Whale_Tuune wrote:
I remember Mona. She made some good points. I didn't think she was gone for good, though. I hope she comes back.
She was correct that because Autism isn't one thing, an Autism "cure" is unrealistic and medical treatments should target debilitating symptoms. One of the reasons I don't like the "pathology" model of Autism is that a search for a "cure" is a whole lot of time and resources wasted.
Okay, so I don't think that the crossing of social boundaries and other things I brought up can be "done away with" because they're "just social constructs". Consider the following scenarios:
A young woman is in class/at work with a man who has ASD. The man may or may not be interested in the woman, but regardless, he continually invades her personal boundaries in the way we Aspies can: for example, he asks her overly specific questions about where she lives, her background, and her family life. He gets too close to her when she's in a confined space and she feels cornered, he continuously stares at her without realizing that he's doing it. The young woman, afraid for her own safety, calls him a "creep", reports him to HR, and tells other women to stay away from him. Neurodiversity advocates may say that this woman was being "ableist", but I say that she was probably thinking in terms of her own safety. Asking her to ignore obvious warning signs of a predator and treat the man like anyone else is unfeasible in this scenario.
A person of color works in an office with a white Aspie. The Aspie engages in more Aspie-like behavior: random staring or lack of eye contact, increased micro-aggressions due to a lower sensitivity to others' perspectives ("can I touch your hair?" "where's your family really from?" "are you eating THAT?"), asking invasive questions ("have you ever been stopped in an airport security line?" "are you here legally?"), maybe scowling or smiling inappropriately without realizing it, perhaps in a way that makes the person of color think that they are reacting specifically to them. There is a news story about a racist crime that occurred, and the rest of the office talks about how to combat racism and show support for their colleagues of color, while the Aspie is off in their own world smiling to themselves. The person of color again feels very uncomfortable around the Aspie, reports them to HR, and tells their colleagues about how awful the Aspie is. They have experienced this behavior in the past, and typically it is always because the person in question is a closet racist. The Aspie in this scenario may be genuinely innocent of ill intention, and some of their cues may have been genuinely misinterpreted. Still, is the person who reported the Aspie to HR also being "ableist?"
A group of coworkers have one Aspie colleague. They get along as friends, laughing, joking, supporting one another. They try to include the Aspie in their group, but to be honest, being around the Aspie is never all that fun. The Aspie in question is very rote in their conversational skills. They don't pick up on topic changes and try to steer the conversation back to one thing that no one is quite interested in besides them. Others in the group want a chance to speak as well, but they find that the conversation is either dominated by the Aspie's fixations, or is continually interrupted at odd times by the Aspie with some comment that is out of the left field or not conducive to the conversational flow. In addition to this, the Aspie doesn't really greet the colleagues in question or engage in the pleasantries everyone else enjoys, which makes them wonder if the Aspie really likes them at all. Finally, the Aspie has a tendency to give off confusing, indecipherable nonverbal cues that leave everyone puzzled about what they're really thinking. Eventually, they end up forming their own group and nominally include the Aspie, but hang out by themselves a lot. Are they all being "ableist", and if so, can you ask them to set aside their preferences for the Aspie?
Lack of eye contact is one thing. Aspie problems socializing run much, much deeper.
You give some great examples of typical day to day situations that effect autistic people.
The ugly truth is in many cases we are oppressed by our condition and society doesn’t and will never care, why?
1. Many autistic people where they can mask their autism esp in the workplace, so to have an excuse for behavior you would have to end masking
Autism comes with it symptoms that can effect work performance i.e executive functioning, memory and attention difficulties, so there’s a lot of motivation to mask to your boss where you can.
2. Advocates would say with acceptance masking wouldn’t need to happen anymore. But how would a woman recognize autism in a stranger who she thought was behaving strangely around her? Do we have blue heads? How would she know he’s not a rapist?
3. What about double bluff? What if he is sexually interested in her and that’s how he expresses his interest. Yes I have seen that before. I also worked somewhere where a gay man was fired for touching a female worker’s brest, maybe he thought being gay it didn’t mater but she obviously thought different and he got sacked for it. Not everything is black and white or what it seems.
4. The emphasis is on NTs to change but what if they can’t be bothered to look into things. Time is short and people have busy lives are they going to really look into co worker “mark from IT” condition.
5. There’s a crossover in the PC world many on the left would prioritize women and black people over those with a brain condition. So if an autistic person said something that could be interpreted as racist they would love to cancel him to set an example, also not wanting to miss a virtue signaling opportunity. They don’t do free passes.
Theres many more I can’t think of now.
You are also too negative in regards to medical research.
How do you know there won’t be a cure for autism in 20 years? What if there’s a treatment that can reduce many of our symptoms? Google autism research tons of stuff released over the last 10 years.
People once thought space flight and Brain surgery would be impossible but they were proved wrong.
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"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends upon the unreasonable man."
- George Bernie Shaw
23 Jul 2020, 4:33 pm
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