Interesting response on yahoo answers

Post Reply New Topic

I posted this question on yahoo answers today


“ This question is aimed at women with autism.
My question is though that as an autistic woman would you rather date an autistic man or do you prefer to have a relationship with a man who has not got autism?”


This is a response I got from someone who tried to answer my question

“if they have it bad they cant function without help in society .. what good eould dating a ret*d do them .. no what you likely will be dealing with is a parent that supports them and you are auditioning to take over that role ...”



Do you think response shows a lack of understanding though. Especially saying “ret*d”.

Downright nasty. Rude is an understatement.

Rude and poorly worded, but not unreasonable. Most people are interested in a romantic relationship with an approximate peer. Not many people envision being their partner's PSW.

The response shows a complete and total lack of comprehension of ASD as a whole along with respect.

I actually wanted to play the PSW role or rather me & my partner having a very interdependent relationship.

There can be very little autism awareness & lots of misconceptions about autism in some areas. Where I'm from even the so-called "experts" who are trained to test & diagnose autism think of autism as a less sever form of mental retardation. It is really no wonder some layman are extremely ignorant about what autism is if they only ever heard the words Autism or Aspergers online, as an insult term from their peers & society in general in conversation, or from the movie Rain Man. That is the reason why I post a lot on this forum & don't really talk about autism or Aspergers anywhere else online or offline unless it's my girlfriend or psychs & docs.

Wow. Pure social sewage right there. Definitely stay away from whoever wrote that.

While the wording itself is nasty (and should have been edited by the Yahoo staff), it does bring up a valid point: Namely, who would want to date someone whose autism is so severe that they can neither care for themselves nor interact with their date in a meaningful manner?

I do agree that the point is valid but I do think it is important to note that people can have very different ideas & opionons about what they consider someone caring for themselves & being able to meaningfle relate to a date. It might would be a good topic to discuss in another thread.

I think there's a bit of garbage-in-garbage-out in both the question and this particular answer.

Autistic men is a really tough range to pigeonhole, as is autistic women. It's a spectrum ranging from needing a keyboard for basic communication to being at the helm of society as the latest tech wild man or billionaire out of Silicone Valley to have an audacious idea that you were both intelligent enough and undistracted enough to turn into a real thing. There's also really not a lot to stop you either from both being a world famous authority on certain subjects AND needing a keyboard to communicate.

The answer quoted is a very unpolished variant of an observation of how gender tends to work in the dating market and how the fundamentals shape needs. Past that it's to a very specific situation, ie. the assumption that the woman can take care of herself and the guy can't (could be the reverse, could be neither can take care of themselves, could be both can take care of themselves), again - autism as such a wide spectrum makes the original question really difficult to give a wise answer to other than 'not enough information to go on'.

Yes, I am sure in it!

Certainly, it has already been well-covered in just about every "I can't get a date" thread on this website.

That was a very sour answer that person gave you. Avoid that sour grape in the future.

I was going to say this too. It's unrealistic to expect someone to develop a romantic relationship with someone so low functioning that you're not really a partner, but a carer.

Women tend to be relegated to all the emotional labour in an NT/NT relationship, it's even more work if your partner is a high functioning autistic, let alone low functioning.

Relationships aren't all sunshine and flowers. They're hard work. Why would someone make that even more difficult for themselves than it already is.

The answer has nothing to do with the original question; since the asker was definitely not referring to that kind of severe Autism.

To be clear; no one who can write questions on Yahoo or WP is a low functioning autistic.

That is true, but only as far as it goes.  I believe* that most people are not looking for a relationship with a lower-functioning person if they can help it.  For example, had I known that my first wife had alcoholism and a bipolar disorder, I would likely NOT have even asked her for a date (especially in light of knowing what I know now).

Of course, there is the flip side that most single people seem to be looking for someone to take care of them in some way -- gold-diggers looking for a Sugar-Daddy, alcoholics looking for a codependent enabler, single moms looking for a baby-daddy-by-proxy, and so forth.

*Mere belief proves nothing.

Well, there's so low functioning that you can't dress yourself and there's low functioning can't hold down a job, but can type a coherent sentence. I think there are definately low functioning people here like ones who won't ever leave their parents homes.