Aspergers not a disability or disease?

Post Reply New Topic

I apologize for the commotion I caused last time I posted a thread; admittedly, I have always been acknowledged as a poor writer and don't always get my point across effectively. However, I have repeatedly heard the statement that Aspergers is not a disease or a disability, even that it is in fact a gift. Much of this evidently stems from people with a grudge against me or tendency towards picking on the unfortunate. However, I see many of the same things said here, that Aspergers is a 'set of difficulties' rather than a disability and a syndrome rather than a disease. To be, that sounds like splitting hairs. What is the difference between a disease and a syndrome in everyday life? How does a 'set of difficulties' (which happen to be severe in my case) not qualify as a 'disability'?

I view my AS as a disablilty or handicap, depending in which part of the world you're in. How could it not be, if I miss a stop when I'm on the bus and I have a meltdown and end up in the bus loop in the next town and miss a day of work, because of it? I'm very smart. Don't get me wrong. It's just taking me longer to get use to the area than I've expected.

I re-read your last thread just then :

http://www.wrongplanet.net/modules.php? ... ht=#432243

I can image the pointless path this one will take to.

Quite extraordinary!

Write plainly, and I may respond.

To pass on your genes you must mate; hence anything in your phenotype that imposes difficulties in that regard can be safely called a "disability." Now, whether you consider yourself disabled or not is entirely another matter. I consider my bone disease MUCH more of a real disability than my AS symptoms. Then again, I'm a very gifted mathematician and biology theorist, so would I get rid of my AS? Probably, if I had the option, not. Disability is a subjective thing, yet I certainly laugh at the one poster on a different thread who said he had no problem, it's all of those damn NTs that have the problems! It was quite humorous but also the product of someone who desparately wants his reality to be different yet seems quite unwilling to make it different. What can I do but laugh at those people?

I see it as a handicap,but to use an analogy it's in much the same way for example like someone who is not a native English speaker but goes to live in an English-speaking country.They will eventually get to know enough of the language to understand and be understood.In some cases they will be fluent and even speak as well as anyone else.Someone with AS will never be a 'native speaker' in an NT
world but they certainly don't have a disease and the amount of perceived disability if any is a matter for the person and those who know them to consider,if need be.

I am grateful for what I am. But it's hard too. A syndrome is a cluster of symptoms - hence AS.





I prefer to think of myself as a raging lunatic, if that's ok.

Difficulty with reading or seeing in the distance is an impairment. How you want to deal with it is a different issue.

HEY, It IS the NTs fault! THEY are the ones creating much of the noise, obstacles, etc...

You know what I feel like? I feel like one of those complex radios that you could get in the 80s that was harder to use, fancier, and maybe more expensive, and the reception wasn't uite as strong BUT The reception was clearer, they could receive more channels, and even receive sidebands, etc... Some may look and figure "WHAT A RIPOFF", and others may BEG for it! I am just still trying to find all the pages to that owners manual. 8(

Wish I could see something or someone in the NT world that would motivate me to want to fit in more. The older I get, the more I don't care to try.
I think I am very special, screw anybody that doesn't agree with that

Tetrachromats (people with four types of color cone in the eye, not three) can see four distinct primary colors. Is this a disability, a disease or a gift?

All of the above.

It is a gift, in that they can see a far more vivid world than anyone else, they can see in paintings that which is invisible to others, and they will be far more capable of detecting - and avoiding - many kinds of hazards the rest of us would blunder into.

It is a disability in that such people will experience difficulties with anything based around three primary colors. (eg: all color computer printouts, all computer monitors, all televisions, virtually all movies, all photographs, all road signs, all graphic novels, etc.) Remember, defects not visible to others WILL be visible to them, making what is perfectly usable to you totally scrambled nonsense to them. Things won't look right or consistent to them, if the images from their eyes make sense to their brain at all.

It is a genetic disease, in that it is a deformity in the genes that will result in ALL male children and 3/4 of all female children to be color-blind or possibly totally blind. The remaining 1/4 of daughters will be tetrachromats IF the male carries the necessary genes, otherwise they too will be color-blind or blind.


Cases can also be made for schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, attention deficit disorder, genetic disorders that lead to giantism or dwarfism - in fact, I can't think of ANY condition that can't have a case made for it in all three categories, except perhaps that of being dead. And the cryogenicists in the crowd would be sure to put up a good fight there as well.

Schizophrenia? Sure! You think the book/movie "A Beautiful Mind" was fiction? Nooooo...... Bipolar? John Lennon was bipolar - you think that didn't come out in his music? It MADE most of his music! If genes could collect royalties, John Lennon's income would have been split in half.

The genetic condition that allows the Inuits to eat blubber and other high-fat food on an almost continual basis would be lethal to anyone on a Western or Eastern diet. Same as it would be lethal for anyone in America or China to try and live on an Inuit's diet on any kind of regular basis.


Asperger's is a marvelous gift, but it comes with a price, no different from the price everyone pays for any gift. The price we pay is in problems such as problems with non-verbal communication and over-literalism, amongst others. Our problems are as real as anyone's, and anyone who denies that problems arise from Asperger's is no more honest with themselves than the person who denies that any good comes from it.


The Celts had a special place in their mythological beliefs for two-edged gifts. All of their heroes had them. The more heroic the person could be through their gift, the greater the price that had to be paid for having that gift. Nothing came free.

The Greeks also had such gifts, but it usually worked the other way round. The last thing left in the box that Pandora opened, after all the chaos had left, was... hope. Not even after such a calamity was the gift without something wonderful.


If everyone from the most ancient of Irish chieftains to the most modern of Economics Professors can see he beauty in the beast (and the beast in the beauty), the least we can do is to try to do the same.

An intriguing thesis, but what about Aspergers makes it a gift with a price rather than simply a curse? The term 'gift' usually implies some great boon in this context, yet I can't seem to think of anything good the syndrome has ever done for me. If I am simply paying a punishing price for a great gift, then why haven't I seen any positives from it in twenty years?



I for one see plenty in the normal world to envy. Sure, if you look at MTV and teenage subcultures, it all looks stupid, but for the vast majority of humans (including me), friends, family, and popularity matter and being barred from them hurts.

I don't really see it as a handicap... from my point of view. I just see it as a different way of thinking entirely.

Others see it as a severe handicap... and I can see how. From their point of view, they see someone who won't ever try new things, lol... someone who never leaves the house unless it is absolutely necessary (rarely even going into the front yard)... someone who is very indecisive about yes or no answers to questions, just because they are always busy weighing the odds of each choice rather than knowing for sure what they want to do. They see it as a hinderence really, and they don't understand how I cannot be bothered or depressed by it... neither do I at times.

They see the things I am good at, and they try to compliment me-I see that, as well as where I could have improved... they see me not taking any pride at all in anything that I do, not taking compliments, not being able to say hi to someone without dancing around it for half an hour before I say anything at all. They see me hanging around on the edge of a group rather than trying to get involved in it. I see myself as involving myself in whatever is going on as much as I can, at putting in a great deal of effort at times, and trying to keep myself comfortable as well, but even when I am uncomfortable, I don't immediately think it is because of autism. There are a million other reasons that cross my mind first as to why I don't like to socialize much, lol.

Sure, it could easily be seen as a handicap or disability of sorts, but there are always 2 sides to the coin. Every family member I have says that I have "issues", they discuss me like I'm an experiment, they act like I am an obstacle, lol. They are uncomfortable around me usually, as I am uncomfortable around them as well. It isn't their fault that they don't understand, and it's not my fault that I don't "apply" things to my life to better the situations-whatever that means.

Everybody is just a person, everybody is different. Even if they all walk around looking like clones and talking the same way when around each other, they are all still different, and that is all there really is to it. As for whether or not it is a handicap or disability, that just depends on who is being asked.

If you ask 2 people whether or not they like chocolate ice cream, one might say yes, the other might say no. That's all there is to it. Whether we all have any form of autism or not doesn't mean we will all answer the same either, ultimately.

Last edited by nobodyzdream on 02 Aug 2007, 12:21 am, edited 1 time in total.

I only recently discovered AS, at 60, it does seem to fit. When I look back on my life, there were social problems, with people who were social problems.

I returned to the place where I grew up, after long traveling, very American, moved to a new region once a decade. I did find some normal people from the old days, and I would not trade places with them.

People did not understand my humor, thought my word usage strange, but I found they had been married and divorced several times, made a mess of childrens lives, they had reached a social peak in high school, and it had been falling apart ever since. Their social relations did not work out, their network of friends used them.

They wound up in dead end jobs, had nothing to look forward to in retirement, and were isolated.

I did not fit in their world, but made my own, people play a role, but they are not the planet, time, animals, plants, rocks, the night sky, are much more important.

I may not know football, but I do know history, technology, science being the voice of the universe, and compared to a goal of being popular, and just like everyone else, there is no choice.

I am me, and it works for me. I had little choice, like everyone, I developed what I was good at. There were conflicts in my school years, my teachers thought I was crazy, talking about Univac being remade with transistors. They did their best to turn me into a factory worker. A few years later I was running the latest from IBM.

I had problems with girls, I did not want to be their first husband. I could see serial brides. I was not someones ticket to a lazy life.

Longer term, my social problems were people who broke into my house and stole things, I have heard it was not just me.

I am facing old age with a brain, a knowledge of the universe, and what are we? Small bits of the universe created to observe, and then get recycled. Observation from my point of view must mean something to the universe.

For most people my age, it is over, and they failed. I am just getting good at being me, and look forward getting better at it. I have no group to conform to, they are dead, or living like it.

All humans are disabled, most peak in their teens and twenties, and breed a lot of factory workers. After that they lie. Some do not fit the mold, and getting away from it grow to some shape they were meant to fill. Others listen to people telling them that they should be a popular high school girl, when they are thirty-seven. Most lives are lies, and what truth exists, perhaps we will learn after we are dead.

There is no choice but to be the person you are, grow to be the best you can become, and find enjoyment in it. We have always existed, it is this hyper social time that is strange. It is pop culture, and I prefer traditional.

I will 'copy & paste' an exerpt from what I a letter I recently wrote:


I am intrinsically motivated and curious; I am synonymous with science. Due to my neurology, I assimilate differently. I am autistic. This means I neurologically developed into fruition later than another adult. But since the puzzle pieces have assembled, I see the Gestalt pattern with meticulous detail. I am grateful for what I have been given and acclimate for my deficits. For me, I knew the depths of mind and finally found a channel to the ‘outside world’ through logic, science, art, and other forms of expression, which can be shared. The scientific method is verifiable, repeatable, and therefore has merit. This is my channel. When I came to recognize this channel then my infinite mind was not just confined to my skull.

I consider myself lucky to be able to utilize my talents, whether they be from my AS or not, and luckier still to be in an environment where eccentricity is considered the norm. Very lucky indeed.
Yes, AS causes me some impairments, but in other areas it allows me to put together pictures about how 'reality' really works that are far beyond what many NT's brains could ever hope.