Can an Aspie be a bully?

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So after I received preliminary confirmation of having Asperger's Syndrome from my psychologist, I learned shortly after that my father has been told by his work colleagues that he may also have AS. In addition, he describes my eldest sibling as also experiencing social nativity and difficulties in her life and that we are more alike than I wish to acknowledge. However, I find this terribly insulting. Why? Well, because my eldest sibling was my main tormenter/abuser in my life, and still persists every time we try to amend our relationship. Unfortunately, my father insists that it is just normal sibling rivalry behaviour. However, when I explain what she did to me when I was younger to others (mostly NTs), I am told that what she did is not part of normal sibling rivalry.

Some of the things she did to myself and my elder autistic siblings:
- torture us when our parents were away/babysat us (i.e., lock our bedroom doors with shoe laces for the entire day, pull us down the flight of stairs by our ankles, lock us outside of the house in our bathing suits, steal my pants so when my mom arrived home she would see me running around crying, pantless).
- install a keylogger on my PC then expose my conversations to others and parents
- go into my bedroom while I was at school to steal my journal, leave threatening letters on my bed, take items in my room (i.e. clothing, accessories) and accuse me of stealing them from her
- convince my parents that I was a drug addict, promiscuous, pregnant, trying to make her late for work and get fired, plotting to kill her, was yelling at her when we were alone, was bipolar, and needed to see a therapist. Eventually my mom made me see a therapist once just so my eldest sister would stop calling her a "bad mother" for not doing anything. In the end, the therapist saw right through it and told my mother that I was a normal teenager and that my eldest sister had too much control in the family.
- and the latest incident was I visited her during her most recent breakup (a guy/fiance of 5 years) because she thought she had no friends and he was going to hurt her when he would pick up his stuff (which wasn't true). After hanging out with her a few times, and going shopping with her and my mother, shortly after she began to post threats on her Facebook wall towards me (i.e., "that brat better be afraid, there I said it."). I am told that my mother is quite irritated with me now and instead has become closer to my eldest sibling so maybe she is hearing rumors about me again that aren't true.

At this point I can't tell if my eldest sibling is on the spectrum based on how my father describes her, or perhaps she falls under a different category altogether. Or perhaps this is just normal NT behaviour?

I have been emotionally abused by an aspie.

Aspies absolutely can be bullies and abusers. Being an aspie doesn't either prevent that or cause that.

I have no idea about your eldest sibling, but it doesn't sound like "just normal NT behavior" or "just normal aspie behavior".

Yes they can be a bully. I have seen some online and knew one in real life. Even I did some bullying in my childhood because I thought I was supposed to and I did it to fit in and be accepted and be liked but it never worked.

Redacted.

Last edited by Willard on 01 Oct 2011, 9:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Sure, they are human just like anyone else. And your sister is insane, I feel bad for you and your siblings for being tormented by her and also for her because she is obviously sick.

Aspies can definitely bully. I've seen a couple on this forum try to bully people, and there were some incidents of bullying on the autism hub a year or two ago.

Anyone can be a bully. Even someone who despises the art of bullying and bullies in general can accidentally bully someone without realizing they are doing it.
The individual must make the conscious choice not to bully others. When bullying is brought to the individual's attention, it's their responsibility to make sure it ceases. If they didn't realize they were doing it, which might be the case with Asperger's, they feel remorse.
If they are heartless bullies who don't care, they rationalize it, justify it and continue.
Aspies can fall into either category.

My dad would also be a bully Aspie. He has said some pretty awful things to me over the years, & I have seen him say some pretty mean things to other people as well. He has no sense of hurting anyone either verbally or physically (nearly yanked my arm out of its socket when he got mad at me). However, he's the biggest baby when it comes to physical pain...not sure if he's affected by verbal abuse now or not.

Well I can't say I've EVER heard of an Aspie being a bully...although I admit that with a girlfriend, I used to be a bully in terms of getting very angry if she'd nag me about something, but that was mostly to cover up my absent-mindedness about things that I was "supposed to" notice. It's because that sort of thing had gnawed on me for some time, not because I enjoyed inflicting any pain on her. I stopped it though b/c I felt really crappy about it after.

I have been set up to be a bully by manipulative people at school who made phony reports to a principal that I threw snowballs at a younger kid, and that I stole someone's pens that were planted on me...but those clearly don't count.

Most of the comments on this thread so far don't seem to address the matter in relative terms, however. I would have to say, despite not having empirical evidence on hand, that the proportion of Aspies in the Aspie population that are bullies is far less than that of NTs. Also, Aspies are FAR more likely to be the victims of bullies, than bullies themselves...and I truly believe that those who DO become bullies, are the ones who have been subjected to more than their fair share of bullying, and they're out for "revenge".

This is correct, but I didn't interpret the question to be "How frequently do Aspies bully others?" but "Can Aspies bully at all?"

Also, per your last point - any amount of bullying is "more than their fair share."

In my opinion YES Aspies can be bullies. And I have seen some pretty intense bullying from one Aspie to another.

of course they can. See the thread right above { http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt175609.html } as you can see, aspies can be bullies, trolls, and self-agrandizing exclusionist jerks

I don't see any bullying in that thread. Just people being opinionated. I don't know if I am included in there as a troll or bully or jerk but if I am, oh well. I know my opinions aren't always popular and I am very opinionated in some things but I don't feel very strongly against the self diagnosed like some people do.

I also see "bully" gets misused too and your post is an example of it.

We have probably all done it at some point, dominate another person unfairly...

It's got nothing to do with "exclusion." This is an example of the "us v them" thinking I refered to in my post.

This "you can only be in the club if you are an Aspie" ideology has gotten way out of hand. It's far better to be truly neuro diverse and accept all differences, including NTs or you are turning into what you despise in others.

Even though I completely disagree with people on the matter of self-diagnosis, I don't think anyone in that thread is bullying. There was someone who came to this forum some months ago who did try to bully me into accepting his version of my reality (which was that I just wanted to be "Aspie" to be cool and would doctor shop until I got the diagnosis I wanted, and there was something seriously wrong with me for self-dxing). I have had at least one other on this forum attempt to bully me. I have seen multiple bullying attempts directed at anbuend over the years (while lurking before I joined and reading old threads), and I've seen other people bully and be bullied in the time I've been an active member.

I do agree that "you shouldn't self-dx" can turn into bullying, but I have also seen someone who self-dxed (with ADHD, not AS) bully people rather aggressively, so I wouldn't be surprised to see a self-dxed autistic person bullying others.