Is Asperger's syndrome / autism a disability?

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     I'm just curious: you acknowledge that you are very disabled by it; yet you do not want a cure, if it were available.
     I've noticed that a number of people with similar conditions do not want a cure. Why not? Surely most people would leap at a cure for a condition they acknowledge to be disabling?

Regards, Michael.

Perhaps you need to see where I'm coming from.

I was 37 before I found out that I had Aspergers.
I grew up without a condition to "blame my pain on".

I had to accept that it was all ME. All my fault somehow... and I had to rise above it.
It was a hard slog but I figure that I mostly made it.

Now, it's nice to know that it wasn't all my fault and it's great to have a lot of things explained but ultimately, I'd already made it "Not" a disability before I learned of its existence.

     I have some sympathy for this point of view, because I agree that "normal" people often have needless and irrational attitudes that sometimes impact against people like us. But I think that is only one side of the disability aspect. The other is when the disability itself prevents you on a long-term basis from doing what you most want to do, or at least severely degrades the quality of your achievement in that area. That has nothing with social attitudes amongst neurotypicals, because the things impacted on are things you want to do yourself, not just what you think others expect of you. In my book, that is a very clear disability.

     That, of course, is a severe injustice, possibly even an act of cruelty and prejudice if done deliberately and with awareness. I have never noticed that personally in my own life - but that may be partly because I don't have a career and interact very little with the outside world by normal standards.

     I agree that, from certain points of view, society is disabled; but I think that is quite a separate matter from whether the A.S.D. person is also disabled in their own way.
     I am reminded of the statement by a psychiatrist of a few decades ago (was it R. D. Laing?), who was sceptical of the whole modern practice of psychiatry, and who stated that insanity was merely a sane response to an insane world - a view I might agree with up to a point, but not fully.

Regards, Michael.

     I really didn't think anyone used this term seriously - I thought it was only a satirical usage by people wanting to poke fun at the excesses of political correctness.
     I suppose it could be justified in cases where the person in question can point to definite superior abilities which are related to their disability (despite its linguistic awkwardness) - but otherwise I find this rather akin to calling short people "vertically challenged", stout people "horizontally challenged", or bald men "follicularly challenged" - and dozens of other similar humorous coinages.
     I certainly am not differently abled - I cannot point to any advantages at all that my condition confers upon me.

Regards, Michael.

I feel blessed to be honest and would only change a few things about myself .

Often have irrarional attitudes that SOMETIMES impact people like us? I have never been one to put any merit in anything other than equality. I don't care what your strengths and weaknesses are, human is human. But NT interpersonal communication is built around not saying what you mean and getting angry at people who take you for what you say instead of what you mean as being difficult. This is not an often-sometimes, this is an always-everywhere. I'll accept people telling me "Why do you always have to be right?" when they understand I'm not mental when I respond "Well why do you always have to be wrong?"

Fair do's.



Thanks man. Pretty clever metaphor about the snakes, I've never thought about it like that before.

I would say more than 3/4 of the members of WP are anti-cure and the reason for that is simple. We like the way we are.

The majority of us with Aspergers do not feel intrinsically disabled, many of us challenge that we even have a condition, syndrome, or disorder. Rather, we are neurologically wired differently, and it is held against us.

Many of us aren't exactly happy with our lives, but that is largely because of the rotten way we are treated most of the time. The only real cure is for NTs to treat us with respect and stop disenfranchising our rights. Better yet, make accommodation for our differences. Make life easier for us [according to our standards] instead of so difficult, many of us find it impossible to survive.

Or so difficult to survive, that trying makes life unpleasant and not worth the effort. These are the real issues that NTs love to skirt around and exclude us from the conversation. Funding is provided to help us and NTs use that money to impose treatments on us or programs that we don't want, and worst of all to finance research that could ultimately eliminate us.

If-we-are-just-different-then-why-should-we-not-be-treated-like-any-other-different-person?

Why-should-anyone-"accommodate"-us-if-we-are-as-capable-of-getting-along-in-the-world-without-accommodation-as-anyone-else.--Why-should-the-world-compromise-to-accommodate-us-when-others-who-are-not-disabled-are-expected-to-compromise-to-accommodate-the-world?--What-gives-us-any-reasonable-justification-for-requiring-others-to-extend-themselves-or-compromise-or-accommodate-us-if-we-are-different-but-not-disabled?

Everyone-is-different,-so-why-should-we-be-specifically-"accommodated"-if-our-difference-is-not-disabling?

Well, assuming the hypothetical cure means a true and complete cure, this would mean that all the brain systems contributing to what classifies me autistic/AS would need to be altered. Such a complete brain alteration would change who and what I am on a fundamental level since the brain systems involved are those involving my fundamental perceptions, cognitions and emotions. My cognitive abilities are characterised by strong detail-oriented processing, systemising, excellent long-term memory, and visual-spatial processing. This enables me to be an effective scientist, writer and artist, among other things. My atypical perceptions also mean I approach problem-solving in an idiosyncratic way, which has been mostly beneficial in my case.

Now, if I could alleviate some of the sensory symptoms and compensate for some of the others by learning new skills, and have the accommodations I'm entitled to, my quality of life would be drastically improved. Some small changes applied correctly have already had a substantial positive impact on my wellbeing. This is often the case where disability has previously gone completely unaccommodated.

AS is merely an ability set (which varies somewhat from person to person)

It is a set of abilities that allow us to thrive in our own worlds, and generally excel in our own areas of expertise.
It is also a set of abilities that is often at odds with the mainstream, Neurotypical, appearance-based culture.

So, I guess, it would depend on what set of metrics you judge 'disability' by.

If you value 'truth unto oneself', prescience, deep thinking and caring about things that appear to objectively matter, then AS is NOT a disability.

If, however, you, above all else, value the ability to rise to the top of masses of superfluous people scrapping for position in an illusitory social hierarchy, to be mesmerized by flashy new fads, prefer appearances to deeper meaning, devalue honesty... (I'll stop now... its starting to get a bit messy... but you get my point), then AS would qualify as a disability.

It should be apparent that I LIKE having AS and do not consider it a disability... a challenge, perhaps, but a challenge to be overcome, and well worth the mental anguish incurred in the process. In summary, then, I would like to paraphrase Nietzsche - 'he who is freest suffers most' - AS frees one from the bonds of NT social juggling, but he certainly must endure untold hardships as a result (as we all know).

OK... I'll get off my soapbox now

Of course it's a disability, and that's for the simple reason that you need to be disabled in the ways outlined to be diagnosed with it. Even if you aren't diagnosed and you still have it, you're going to be just as disabled in the ways outlined.

Before and after the label does nothing but give your disability compared to your peers a name, which can lead to understanding by the same peers if they're decent people, and it'll allow you to focus on the areas where you aren't disabled.

i fluctuate in terms of how i view it> there are things I like about it and yet I am very disabled by it too.
At present I am chronically suicidal and struggling to even find value in staying around. I lose hope and i loathe the fact that i feel trapped and cannot stop stimming or cannot move out into the world beyond my rigid and repetitive routines. Often these are fine, but when the depression kicks in, and the anxiety - which are two co-morbids that play havoc with me and my quality of life, i am rendered useless and despairing.
I can feel how different i am from others. I live behind a glass wall and I cannot reach others. Whilst i have some great gifts, thanks to my autism, I also feel gutted by it and truly despairing.
I get trapped inside myself. it is like a prison sometimes.

I am dis able to go along to get along. Why do I always have to be right? Dissonance is painful. I can't do something I know is wrong, and I can't pretend I don't know it is wrong. If something suggests I might be wrong, I am compelled to find out. I have a hard time convincing myself that semantically wrong things are able to be correct, but I can understand being practical. I often disagree about when it is acceptable to just do the practical easy pragmatic thing instead of just doing it right. The negative feedback I get from NTs amounts to "I'm just not good at thinking about things, but admitting I'm not as able to think about things makes me feel bad so I'm not going to, instead I'll just say you are over thinking it. It is not important to be correct, just go look busy."

It is depressing to be told you are wrong because you are the only one who bothered to actually check what was right. Then I get called uppity or arrogant or abrasive or whatever you want. Ad hominem from people who don't even understand what an ad hom is. Everything is just about keeping your head down and getting yours.

So what? It seems to work for them. It is not my place to overhaul entire societies ways of getting along. I have a responsibility to my self to figure out what my place is, to find that which gives me joy and dedicate my life to it.

I prefer 'Uber Spaz'

Not really a good comparison. They are separate animal types, whereas someone with an ASD (or other disability), is not separate from NTs; IE: we're still humans as are they.