Why is Asperger's So Misunderstood

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I think part of the problem is that's still not widely understood among the populace, unless they have a direct connection to it. I was diagnosed only a year ago and had first heard of Asperger's only two years prior to that. I did not personally know anyone with autism growing up and had never (knowingly) met anyone with autism. I didn't even know that it was a spectrum. I had only seen and heard things on occasion from the news and the like, usually about children with "classic" autism. Therefore, whenever I heard the word "autism" I automatically thought of "classic" autism because that was all I knew (and even then I never knew any details about it).

As previous posters stated, I had no connection to it and no reason (at that point) to really look into it. Higher-functioning forms are more hidden and therefore we come across as "normal" and "unimpaired".

I think we could eliminate the problem of being misunderstood by eliminating use of the term 'Aspie' to identify ourselves with, and replacing it with a new, clinically irrelevant term that covers not only people with Asperger's Sydrome, but also people with Avoidant Personality Disorder, Schizoid Personality Disorder, Schizotypal Personality Disorder, and maybe even some introverted, socially awkward NTs. This new, more vague term would eliminate the problem of being misunderstood by making it harder for people to rely on preconceived stereotypes, thus making it more obvious to people that they don't really understand, but it would still provide an excuse for our abnormal, quirky behaviors. I think it would be kind of difficult to create a term that covers this whole cluster of people and put it into common usage though. Consent would need to be gained from all of the groups covered in order to do that. But I believe that the creation and usage of this more vague term would benefit members of all of the groups that would be involved.