ShadesOfMe wrote:
we aren't. we are on the autism spectrum which is DIFFERENT. It is not Autism. We are on the spectrum, but not Auties.
I think that this is a very important distinction. We are not autists. We are their non-autistic doppelgangers. To be slightly cornball, it could be said that we "walk in both worlds, but a shadow in either."
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and I think if we even have a Advocacy board, it should be AS advocacy not Autism advocacy! and doesn't that stuff go in the general section anyways?!
Aspies don't need advocacy. It's in the same class of disorders as ADHD and schizotypal personality disorder. It shouldn't even be considered, in itself, an Axis I disorder. We are sympathetic toward those who are truly disabled, though, because we see ghosts of ourselves within them.
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The thing is, it's thought to be genetically related, but it isn't the same thing.
It's not. One severely damages development...and the other does not.
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I went to a school for aspies and Auties for a few days, and those kids were really bad off. One of the girls just wandered around in circles, acting like no one was there, reciting what seemed to be a line from a movie, over and over and over.
You mean...you've never done that? O.o o.O O.O I like to spin in circles while I walk! It's really fun! You should try it!
Of course they were acting like no one was even there. That's the definition of autism. Rather than being stupid, which isn't quite the case with them, they simply have little, if any, connection with their surroundings. They're in "lala land." It isn't a lack of awareness, though: it just doesn't occur to them to care. Even so, this isn't quite intentional. It's like the semi-voluntary attention-getting behavior that marks ADHD, for, although this attention-getting behavior
seems voluntary, the person doing it is often mortified by its consequences and may earnestly want to stop doing it. The same is so in autism: although they may understand the
concept of coming out of their fairy land, can even do so for brief periods and dearly
want to
stay out of it, they are simply doing what is in their nature. Am I being clear here?
Think of it as a good husband who's had a few too many drinks, for analogy: he may know that he's being offensive toward his wife, he may even try to tearfully apologize to his wife even during his state of drunkeness, but he wakes up with his bags packed and a notice that his wife is staying with her mother until he leaves. During his state of drunkeness, he's aware of the impropriety of his actions and feels that they are wrong, but he finds he can't help himself.
When I try to explain these things to dedicated NTs, it feels like talking to a brick wall. Essentially, human beings are nothing but big bags of narcotics. Whether you're NT, AS, or schizophrenic, that's all you are and all you'll ever be: a big, fat bag of narcotics. It's a crude, analogous way of stating it, but accepting this causes all these disorders, ranging from ADHD to catatonic schizophrenia, to make ten million times more sense. You're a pretty
sophisticated, little bag, though, I'll grant you.
Gah. I got side-tracked, so I'm having to come back and edit behind myself. Instead of fiddling with the above, let me append.
Think of high functioning autists, such as Aspies, as being on a drug. This drug sometimes makes them slightly, even significantly, more intelligent than most people. However, it can also make them very dull in character and narrow in their patterns of thought. Think of a severely low functioning autist as someone whose exposure to similar substances has led to lasting brain damage and pervasive, debilitative developmental impairments. This is kinda why we are associated with autists. Similar principles seem to be at work.
at least *someone* gets what i'm trying to say. everyone here seems to be taking what I said waaay out of what i meant. and for those of you who are all,talking about the "we" in the title, this website was originally for people with AS. Most of the people here, have AS. That is why in the diagnoses section of the profile, it starts with "have aspergers diagnosed" and have aspergers undiagnosed. Not a whole bunch of different things on the damn spectrum.
26 Feb 2008, 8:58 pm
