share ideas to combat bad press trope - 'dangerous solitary autistic' ?

Watching a two part BBC documentary on Luton murderer, Nicholas Prosper, I thought 'oh, the 'dangerous solitary autistic' trope. I spent months on moving to a new social housing area, with 3 neighbours literally running away when I went out. They got used to me - taking shopping indoors in my wheel-barrow, for example, or building eccentric grow-houses on my allotment. The 'eccentric' trope is preferable Rolling eyes . How do you think we could 'change minds' [and keep the change] about public perception of solitary autistics being 'dangerous'?

I get a lot of pleasure giving-out solutions - even when I get no response. I email my housing association, MP, government officials, supermarkets.. I sometimes email someone whose been in the news, where I have experience and think they might be heartened.  I've had good responses for quite a few ideas. It's good to be appreciated. All your creative, inventive, engineering, techie minds - what a waste if all this knowledge/experience is just used out of sight indoors!

What about autistic think-tanks, discussing social problems and issues and offering formal reports to people who can 'make a difference'? BBC news does have a news about autism page - this might be a good point of delivery.

Parents Reply Children
  • The problem is, we don't know, as they rarely seem to tell us about their activities.

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    Aren't allotments supposed to have all sorts of Heath Robinson constructions, I know mine did? I once chased a big bit of plastic sheeting down the road and when I'd caught it I turned it into a polytunnel, it had come off a new mattress delivered to the people across the road.

    I don't know about being typecast as a lone dangerous crazy, I feel we're typecast as savants, if you've not got some kind of near superpower like Patience in the TV program, then people don't know how to think of you, so I guess we're either lone crazies or savants. Really most of us, like NT's are somewhere in the middle, just wanting to quietly get on with life.

    Lot's of people choose to live alone these days, so why are we being picked on?