POLL: Do you believe that Alan Turing was autistic?

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If people can't be affected by something until it has been identified and reified... that illogic alone raises ten zillion hornet's nests and is patently ridiculous. I think it was used just as a cop out on his part to avoid facing conflict on a personal level.

I agree. It is just that I expected the cast and crew to respond fairly and honestly when asked explicitly about Turing's likely autism. Instead, they blanched and turned defensive rather than saying simply, "It is true that Turing might have been autistic. Whether he was or wasn't, we sought to portray him as historical records suggest he was. If that appears to be autistic, it was only our attempt to portray his life accurately."

It was their blanket denial of any suggestion of autism that offended me.

Understandably offended. They had their own agenda, and commercial interests dominate once a film is released, the PR people behind the scenes largely dictate the game plan from there, and because AS is so stigmatised, it is likely that they chose a strategy that excised that aspect to maximise seats sold to NTs.

It's much bigger than just him, I think - wheels within wheels. The almighty dollar. The souls of AS people don't matter a damn to the movers of those wheels.

Sooo true! It reminds me of a job I had once with a national shopping-mall magazine publisher. I was the graphic designer and often assisted with modeling assignments. During the production of one such magazine, we learned that a Chicago-area shopping mall's marketing vice president had asked for the female cover model to be substituted with another, "less dark" model. Being up against a hard printing date, we hated ourselves, but complied with the buyer's demand. As fate would have it, the mall's marketing president showed up a couple weeks later to visit our offices. I introduced myself and apologized for using a model who was considered by her assistant to be "too dark" for the patrons of the mall. The marketing president happened to be a black woman and demanded that I share with her the details of our little last-minute change. She was as apologetic about the matter as I was. I only wish that she had sent a letter of apology to our model who must have been discouraged to see her cover photo moved to a smaller inside page.

I guess the difference between Graham Moore and me is that I wouldn't dare obfuscate the truth.

[i]
I guess the difference between Graham Moore and me is that I wouldn't dare obfuscate the truth.

Pick which one is the aspie...

Hehe. Are you teasing me, now? I know, I know. I can't lie and can't stay silent in the face of such things. But, I once was introduced by a Utah Legislature committee chairman as being "one of the most factually honest lobbyists" that he knew.

I have no doubt that he was sincere, AspieUtah.

Thank you!

I think I would have said I was Autistic if I had known back in the '70's in college because

1. Less experiences with consequences to myself and knowledge of consequences to others
2. I would not have had the social knowledge to understand that there was such a thing as a closet for me to come out of.

As far as the filmmakers attitudes I think it is almost irrelevent because in practically every review and discussion of the film Aspergers was discussed.

I am still not going write so and so historical figure or celebrity who has not come out is autistic and disagree with others that do so not because of internalized ableism but because of my Aspie-Autistic traits. "Highly suspect" fine, "lot of Autistic traits" no problem, blanket statements that these people were or are autistic NO,NO and NO.

I'm not necessarily criticizing the idea of retroactively diagnosing people with autism, I'm just saying there's no way to know for sure unless they're alive and in a state where they can be diagnosed. With enough evidence, educated guesses can be made, but we'll never be able to confirm these theories 100% in the case of a dead historical figure. It's like how "The Big Bang" is only a theory, even though it is widely accepted.

^ See? That's the thing with me. Even if they did genetic testing and found out none of these guys were on the spectrum, I wouldn't care. Hell, I don't even care if I'm on the spectrum or not. It's simply refreshing to find, even this late in life, that there are, or were, others like me roaming the earth and I wasn't alone in my uniqueness.

<--- Not the only oddball in town. Yay!

that's kind of the way I look at the Spectrum, kind of a conceptual whole to help me understand myself better.

And really, much better than any competing theory I've run across.

I currently am comfortably self-diagnosed. And maybe in some final analysis, I might be Spectrum-lite or Spectrum-friendly, well, that would be okay, too.

But we run the show. When we build organizations which advocate, which network and provide social connections, which recruit volunteers to help with such things as insurance and taxes ---- and I certainly hope we build such groups! --- it's adults on the Aspergers-Autism Spectrum who need to be the voting members.

In particular, I have been disappointed with psychologists and other so-called "helping professionals." Other people have had positive experiences, and more power to them. But in either case, we get to make our own decisions.

I also point out that psychiatrists weren't that helpful for lesbian and gay persons. They included being gay as a mental illness far longer than they should have. And it's the whole medical model mindset. It focuses on the problem. It doesn't play to strength and be matter-of-fact about problems, which to me is a much better way of going about things. And in terms of the historical record, it was the LGBTQ community and finding allies over the years like transgend persons and like persons who are gender-queer, where advocacy and community building really started to get things done.

Agreed.


Thanks! This link is a very good resource for people to become familiar with the power dynamics in human societies.

I can see where you are coming from, and need to make more clear then that in terms of allies, mental health professionals would never (in my opinion) be a group that would privilege the liberation of AS people. In citing Attwood, I was thinking of his personal qualities most (he had a stepfather with AS, which influenced him, there's a bigger picture there). Nor do I see psychologists, either the academic or services-pushing kind, as ever having a place at the table in the change process because their privilege as a group, which so greatly benefits from the imbalances in existing power structures, is huge and very dominant in maintaining the status quo. There will always be outliers though - those rare people from almost any walk of life who "get it" and allies can be tremendously important in political struggles, especially if they can assist getting the message out there (but never speaking FOR us).