Why are people proud to be aspies in light of

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I'm a little surprised no one is mentioning Eliot Rodger as a campus killer who was considered to have Asperger's, at least according to his mother. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Isla_Vista_killings

What seems to be a common thread is hatred and envy of others who are more successful and socially integrated. Aside from not encouraging weapons fascination, the moral education of children should include some element of respect for others and obligation to the human race. Wipe that self-pity off your face! I do see some Aspies posting at WP (not referencing the OP of this thread) as having similar broad unfocused anger. They scare me.

WOW! Look how green the grass is back in the '50s!! !!

Unhappily I must inform you from personal experience the 1950s were not rock-and-roll heaven for aspies and in both the '40s and '50s physical bullying was all the rage.....I'm not sure you would have enjoyed it very much.

Be strong....hang in there.

I didn't do it so why should I feel ashamed? I think a lot more should be done for those on the spectrum, 80% unemployment speaks for itself. You can have an average or even above-average IQ, be able bodied, not be psychotic, and still be disabled because the social component is so important. Perhaps it will start being taken more seriously.

Judging us by the actions of one insane person is ridiculous to be honest (and I don't even think this last killer was on the spectrum at all). This is the type of attitude that paints us all with a negative brush and should not be thought about.

Also, I have no connection with the people that did these crimes, so why should I feel bad about being born on the spectrum?

People with Asperger's and Autism are more likely to become victims of violence themselves due to the stigma, the ignorance, and general stupidity of NTs and the media. Good lord, don't get me started on the media...

That is true also for people with mental illness such as schizophrenia and bipolar syndrome. But when people commit horrific crimes they like to use such things to justify their behavior, as if that makes it okay, then.

I want people to see me for who I really am - an intelligent, talented person with a quirky sense of humor who's a big kid at heart, not someone they should lock up before she goes on a killing spree. But thanks to the media NT's hear the word Asperger's along with the more stigma-inducing words syndrome or disorder, and that's all they see.

But obviously the majority of serial killers have not been identified as being on the spectrum (or even hinted at being so; in fact, several, eerily, were very popular and outgoing, hence "shocking" the world - why is it a shock? Because we're trained from birth to fear the people who don't fit in socially, whether that fear is warranted or not).

Obviously this "broad, unfocused anger" you claim of people on the spectrum overwhelmingly does not result in serial killings, mass killings, etc.

This all reminds me of a study I read about once - this was long ago, though - where children were shown various pictures to identify a "stranger." The majority of "strangers" - even though the kids knew none of the people on the pictures shown - were unsmiling and not physically attractive. The people who were handsome or beautiful and were smiling were not identified as "strangers" by the kids. The idea? If you physically "look" like a "regular person" then you aren't dangerous. (I can go on the hunt for that study if anyone is interested.) Is this true? Obviously not. But we are taught from the cradle that if a person "fits in" to expectations then the person is safe. If a person doesn't, either physically or in other ways, the person might be dangerous. It's this very assumption that many child and other predators rely on, actually. Many killers throughout history have been outgoing, even popular; some have been very physically attractive; some have made sure to attain positions of respect in the community. Because they were very, very smart and they knew people would fall back on their old superstitions of who's "safe" and who "isn't".

We are taught to fear what's different even when there is no evidence that the particular difference generally results in danger.

Hauling ASD into this latest tragedy, even though it has by no means been proven - we just know that the guy was isolated, weird and loved guns; these three things could be due to dozens of different factors, none of which might be ASD, we don't know - smacks of dragging back the ages-old "cautionary tales" against people who don't fit in. Now it's, "See? They kill people!"

Way to go, lack-of-progress.

As far as your finger-wagging against not teaching children respect for others, if there's any one group who is taught basically from day one that they must fit in and act like others, it's people on the spectrum. So that comment made me do a "say what?" double-take. I don't know that simply not being taught to respect others results in mass spray-shootings, BTW. That's quite a stretch. I'm sure it's far more than that. If you're inferring that this one person wasn't taught respect for others, we don't know WHAT he was taught - except how to shoot a gun. We know he was isolated and we assume, based on so far unsupported random commentary from "witnesses," that his mother constantly asked neighbors to shush around him. Depending upon what his issues were - depression? Abuse? Sociopathy? We don't know - that could have been a panic reaction because things were already bad and the mother was afraid, not because this mother thought the world revolved around her son. How do we really know?

It seems to me that people who are "different" are more likely to lash out because others refuse to accept them and what they can't change than due to the fact that they don't respect other people. A lifetime of rejection and emotional (or sometimes physical, i.e. physical bullying) torture appears to be more the motivation than a cavalier "I don't respect other people, so I think I'll kill a bunch of them". Yet the lesson isn't, "Hey, let's stop torturing and rejecting people who can never act in a movie star-perfect cookie-cutter way. They might just freak out at some point when the ongoing unilateral cruel rejection gets to be too much." Instead it's, "See? We were right all along...we SHOULD be rejecting, condemning and bullying people who are different." What oddly circular logic.

I find this line of thought that kids aren't respectful, in particular, Aspies aren't respectful, and therefore, Aspies are prone to grow up to be murderous oddly put-together. That's just my view. It may be logical to the next person. I can't say.

I think parents (and schools) vary widely in teaching kids the satisfaction that comes from giving back, from helping others with no other goal than to be altruistic. You can also teach kids, including Aspie kids, to identify who is needy or friendless, and be supportive of those people.

Lacking this kind of instruction, I would say autistic people in particular, with their discomfort around social situations, will turn all their focus inward on themselves and feel increasingly cut off from the world at large.

You can call it finger-wagging (which I found insulting, by the way) but yet I continue to insist these things are a parent's obligations and one is not excused from this instruction solely due to being autistic.

(underlining above mine, not the quoted poster's)

You may find it insulting and it's your right to do so, but you did in fact intimate that parents of autistic children don't teach them to respect other people (or that many don't or not enough to? Not sure there), and in fact have now repeated that in the very sentence I've quoted above, which came down to, in my opinion, to finger-wagging (reprimanding). IOW, you appear to have decided that parents of autistic children don't teach their children respect for others and appear to be admonishing these parents for this (lack of) action.

However, you have a right to your feelings as much as the next person, so I'm not saying you shouldn't feel that way, I'm just pointing out in what ways I felt that was what you were doing. I am also attempting to point out that for many, many parents of autistic children, a lack of teaching respect for others is not the case. I'm sure it must be true of the parents of some autistic children, just as it is true for the parents of some NT children. I do not believe (nor have I seen, though I'm just one person) that a lack of good parenting nor of teaching respect is exclusive to, or even more often seen in, parents of autistic children. This is my view and experience and you are free to disagree with it.

You're choosing to distort what I said.

"I think parents (and schools) vary widely in teaching kids the satisfaction that comes from giving back, from helping others with no other goal than to be altruistic. You can also teach kids, including Aspie kids, to identify who is needy or friendless, and be supportive of those people."

I never said all parents of all autistics fail to teach them moral codes and behaviors. I said there is a wide variation. I later said this might be a special problem for autistic kids simply because they are so likely to be focusing on their inner experiences.

I think you're misunderstanding me too; I think I was pretty careful (see my post that quoted your one paragraph above) to say you may not have been saying "all."

However, since the intimation was there that enough parents of autistic people don't teach what you feel they should be teaching that such a statement would be warranted at all, I responded to that.

I'm sure you don't think this is true of the parents of every autistic person. But you seem to feel it's true of enough that you felt you needed to say something about it. I don't have empirical data that most parents of autistic people do teach social responsibility, and you don't have empirical data that most or even a significant number of parents of autistic people don't teach social responsibility, so this is all opinion, on both our parts.

A lot of aspies like endless debate over semantics, but I don't have anything further to say on this matter, NowhereWoman. Unsubscribing from topic.

Well, frankly that is something that is missing in general in western society these days. It doesn't really come down to what parents teach. A lot of bad influence comes from the internet. There is a lot of intense negativity centered young males in particular, the unemployed, the loveless, etc... The PUA sites in particular are like a big black hole of chauvinistic male narcissism and pseudo-darwinistic vomit.

In a culture that has institutionalised individualism, double standards and gun ownership, someone decides parents (correction, female parents) are responsible for turning out mass murderers by not teaching children at home to be more altruistic. Sad.

And the 80% unemployment claim again for which there is no respectable research basis, it began (and continues) as Autism Speaks propaganda - they had someone 'estimate' what the rate 'might' be, and then quoted it as 'fact' to the media in their press releases, and now some people here re-quote it as fact. Sad.

Who needs the media or Autism Speaks to stigmatise us? Just read Wrong Planet...

The label is merely NT shorthand for a variety of states ranging from elevated consciousness to those who are vulnerable and in need of support.

There is no simple answer and simply labelling someone Aspergers means nothing other than there is something underway in this person.

However, in meeting at these resources, one hopefully learns a little more of oneself and thats about the best use one can make of them. You may in the process discover that you are of an elevated consciousness and go away and do something with it. Alternatively, you may discover you need support and hope it is available. Such are the vagaries of birth.

We have no way of really knowing what this shooter was other than a vague label.