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.
So I must be a deformed female from your way of seeing things (sarcasm, by the way!).
I prefer intellectual pursuits to socialising, don't wear makeup or skirts, don't care about fashion or clothes, am assertive and speak my mind. Many women are like me, a significant minority in fact, and before you put it down to my aspergers, there are many women with asperger traits who never need a diagnosis, and many women who are not into socialising. It is just that society expects women to behave in a certain way and conformity is a very powerful thing.
I don't have an identity as a woman as such, more as a human-being. But I do identify with female oppression and identify as a Feminist. How much to do you know about Feminism?
I do not ignore neurology completely: Aspergers is caused by a different wiring in the brain, but beyond this there is a great deal of difference between people with aspergers. We are all unique, and one person with aspergers will have a slightly different brain difference to the next person with AS, just as one neurotypical's brain will be slightly different to another neurotypical: As Puck puts it, there is a human continuum. But the categories Woman and Man are not medical in a neurological sense, they are purely functional with regards to procreation, and some other marginal average differences like size and strength. Your argument that men and women think differently due to biochemistry is naive, simplistic and conformist. Do you ever question what you read, do you ever try and see behind facts to hidden meaning, to understand that appearance is not always the same as truth? We are not talking about tigers or cars, we are talking about human-beings.