Published on 12, July, 2020
Does society have a duty to account for unequal outcomes in income, health, relationship success and happiness?
I'm going to assume you mean spicificly with relation to autism? To an extent. Already in therory (but too often not in practice) employers must take special steps to make jobs accessable to autistic people which of course helps level in playing field on income. The NHS, and the goverment more widely, has a legal duty to try and remove health inequalities in health and social care (although in practice its very easy for them to get out of actually doing anything and turning it into a box ticking exercise instead).
I think you need to ask yourself what would 'sociaty' taking reponsability for relationship sucess and happyness inequalities (for autistic people) look like? Are we going to have goverment issued girlfriends? I don't think any one wants to live in that sort of distopia. And what is happyness? Isolation certainly is a driving factor in depresion and you are a lot less likely to form relationships if isolated. The goverment certainly can and should do things to address autistic isolation.
It's been my observation that its very easy to exclude autistic people socialy and get away with out any negative social or legal consequences. If you label a person as a weirdo or creep instead of autistic it sounds perfectly rational to most people to shun them instead of what it generally is, discrimination. If it's just a circle of friends I'm not sure how much we can do about it but when it's something a bit more orgonised like a club or your local pub that sort of thing should fall under the equality act. The problem is the equality act only really works well if you've lots of money to throw and using it to enforce your rights through lawsuits.
So yes I think the goverment has a duty to address employment inequality (which can lead to income inequality), health inequality and social isolation inequality (which can lead to depression and a lack of relationship sucess). However in practice they will only ever give it lip service unless their hands are forced.
Hell they promissed to let the autistic patients out of mental hospitals and then went back on it when it was inconvenient for them. If we want them to do these things we will have to drag them kicking and screaming all the way.
There are many options. The government could have chaperones who introduce Autistic people to potential partners, "middle men" who would help translate the body language to the Autistic person who doesn't understand and help soften the bluntness of the Autistic person to the neurotypical, for example.
doesn't sound very romantic does it? A date with a 3rd party hanging about reminding you that if they seem weird its only their autism and you should overlook it. The moment you have an authority figgre seeming to tell people how they ought to feel you tend to put their noses out of joint. If you want to tell people how they ought to feel you need to use peer presure. That's what seems to work best with neurotypicals.
The backdrops are typically humdrum and every day. It’s the experience of ‘clicking’ with someone I think that is romantic. Finding you quite rapidly forge a deep connection based upon a common point of view or a common Experience. Or maybe it’s just based on sheer physical attraction.
The location is less important than the opportunity to really get to know the person and be honest with them. Having a third party there interrupting can kind of disrupt that to some extent. Disrupt that sense of natural connection.
A lot of relationships don't seem very romantic to me, in any case. How many people meet their partner at work? What's romantic about that? It's not like Jack and Rose on the Titanic, is it? Or something from a Shakespeare play. Or meeting a seductive stranger on a train. A lot of relationships seem quite boring.