Aspies For Freedom

I do understand that most autistics are not savants. The reported incidence is 10%. And not all savants are autistic. I could make my character non-autistic.

But the essence of story is conflict. No conflict - no story.

My little brother and I used to joke about the structure of the novel:

First, everybody throws rocks at the hero, and he climbs a tree to get away. In a novel, at the four-sevenths point, the hero catches the first rock. The last three sevenths is him coming down out of the tree.

So terrible things have to happen to this character (his name is Ivor). I have to find rocks, I have to find a tree.

20 kHz is a reference to audio frequency. The normal hearing range is 20 Hz (abb. for Hertz, a physicist. Hz use to be cycles per second, abb. cps) to 20,000 Hertz. (20 kiloHertz, abb. kHz).

The human voice generates sound in the range of 200 Hertz to about 2000 Hertz.

All information in the physical world that we have observed so far is carried by vibration. That is from the physicist's point of view.

So I'm wondering, if I were deaf to sound in one frequency range, and could not hear my own voice, does that mean I don't have anything to communicate?

If I can't interpret signals of love from others, and can't express my own feelings in a way sensible to others, does that mean I do not have those feelings? Or do I even know what the feelings are if they cannot be shared?

I was just speaking of the progression of the story.

Ivor is, say, autistic, somewhere on the spectrum. This presents problems to him in his relationships within the world, because he cannot see/understand certain patterns. Ivor has a gift, though. He sees patterns where others cannot see them. Random to the rest of the world is not random to him.

My problem as an artist is in imagining the inner state of an autistic person. I sat in that waiting room watching that autistic girl, certain that there was a lot going on in her head. She was extremely "low-functioning". What does that feel like, I wondered?

So I am on this board because I want to get that character as right as I can. I could just "lurk" on this board. But I feel that's somehow dishonest. There's plenty to read, and I could just do that, and go about my business. But that just doesn't feel right to me.

I won't lie. I do feel a need to signify my respect for folks that say "I'm just fine, thank you very much." I have a deep suspicion of normative thinking. I have issues in my life that are rooted in that kind of thing.

It boils down to this: My value system says "All of us matter equally." And "It is my joyful duty as a human being to discern the value and goodness in everyone."

I don't think nature makes mistakes. People make mistakes.

I don't take it as rude. As a matter of fact, I think everybody has been just fine, and I feel very comfortable.

I want everyone to know that you are not just helping me write some dum story, but also helping a 7-year old child who has been diagnosed with Asperger's.

I keep getting email notifications, so let me take a look-see...

"I expect the child would, at some point, become aware of the mom's feelings of frustration or disappointment, and the child would also feel abandoned to some extent.  Even if the mom is careful to avoid saying anything negative, and even if the child can't read the mom's body language and tone of voice accurately, there may be some discrepancies in the mom's behavior and words.

For example, let's say the mom always tells the child that he is smart, capable, and will have a wonderful future.  Then the mom overly praises the child for some small accomplishment (such as tying his shoelaces neatly) that wouldn't be significant for the average child of his age.  The child starts to wonder if mom's expectations for him are really as high as she claims."

How is it that the autistic child becomes aware of the mom's feelings?

Decoding mom isn't a piece of cake for anybody.

But what "significators" would make the autistic child aware of those feelings? I like the "discrepancy" thing. That implies a consistency that the child expects. Like a piece of the puzzle doesn't fit.

I was just talking with Marshall's mom, Kim, about the connections he makes, and those he does not.

For instance, "Marshall, don't put your feet on the chair." Marshall does not take that to mean the class of all chairs. Just the particular chair he had his feet on at the moment.

This is consistent with what I have read about savants being in more direct contact with integer arithmetic. As NT's develop, that contact is swamped with classification. Rather like the night sky being swamped with scattered sunlight, so the stars disappear. Sort of.

One thing I would like to mention. A great deal of knowledge has been piled up with new medical imaging technologies. One study I heard about showed that emotional distress caused activity in the same region of the brain that becomes active due to physical pain. The same group of researchers showed that images of the physical suffering of other persons caused activity in that same region.

This would seem to imply that physical and emotional pain are physiologically congruent.

Now, if one cannot receive a message of the physical suffering of another person, say because of blindness, does not mean that if the image were visible, one would not feel it.

That is to say, the capacity for emotion exists, regardless of the capacity for communication.

Yikes. I hope I am clear.

The point I am driving at seems sort of stupid. It is obvious to me intuitively that autistic people have emotional life. But the ordinary forms of communication don't work properly. So there is misunderstanding on both sides.

The misunderstanding is easy for me to comprehend.

I am interested in the successes - the moments of understanding between NT's and autistics, and how those come about.

BTW, I find it a little ironic that Emoticons are available on this board.

...is a lot in just the short time I have been conversing with you good folks.

As I have said, understanding the emotional communications of others is a challenge for anybody. It is for me, anyway. And since I was a child, I have been obsesssed with the question "Why do things fall down?" That has led me on a merry chase through the world of gravitational physics. I focus way too much, much to the frustration of my friends. Sometimes they make fun of me in cruel ways because I will go on and on about the camera work of Stanley Kubrick.

I have come to a tentative conclusion that we are just all right. I suppose I could self-diagnose as Asperger's. But what's the point?

I deeply identified with Guest's comments about the light patterns on the wall, and the long, beautiful train of thought that came along with it. I was at a party last Saturday (and I don't like parties... too much going on), and was bored to tears. I can remember standing in a backyard once, and seeing a peculiar color pattern, and tracking it down to the refraction of a strand of spider silk.

In short, I go off into my own little world a lot.

And I have a lot of trouble understanding why people don't see the same things, and ask the same questions.

I'm beginning to think that DSM-IV has a place for everybody. And I wonder whether there is anyone who doesn't have some sort of "disorder".

Maybe we're all in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest". The only question is who's the nurse and who's the patient. And maybe that choice is ours.

The only real problem we have is figuring out who's smiling. If they are, smile back. If they're not, ask "What's the matter?". And don't take "Nothin'." as an answer.

I think you might be right. None of us can ever understand fully what it means to be anyone but ourselves.

But I take profound exception to the politically incorrect thing. I am not looking for votes. I'm looking for help in understanding. I'm making an effort to get it right.

There may be no way I can write from the point of view of an autistic. But I can try.

Colleen McCullough wrote about Julius Caesar, from his point of view. Despite the fact that he slaughtered thousands of Gauls, I still wound up liking the guy. Go figure. I came to a better understanding of him as a human being, and the in which he lived. Colleen McCullough had done her homework. That's all I'm trying to do. I may not be a great writer. But I can try to be a good one.

A good writer is honest. Whatever she writes, it had better be honest. Otherwise it's tripe. There's no point in it, much less profit. And that's all I'm trying to do here - be honest. Whether I try to write the story from Ivor's point of view or not, I'm going to try to get it right. I'm going for honesty.

For the record: The label of Politically Incorrect is just some weak ***. I can't abide it. It's name calling, and obfuscating. Leave off the "politically" and I'm fine. Just "incorrect", "not accurate", "does not serve"... Fine. I can take that gracefully. But Politically Incorrect? Not for one second will I stand for it. That's just some Stalinistic chickenshit.

I think it is plain from my posts that I don't like labels or judgements. I grew up with Jim Crow. I've seen some Politically Incorrect stuff. I've experienced some of it because of my life path. What's Politically Incorrect is blaming folks who don't have wheels for not getting out of the way of the flood. And then patting yourself on the back for the way you handled the hurricane. That's Politically Incorrect.

And you don't even log onto the board with a name. You just come out of left field with no name, and label me. Bite me. You hear? Just bite me.

Good stuff.

My comment about emoticon's...

One of the books laying about here on Asperger's uses emoticons as an index... And the printed word is, of course devoid of body language and tone-of-voice. But printed word seems to serve well.  :grin:

As for portraying life as an autistic as sucky...

I have no intention of coming at it that way. My take on life is that it is what it is. We are each challenged to make something of it. My experience of people is that the best of us are those who are supremely challenged, and who get up out of bed, and go do something, even if it's wrong. I have spent my life trying to figure out what in the hell the Universe is trying to tell me. My conclusion? The Universe is just trying to pass the time of day.

I figure everybody, at some level, is trying to Decode the Message. That's what all my writing has been about. We are all just trying to figure out What To Do Next. Like in the next ten seconds. So we do something. Then something happens. It could suck, or not.

And in the end, diagnosis doesn't make a whit. Labels are BS. But a flower? Now that's something...

I hear ya.

Politically Incorrect is about the only thing a person can say that would make me go ballistic. If "Guest" had a name, I'd feel a lot more kindly.

But it's after my nap time. I'm a little cranky. And I've been thinking hard all morning.

See all of ya'll tomorrow.

This reference is to the "power" we feel we have when we name things, versus the real power in the Universe, that actually creates things. And to the fact that a diagnosis is not action. Moreover, a diagnosis is an opinion.

From the homepage of this website: "We view autism, not necessarily as a disability, or something that is negative for everyone on the autistic spectrum, but as part of who the individual is."

So "autism" and "Asperger's Syndrome" are symbols. They have no real power or reality. But you, and I, are real. Our bodies and minds exist independantly of any descriptions. If the descriptions disappeared, we would still exist.

Of the two statements "I am" and "I am autistic", which is more powerful?

Naming a thing gives it power, or takes power away from it.

This site declares that "We know that autism is not a disease."

But check out the definitions of "diagnosis". Every single one says basically the same thing - a diagnosis is an identification of the presence of disease.

Now some may argue that "pregnancy" is a diagnosis. I would reply that pregnancy is a condition, a description of a stage of human growth. Medical assistance is in order to make it more comfortable and enhance the probability of a successful outcome, but it is not a disease. And so pregnancy is not a diagnosis, but rather a description.

So accepting a diagnosis, or even a description, using it to describe yourself is like a fashion choice.

And someone once said: “Why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin. And yet I say unto you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.”

"I don't have any more time to spend on this, but I have to say that your understanding of what it is to be autistic is quite limited. You do seem to be trying to understand, but underneath I detect some anger. Where is that coming from?"

I'll tell you where my patience is wearing thin: I came on this board to do research for a story so that I could accurately convey an aspect, one aspect, of a character I was thinking about. I said at the outset that I didn't know much. At each turn, when questioned, I have been honest. I have been kind except when I was labeled as "politically incorrect". I didn't take offense when I was labeled as un-professional. 90% of the reponse to my posts have been negative.

I loved this comment:
"Vendaia, the need for a dramatic conflict does not excuse the careless use of cultural stereotypes, from the standpoint of either literary merit or social responsibility. An autistic character does not have to be a savant in order to create a conflict, any more than an African-American character has to be a professional basketball player, or a Jewish character has to be a wealthy banker, or an Italian character has to be a mafioso.

Stereotypes are a lazy substitute for the mental work required to create a complex, true-to-life character and a meaningful plot with a genuinely believable conflict.

By the way, this is the reason why I assumed you were a part-time student taking a creative writing class. A professional writer would know better."
A part-time student... I should know better...
My writing career spans over thirty years.
"a lazy substitute..." Mentally lazy people don't get a bachelor's degree in Physics.
Let me tell you what the impression I have of "Aspies" is now, based on my experience on this board so far:
Angry, territorial, defensive, derisive, dismissive... I could go on.
Here's some copy from a lady advertising her coaching:

"Yes, there is light at the end of the tunnel! There are aspects of Asperger that you can use to your great advantage.

FOCUS
Your ability to focus on one objective over long periods of time without becoming distracted allows you to accomplish large and challenging tasks.
UNIQUE GLOBAL INSIGHTS
Your ability to find novel connections among multi-disciplinary facts and ideas allows you to create new, coherent, and meaningful insight that others would not have reached without you.
INDEPENDENT THINKING
Your willingness to consider unpopular or unusual possibilities generates new options and opportunities and can pave the way for others.
INTERNAL MOTIVATION
Rather than being swayed by social convention, other's opinions, social pressure or fears, you can hold firm to your own purpose. Your unique ideas can thrive, despite naysayers.
ATTENTION TO DETAIL
Your ability to remember and process minute details without getting lost or overwhelmed gives you a distinct advantage when solving complex problems.
3-DIMENSIONAL THINKING
Your ability to utilize 3-dimensional visioning gives you a unique perspective when designing and creating solutions.
CUTTING THROUGH THE SMOKE SCREEN
Your ability to recognize and speak the truth that is being "conveniently" ignored by others can be vital to the success of a project or endeavor.
LOGICAL DECISION MAKING
Your ability to make logical and rational decisions and stick to your course of action without being swayed by impulse or emotional reactions allows you to navigate successfully through difficult situations without being pulled off-course."

Is any of this true, or is this stereotyping?

And when it comes to stereotyping, I think I can be a little sensitive to that danger. I am a male-to-female post-operative transsexual. Riffle through your mental pictures. Any sterotyping going on? Want to go visit one of our Internet communities, ask a few questions in an effort to understand what that's all about? Care to try to write a story with a main character who's M2F post-op? Get inside her head? See the world through her eyes?

Any of you GD (Gender-Disadvantaged) folks want to make a comment?

First, I am not angry, I am a little irritated by assumptions and labeling on the part of certain respondents.

I came to learn. I am met with fear and hostility. Understandable.

Second, taking offense is a choice. Choose not to take offense. Just don't. I am not offended. Just irritated at the whole taking offense thing.

Third, I have experience with this business of diagnosis. I have given it a great deal of thought.

Fourth, I have a lot of experience with stereotyping. I fight it every day.

Fifth, you, and all, really, have been good sources of info, despite the very typical flaming that seems to spontaneously combust on every single discussion board on the net. These boards have a similarity to Brooklyn playground basketball games... tempers flare, players squawk "Yo, hey, foul!" But the game gets played, and everybody comes back and high fives, and the games go on.

Sixth, we are dealing in our household with a great kid who has been diagnosed with Asperger's. I personally find him delightful. We've got two single moms, four kids, and me. The age range is from 4 to 57. It's quite a melange! But we are all familial. We love each other, and struggle every day with a host of issues. I find Marshall to be delightful, smart, talented, and... well, just really cool. I am his champion in some ways. I would take a bullet for him. His talent is what has inspired my desire to try to write a whomping good yarn that features an autistic character.

So folks, if you feel so inclined, steer me clear of misconceptions, stereotyping, tell me something of yourselves, whatever you want to say. But don't take offense. I didn't come here to offend. When people ask me about myself and my situation, I don't take offense. I try to tell them what it is like, how it feels, what my life journey has been like. I try to build understanding.

And that's what I'm trying to do here - understand as best as I can what you feel. This is an opportunity for bridging, not a war. There are plenty of jerks in the world and on the net. I'm not one of them.

If you cannot understand that I am a compassionate, empathetic artist by this point in our conversation, then fine. Don't participate. But the last post on this thread will be one of mine. Because I don't give up.

In a way, I'm not surprised.

One of my points is to compare "NT" and "GD" in a humorous light. Let's get beyond labels, diagnoses, stereotypes...

I have read a good deal of Balistexistenz. I'm going to where you point me.

My main point is that there is enough suffering in this world. I say again, our only hope in this mean, mean state we call existence is compassion and empathy.

There are so many choices we don't get to make in our lives. I do my level best every day to make my choices from a basis of compassion and empathy.

I cannot be any plainer than this.

Oh, no. Persons who live lives in only one gender are Gender-Disadvantaged. Just as those who are not autistic are NT's.

I have googled Neurotypical. I know where it comes from. I have visited the sites.

My use of GD is satirical and ironic.

As for your mixing up sexual preference and gender identity? Oh, my.

I could say terrible things about your lack of awareness, your lack of understanding of the issues. But I'm not going to. Nor do I choose to take offense. Your statement comes from a lack of knowledge.

Dear heart, were you to show up on a TS board, and make that confused statement... well, I don't even want to think of the flames...
I've seen it happen. It's not pretty.

Lack of knowledge is no sin.