Aspies For Freedom

Just started reading through this thread, trying to find some helpful information about trying to get a formal diagnosis - where is it?

Anyway, just had a thought about the terminology, when I read how Aspergian excludes others on the autistic spectrum.  

Well, if we're different from NeuroTypicals, does that make us NeuroUnTypical, or NUTS? :lol:

Normal, sensible service resuming roundabout... now.  :oops:

For years I worked in a Library, then did conveyancing work, all of which involved desk work, minimum contact with people, and lots of paperwork needing intense concentration to detail.  That suited for quite some time, but I at last got bored with papers and dry dusty old files, did a complete U-turn, did my Childcare Certificate, and now work full-time with a class of 4-5 year olds.  

I find that the kids are easier to deal with than NT adults - less judgemental, and they think my little idiosyncracies are funny and eccentric, rather than something to be frowned upon.  Plus it gives me a chance to work with my "special subject" group: I have got two little boys in my class who are on the autism spectrum, and recently another little girl was formerly diagnosed ( I was pretty sure she was an Aspie previously, now a doctor has confirmed it.)  

My daughter also finds social contact extremely difficult; she wants to work in forensic science when she graduates (shades of the tv program CSI - Gil Grisham rocks!)

My point is, there are jobs out there that could suit if we can think outside the square - and who better to do that than an Aspie?

Alison

Whoops, should be "formally" not "formerly", of course.  So much for attention to detail!
Alison

So you guys want to be declared a minority?

First you need numbers.
Then you have to have a reason.
Why do you think you are struggling?

Here in the US,and other countries I can think of a few minority groups.
Women-Glass Ceiling. I think I bumped my head on it a few times.
AfricanAmerican- Does this forum love or hate PC? Anyway this is pretty much self-explanatory.
Jews- Hated by most nations,but beloved by God.If suffering for 2000 years isn't good enough I don't know what it.
Roma- Or Gypsies. Living in poverty.

Numbers: No matter what way you slice it, three in a thousand is a minority. Especially when you consider that other neurological divergences that attract equal levels of discrimination such as Schizophrenia are more common than diabetes. Numbers schumbers.

Reason: Let's see, is being abused with legal sanction by schoolteachers a good enough reason? Because I can assure you I can pull plenty more out of my hat without even trying.

Struggling: This particular Aspie looks back on the sum of his life to date and feels he would have been better off if he had been aborted. Does that sound like someone who is not struggling to you?

Women also have a tendency to seem to want thousands of years of sociological and environmental development to change overnight (please excuse the generalisation for a second). Doctors know how to treat female-specific complaints (seriously, try going to a doctor and telling them you have Asperger's-related finger muscle atrophy). They also happen to be around fifty percent of the planet. Calling them a minority group... well, Amy said it best.

African Americans and their reason(s) to be called a minority are pretty obvious to the eye. An Aspie has to announce he is an Aspie to 99% of the population before people even get to decide whether to spit on him for it.

Aspies would also like to prevent a propaganda-inspired holocaust that is very much in the making already.

That much remains unknown, but a strong correlation has been found between hand/finger muscle atrophy and Asperger's Syndrome. Every Aspie that my current rehab consultant has seen (and she estimates she has so far seen every Aspie adult in this town, which would mean at least sixty), she has noted finger muscle problems with. I doubt that all Aspies have finger muscle problems, but of all the people I have met as a boy who were Aspie like, all have various coordination problems, including of the hands.

My consultant told me it could be vitamin-deficiency related (also a strong correlation there). At the time, I was having agonising shoulder problems, which disappeared when I started taking vitamin supplements.

Perhaps someone will develop finger exercise programs for Aspies?

Pardon me for being skeptical.  Projecting ahead a couple of decades, I'm imagining there will be many sets of Venn diagrams to illustrate differences in gene expression levels between autistics and non-autistics and/or different sequence variations in some genes between autistics and non-autistics and/or different epigenetic modifications of genes between autistics and non-autistics and that there will be no Venn diagrams that clearly and unequivocally separate autistics from non-autistics. That's my prediction.  It's also possible that there could be reconceptions about what being an autistic person means.

We'll have to check in 20 years from now and see what the research has revealed.  Two possibilities have been suggested in the posts above: A) that there won't be definitive genetic differences that clearly sort people into autistic and non-autistic groups; B) there will be discovered relatively defined genetic switches that send the brain along the autistic developmental path or not (in the case of neurotypicals).  There is another possibility: C) that the term "autism" will be considered overly vague, and that, as more genetic info is acquired, there will be stratifications into different types of autism, each with a set of genetic markers ascribable to that autistic subtype, and each stratum or type of autism might have degrees of severity.

I like possibility C.  I suspect I belong to some as-yet-undefined subtype myself.  

An interesting point that a television programme would presume to 'explain' anything much about such a controversial area of discussion as 'race'. It sounds very much like a propaganda piece that is parroting the orthodox pieties of the moment rather than explaining anything terribly much.

How far back did the History Lesson go? Did it concentrate on one very narrow slice of history, or did it discuss many thousands of years, in order to showcase the underlying realities of exclusionary practice in human nature and history? Did the programme attempt to go beyond the cosy binary divide of Black Vs White, or did it also explore the equally vicious and reprehensible exclusionary practices within both Black and White groups of people?

It is tempting to stifle debate by asserting that "The Differences Within 'The Races' Are At Least Equal To Or Probably Exceed The Differences Between 'The Races' Therefore Demarcation Along Arbitrary Socially Constructed Conceptions Of Race Based On Wholly Superficial Criteria Is Meaningless", but that is a Creedal Shibboleth that is sometimes challenged by people working in the field of Evolutonary Biology and allied fields, who are perhaps better qualified to make pronouncements on the subject than half-educated hacks working in the mainstream media. Of course, those scientists who do challenge the cosy certainties of the Creedal Shibboleths are likely to find themselves discredited, disgraced and driven forth from the Academy.

It would seem that the "Long march through the Institutions" is almost complete. On the other hand, there is always work to be done, because dissidents and dissenters can be found wherever one cares to look for them.

I read one article that said that the genes controlling skin color were fewer in number than the genes controlling hight, and from this decided that two white guys of different height were more disparate in genetics than a white man and a black man of the same height.  

What that statement ignores, however, is that there are genes coding for many things other than height and skin color, as well as a large number of genes that have no apparent function at all.  Given that populations living in isolation accumulate a number of mutations over time, the longer they went without mixing, the greater one can expect the the divide to be.  the number of genes coding for obvious physical differences is irrelevant.

The whole premise here seems to be that "we're all not so different afterall, so we should be treated equally."  I believe that the second part is absolutely true, but the first is simply rediculous.  We are NOT all the same, and to give sameness as a reason for equality will only ensure it's further denial.  

It is better by far to state that all humans should be accorded the same basic respect regardless of their ancestry or genetics.  We will make no headway exclaiming that we are "just like everybody else" when obviously we are not.  Instead, we must stand up and say "We are human, we deserve basic human rights, and we are not going to shut up about it."  Genetics should be left by the wayside.

You forgot Intersexed.

I also agree.I also agree.

Whoops - there's only supposed to be one "I also agree."