If you could push a button or take a pill to get rid of your

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I agree with you. I am glad that so many people on here have wonderful lives in spite of their autism, and wouldn't want to change a thing. That is not me. My life is ok today but I am sure it would be much better if I didn't have Asperger's, my past would have been 1000 times better.

I am grateful that I have been able to accomplish what I have in spite of Asperger's, but it sure would have been much better to be an NT and not have to add "The in spite of Asperger's". To have had a truly normal, typical, fun filled life would have been wonderful!

For me even as a NT that radical a change at this stage of my life would be too much. As an older person like or not I do set an example. I do not want to enable the idea that autism is all about bieng impaired. I do believe a lot of the severe difficulties of living autistic is about societal judgements about what is wrong.

I am conflicted about about the cure thing. The idealist in me is radically pro choice and individulist. The realist and experienced me believes that a cure will never be truly voluntary. Kids will have no choice and while probably not legally mandated the social and financial pressures to take the cure will be enormous (triple rates or no insurence if you do not take it, employers won't hire you if you do not take it). The combination of desperation and money will probably lead to a lot of harmful faux cures.

I am skeptical of retro and celebrity diagnosing. But blanket no caveat statements that these people were not autistic are just as wrong as those that say they were. Science has not discovered what autistic brains look like yet so it has not been proven that Einstein was not autistic All we can say is that Einstein, Mozart, Franklin, Hitler, and Nixon had autistic traits. Adam Lanza was diagnosed at Yale.

What is the best approach to helping Autistics emphasizing that Hitler, the guy in Germany who massacred people at a McDonalds had autistic traits as well as the lowest functioning to prove Autism is this horrible thing or emphasizing Einstien? Emphasizing only the the negative could lead us back to the days of institulizatiion, increase in police shooting autistics first and asking questions later and the positives in autistic people never bieng discovered. Emphasizing only the positive enables the aspie supremacists and could lead to people not uber mild losing or never getting support or understanding. So the solution has to come from the area we autistics hate the grey area or something in between. I would say since the first 70 years of autism has been pretty much all about the negatives the positives should be emphasized but not to the point of unreality.

yeah exactly

What autistic traits did Hitler have? He was an outstanding orator and seemed to understand human nature pretty well. Those sure don't sound like someone who is autistic.

What the OSS report seemed to show was not what maybe Hitler was like, but according to it, he was not really the magnificient genius often attributed to him. He was quite stupid and the rest of the Nazis frequently disobeyed him when he came up with a dumb idea. They kept him around because of his speaking ability but he was no personal manipulator, he did not entirely trick the entire German people but was the result of generations of certain traits coming together in the nation. He is the ulcer, the manifestation, of an underlying disease that has laid dormant in Germany. Hitler did not create german madness, rather german madness created Hitler.

It also is not impossible for someone with no sense of mastery or intellect to rise to a position of high ranking. Ribbentrop was quite possibly the stupidest ambassador to ever exist yet he managed to land his job. He was so stupid the other Nazis couldn't even stand him, even Hitler couldn't stand how stupid he was.

I am not saying Hitler had aspergers though, but that is seems odd anti-cure people like to tout how Einstein, Elvis, or Beethoven must have had autism yet never question whether some particular evil person also had it. I only said he displayed some traits, maybe one of Hitler's great great grandparents could have had aspergers and some of the traits appeared in him.

One of the things anti-cure advocates don't seem to ponder is how Neurotypical people feel everyday, a person with aspergers who was suddenly cured may find out how everything may feel a hundred times clearer and lose a ton of mental pain they never knew not everybody has. The guy who tried methylone said he felt so good and could feel things he never felt before, the amount of clearness, relaxation, ability to feel what others feel, and so on. Maybe he just felt high, but for a NT that feeling high is normal for them and we just feel horrible every second we are alive but just got used to it.

For NT people, every second may feel pleasurable in comparison to us. They can absorb dopamine just from chatting or seeing another person smile. They do not need special interests to get high inside.

At this point, I don't think I would. If you had asked me in high school though, it would be a different story.

Psychopathography of Adolf Hitler - Wikipedia

I have a lot of autistic traits, but whether or not I'm autistic, I still don't know. That said, I go back and forth about this. On the one hand, being autistic, or (~autistic), has resulted in most of the worst experiences of my life. Particularly in my inability to deal well with conflict... I usually end up making angry people angrier, until they get really awful.

At the same time, I KNOW that my unique perspectives and experiences are what have enabled me to find the personal and professional success that I have achieved. My romantic partners tell me that my tendency to be extremely literal and need explicit communication has enabled them to learn and understand things about themselves that they otherwise wouldn't have understood. And my software engineering skills certainly benefit from my attention to detail and obsessive nature.

I dunno. Logically, I know that I should not want such a magic cure. But emotionally? I've often wished I could just make this go away. There's a lot of pain in this life that I wouldn't have had.

Nope, don't know what I'd be like without it and don't want to take the chance.

"But you'll be normal." People would say.

But what is normal other then a cliched point of view people are forced to accept.

Yes, I would.

No, I would not want to get rid of my Aspergers. It's part of me, and it's part of the way I think, feel and focus. I wouldn't want to be someone who focuses on people rather than interesting things for anything in the world. That would be such a loss for me! I have never wanted to be like anyone else or everyone else, I have always been content with being myself (and I see everything that affects my brain as part of myself).
There are comorbids I would happily ditch though.

might be nice to get rid of some of the symptoms

possibly

You don't know what you are missing. I have observed, read studies, and thought it through and through and realized what exactly is missing.

It pains me to think and makes me angry knowing so many people would say no to a cure. I remember the ice bucket challenge, 100 million USD raised for ALS. If you people who were against a cure weren't around, think about the millions that could have been raised and will continue to be raised for a cure or some treatment for all the negative symptoms. Think the years that could have been spent yet were thrown into the gutter because of this neurodiversity anti-cure Einstein-had-aspergers nonsense that has plagued the medical research community like cancer.

The problem is that many aspies seldom are self aware by nature or are not bitter enough like me to become aware. I know every single executive dysfunction, every single intellectual impairment, every single mental echolalic tendency, every single issue I have with multi-processing, my lack of cognitive empathy, my terrible time growing up, my naievity, my lack of properly formed memories, my weak sense of "self" (due to not multiprocessing), my inability to gain dopamine just from a sunset, my inability to communicate.....

You little professors need to get a grip. Autism costs the USA 90 billion dollars a year! And I am part of that problem, we need to change as much as neurotypical people need to as well.

It is interesting that the anti-cure people see NTs only in a rather narrowly defined, very negative light-like all they care about is appearance and small talk. Most NTs are wonderful people with a wide diversity of interests, and live productive, fulfilling lives. I suppose seeing them negatively is a good form of rationalize for why I want to stay the way I am. If you are truly happy and fulfilled with the Apsie live, then I can see why you wouldn't want to change. I would guess than many Apsies aren't happy with the way they are, and would give anything to change it.

No...

I am who I am. It's taken a while but I'm at a point in my life that I look who I am and am quite content for the most part.

For the longest time, I never thought that I should change. I didn't think that there was anything wrong with me at all. But, very late in my life, I realized that I didn't really want to be this way. All it does is make life harder for me.