a way you can help understanding of Asperger's Syndrome

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I am on the policy debate team at my college and have only one or two more upcoming tournaments for the year. It has been harder for me than most having Asperger's, but it has been fun nonetheless. There is one team whose strategy is to focus on how the government and some practices in debate discriminate against African-Americans and makes fighting against white supremacy the main issue in their affirmative plan. I have decided to do something based on that except I will replace the discrimination against African-Americans with discrimination against those with Asperger's Syndrome using myself as an example. I have about one month to do this before the last two tournaments arrive.

That is where you guys come in. I know there are many intelligent people on this forum who do a lot of research and thinking about Asperger's. I already have some stuff put together, but any help would be greatly appreciated. If anybody has spare time, I would be very grateful if you could direct me to resources about Asperger's Syndrome and high-functioning Autism in general regarding how we are discriminated against in today's society. Basically, anything saying that the status quo of our society really has no place for us. Anything that compares AS discrimination to racism, sexism, etc. would also be great. And, it may be a bit of a stretch, but anything that in any way has some kind of a link between agriculture and Autism would be good too. Online articles, print articles, books, and even well-written blog entries can all be used.

I will answer any questions you guys have about it and give you updates on my progress and results when it comes time for the tournaments if anybody cares. Thanks in advance for any help I get on this!

Unfortunately I don't agree with your premise. Discrimination based on race is different, because hypothetically there's nothing a white person can do that a black person can't. They are equal in abilities, and so should be equal in employment and pay.

But the nature of Asperger's, as a disability, does include a lack of social ability and many other useful skills for some jobs. I do believe a cook with Asperger's could be just as good as an NT cook. However I don't believe most people with Asperger's would be a very good wedding organizer, marriage counselor, diplomat, or other job which would require careful social considerations and close attention to non-verbal queues. That's not to say no person with an autism spectrum disorder could ever do those jobs, I'm sure there are some that can. But the vast majority of people on the spectrum would probably not.

The Americans with Disabilities Act does cover situations of physical and mental disabilities, but even they don't claim anyone can do any job. You wouldn't want a blind guy driving buses or a leprous massage therapist either.

Firstly, re the fact of being on a debating team, I'm impressed! Go you!

Secondly, great idea to ask WrongPlanet (or similar community) about autism. I've been feeling increasingly that communities for autism must have by far more expertise on autism than nearly any other source of information, not just because we experience it every day, but also because (unlike many other sources) many of us may, be quite literally, obsessed about autism!

Thirdly what do you mean about agriculture and AS? What sorts of comparisons are you looking for?

EDIT: Fourthly... What is the topic of your debate? (moot I think they call it)

Last edited by Liresse on 16 Feb 2009, 8:14 pm, edited 1 time in total.

hi- interesting project!
i think the main point about a.s is that it's invisible; i get what you're saying about racism, but it's a leap; it doesnt completly do it for me- colour is SO instant. autism is- that bloke is behaving weirdly- what's he up to? what's wrong with him?? you might pass 100 aspies in the street and not know it. black people cant hide- their colour is always there.

there is an interesting campaign in the uk at the moment baout mental health- 'would you hire someone if you heard they had a history of mental health? congratulations, you just turned down florence nightingale'- etc. lots of famous poeple w depression etc; showing that they have something to offer.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstop ... /Florence-
Nightingale-might-never-have-succeeded-with-modern-stigma-against-mental-illness.html

(you need to make that all one line again)

though combating discrimination of race, gender, sexuality etc is similar, because autism is invisible, i think people still tend to think you're making it up, are not being posative etc- all the same stuff that comes up with mental health (though obv autism is neurological).

its also a really unknown quantitiy to most people- rainman. taht's about most people's experiance of it.
so with regards to discrimination the general public will hvae a very unclear idea of what exactly you have, but it certainly wont be a posative one.
people have definate reasons for most discrimination- eg- women are weak, dont think logically, black people are stupid, just good at sports, or whatever- autism is such an unknown quantity for most people- its a very different discrimination, isnt it? its less defined.

regarding info, the uk autism soc has fantastic resources- www.nas.org.uk
they are very good about campaigning. im sure american, australin etc societies hvae similar resources and campaigns.
but most of what i know abuot a.s comes from here. you will get a much clearer understanding of any aspect you care to think of from a trawl through the posts here. there are also good resources sections elsewhere on the site.
good luck.

re: Mage and misslottie - TS's debate moot may simply be "discrimination" rather than "racial discrimination."

If so, I certainly think aspies can be discriminated against. Of course sometimes there is a reason for not being accepted into a certain job, as with Mage's comment about suitability for certain occupations. However, this should never mean that aspies do not have equal opportunity if they happened to have the right skills, any less than any NT. And I would agree that this sort of discrimination could certainly happen.

Most relevant for TS's debate may be in job interviews, where an aspie may not give off a good impression even if they have all the necessary skills for the job - such as a job that does not involve much social interaction. Possibilities for situations for discrimination will occur when the Aspie has the skill, but not the social/non-obsessive/quick-thinking aspects that typify Aspergers (I'm generalising here.).

Couple of examples:
- in a shop you are trying to select clothes but get overwhelmed, making shop assistants think you annoying and be less likely to be sympathetic. In certain cultures it is normal to "bargain" through any given sale; if the assistant is unsympathetic they may refuse to give you a better deal than if they were (and rather not have your money than sell for cheaper)
- in law enforcement/legal situations you may be labelled as incompetent, either through the "autism" label or your inability to express yourself in a high stress situation, and thereby be deprived of rights you would otherwise have

The only discrimination that occurs is due to the inherent problems that come with AS. There's a reason why it's considered a disorder and why you can get disability services for it. People can't even discriminate against simply for having AS unless you tell them you have it, in which case the most common reaction by far is to patronize you which is just insulting to the ego and not anywhere near the same as people throwing around racial slurs and other verbal harassment.

The main way that people with AS get "discriminated" against is that we tend to do poorly in jobs and other areas of life that require good social skills, and as a result we tend to get shunned from those areas. This, however, is an entirely natural consequence of AS and not something that people do just because they don't like aspies (because again, the vast majority of the time they won't even know you're an aspie. Hell, if you tell them you have AS they're actually liable to become more understanding and ease up on you). Saying that counts as discrimination is like saying it's discrimination that a mentally ret*d person can't get into Harvard Medical School.

As for incompetence in social situations and the resulting misunderstandings and disadvantages we face, again, that is a completely natural consequence of being an aspie. It's not discrimination, it's just normal people being put off by the annoying, rude, or otherwise inappropriate personalities that aspies tend to have.

I think a lot of people in this topic are getting hardship confused with discrimination.

There must be a reason why ASD gets harder and harder to detect in people as they age. There are ways to hide it (not cure it) but the longer you survive, the more you learn and the more you learn how to pass off as NT.



I don't know about this statement. I could always feel that Chinese people are money-grubbing, rude people who always want the best for themselves and from a firmly egocentric, Western view this would be quite a normal reaction. As a person who is ethnically Chinese but culturally Western, I understand/believe that this is a completely justified response if we are judging the Chinese person by Western standards. Slurping soup, bargaining at every shop, asking for discounts, talking with our mouths full, yes these are all "rude" in a western culture, while being generally acceptable (I think) in Chinese culture.

Thus it happens that (italics my edits)



Is the "normal person" making value judgments about Chinese people being rude and impolite? Yes.
Chinese people actually trying to be rude and impolite? No.

This kind of un-true value judgment will impact their social circles, treatment in the community, their business front, the way government and legal officials treat them, etc etc.

Sounds like discrimination to me?

(EDIT: I have used Chinese-Western conflict as an example because this is most prominent in my area. We do not have much Black American discrimination in New Zealand but of Chinese discrimination and anti-Chinese sentiment there is certainly PLENTY. At least where I live.)

1. Chinese person probably functions perfectly fine in their own culture, or if not fine, then definitely better (in an environment that caters to their habits).
2. The only solution is to be culturally sensitive. (both AS and NT.)
3. Discrimination happens everywhere. I doubt it has to be "abnormally discriminatory" to be discrimination.
4. "confusing hardship with discrimination" What does this mean? I do not understand.

The issue though is that it is impossible to tell whether a person has AS or not in normal social interactions unless they tell you. There's no defining physical characteristics that give it away like an ethnicity. People simply assume you're a normal person and thus hold you to the same standards as they would anyone else.

Also, I wasn't saying that "confusing hardship with discrimination" was a solution (that doesn't even make sense), I said people were confusing the two in this topic. Discrimination in the context we're talking about is when a person treats someone badly simply because they belong to a group that the former person doesn't like. In order for it to be discrimination the person doing the discriminating has to be doing it because they recognize the other person as a member of a particular group. This does not apply to aspies because 99% of the time the person treating you badly has no idea that you're an aspie, they just think you're weird, annoying, or rude. Rather it's a hardship for aspies because we have to go through crap like not being able to work certain jobs, peer rejection, unintentionally offending people, etc. because of the behavioral symptoms of AS.

Forgot to add that similarly a normal person might perceive an Aspie's behaviour as antisocial, unfriendly, rude, impolite, annoying

However the Aspie is generally not trying to be antisocial, unfriendly, rude, impolite, annoying, etc. They may be exhibiting behaviours which cannot be mistaken in an NT culture as being rude, but they aren't trying to piss off the NT world.

Come on, Aspies aren't all wallowing in self-pity, trying to be as Aspie as possible. We're trying to survive in this world, not make the world say Ohhhh poor aspie (and say the world is crap when it doesn't go on to help us). We don't survive very well, and we piss other people off, but the point is we're not actually TRYING to inconvenience and irritate everyone else in the process.

I modified my first post. Please read again :)

Sorry, I'm aspie...please forgive my slow processing and difficulty arranging multiple inputs.

mmmm...I dunno. I think what you're running into is what I call the 'profesionally offended'

You can't equate anything to blackness, because to do so in any sense is 'de facto' racism. They will tear you a new one for opposing them in any way (which is why they employ so successful an ad hominem argument) There's no defense, the argument is made; whomp, they win, and you'd better lose if you know what's good for you.

Fortunately, not everyone thinks that way.

I'm sorry for not making sense, then. What I meant when I said "solution" was "an answer to all the arguments above." I meant that it was not simply all aspies are undergoing hardship.

Yes they are undergoing hardship. They have difficulties. This is not discrimination.

Sometimes they are treated worse than their difficulties warrant. This is the discrimination.


Parallel example: Chinese person undergoing "hardship" because they speak English very well but with a distinctive Chinese accent. This is a difficulty, not discrimination. What I would call discrimination is the stereotype or labelling of a person, or an entire culture, rude or incompetent or [bad attribute] or otherwise less worthy, regardless of individual variation, due to value judgments placed on them by people of another culture.

In this case, the Chinese person might be discriminated against if they were a sales rep in New Zealand. (Note that they might not be discriminated against by people of their own culture - compare AS) They might have brilliant sales initiatives and have been a Buyer or other high-ranking salesperson in China, but in New Zealand, a person that hears their accent could very quickly assume they must be selfish and out to scam them for their last cent - and quickly decline the deal.

That is discrimination.

In some cultures, it is rude NOT to slurp your soup. You can't win eh?

Conclude: Discrimination exists everywhere, it's in the beliefs and stereotypes of other people, and it is NOT just defined as "specific difficulties."

That's what I've been saying. I'm not saying aspies are intentionally rude, annoying, etc., I'm saying we come off that way due to our lack of social skills and knowledge of social rules. The issue is that a normal person is not going to be able to tell if you're an aspie or not unless you tell them yourself. As a result they're just going to think you're a rude/impolite/annoying/whatever NT and react accordingly. This, however, does not count as discrimination as the NT you're interacting with is not intentionally treating you badly because you have AS, he's just treating you badly because he finds you rude/impolite/annoying/etc. Hence the reason I say that this type of circumstance is a hardship, not discrimination, for aspies. It's a disadvantage we have to deal with because of how AS makes us behave and interact. Likewise a person blind from birth isn't being discriminated upon by a vision-centric society, rather they have to deal with the hardships of being blind in a society that places great importance on being able to see.

There's really no way around this problem unless you want to propose either training everyone on how to identify and diagnose AS along with classes that teach them how to ignore the sometimes offensive things that aspies do unintentionally. That or have every aspie walk around with a t-shirt that reads "I have Asperger's Syndrome. Please treat me differently".

Yes. But - I think this is still discrimination. It may not have a solution, but it's still discrimination of a sort.

I mean, people who are being racist don't need to think "ooh I'm going to be racist now. -plot-" to be racist, you know. They just have to believe something about a person or group of people that isn't actually true. (Human beings have been believing untruths for thousands of years. I don't see how we can stop now.)

This is endlessly the situation of most minority groups (let's compare GLBT, racial minority, people with other difficulties such as ADHD, bipolar depression, etc), doesn't have to be "oohhh a discrimination opportunity" and occurs the world over. And certainly, I think, it occurs to aspies.

(Not to be depressing about it, but to be completely and brutally honest, I'm certain that discrimination is an unstoppable force that will continue to plague humankind no matter how much we think we have erased it. If it doesn't occur to aspies, then aspies must be superhuman! - (which we are far from being))

Your thought about t-shirts is amusing! ...but I agree implausible and probably wouldn't help anyway. I agree there needs to be a solution - but I doubt we'll come up with one anytime soon, short of a miracle.

Of course most people don't consciously discriminate. However, they still need to be aware that the person they're discriminating does, in fact, belong to the group that they're biased against. You won't see a homophobe belittle just anyone, he'll only go after people that he knows are gay. You don't see a KKK member burning crosses on random houses' lawns.

Discrimination occurs in someone's thoughts, not just in their actions... Your examples are valid, but they don't define discrimination.

Example of slurping soup - in a restaurant you hear someone loudly slurping soup behind you. The NT Normal Western Person doesn't have to look behind, doesn't even have to see the person before you instantly think "gosh that person is rude." Even if the person was actually doing it because they thought they were giving honour to the chef to show that they were enjoying it.

The homophobe can hear what he thinks is a "gay voice" over a business call and instantly form pre-conceived ideas of distaste towards the person on the other line, or at the least suspicion or cautiousness, that would not arise if the person did not have "a gay voice." Again, no action, just thoughts. I still think this is discrimination.