Aspies For Freedom

I don't want to offend anyone. but please hear me out. I'm just curious to know, what advantages to aspies have over NT's? Have you ever had the problem I have right now?
Do you have any advice?



A part of me hated myself for being an asperger. It made me feel weak, and naive. As a child, I was raped 8 times and didn't know it. I was angry at myself for not reporting it and never figureing it out. I just figured it out this morning.

I'm always an easy target, for bullying, rape and theft. I'm very easy to take advantage of.

Ever had this problem:

I walked up to these two girls who needed help with their assignment. I offered to assist but they just looked at each other, laughed and walked away.

People say I'm smart, but I'm going to prove them wrong with my 96 I.Q.(My psychoanalyst test) When I beleived them I actually acted like a smart ass, acting like a know-it-all just for the sake of attention. When people cheat off my answers off a test. I feel useful. when i act like a know-it-all, people look at me as stuck up. I didn't know was being as such. When I found out that my behavior pointed to the disorder, I went to bed and cried my eyes out. Calling myself names, like "freak" "retard" "dummy" I even planned my suicide, but never acted on it. I heard of a cure and I really wanted this cure, even if I risk losing my own life..(right now I'm not sure.)

You want to say something to the other students but it feels like that no one ever listens to you.

I tried reading books on how to make friends, but they proved useless, I feel like I did something wrong. Maybe I did. I did all the thing the other kids did to get attention, silly things. If someone ran naked across the school football field, I'd do the same thing. If kids are picking on the fat kid, i'd do the same, but I never picked on anyone before.

Every day, I walk around campus looking at the floor, hating myself and the whole world. I wanted something bad to happen like a school shooting, or a plane crash. I looked back and asked myself why I never died of lead poison.

It's very hard to grow up and suck it up. You guys seemed to like being an AS, but I just wondered why.

I know you don't want to hear me but this is the truth. Now I'm going to bed and I'm going to cry my eyes out again

I never stopped being an aspie but at one point in my life I started to realize how much suffering I had because of it.  I don't hate being an aspie --- I JUST HATE THE WAY SOME PEOPLE TREAT ME BECAUSE I HAVE ASPERGERS.  

Now that you know some people have treated you badly because you have asperger's -- you could start working on ways to try and protect yourself from that abuse.  It will never be 100% effective but it will lessen your suffering.  

I started one day to realize that my happiness could be dependent on myself and not on being around other people and having lots of friends.  

Do you want some help?

Do you have any special interests Lucario - could you develop your special interests to make your autistic traits work to your favour in life?

I felt kind of like that for the first few years after I was diagnosed. All my friends just left me, and made fun of me. I didn't act any different, but because I had a new label, they couldn't be my friends any more. Suddenly, I wasn't funny and spontaneous- I was creepy and insane. I hated myself because I wasn;t normal, and because everyone else hated me. The special ed. system telling me I was an inferior subhuman didn't exactly help.

But the simple truth? You can't hate yourself. You are who you are. We face challenges that other people just breeze through. The things that other people enjoy terrify us sometimes. But we're people. We're human beings, with the same souls and rights and emotions as anyone else. If other people make fun of you? Screw them. They're jackasses. Don't listen to them. You're yourself, and yourself ought to be good enough for anyone.

Music playing, scratch the record

Are you reading more into what actually went on?  
When I was a sped, they treated us with respect.
Did they demonstratedly treat you with disrespect?  

How did they treat you???????????  What did they do and say???

Some of the staff at the Maryland Rehabilitation Center in Baltimore seem to have had a client service problem, I mean, during our cooking lessons, think she had a temper.... I hate to say it but I saw her hit one of the girls.  I wish I had said something (as a Masters I knew damned well the woman was out of line, I tried to get jobs similiar to the kind she was doing, I knew the drill)

The MSW on the Community Living Sills Training floor seemed to have an attitude.  What is the difference between a man with a Master's in sociology and a woman with a Master's in social work?  The man has Asperger and the woman doesn't and she thinks she is better than him because of an accident of genetics?

No I did not handle the Community Living Skills curriculum well.

It was 1999.  Because I lived the previous year in Greenbelt alone with just a cat, I already knew how to
a. cook
b. do laundry
c. take public transit
d. shop
e. keep house (clean, vacuum)
f. wash dishes, either by hand or with an dishwasher appliance
g. hell, in 1991 I got my driver's license, and after my dad died in 1996 I had Mom's full permission to develop my skills on the road.  Dad's fears of getting into accidents were overrated, I had two in a year but I was not at fault and the damage was minor to either vehicle.  I was not at fault for years.  We all make mistakes, eventually, and try not to repeat them.

CLST did teach me how to iron clothes.  It takes forever.  I can do it.  I'd rather do something else with two or three hours, so I patronize dry cleaners like everyone else does at work.  It would probably be worth it to iron ties and handkerchiefs, though, because they are small, not much time to press, and they would be too expensive to press for their small size.  For the big stuff, shirts and pants, I would burn my fingers.  I did.  You get really mad at the cat when she is down by your feet when you burn your fingers in the steam press, but you love her, and you don't hurt her.  That is love.

Lucario,

I don't think anyone could take offence to someone having a hard time dealing with who they are. And I think most people here would be lying if they had never experienced shades of what you're describing in their own self-perception. If it makes you feel any less alone, I know how how it feels to feel like you do right now; I still feel hopeless, small and confused in a world I don't fully understand. People think I'm confident and self-assured; I don't know where they get that impression from.

I won't patronise you by saying that you're a 'survivor' for dealing with rape and sexual abuse. I find it to be one of these terms people throw around when they don't know what else to say - pretty much the same as 'what doesn't kill you makes you stronger'. Sometimes what doesn't kill you only makes you turn into a shell of a person or a bastard. However I do believe people can turn around bad experiences that they had no control over and take charge of their lives again.

Remember you were a child. Few children, AS or NT, fully comprehend sexual abuse/rape and many are too scared to tell an adult. Some that do are accused of being liars, or the abuse is swept under the carpet and ignored. You are not weak for not realising, nor are you any kind of failure either. I think the important thing for you to do right now is get in contact with some form of a rape crisis centre; pardon me if I'm wrong, but I'm assuming you're female. If that is the case, then it may be advisable to contact some form of Womens' Aid centre too, or Victim Support. These are free UK-based models that offer impartial counselling and support to those who have experienced abuse. There will be similar models if you aren't in the UK and a Google search should help you out there. Even if you're male, these organisations will be able to put you in contact with relevant organisations if they cannot help you. You are also under no pressure to involve the police; they are there to support you, so I would urge you to reach out to these services, as I think any help you can get right now will help you.

With regards to being easy to take advantage of... one of my exes left me nearly £15,000 in debt and the other... well, lets not go into detail but she f*cked up my life in another way too. In turn, I became an angry, bitter, twisted cynic who freely admitted I hated humanity. For a while, that anger kept me alive when I just wanted to curl up into a ball and die. But anger doesn't last forever - you can't let anger feed your life, you'll burn out. So my anger burned out, I took an overdose at 20. Turned out I was allergic to the pills I overdosed on and I nearly ended up succeeding in my suicide attempt (I was fitting constantly, had protein in my blood...). I remember sitting in the room with the pyschiatrist the next day (because they knew it was an intentional overdose) and being told "you nearly died yesterday". She was telling me a load of medical information that I didn't care about. I just felt dulled. At one point I'd wished for death to come and take me away, but when I was flitting into consciousness I remember being hysterical and having to be restrained by nurses... because I was terrified. That blackness, losing yourself, feeling yourself slip, is petrifying. I've been low since then - I've even been suicidal - but that experience was so frightening that I'd have to be at utter, complete, desperate rock bottom before I'd contemplate it again.

Just as anger isn't a long term productive emotion, neither is depression. You can't change the nastiness of people; trust me, people like these girls don't even like themselves. The most popular people are a lot more lonely than they would like to admit. Popularity doesn't necessarily mean well-liked; it just means they're the acceptable norm. I watch girls in my university course and I'm so thankful that I'm not like them. Why would I want to be afraid to leave my front door without my 'face' on? Why would I want to sit silent in a class when I know the answer? Oh no... no-one wants to speak first, and snigger and roll their eyes at the person who does. Oh boo hoo... yeah, their lives are great, they have a better social life than me, but am I hanging out with people I bitch about behind their backs? Do I freak out when I put on a pound one week? Do I live my life for me... or for what other people want me to be? I don't give a f*ck what anyone thinks about me. Thats not self confidence, or self assurance. Its knowing that I'm a genuine, loyal person who does anything for those she cares about, who doesn't intentionally try to hurt people for no reason, who is straightforward and honest... if they don't like me, well, thats their loss. I'm not God's gift; I need to lose weight and I'm pretty bad tempered. But I have a good heart, and thats what makes a lot of people proud to be Aspie.

People with good hearts tend to get walked all over at times. Its why its so rare to find decent people... sometimes it feels they're all hiding because they've got stung. But they are out there. Remember that even though you may seem to attract all the bastards of this world, warm-hearted people also try to graviate toward warm-hearted, kind people. Thats not an Aspie thing. Thats a human thing.

There are some days when I wish I understood the world better; life is all one big theory class to me. I don't understand the emotions of others particularly well, and non-AS women are from an entirely different planet to me. Recently I've wished not to be AS, but to understand emotions more. I've sat and cried my eyes out because I feel so frustrated at my own inability to engage. At times I feel like a machine stuck in a person's body, even more so since I found out I had AS - whereas before, I had mood swings because I couldn't recognise my frustrations, now I sit back and let this steely logic do things. I expect certain words to elict certain responses and when I don't get those responses, I get more frustrated. Its not how things process to me. I can't understand why women think that by expressing upset its only my letting off steam; if I wanted to vent, I would say I'm venting. When I say "I feel..." I want to be told if I'm wrong or not. Emotions don't really interest me in the same way that they seem to interest other women. But I'd rather be machine-like and be myself.

Being yourself is probably the hardest thing anyone can ever do. But its the best way to be.

My advice to you would be to deal with things you can work with i.e. the abuse in your childhood. These things have quite a nasty habit of jumping up and biting you in the bum when you least expect it (trust me there.). Deal with one thing at a time; you're overloading yourself here. No wonder you probably feel as though your head is about to explode. It is a lot for anyone to deal with, AS or not. But as corny as it sounds, there is always hope while you're still alive.

First of all, it's not uncommon for even NTs to be in denial about being a victim of a sexual assault.  In addition to seeking counseling, you may want to read the book 'Miss America By Day' by Marilyn Van Derbur.

It also does not mean that you are stupid or slow. Sometimes the mind may block out or rationalize some things at the time because it would be too much to deal with otherwise. There is nothing wrong with you, but there is something wrong with the rapist.

And secondly, an IQ score says nothing about how intelligent you are.  There are many problems with IQ tests and I wouldn't take the score to heart.  Being able to take a test well and being intelligent can be mutually exculsive things.

My IQ score certainly isn't MENSA worthy, but regardless I know that I am an intelligent person. I also have no savant or super impressive talents. That doesn't make me unworthy however.

Self-acceptance isn't something that happens overnight and negative thinking can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. My advice would be to be true to yourself and pursue the hobbies/interests that make you happy. In the process, you may find a few friends.

My teenaged years sucked ,but life does get better so hang in there.

ocampo makes a lot of sense here, Lucario. Learning by trial and error is a hard and often painful way to learn, but for some of us that seems to be the way we learn.  I feel so sad that you have been hurt and hope you find ways to heal.

I second this.

Also if you have just realised today that you were raped when you were a child, you have a great burden which is important to unload, please do as ocampo suggests and seek help from one of the organisations that are highly trained to deal with this as soon as you can.

If it comes to that, there are thousands, probably hundreds of thousands, of autistics and their families willing to do what it takes to keep that from happening. Realistically, though, I don't think it will. There are too many of us and the autism rights movement is gaining too much momentum. I understand the paranoia; and you would be right to be paranoid about mistreatment, because that does happen on a daily basis. But the reality is that you are very unlikely to die because you are autistic; the vast majority of murders of autistic people are perpetrated against people who are dependent on caretakers 24/7, or else nonverbal or partly verbal minor children. For now, the only people who are targeted for the extremes are the most vulnerable. You are 16, verbal, and in high school... death is unlikely unless you become very disabled.

A lot of us believe that forced cure is a sort of death, and get paranoid about that. I agree; I refuse to be paranoid, though. A cure for autism is unlikely. Forced treatment? Yes. Happens every day.

The realistic worst-case scenario is more like: They develop a genetic test, and autistic fetuses get aborted (along with the many false positives) at a 95% rate or so. The remaining autistics lose services because there aren't enough of them. Over the next few hundred years, they remain a marginalized population as autism slowly removes itself from the gene pool--as do positive, autism-related traits such as logic and visual thinking. This causes a stagnation in scientific progress, as society depends more and more on social connections and guesswork instead of facts, because even NTs-with-autistic-traits would gradually no longer exist. If something similar is applied to other genetically based mental conditions, we might lose art, literature, or even a strong sense of morality, as all these can go to extremes and result in mental conditions. Society would become normalized... everyone nearer and nearer the average; fewer disabled people; more cookie-cutter education; more and more trivial ways of 'standing out'. Also fewer innovators, activists, and eccentrics.

But that is the pessimistic prediction. Optimistically, autistics (along with the entire disability community) would become more and more open about their rights. It would become another civil rights movement; and eventually the shame of being different, instilled in childhood in many people, would become less prominent. Autistic people would become more and more obvious as they stop trying to hide, and as parents stop trying to hide or normalize their children. The 'financial burden' of autism on the economy would briefly increase as autistics receive needed services, then decrease precipitously as they became employable and found jobs with newly tolerant employers. It would become as socially unpopular to taunt someone for being a 'nerd', 'psycho', or 'freak' as it would be to taunt someone for being black, homosexual, or physically disabled. It wouldn't happen in our lifetimes, just as it won't happen for the lifetimes of black people born in the 1960s. (Yes, they're still alive, and still middle-aged. The civil rights movement isn't complete yet.) But maybe, given enough courage on our part, two hundred years in the future, being autistic could be viewed as being no more negative than having blue eyes.

There are two kinds of people involved in the suffering of the Aspergic.  There are those with Aspergers and then there are the assburgers.  Assburgers are the kind of people who exploit and victimize people with Aspergers.  The vast majority of us do not suffer from Aspergers, we suffer from the accompanying assburgers.

Sounds more like "used to hate". Either that, or it's a typo. Not a big deal in either case.

Perhaps what I get out of this thread is that we eventually get what everybody else has, that we eventually learn to get along and make peace with who we are.

Then we would think it is a mistake to be cured.

When I was younger I hated myself because I didn't realise I had autism and I was told by parents, teachers and my peers that my difficulties were all my fault because I wasn't a good person and I wasn't trying hard enough. I believed them because I knew no better and this led me to hate myself.

Once I found out about autism and AS I began to feel better about myself because I could see that there wasn't anything 'wrong' with me and I wasn't a bad person - I was just different.

After being diagnosed I started learning about disability rights and autism rights and this led me to realise that I'm just fine the way I am and the only people who have problems are those who discriminate against people who are different.

I never took any shit from my peers or even my family, regarding my eccentric behavior, so I managed to retain a good self image. However, I hated everybody else for thinking they have the right to force their ideas on me. It still pisses me off to see kids and adults telling others how to live their lives; all I want to do is slap them all in the faces. Nobody should be butting into other people's businesses.