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How do you describe Autism?

Lotus

I identify with these points that Wendel1994 wrote:

"I can study how other people who are not on the spectrum live and compare it to my life and see what is different, and the fact, no matter how hard I try to get what they have, it never feels right, it feels like an awkward replica of what they have..... people with autism are different and mine is as far from who I am as possible! Autism is not my personality, my true personality cannot be let out as it is being weighed down"

I have recently come up with an idea of how to explain what autism is. I think of our brains as computers which are not connected to the mainframe of society, like NT brains are. I see NT brains as being part of an interconnected web, like the world wide web, but we don't have the correct software to connect to it. This means they can't read our "code" either and so often fail to understand us. I've often been frustrated by well meaning people who think they know me, when they really don't. And I'm a fairly well adapted female Aspie who is assumed to be an NT by most people.

But I think that autism may encourage individual thought and development, often giving us insights and skills which NTs don't have. (Star Trek fans - think of Seven of Nine and her struggles to become a free thinking individual). 

Maybe our society, in it's struggle to become less prejudiced against people who are a different colour, race, religion, etc has promoted an idea that we're really all the same under the outward appearance. Of course, treating people badly because they are different to "the norm" is totally wrong, but treating everyone as if they are the same seems to me to be the way to stifle individual development and creative thought. 

What do you think?

Parents

  • The broad gamut of equal rights legislation covers those with disabilities, but doesn't provide full coverage for those with hidden disabilities. Well-meaning schemes like the sunflower system have refused to check the background of applicants, leading to its widespread abuse.

    With the NHS issuing certification for the hidden benefit of full innoculation, would it not be possible for them to similarly include a heads-up on hidden conditions? As one of the GAD staff in the stroppy days of the 1980s (I was brought in to do the roll-out of the Dial-a-Ride program once it had successfully completed testing, in an easily-scalable financial package), before going on to one of the guarantors of the ECHR, I find the lack of provision and routine discrimination appalling.

    We don't conform to norms which make no provision for anyone who's not white, male and neurotypiucal - which is about 30% of the population. The other "minority" groups refuse to become compliant, why should we? We can't help being born the way we are, and I've paid my way with knobs on. In some respects, even neurodivergent panders to that minority's misguided idea they're the norm.

    Once we get beyond one Aspie standing out as a spokeswoman for all, because everyone else had been too badly done over to speak, then perhaps we should start telling the medics our side of the story. The girls in Public Schools are getting a hearing, London's single women likewise, and the BAME community, because Authority has let them down. We're in the same boat.

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  • The broad gamut of equal rights legislation covers those with disabilities, but doesn't provide full coverage for those with hidden disabilities. Well-meaning schemes like the sunflower system have refused to check the background of applicants, leading to its widespread abuse.

    With the NHS issuing certification for the hidden benefit of full innoculation, would it not be possible for them to similarly include a heads-up on hidden conditions? As one of the GAD staff in the stroppy days of the 1980s (I was brought in to do the roll-out of the Dial-a-Ride program once it had successfully completed testing, in an easily-scalable financial package), before going on to one of the guarantors of the ECHR, I find the lack of provision and routine discrimination appalling.

    We don't conform to norms which make no provision for anyone who's not white, male and neurotypiucal - which is about 30% of the population. The other "minority" groups refuse to become compliant, why should we? We can't help being born the way we are, and I've paid my way with knobs on. In some respects, even neurodivergent panders to that minority's misguided idea they're the norm.

    Once we get beyond one Aspie standing out as a spokeswoman for all, because everyone else had been too badly done over to speak, then perhaps we should start telling the medics our side of the story. The girls in Public Schools are getting a hearing, London's single women likewise, and the BAME community, because Authority has let them down. We're in the same boat.

Children
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