What is the biggest lie about Aspies?

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I think you might be surprised. A lot's been overshadowed by autism, which shows up more often in the news and in public schools. Every new parent in the last ten years has also had the vaccine/autism debate thrust on the family.

I suspect that if you did a reasonable poll, you'd get a lot of "I'm not sure" and "Isn't it kind of like autism?" and then a minority that knew enough to hold the kind of views you're talking about.

I agree that many would likely reply, as you say, with "Isn't that like autism?"

And that being so, (we'll assume) they probably apply their Autism stereotype to Aspies..

Yeah, that's a perplexing one. I guess they would be a little surprised to find someone on the spectrum like myself training in gracie jiu jitsu.It would be interesting to learn if there are any people on the spectrum in the UFC or Bellator.

Except there's no reason to assume that. An answer like that means "I have no idea, but I think maybe there's some connection, this isn't something I care about." If their experience with autism is that one kid down the street who can't talk, keeps running into traffic, shrieks, bangs his head, and goes to a special school, and they care enough to lay that over Asperger's, then there's kind of nothing there about wanting to be alone or lacking empathy or anything like that.

Most people genuinely don't care, are ignorant as the day is long, and don't much care to correct that. They don't really want to know what either autism or asperger's is. They want to go home, eat food, and watch their show. Any oppression takes the form of a vague resentment that other people need looking after and that this will require money and attention when, after all, nobody's showering them with money and attention. As for those who care enough to get it wrong, you're supposed to be grateful that they cared enough to think of you in the first place and be nice enough to try to help you. And if they're professionals, good luck convincing them of anything.

Your big chance is with NPR listeners, but actually most of them don't care that much either, unless someone in the family's been diagnosed. Otherwise people with Aspergers work in Silicon Valley and look and behave like Bill Gates. A very attentive listener knows Aspies don't look you in the eye. All this fine-grained stuff about empathy and being alone...again, beyond the point of caring for most.

If you want a good model for this stuff, try the Dictionary of Received Ideas.

Can we get back to original focus of what is the biggest lie that the websites promote?

Here's the thing, I think: most people don't care; you're talking to clinicians and school people. And they're part of giant machines made for masses of people. A clinician doesn't want some complex picture; she wants a decision tree. A school psychologist needs to test and sort by the cartload. Do they sometimes regret all this, sure. But their jobs aren't about fine-grained, bespoke understandings of anyone's problems. They're about off-the-shelf solutions. Best-practices powerpoints. If you get someone unusually smart and not-overworked, that person may take the time to get things right. But most...I think the best you'll do is a highbrow, wide-release movie like The Squid and the Whale. And that'll backfire, too. Because believe it or not, not everyone with OCD is Adrian Monk.

I like the idea of picking one "biggest lie" and getting to work on it, but it'll take real perseverence/organization if that thing's built into all the literature. You're going to be fighting against people's professional reputations, and they aren't likely to say, "Oh. Really? Well - okay, sorry if I got you wrong. My audience wants a good powerpoint take-home with a max of five bullets, and I know you're telling me it's much more complex than that, so I'll just...give them something really complex that they can't use."

You are speaking as an aspie yourself?

I don't understand. Why does this matter?

I thought it was assumed everyone with AS had a high IQ.



True.



We are though.

See Tarantella64's "my audience wants..." This made me wonder if she/he is an NT and had any personal experience of aspieness

I could probably be diagnosed if I pushed and spent hard enough, but don't have any reason to. And am not really feeling the binariness anyway. The "my audience" is from the asperger's-expert's POV: it's their business, right?

And it strikes me that this effort is itself aspergian in a doomed way: you want these NTish clinicians, school people, etc. to broadcast a complete and vastly nuanced version of AS. But that's not what they're interested in doing. They don't want to deal with a complete and vastly nuanced version of anything, and neither do the people they work with. That's an aspergian obsession.

What you can do, with tremendous effort, is substitute one sound bite for another. You can stick "We are all unique!" in there, and then you can, with great effort, get them chanting that like it's Monty Python. Or you can make a heartwarming video featuring a spectrum of AS. If you make the spectrum too big, though, they'll get up set and decide they'd better define AS more manageably, which will cut out part of your spectrum. They'd have to pay a lot of attention to you before that happened, though.

Consider how long it took for "gay people can be parents" to lodge in people's heads, even partway.

From my personal perspective the biggest problem is the sensory issues. NTs just don't have them as much or not as strongly and these are the things that impact on my quality of life the most. I can pretend and even though it's exhausting I can do it, but being physically and mentally worn out by stimuli to the extent that others cannot even relate to is the biggest problem for me. Like, there is an event, and my colleagues are getting energised talking to the public while I am trying really hard not to pass out. Most people just simply don't understand or accept this.

I wouldn't say they're all lies because everyone with it is different so it may be true for some but not all. People just tend to generalize conditions.

The one I cannot stand hearing is about them being violent. Sure there are aspies out there who are but it always offends me when people call it AS. I was watching Dr. Phil the other day with my mom and it was about an eight year old boy who is violent. He threatens his mom and step dad and also with knives and says he is going to kill them, he hits and spits and punches and kicks and does it to his siblings too and my mom said "That kid needs to be in a hospital" and she also said he needs to be taken. Then they went over his medical history and it started when he was two and it got worse as he got older and my mom said "I wonder if he is autistic." Ugh I hated that comment but I said nothing. I was so relieved when it said he is not autistic. Thank god.

I have actually seen people say online they don't want to know abut it so if a parent dares to throw the "My kid has autism" card in their faces, they would throw it away or toss it back at them because they don't care to know about it. They don't want to understand it either because they don't care. They only care about the disruption the kid is causing and think that kid should be home, not in a restaurant if he or she cannot behave appropriately. That just shows how people can choose to be ignorant.

More BS about Aspies:

All Aspies are like Rain Man.

All Aspies are natural "computer geeks."

All Aspies deserve to be abused because they don't understand what abuse is.

All Aspies can't tell the difference between right-and-wrong.

Yes!! ! Yes, yes, yes!