Published on 12, July, 2020
I've been wanting to write this for about three years pretty much ever since I joined the forum, but thought it might be a bit triggering for some.
Now I'm on moderation I guess, IS the time to do it, because if I say anything that is wrongspeak, then at least it might get filtered before I upset anyone.
This thought was triggered many, many years ago when my child was not in her thirties, and we were watching a cartoon and the villain of the piece started to talk about his frustrating life and upbringing etc. and I recognised my own circumstances! All the things that cartoon villain (and many more screen villains before him) described had been a part of my upbringing, and I'd felt the urge to crush, kill, destroy just like they report, but in my case I found that sort of thing to be really unsatisfying and not the life I wanted to lead lead (or role I wanted to pay?) So evil villainly became a part of my character rather than the whole thing.
Now to be honest, there are some people here, who lack my ineffably sunny disposition ( Oh that's funny! One of my best..) and may actually be bad guys, but would they know it? Certainly my experience is some of the worst things I've done, I was quite convinced were righteous at the time...
Then there's the way N.T's react to us and then interact with us.
Do THEY see us as the good guys?.
I find this unsettling to contemplate, but today as I read some current events that are happening in the states, where much is being made of the perpetrators Autism diagnosis, and see the discussion starting to happen in "mainstream" (by my standards) media I think we ought to ask oursleves some searching questions about the nature of Autism and have asome answers ready for anyone who ask before we get further marginalised as a group.
I hope you (and the mods!) don't mind, but I'm going to re-post a reply of mine from another recent thread (Defence Lawyers using defence of ASD for offenders that commit serious crime). They're closely related and I think it serves equally well in reflecting my thoughts on your thread, too:
I'm not sure how to feel about it. I think it's human nature for reporters and their readers / viewers to immediately look for - and latch onto - anything in the way of known differences that could potentially help to explain instances of shocking and abhorrent behaviour. So perhaps it's inevitable, because we'll never know the reason behind any given individual's motivation or behaviour until the case has been fully investigated (and sometimes not even then).
I'm not sure that the media are necessarily aiming for autism to be seen as an "excuse" or sole reason - perhaps it's more a case of them flagging one potential contributory or related factor.
That being said, many of us on the spectrum have comorbid mental health issues, and research has shown that we can be at greater risk of suicidal thoughts or actions. Is it so far fetched to think that certain conditions, such autism (including its traits like rigidity, black and white thinking, and the potential for losing control of our behaviour during meltdowns, for example) in combination with mental health issues, could also lead to extreme actions at the other end of the behavioural spectrum?
We can also be more naive than neurotypicals, which can make us more susceptible to being groomed and manipulated into doing things that we shouldn't.
This article is interesting. Whilst it suggests that some research points to autistic people being more likely to be victims rather than perpetrators of crimes, it also says this:
"On the other hand, some studies indicate that individuals with autism may have a higher propensity for certain types of offenses, such as arson (Hare, Gould, Mills et al., 1999; Mouridsen, Rich, Isager et al., 2008), sex offenses (Cheely et al., 2012; Kumagami & Matsuura, 2009), and assault and robbery (Cheely et al., 2012)."
From: https://i-am-autism.org.uk/autism-and-crime-is-there-a-dangerous-connection/
So, overall, I don't really know what to think or feel about it - including how to answer anyone if they were to challenge me on the subject.