Elliot Rodger killings- attempt to link autism

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I wrote another blog post in response to the claim that Rodger had Asperger's. It turns out he did not.

Another shooting has taken place. The most important thing to remember at a time like this are the victims and their families. Once again, I see media attempts to stress "Asperger's," and once again it turns out that the killer did not have an Asperger's diagnosis, even after years of therapy. http://paulacdurbinwestbyautisticblog.b ... urder.html [url=Another shooting has taken place. The most important thing to remember at a time like this are the victims and their families. Once again, I see media attempts to stress "Asperger's," and once again it turns out that the killer did not have an Asperger's diagnosis, even after years of therapy.

I would like to request no comments on one topic in my blog post. If anyone does comment, I will not respond. You will understand when you see it. Thank you in advance!- Paula

I hope I did the link correctly. If not, please just copy and paste into your browser.

could you post more information on this?

As of this writing from what I can see no other media is reporting the family friend disputing the lawyers claim of a diagnosis

We have conflicting evidence currently. Before reaching a conclusion, we should wait for conclusive evidence that he, did, or did not, have Aspergers.

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-m ... story.html

When I discerned this statement from the article I immediately knew it did clearly signify that the abhorrent mainstream media as per usual advertently suppressed this in order use asperger's/autism as a scapegoat by sensationalizing it as the "sole attribution" for Elliot's slaughtering (It's disgusting). They did it precisionally for the Sandy Hook massacre (Adam Lanza) and instead completely discard the real underlying intrinsically psychological causation, which after contemplating parts of his underwhelming "manifesto" suggests to me that the only plausible explication for his behavior was a solid case of either malignant narcissism or psychopathy (highly likely to be both). It would certainly also explain his propensity for accounting his misogyny and chauvinism.

agreed.

The problem isn't so much whether he had an Aspergers diagnosis or whether his family labeled him such: the major problem is that Aspergers is becoming a media / pop-culture shorthand to describe people of an anti-social disposition. And that means that the public are beginning to associate the condition with criminality, violence and psychopaths.

And that is dangerous for those of us who want to at least try and have some semblance of a life.

It's probably statistically provable that dyslexics are more likely to commit petty crime, or that asthmatics are more likely to injure others operating heavy machinery. But the reasons for that are that a) dyslexia makes it harder to achieve in school and therefore makes a person more vunerable to falling into crime, and that b) asthmatics are more likley to have breathing troubles operating machines. There would be uproar if anyone in the media suggested that dyslexics were predisposed to be criminals and that asthmatics are clumsy people.

Yet the tabloid media is allowed to use Aspergers as a term for psychologically unstable. It's unacceptable and needs to be challenged.

i have seen nothing in the news on CNN or any other source saying the california shooter had aspergers

The LA Times article posted above was the first I have seen that specified Asperger's. The articles on CNN and NBC said that they did not want to specify so they would not create a stigma.

According to the article, if it wasn't Asperger's it must surely have been World of Warcraft that caused this.

BBC had it in their earlier coverage. It's noticeable that they have pulled it from later coverage

I think there is a good chance this young man was either ASD or diagnosed with some similar condition, but obviously that would not be why he made the poor choices that he did, and I think the later should be everyone's focus.

Nicely said: then the question is: how to challenge it when the negative connotation has already become entrenched?

Answers on a postcard for that one...?

But I'd argue that the AS communities current approach of trying to explain our behaviour is ineffective. People only remember the bullet points and miss the nuance.

It also sounds like we are trying to justify why we should get special consideration. Look instead at how Feminism, the Gay Rights Movement and (physically) disabled have crafted their message. Feminist activists don't spend time trying to prove the female mind and ability is identical to a mans in the areas that count. Gay Rights Activists don't waste time trying to prove that homosexual love is the same as heterosexual love. And Disability Rights groups don't use their time to prove that the physically disabled's disabilities don't impact on their mental capacity.

They instead casing on the assumption that these points are bleeding obvious and that people who disagree / claim otherwise are wrong, idiots and bigoted. It's hardly liberal (small 'L') but it's effective!

We shouldn't therefore be trying to win acceptance from NT's by getting them to understand AS and Autism. The first step is to drive the message that stereotyping and misinforming people about AS is the same as racism, sex discrimination and homophobia!

Here ends the sermon / rant

Ivanhoe and DW, you have very excellent points.

Trying to "neuroprofile" is dangerous. To society, and to us. It's just as wrong as racial or religious profiling, and leads to the same result.

You can't predict, by something like neurology, who is going to make sh***y choices.

You CAN look at attitudinal and life situation factors-- hate, bitterness, deluded grandiosity, a sense of entitlement that Rush Limbaugh couldn't even joke about-- and attempt to ameliorate them by teaching better attitudes and ways to change the life situation.

Look-- I have come to the realization that I COULD HAVE BEEN A SHOOTER. Really and truly-- when I was 14 years old, I was on a path that very realistically could have led to a gun (or a gas attack, or vehicular homicide, or something equally foul). I was isolated, I hated myself and everyone around me, I believed that I would be a failure if I did not attain others' constructs of perfection, I was furiously angry and bitterly jealous. I was in a bad place, and headed full tilt for Hell.

It was dumb luck, a smart Aspie, and good old hillbilly common sense that saved me (and possibly a few other people). I had the dumb luck to leave the snotty little American-Fantasy-on-the-Surface suburb that I grew up in. I had Saint Alan to teach me that there were all kinds of ways to play it, and all kinds of ways to look at my life, and that perfectionism and resentment of the things I "ought to have" and didn't probably was not the path to peace and contentment. I had a bunch of ragtag rednecks who took me the way I was and, while they did not exactly embrace me, they did leave me alone and give me space to figure out who I was and who I could be and time to heal.

Clay-Battelle High School is hereby awarded the Exemplary Accident Award for taking an Aspie on a collision course with society and herself, and in four short years giving her the makings of a productive, pro-social citizen. They did good, and they didn't even know what they were doing (actually, I suspect that a few of them DID).

People do not want to accept one terrifying fact: You cannot pick out who is predetermined to do this and who is not, because there is no predetermination. There are factors that might influence the choice, one way or another...

...but, at the end of the day, it comes down to just exactly that. A CHOICE. Or a series of choices, which must be made each time life throws feces at the fan blade. IT ALL COMES DOWN TO A CHOICE.

Anyone can make the right choice...

...and anyone can make the wrong one, too.

It's all about how we choose to treat people, and how we encourage people to treat each other and themselves. Right now, we are choking on the fruits of a culture of death. We can do better.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morn ... ng-autism/

Consider this alarmistic hit-piece I found. First hit or so with google if you type in "autism mass shootings" or the like. Look how that guy tries to insinuate a correlation. Yes it was about Lanza and not Rodger, but the point remains. It's easier to blame any exotic-sounding neurological condition or (even worse, unrequited crushes) rather than look for the obvious: that Elliot Rodger was (for the lack of a better expression) a rotten human being, an extreme narcissist, full of self-pity, an enormous sense of entitlement and misanthropy (one look at his "autobiography" of 140-page drivel is enough).
I know people who are on the spectrum and those who are not on it who exhibit some of these traits to a varying magnitude- some of these seeds of evil are in all of us, and part of being human(e) is to confront and fight them so that they may not lead us to do monstrous things. And things like Narcissistic, Borderline or Anti-social Personality Disorder and being on the spectrum are of course not mutually exclusive. I know people on the spectrum who have unpleasant personalities and have done truly horrific things- but that, in my opinion, is only to be expected: they are human beings too, and of course human beings can be evil- that's just part of the profound tragedy (or blackest comedy, if you are so inclined) that is the human condition! But enough of that. His victims are far more important. They are the ones that matter. Not him.

I remain pessimistic. Scapegoating is too easy... too human (and we shouldn't delude ourselves that Aspies and other non-NTs are necessarily better in that regard). We need to find our villains quickly and filter them out, so we can keep feeling good about ourselves. Trying to be understanding, educating ourselves, looking for more complex explanations? Excuse me! Who's got time for that these days? I remember going to a talk with Prof Simon Baron-Cohen once, and all most people got was "autism=less empathy" (rather than autism=less COGNITIVE empathy; I'm oversimplifying myself here for the sake of brevity) and hey presto! you got questions from the plenum like "Could it be that African child soldiers are autistic?".

But maybe there's reason to be optimistic? While they have not gone away, there is decidedly less acceptance for homophobia and racism now. Maybe some similar progress will be made in the fields of neurodiversity and mental illness?