Dan0192837465 wrote:
Does anyone else agree that the new revelation of Susan Boyle's erratic behaviour, general demeanour and much aknowledged mental health disorders, are now finally being attributed to Aspergers Syndrome, actually hinder the evolvement of AS community as a whole? I think it further damages the already tarnished reputation of AS sufferers.
Most people with Aspergers don't walk around with a placard announcing the fact, so the only people who know are people they have chosen to confide in (or had that choice made for them by parents or school officials.) The thing that makes NT people react oddly or negatively to AS people is the behavior of each AS person. When you don't give the expected signals in response to a communication or signal, you are weird and often creepily different. If you are lucky your strangeness will just be seen as intriguing or quirky. But there is a deep instinct in people to use these signaling systems to evaluate the safety of social contact with others--and we don't give the reassuring countersigns, or do it in a way that is "just a bit off." No amount of media image associated with labels is going to change that basic moment of alienating discomfort.
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The way I square it, everyone mocks, lampoons, ridicules and just uses typical derision towards SB everyday in the media. We surely don't need the label 'AS' attached to such a figure of fun. Whether good, bad or indifferent. It's another name to add to the long list of insults that NT's can and probably will call anyone who ticks the different, eccentric and loner boxes.
This "everyone" is hyperbole and destructive. Better to acknowledge that only some mock, lampoon and ridicule. There is enough real hostility in the world that there is no need to create an image of it where it doesn't exist.
For the most part, people are responding to each eccentric person's actions. I know the other thing--when someone who
does know looks at you differently or discounts your opinion just because of the label, but they don't do it because of Susan Boyle--they do it because they are ignorant and the only idea that they have is that your mind is defective in some way. The point that can be made is that the defect is in the area of social communication, not whatever areas of skill or expertise we may have developed. Susan Boyle is quite good there. Hire her as singer, not an MC or social secretary.
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This I find is not beneficial with the news of anyone, not such SB as having AS but defining anybody solely by their condition alone. I think this is dangerously misleading and quite simply a demonised portrayal. I would like a clear distinction that separates the fantastical misconceptions from the actual reality of living with AS, rather than having an inaccurate combined mixture of both, illustrating AS life to the wider public.
The actual reality of living with AS is different for each person with the neurology. Quite apart from it's inclusion on the autistic spectrum, AS is a spectrum disorder because of the great diversity of ways in which it presents. Susan is one, you are another and I am a third. One thing I have come to realize is that I am a bad judge of how weird I may be in any given situation. I know people think of me as eccentric but I don't know how much. I have come to recognize that this lack of awareness is a function of my neurology. This kind of thing is the problem for me, not what people think about Susan Boyle.
Might it be possible that you are the central component in the story of your interactions with others? And that these interactions are not significantly mediated by people's knowledge of Susan Boyle?
23 Dec 2013, 4:40 am
