Aspie businesses for Aspie employees - Is it ethical?

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(I am using aspie in place of autism spectrum disorder to make it easier to write)

What if we here at the"wrong planet" and other aspie groups joined together and created a business or businesses catering to people on the autism spectrum?

First of all would this be deemed ethical or would it be considered discrimination?

As an aspie myself I feel I am truly capable of great things... but because my weaknesses were ignored for so long and festered I am dysfunctional in many areas... and my past is so littered with failure it's difficult for me to even try to get a job now.

But what if we aspies formed companies that dealt with our shortcomings and benefited from our great strengths...

One other issue - how do we determine who are true aspies? Many people could claim they are. In my case I had very unbalanced results at school... I was terrible at doing homework but scored very high on tests. In my case this would be a good indicator. I was also especially bad at algebra.. this could be a key indicator.

Maybe we could get aspie references... lol.. like "anti references" where we call people's employers or teachers and find out how the failed aspie employee had certain "bad" aspie traits?

I truly think this method could solve so many problems for our community... who better to fix this mess than aspies? We should be able to find some great solutions for our weaknesses too and exploit all our strengths. Maybe we could get some key aspie leaders to help our cause?

Last edited by CAL_1138 on 07 Jun 2013, 5:10 am, edited 1 time in total.

What would we create and sell?

I think it could be anything... it could be any type of business but maybe it could be businesses that aspies are known to excel in like programming or video games etc...

And we could use aspies with different strong suits to counteract eahc others weaknesses in certain areas... and use aspies and neurotypicals together as well (like to handle things we couldn't find aspies to handle), but we would have to create some method where neurotypicals couldn't take over the businesses...

I think it would be a great experiment at the very least... but I honestly think if we did it right we could dominate in our field over neurotypicals if we solved the issues that we need to overcome...

We could try to gear the business to suit how we work best.. for example... instead of having meetings where we speak in front of the group... due to aspies being introverted etc we could find some other method to do this... like virtual meeting etc.

We would have to focus on innovation and be very willing to take risks by doing things in creative ways to get an edge over our competition. We would maybe need to create some type of system that didn't operate like normal companies.. so there is no boss or bosses dominating people.... but maybe if it was all aspies this would just happen naturally anyway? But in order to keep it aspies we get into that area of discrimination...

I wonder if there are any other examples of minorities doing things like this?

We could even have a department that was geared towards researching aspie strengths within the company and that was focused on enhancing our strengths and counteracting our weaknesses. That would constantly work to try to help people who were struggling with things and also recognize the strong aspie traits that were very beneficial and enhancing them

Also... in order to avoid being called discriminatory we could do it another way where instead of hiring people using conventional criteria we would use criteria that is conducive to aspies.. so we would never have to say it is a aspie only business.

For example.. lol Most businesses look for people with great grades or people who are very vocal or people who are considered natural leaders... In our business the criteria we are looking for is the total opposite.

Most companies are looking for people with degrees... our company would be the opposite.. we seek out people with aspie traits and who developed outside the system and help to train them into what we need or get them to work in such a way that their weaknesses are balanced out.

How could we find a way to reward aspie traits? Like most companies reward people for being ruthless and networkers etc... How could we reward aspie traits where we are more sensitive, passive and introverted?

I really think you're on to something here.

Just think of all the brilliant aspies out there not working... I feel I am in that boat.. Not only is it sad for us.. but I think it's sad for the world too because I think we could do unbelievably amazing things.

Also, if we do this and it is a huge success it could revolutionize how businesses hire people and even the educational system. Schools could operate this same way....

How do we get it started though? I think the reason it hasn't happened already is because many times aspies are not the type to make these kind of bold moves. We think about them but don't do them.

No idea how to get started...but this is brilliant! We need more things where Aspies are helping out other Aspies.

Exactly! The sad thing is that many aspies are used through history I feel because they are the ones who come up with a lot of brilliant things but they likely don't get the credit or rewards for it - such as inventors etc. Take Einstein for example.. he just gave his gift to the world. Bill Gates is one of the rare examples of the aspie getting rewarded for it. Imagine if someone like Gates embraced all us aspies. This is what we need to do here.


I think this could go even further too.. aspies should join together and lobby for our group... I think we should literally have aspie communities too. Imagine a whole city of aspies... to me it would be like heaven. haha Other minorities do this.. why not aspies - AS people? This would really help us create businesses and schools, too.

I have an idea how we could maybe get started... how about everyone here list what your strong suits and weaknesses are. Ask your aspie friends too...

My strengths -

- ideas, inventing, understanding technology
- analyzing things and seeing patterns
- art, design
- research (if i am interested in it)
- creativity

My weaknesses -

-math - especially algebra
-public speaking
-focusing on things I am uninterested in
-executive function - staying on task
-problem solving when I am stuck on something

What we could do in our business is to put people together in teams who have complementary abilities and weaknesses and then they could work on specific tasks together. We could have people who are problem solvers or a kind of counselor when people struggled with certain tasks... like the guy in pulp fiction who came to help Travolta and Sam Jackson's characters.. haha

I like this idear.

One of the businesses could create and sell educational materials for autistic people based on how autistic people think and learn.

That is a really great idea, btbnnyr.

And this could be used for job training within all the businesses too. What if the businesses in the aspie community donated to some research branch devoted to unique teaching, learning and testing methods? With funding like this they could accomplish amazing things...

Autistics not only face horrible discrimination but autistics themselves are accused of creating discrimination if we support affirmative action for autistics.

I think there is a mistake here though... it isn't discrimination.. that's what I was getting at above... we are mining an untapped resource IMO...

To me what you are saying is like saying it's discrimination for an engineering company to hire people who are good at math and not hire people who are bad at math...

What we are doing is realizing that these people who are wrongfully considered undesirable are actually desirable for jobs.. and we are going to seek them out just like other attributes are sought.



- or in other words it isn't really discrimination in either case... it's just that the people who dismiss aspies are making a mistake in this case.

Like if someone were to determine that aspies are great at a certain job and then employers seek them out is that discrimination because they are excluding other people?

I wanted to let people know there is another thread that relates to this subject matter the OP of the other thread let me know about. It looks awesome. Exactly in line with what we are talking about here.

http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt218974.html

A lot of Bosses think autistics are slow learners and Bosses think that they cannot afford to waste large amounts company resources training autistic workers even in the name of reasonable accomodation.

It could be true that autistics are slow learners but being a slow learner does not prevent someone from becoming a genius.

But now the Boss is even more offended because this so called autistic is in actuality smarter than the Boss.

Since everyone is created equal, the Boss thinks there is no way an autistic can be smarter.

But it is okay for an autistic to be dumber because autism is a disability.

So the Boss satisfies his ego by firing the autistic worker and declaring the inventions of an autistic worker worthless.

I think it is really fear of the unknown.. people who aren't familiar with autism spectrum disorders don't see the benefits they provide.. We on the inside know this... which is why we should be smart enough to tap it.

I can see that if we did this we ALL could benefit from this.. society, too. The people on the outside just don't get it. But I think a lot of minorities know this about their minorities.

It is also possible that we could join different minorities together.. this is something we could explore.

We could make it a goal of our organization to help all minorities and people with disabilities...