Okay to 'out' persons dead for 5 years?

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It is advantageous to talk about famous people or people who have achieved a lot who might be on the spectrum.

And yet, we also want to be polite. Someone who is still living, they can choose to disclose at a pace comfortable to them.

Someone who has died, maybe similar to the rule for the baseball and football halls of fame, that they need to have been dead (retired) for five years. Or, we can do three years.

What do people think?

i would consider how their family would feel about it. if it's okay with the family, go for it. i'm all for good press for folks with brain disorders.

Can we call it a brain difference?

Or, I'm comfortable saying autism is both a difference and a disorder. For me, it's a very mixed bag, as I think it is for many of us.

Is there status on the spectrum documented or is this the speculative posthumous diagnosis rubric applied to people like Einstein?

When alive they didn't talk about for what ever reason then I think its disrespectful to 'out' them when they are dead so no.

More the latter. More saying, 'they were a creative person, they marched to their own drummer . . . '

As an example that people with autism, with some help, understanding, acceptance, can achieve a lot.

Please note that even here on WrongPlanet we speculate whether such and such living person might be on the spectrum all the time.

I intend this post as a more polite, more cautious way to do it.

Since it's all speculation, I think that whoever wants to speculate can speculate whenever they want. Everyone knows that it's all speculation, much like the speculation about the aliens at Area 51. For example, I speculate that the Unabomber Ted Kaczynski is autistic.

It's not like they'll rise from the grave and sue you, although their next of kin might. What people say about me when I'm dead is quite literally the last of my worries.

How so? And for whom? Seems like self-promoting to me.

I think we need some self-promotion.

And I think we can draw a lesson from the movement for LGBT equality. Just like the movement for gay rights benefited from saying, hey, by the way, Alexander the Great, Leonardo Da Vinci, Walt Whitman, and a bunch of other people, were probably gay.

I think we benefit from saying, hey, by the way, Thomas Jefferson, Jane Austen, Charles Darwin, and a bunch of other highly creative and orginal people, were probably on the autism spectrum.

And I think we can follow this up by saying, most people on the spectrum are middle-functioning and that's perfectly okay. The creative stuff comes, not when a person tries to force it, but when he or she merely allows it. And we should be accepted as we are.

Steve Jobs more than likely was on the Autistic Spectrum. Completely focused with his career, pioneer, IT evolutionary/visionary and a very successful business man. Obsessive, perfectionist as a CEO who only did things his way.

Steve Jobs possibly had Autism.

Bill Hicks
John Lennon
JFK

your reasoning is totally unconvincing

The dead have no "right" to their reputations.

However, if you are going to claim something about someone who is deceased, it is poor taste to make any claim you can not back with substantial hard evidence.

Claiming someone "might" have had AS is one thing. Asserting that they did have AS would mandate a significant amount of proof.

Okay, so, Steve Jobs was intense and focused about his creative pursuits.

Now, was he sometimes clumsy in his personal relationships, with perhaps 'patchy' social skills? I don't really know about this second part.

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If so, that would be some case. Not a slam dunk by any means, but some case.