Life! Don’t talk to me about life.
To return to the OP, I have a daughter with an extremely limited vocabulary. She repeats memorized phrases or things she has heard on TV, but doesn’t create new sentences to express original thoughts. I have never encountered anyone who “hated” autistic people. On the contrary, most people go out of their way to be kind to her. In particular, the teachers here really go the extra mile to give her the care she needs.
I agree with the above sentiments, especially China Guy. If a person obviously has a disability, they are given much greater latitude than one that appears neurotypical. If people encounter someone who behaves rudely, the fundamental attribution error kicks in and they are most likely to assume this person is just a jerk rather than waste time wondering if he has an underlying mental handicap. (Contrast this with, say, someone with Downs Syndrome, which is immediately obvious even absent any behavioral indicators.)
I’ll throw out one additional point, and I feel really horrible for saying this but I think it’s the truth: Being cute helps. My daughter is very pretty, affectionate, and sweet natured. It’s really hard to be angry at her. You take two people with the same disorder, one whose behavior is pleasant and another whose behavior is obnoxious, and tell me which one is going to get more sympathy. It’s not fair, but that’s the way the world is. And in that sense, it has nothing at all to do with the disorder itself and everything to do with the behavior.
Again referring to Temple Grandin - as an example of the work it takes, she practiced gauging social distance by walking up to a supermarket’s auto-opening door repeatedly. And when she started doing research in stockyards, she completely missed the resentment to her butting in where academics weren’t supposed to go because it was all done with tone of voice and body language, which she missed completely.
Fair enough. See below.
The above four comments are jokes. The first is a reference to medieval methods of identifying witches and the other three are Monty Python references. Sliding in Monty Python references is one of the things that some of us on this board can be a bit obsessive about.
One of the biggest problems that I’ve seen for autistic and “autistic-like” people is a lack of vocational supports. If you can’t get a job because you can’t read or don’t know how to use a computer, there are dozens of organizations - public, private, secular, religious, large, small, urban, rural, etc. that are ready and willing to jump up and provide basic skills classes to help you learn these skills and earn a GED. If you have a high reading level, high math level, can use a computer, but can’t get a job because you are too socially awkward to pass a job interview, there is the great sound of crickets* when you go look for help. Because social skills can’t be tested for in an exam and because there are no clear best practices (or even halfway decent procedures) for teaching social skills, there is very little that anyone can do for you except tell you to “keep trying”.
*This is a figure of speech which means that you are being ignored, nobody is speaking, or that nothing is happening.
There’s a big difference between bad/evil and annoying. Plenty of people may find someone annoying but not hate them or think they are bad people. Of course, if you’re on the spectrum, it may be hard for you to tell the difference.
I heard that people on the spectrum are unable to process social cues. It’s not so much as not being aware of social cues as it is not being able to understand the cue.
Maybe being on the spectrum is akin to colorblindness? I know that socializing is more important than interpreting colors, but some colorblind people can manage along well-enough while being mildly colorblind and some really struggle with the brains inability to process colors.
Unfortunately humans are hardwired to fear anything that is different from them or their “tribe”. Of course as we all know, humans like most animals don’t like to display fear because it reveals weakness. Therefore even more unfortunately fear of what is different (aka unknown) manifests itself in a spectrum spanning from the mild (ignoring, dismissing, avoiding) to the extreme (teasing, bullying, physical violence).
So any discrimination towards those on the autistic spectrum is likely a secondary effect stemming from an innate emotional reaction that cannot be overruled by logic.
I’m not convinced of this…but… Not being able to respond properly to social cues is a fairly strong symptom of Asperger’s. It’s “on the spectrum,” but fair high on the range, like 7 or 8 on the 1 to 10 scale.
Most people with Asperger’s are able to respond properly to social cues, with less or more difficulty as they are distributed across the spectrum.
(Damn near everyone flubs their response to a social cue upon occasion!)
Especially since not all social cues are the same. A person may able to tell when someone is angry or happy, but be clueless about the shades in between. Or they may be able to recognize a joke when it is framed explicitly as a joke, but treat a sarcastic one-liner in a literal fashion.
Non-autism people are just as varied, IMHO. I’ve known people who are reasonably put together, but still manage to be social dingbats sometimes. But because they don’t have other impairments (like having narrow interests and rigid behavioral patterns), perhaps they can adapt better.
It seems to me that the general public doesn’t really know that much about autism, and I’ve heard people say things in the media like its one of those made up disorders that doctors created. Its understandable to a point, everything is lumped on the spectrum now so you have those who are completely non-verbal all the way to highly intelligent and verbal kids with Asperger’s but who still have some struggles. And then there are all sorts of in-between things like where the kid gets categorized as Pervasive Developmental Disorder- Not Otherwise Specified. I also saw some negative things online after it came out that the Sandy Hook Shooter, Adam Lanza had an Asperger’s or Autism diagnosis.
This is a little bit is a tangent, but if you take “the spectrum” and put it in the larger spectrum of individual variation, it might not just be natural human reactions that out people at a disadvantage but also business and social trends.
For example, we like a lot of business have jumped on the open office plan bandwagon. What that means among other things is that everyone is visible all the time, including that guy who constantly rocks in his chair while working.
Now maybe he has some neurological disability or maybe it’s just a quirk. What’s unfortunate is that now he has no visual privacy, people are going to be annoyed by that, perhaps, or judge him negatively. If we had stayed in our enclosed offices with doors, no one would ever have noticed.
So the way trends remake our environment can also create disadvantages.
I agree. I recently read an article that talked about how social skills are at a premium nowadays because so much work is collaborative. And the tight job market means that workers are expected to be jack-of-all trades in some shape or form. A person who can only code because that’s their singular interest is going to be at a disadvantage compared to the person who can do a whole bunch of other things in addition to coding.
I think heightened competitiveness in education and the workforce has made people more aware of their limitations–with the natural outcome being more people showing up at the doctor’s or therapist’s office to get help. And that often involves getting a diagnosis of something.
That’s for darn sure! I have a friend who has a magnificent “deadpan” expression and manner. Around him, everyone else is autistic, because the guy gives off no cues at all!