Published on 12, July, 2020
I can't stand stereotypes and do not wish to be defined by my condition. I would rather people saw me as an individual with strengths and weaknesses, some of which can be explained by me having Asperger's syndrome, rather than defining me by a label. This is why I can't stand the word 'aspie'. While having Aspergers is an important part of my identity, it is no more important than me being female, no more important than my sexuality or my age. I would hate it if someone did not see past me being a woman or past my age, why is having aspergers any different? The disability movement campaigned for disability to be seen not as an individual affliction or difference, to move beyond individualising disability and to see it as a societal problem: people with disabilities should campaign collectively to change society, making it imperative to see the person before the disability. I am a person with asperger's syndrome, not an aspie. I share traits that other people with AS may have, but I don't share all the traits, just enough to have aspergers. We are all different, to say I am an aspie suggests conformity with other 'aspies' and obliterates the part of me that defies easy categorization.
Charles Dickens managed to find a wide range of characters, which might have been charicatures, but also they had to be identifiable to his readers. In the past, for a variety of social, medical and financial circumstances, people's behaviours widely varied.
Nowadays society is driven by TV, media, internet (twitter etc), magazines (including lifestyle) etc., and standardised expectations of education and training and worklife.
The consequence is that the majority traits define the norm.
Those of us who cannot match these traits go to the wall.
We've had the debate on here about achievement and AS, with some people arguing that if you've achieved you haven't really got AS.
The historical models - Einstein, van Gogh, Warhol - that people have tried to argue showed asperger traits, mostly lived in times when their eccentricity was tolerated because people were so widely different.
The tragedy is that we clearly need people who are wired differently to make scientific breakthroughs necessary for human survival and progress.
The current strategy of dividing such people off, and majking them clinical specimens, is we are losing the variety and range of skills humans need.
Standard NT man/woman may not actually be capable of survival.