Aspies For Freedom

Ha!  good question...here are three I can think of right off.

I might give you a non-standard response to a question or statement--overly direct or blunt or missing the point.  If this bothers you, tell me why.  I'm not trying to hurt you on purpose.

Forgive me if I don't recognize you even if I know who you are--I'm bad at faces and a lot of people look alike to me.  If you change your hair or beard or something, I might not know who you are.  (Not true for all aspies...but this one gets me in trouble).

It's okay to try and cajole me into stepping outside my comfort zone--sometimes.  But please stop if I ask you to stop.  Some things I just really don't want to try or do.

Some people might agree or not, I don't care if they do. What I wish some people would know.

1on't say 'Hello' if you are only makeing yourself do it, or just passing by. It is used to introduce one's self, not say at the drop of a hat for no reason. Thus, please don't get angry, NTs, if we don't say "Hi' because we need a reason to do so.

2:Lack of verbal display does not equal stupidity, and certainly not laziness! An aspie's/autie's brain, I think, works at least six times harder than the mouth alone. Can any NTs think at their very hardest and not get a headake? Well, we do it on a moment to moment basis. That is, if we aren't zoning out to relax.

3:Telling us to calm down or stop crying or ask us what's wrong, when you know it's an uncontrolable meltdown, only makes it harder to impossible to cope with it. If it helps you that way great, but we think hard enough to socialise a word correctly for you, so throwing a need for perfect speach into the mix doesn't help. Thanks for careing, by the way.

4:If someone really offends you when they call you stupid or inferior, why call us broken and inferior?

5:Everyone has a trial in life. Whether they are wealthy or poor. Sick or healthy. So on and so on. Life takes wisdom and knowldge. Changing someone else just to make yourself feel better isn't one of those. Are you trying it to feel better for yourself?

6:All that could be going on in our face and voice tone, is really more going on in our brains. example: Can you jump on one foot, use a hoolihoop, pat your own head, and say Peter piper five times fast, all at the same time and make it perfect? Hey, people are watching! Lol

Here are some that I wish you could know about Aspies.

If we don't smile at you, it doesn't mean we don't like you or are angry or unhappy. Maybe we just don't feel up to smiling at that moment.

We can have quite a weird sense of humour. Maybe it's no coincidence that Weird Al Yankovic is one of my favourite musicians.

We don't understand unwritten rules. If you want us to follow these, you need to write them down and explain why following them is so important.

We can have isolated areas of very high or low functioning. So if you see a person who seems very high functioning, they might still need assistance in some areas of life such as personal care.

We aren't lazy. We might seem that way because we tire easily and because we don't see the point of putting out effort unless there is a fairly immediate and tangible result.

This one has tripped me up several times also.

Thanks for asking!  My biggie would be: We're different from NTs.  Don't try to make us into indistinguishable clones of NTs with some sort of "treatment". Just extend to us the same sort of polite respect you'd give to anybody else, and enjoy the benefits of a multiple world view.
Alison

One really important thing I think is to accept that we need time to assimilate changes, especially those that are unpleasant to us; for instance, losing a person we are very close to or a routine that we really liked.

I really hate it when they tell me to move on before I'm ready because I will move on but in my own time. The more they say move on the more I can't because I need some closure.
Other aspies I know have similar ideas about change. They can adapt, but it takes longer than the usual person.

Good one. I sure hate it when someone pities me as if I was pathetic and hopeless. I had that before.

8: Don't compare who we are to health risks and actual diseases like cancer and AIDs! How would you feel being called a sick disease that kills people? Please, please don't act tocix toward your children that way either.

9: Don't tell me to just calm down and suddenly smile. Understanding our feelings would be a wiser choice.

10: Don't nag us along or rush our thoughts, or feelings for that matter. It's very rude, would you like that?

11: If you don't like something we said, or that we keep repeateding, please tell us patiently and don't leave us in the dark about it.

*toxic, *repeating

Dang my spelling...

Doctors, don't get me started on doctors!  I only found out I was Aspie after my comorbid was diagnosed - apparently it's more common in Aspies than in the rest of the population and the specialist was intrigued enough to give me the Kanner test.  For the first forty three years of my life I just thought I was shy and a bit crazy.  Now I know it's a perfectly valid way of being human.  So finally I had two diagnoses for the price of one, and am a little bitter about all the years doctors were treating my comorbid's symptoms separately, and often in ways that made the problem worse (high blood pressure?  Treat it with beta blocker drugs, thereby exacerbating an already dangerously low pulse rate to the point where I was lucky not to pass out while driving my daughter to school.)

As to socks, I solved that problem years ago and stopped wearing them!  Also, clothes tags get cut out as soon as I buy anything - how do people stand those scratchy things all day long?  And I change my shoes halfway through the day, otherwise I get very sore toes, no matter what I'm wearing, even open-toed sandals. The shoes fit, it's just my comorbid that makes my joints loose and sore, particularly the toes, so I solve the problem by changing shoes at lunchtime (or more often) and at home I go barefoot a lot.  

I think my point is that we all find an equilibrium eventually and cope.  But the problem is that we are trying to "fit in" to a culture geared for NTs, not us.  As Gareth I think said, a cat is not just some sort of deformed dog, but an equally valid animal.  

Alison

Hee!  Maybe a dislike of clothes tags and sock seams should be used as a criteria for Aspieness!  We all seem to be sensitive to them.
Alison

Two rules for my NT friends.

1.) I don't care what you think re: my professionalism.

2.) I can tell if you're being fake.

Way too many personal questions for me i'm afraid.

You surely were; things are getting bad when even we believe the same old stereotypes about Asperger's.

But some thoughts need challenging if they are silly. It's not especially realistic to assume that anybody can say absolutely anything and not have some of it questioned. We are never going to have complete agreement on everything.

I don't see how any of this really follows. Also, how big was the sample WIRED spoke of? I would suspect it was quite a small sample and therefore, not necessarily representative of aspies as a whole. I'd be very surprised if many women were included in the sample.