed to hospital. And she always has been an emotionally strong person - so that proves how bad my meltdowns are.

If I was NORMAL like everybody else in my family, my mum wouldn't have had the nervous breakdown, and I can prove that it was the AS what causes me to have meltdowns because nobody else in my family has ever been known to cause their parents to have nervous breakdowns through having a meltdown.

So - how can I be proud of emotionally torturing my poor family?

Pride is a vice.

And really, we're like all other human beings, except for a few (admittedly important) differences. I don't really see any reason to celebrate those differences.

We are here and we are the way we are. That is reason enough to celebrate (or not, depending on your point of view).

I'm getting there , I think. Perhaps not to pride, but to acceptance. I was ashamed of it, but I try to counter that by reminding myself of all of the extraordinary people who have AS. Still.

I'm not so sure that I want to be proud.

I have accepted my differences. Sure, there are always going to be ups and downs, but for the most part I'm pretty content.
I don't have pride in being an Aspie; I have pride in the things I've achieved despite being an Aspie.

Well, that's what I've been trying to say, but some Aspies on here seem to think that NTs are all different in every way and act in a certain way, and Aspies are impaired and weird and completely different, and act in another certain way. It's all stupid. AS is just a NL disability at the end of the day, and I know I could do without all these anxieties, but I'm still able to work, get married, have children, ect. Anyway, when I eventually get some help and CBT, this might help me, because all I want to do is talk to a social-worker about all these anxieties, and I just know that some help is better than none at all.

I'm not proud, and there are things what make me wish I didn't have it, and I do wish I was NT because I can't get over how the whole of my dad's side are very socially confident, and my mum's side are quite shy people but aren't on the spectrum, and I'm the one who suffers. I think if I didn't have such a big family full of NTs, I might accept my AS more. Or if AS meant only just a few social problems and that was it (no meltdowns, no odd thinking, no anger, no anxieties, no difficulties with routine change, no obsessions, no sensory issues). But it ain't even the main part of it (the social difficulties) what is affecting my life - it's everything else what is.

It's just been bothering me for years.

Last edited by Joe90 on 29 Dec 2010, 2:32 pm, edited 1 time in total.

My AS is the same as having brown hair. It cannot be changed only manipulated. You can't be proud of a condition.

I'm proud of it. It makes me who I am.

I am neither proud nor ashamed. It is simply part of who I am, a subsect of me which helped to make me who I am. A building block. Am I glad I have it? Yes or else I might be very much different. Am I open about it? Yes, yes I am. Am I proud? No, I don't see what there is to be proud of.