people with autism being portayed as psychopaths

Post Reply New Topic

I feel that sometimes people in the entertainment industry portray people with autism spectrum disorder as psychopaths.

I feel that the reason for this is that some of the people with autism are very intense people who also lack conflict resolution coping skills. Some may also hold intense idealism which may freak neuro typical people out.
And in some cases, some of the Aspies may have very specialist skills that may them ideal for being used as the basis for the film directors psychopath's.

For example. I grew up being obsessively into Kenpo karate and go kart racing, and suffer from high levels of anxiety and hypersensitivity to audio and visual stimuli.
So, from an outsiders perspective, all they can see is a really strange intense guy who's really into hurting people with his specialist skills.

But in my case, it isn't true. I am more Buddhist than anything, so do not want to hurt people. Westerners often don't understand that people can actually be into martial arts for more reasons that just to beat people up, so when they see people into martial arts, all they see is a bully that can beat them up. I guess such people are threatened by people who do extra ordinary things such as martial arts.

I also think that people with ASD may also be portrayed as psychopaths due to political reasons.
The reason why I believe this happens, is if you are like me, honest, hold a code of honour and have a keen sense of justice as well as believe that people should be treated fairly and with equal justice.

Well such ideology threatens the political unjust world that presently exists today, where many of the people in politics, journalism, entertainment industry and business are simply not honest, and enjoy a privileged existence as well as more than their fair share of the scales of justice, so the last thing they want is for some moral Asperger to turn up and turn the tables on them. So, like the Nazi's before them (if they aren't Nazis that is), they will smear the Asperger, so that no one listens to such people and if anything will ostracise them.

I guess its all about twisting people's perception so they can twist the scales of justice completely in their greedy favour.
Shameful, yup. welcome to the real world.

Not just in the entertainment industry.
I had a family member tell me once that Asperger's is just "mild psychopathy".
Then there's stuff like the website "Heartless Asperger's" made by a disgruntled woman who claims all aspies are, well, evil and should never be dated because they'll traumatize women.

The two biggest cliches about autistic children (not so much adults) that I always see in the media are:

We are all geniuses who can hack into any computer in seconds or solve complex math problems in our head without using a calculator.

or

We are all psychics who are in touch with the supernatural and are often drawing creepy crayon pictures of bad things that are going to happen or talking to our "imaginary friends" (aka ghosts or demons) because we have no real friends of our own.