Is there an Aspie "culture"?

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There is no "Aspie culture", but there is an "Autistic culture".

The Autistic culture manifests itself through the following:
* Autistic-run gatherings/conferences, such as Autreat and Autscape.
* Autistic-run organizations, such as the Autistic Self Advocacy Network, Autism Network International, and Autism Women's Network.
* Autistic-run forums, such as WrongPlanet, AspiesForFreedom, and AutieSocial.
* Autistic-written blogs, such as "Aspie Rhetor", "Cat in a Dog's World", and "Paula C. Durbin-Westby Autistic Advocacy Blog".
* Autistic-written books, such as "A Painful Gift: The Journey of a Soul with Autism", "A Blessing and a Curse: Autism and Me", and "Autistics' Guide to Dating: A Book by Autistics, for Autistics and Those Who Love Them or Who Are in Love with Them".

For a thorough explanation of the history of the Autistic culture, read "AUTISM NETWORK INTERNATIONAL: THE DEVELOPMENT OF A COMMUNITY AND ITS CULTURE":
http://www.autreat.com/History_of_ANI.html

Thank you for these resources.

No

Dont believe everything you read.

how old are you?

so your saying you want all our opinions but you will not share your finished work with us? Thanks a bunch

I did not say that. I will certainly share when it is finished.

I do not see how my age is relevant... but I am 44.

Fizzg,

Like you've just been told , some of us got this thing, you know lab rats - a little more human approach might be helpful here . Woopsie common anthropological mistake . ( Hey we're the ones to come in cold and not read the social cues.)

Maybe we ask you some fun stuff and we exchange on a more equal footing.

Thinks it's called mutual respect.

Now what do we want to know about NT's.

Meme.

I think there's an NT-ized Asperger culture ie we're all meant to be trainspotters and maths geniuses and like Star Trek, Star Wars, Dr Who and gaming.

This stereotype is fostered by both sides though. Most of the apies I've come across do like Star Wars and gaming so it's not just a fake stereotype. But perhaps it is just the aspies who frequent forums who are more likely to like these things?

There's definitely stereotypes that people play up to though which could be seen as a form of both media and self-created culture.

I don't see how anyone can say for definite that there is or isn't an AS culture - it all depends on who is doing the determining.

To me there is a definite culture on forums I've been on as I invariably feel alienated from it as I refuse to take it on board and act in the same way - this is strongly indicative of culture to me; of people modifying themselves to fit in with the culture.

I'm 45 though so perhaps I have more of an overview of the situation than younger people?

meme

OK... you want to know a little about me? I'm not sure that I would be a good prototype for NTs.

I am not social, I have very few friends. I would not classify myself as "fitting in" with most societal norms... I tend to speak my mind too frequently and often in inappropriate ways. I often feel that people should just be more logical and less emotional. I find a lot of the "rituals" of American culture to be quite ridiculous. I get intensely interested it things I am doing (right now this research project) much more so than most of my colleagues. In short, I feel like I can relate to a lot of what I have been reading here.

I am a scientist by training, I have a B.S. in Physics and Math. I have worked as a H.S. teacher and I have been in the military. Right now I am working on a Ph.D. in Gifted Education.

Why am I on this forum?
I submitted a draft of a paper to an academic journal and it was returned asking for more justification of a culture for ASD. The paper argues for increased cultural awareness of K-12 educators to help gifted students with ASD. One of the reviewers said that there could not be a culture if there was not a critical mass of people that knew the culture existed within the group. I have not found much research in this area. I thought that I might find some help here.

On that note, realize that this is not a scientific laboratory. I was merely asking the opinions of a group of people that I felt would contain some subject matter experts on the area of ASD culture.

Is there something else I should tell you about? I am a fairly boring creature.

Yes, I would say that we do have a communication impairment that necessitates rejection of the norms of the majority. It's not just non-verbal, either; it's verbal too. Some of us on WP are non-verbal sometimes or always. Others have problems with figurative language or can't follow complex linguistic constructions such as what are often presented in adult versions of the Sally-Anne test. We often get NT/ASD couples coming here frustrated because they don't speak each other's language--it's like marrying someone from a different country and assuming they speak English when they don't. Those couples have to learn each other's languages even more than NT/NT couples do.

Regarding being "subversive": Disability culture is often subversive. Rejecting the idea that disability means tragedy and inferiority is quite a subversive trait, and many of us here do exactly that. Even those who don't--who still buy into the idea that NTs are superior--are being subversive by hanging out with the weirdos of society, people that the world tells them to avoid. When we hang out together, we communicate autistic-style. We write huge amounts on our special interest and nobody tells us to shut up; we overanalyze things and juggle numbers and wordplay and nobody tells us we're silly. This reminds me very much of Deaf culture, actually: Rather than trying to imitate NT-style small talk, we plunge straight into the information and logic that comes more naturally, just the way a Deaf person might ignore lip-reading in favor of ASL. Just saying that "I think it's okay for me to be autistic" is a subversive opinion in today's society.

Thanks, Callista. You have made some interesting points.

I'm so subcultured now.........I always feel the more dominant culture to be the most subversive

When right and wrong is imputed, were the women, blacks and gays....subversive?

Or more precisely regarding NT/AS......... the main dominant culture subverts and represses out of fear of difference and ignorance of potential uses.

And control and manipulation for its own evil self

I hadn't considered that subculture could be seen as a negative thing - I've always loved subcultures because they tend to have more readily understandable habits than mainstream folks (I can pass for almost normal in Goth crowds for instance).

Treating culture as "The set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an institution, organization or group" - it does not appear that there is an AS culture. Or, at least, not that I've seen on here. However, that definition would also exclude many subcultures I find valid (like the American Otaku culture for instance).

In terms of common practices- it seems many with AS enjoy video games. I know that I MET many people with AS in anime conventions, but because I'm looking at it from the inside out, I'm not certain how many would be willing to identify with this subgroup.

Linguistically I imagine we are distinct from NT's, to the extent that non-verbal communication is impaired.

Overall I do not believe there is an AS culture. Culture often defines our behavior from the outside in. It will be interesting to see if one develops, but I have difficulty seeing that happening.

Good luck on your paper though! If or when you share any with us, I'd be quite interested in what you've written. I apologize for the communication issues you have already experienced.

Hope you didn't interpret that at rudeness , it wasn't intended. This is a nice place to chill for us.

This journal, like does it belong to one field of current social science? If it does, can you abstract from related research and published past papers their criteria for a definition of culture and sub-culture?

If you want to PM me say two accepted papers or put them up here for general debate, I'm an abstracter/pattern recognizer and this would be a good a starting point and there's a load of other guys who could help.

My first degree was in combined social science, and a lot of it concerned the formation of culture and subculture,

Can I/we help you with this? A set of parameters describing their definition of culture should be fairly straightforward to extrapolate.


meme.

meme -
I did not take it as rudeness on your part, was afraid that I had been rude to all of you by intruding into your space. Anyway, I appreciate the offer. Looking into past issues of this journal about cultural competence I find:

From - Cultural Considerations in the Underrepresentation of Culturally Diverse Elementary Students in Gifted Education. By: Milner, H. Richard, Ford, Donna Y., Roeper Review, 02783193, Spring2007, Vol. 29, Issue 3

"Becoming more culturally competent is a lifetime process; one never becomes fully competent where culture is concerned. Culture is not a static concept. It is not "a category for conveniently sorting people according to expected values, beliefs, and behaviors" (Dyson & Genishi, 1994, p. 3). Rather, culture is dynamic, and it encompasses various other concepts that relate to its central meaning. The supplemental categories that make up culture include, but are not limited to identity, class, economic status, and gender. Drawing on this dynamic concept and the work of a number of researchers and theorists (e.g., Ford, 1996; Hale, 2001; Irvine & York, 1995), we conceptualize culture to mean the characteristics of a person that are developed through formal and informal experiences, knowledge disposition, skills, and ways of knowing and understanding that are informed by race (the social construction of one's skin color), ethnicity (history, heritage, customs, rituals, values, and symbols), identity (how one perceives and represents himself/herself), class (economic/resource situation), sexuality, and gender."

From - Cultural Competence: Preparing Gifted Students for a Diverse Society. By: Ford, Donna Y.; Whiting, Gilman W.. Roeper Review, Apr-Jun2008, Vol. 30 Issue 2, p104-110

The term culture is adopted because it denotes the integrated pattern of human behavior that includes thought, communication, actions, customs, beliefs, values, and institutions of a racial, ethnic, religious or social group (Cross, 1988).

These definitions are somewhat broader than the one I cited earlier...

Maybe there needs to be an addition to the first definition (in bold) that "ways of knowing and understanding are informed by ________" where something goes in the blank to represent autistic culture... Perhaps cognition?

Thanks for suggesting this meme

With all our diversity , we certainly share a group identity.

We have a shared group history, albeit one which is largely unwritten, as yet.

We're growing a shared language.

Some of us, have other family members on the spectrum. And benefit like the "deaf of deaf". Others, as the first identified in their families, belong to an unconventional diaspora.

We have shown the first flutterings of group social action. Most recently in the collective pressure brought to bear on Autism Speaks to change offensive language in their marketing, excuse me, fundraising campaigns. They even threw in a token position to an autistic. If memory serves, my number on the petition I signed (Autism Speaks Doesn't Speak for Me) was something like 2400 and something. That's a largeish handful. I hope you do read the article by Jim Sinclair if you haven't already.

We are at the middle of the very beginning.

Now if we could just get Bill Gates to come out.

fizzicksgirl, Thanks for asking this question. I've been thinking about it quite abit myself, of late.

Recently during a conversation with me, a young, local psychologist who specializes in Aspergers, was entirely dismissive of the idea of an autistic culture forming online or elsewhere. He seemed to view groups like this one as nothing more than support groups. People with problems, helping other people with problems. And as that's what he does professionally, it wasn't anything he would want to look into during his freetime. To underline his point, he told me that when it came to aspergers, he only read what had been written by other professionals. Such attitudes will, I believe, eventually find themselves located on the wrongside of human history. But, I suspect, his beliefs will change as soon as those of his collegues change. Social people hate to be left behind, in their beliefs as much as anything else. We can use that.

And then, after that, we'll take Berlin.

I've got to go to work today. I'll think on this one.

Possible problem here is tautology . Define culture in concrete terms and fit everything into it
that fits, hence this is culture. Gotta avoid that one, but a definition is necessary.

Sociological definitions of culture are descriptive , they are often very good descriptions but lack
deeper exploration of the issues they address. Recently I've been chatting to cognitive guys and I really like the stuff they are pulling in from other disciplines. I particularly like the idea of culture and language having an evolutionary history , existing to an extent independently of the biological process.

Is this a narrow criteria necessary for publication?

Meme

I wouldn't say theres an aspie culture. There certainly is a community, but not a whole culture.