Are people with ASD really worse off than they ever were?

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OK, now some people are going to cringe and think this is like some of the blacks saying that their own people were better off in the days of Jim Crow, segregation etc. But are ASD people, especially milder ones, actually worse off in today's society than at any other time in history?

I think more awareness of the label has led to loss of freedoms for our community. Ultimately saying, I think the autism spectrum labels should be optional on a personal basis. Basically, we are treated differently because we are labeled. Isn't the cure for "ignorant attitudes" just fixing a symptom and not the underlying problem?

The only way I see what your saying is if you are only applying it to people with mild AS. People who would have struggled a bit in previous decades, but, at the end of the day, ended up married and having a stable job.

You are not required to disclose your diagnosis...

Really, your not?

I saw so many angles when I saw the header to this post ...

I think in a more quiet, less crowded, less chemically impacted past it may have been easier to be ASD simply because the environment was more suitable.

I also think that negatives effect that can come with ASD are more prominent in the current generation.

However I also think that those with ASD have better prospects than ever. Few kids are fully withdrawn; they are engaged in their world at levels that would have been considered impossible 50 years ago. We know how to reach kids and help them in ways that were not available just 20 years ago.

But none of those were the question you wanted answered.

I think having ASD be the "condition of the moment" is both a blessing and a curse for ASD individuals. For the community as a whole I think it has been positive, but the best answer in different situations and among different groups definitely varies. I totally agree that it should be a person's choice who knows and who doesn't. And also how far to pursue diagnosis. My son actually does not have a medical diagnosis; he has a school use one. Which means that once he is out of school he can abandon it, should he choose. He won't choose that; I know he won't; but when I realized that I was in the unique position to leave him with that choice, I figured it was the best of both worlds (although we may be tripped up the changes in the diagnostic criteria, should he want to make it medically official, given how well adapted he is at this point).

Ideally, everyone is allowed to control their own destiny. Sometimes there are reasons to modify that, but when there aren't, your choice.

I am not black (I am white) but I can not for a moment think that black people in the US were better off in the days of "Jim Crow" laws.

I would also like to point out that many people with AS can pass as NT when they walk down the street, it is impossible for a black man to pass as a white man.

When a person with AS has to interact with other people they might not be able to pass as NT, but at least as they go about the city or town they are not marked out to strangers.

OP, as I said in your other thread, I also think that we are losing civil freedoms, and I also agree that things would have been easier a while ago than it is today. A lot of jobs that were available are now gone due to technology, and some of those jobs were perfect for aspies. This was discussed here recently http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt267999.html

Last edited by Skilpadde on 12 Oct 2014, 12:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I think things are better than they used to be. In former times, an autistic kid who had lots of potential, but struggled academically due to things like anxiety, sensory issues, or attention deficits would be presumed stupid and/or lazy. Now they can get accommodations needed to thrive.

Those who are more severely affected would be forcibly put in underfunded institutions where they lived in squalor with no activities, just standing or sitting all day. That's if they were were lucky enough not to be subjects of human experiments (see Willowbrook).

There's still work to be done in terms of organ transplant non-discrimination, limiting restraints and seclusion, etc, but let's not lose sight of the progress made.

But the flip side is that a lot of the new jobs created by technology are perfect for Aspies. My son wants to make a career in technology because, as he puts it, working the "real" world is more difficult. He has a dysgraphia comorbid that makes manipulating physical objects difficult. But he can assemble computers and type and mouse perfectly.

Not all aspies fit the stereotype.

I'm not a techie at all, and plenty of aspies (maybe especially us females) are not. To us computers and how they work are as mind-numbingly boring as chess and math. For us it's pretty hopeless.

When someone assumes because I'm Aspie and like video games and would be interested in coding, I tell them, "I couldn't program my way out of a paper bag."

As always it's situational based on the particular individual and who that person has to interact with.

Overgeneralizing I would say it was worse off for severe back then, they were put in a big abusive institutions, locked in a room in the attic or thrown out in the street.

For the high end and there were more jobs, employers cared some what less about personality for certain jobs (ads for programmers list as requirements social skills these days) and the world was less stimulating. So that probably overrides the large gains from knowledge of why they the way they are and places like this.

We are talking about different degrees of bad.

Last edited by ASPartOfMe on 13 Oct 2014, 10:33 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Better or worse? All I know is that if we start working together, then we can help the vast majority of Autistics to have incredible lives. If we do not, of course it will get worse.

Based on pretty much my whole life and what I've seen so far, I've think we've gone from people not having a clue about ASD to people having the wrong idea about ASD. There was never anything inbetween from what I've seen.

If anything I think there's too much acknowledgement of ASD to the point where I fear people are not taking it as seriously as it should anymore.