I remember seeing a comedy about it, but I can't remember the name.

Defamation is extremely common in the Australian community, especially at school.  And many people around here think of it as a disease that needs to be cured.  I also agree with Bario that they aren't truly cultural diverse if they don't accept people with autism.

Good for you, on starting a campaign for the recognition of neurodiversity!  

Part of the difficulty in Australia may be that so many people here actually believe the crap they're fed by the Murdoch press and commercial television.  The popular media line is still "autism'" = "handicapped children", and we get images of kids in wheelchairs (!?!) and the story of the poor dad who had to invest in a tall fence to stop his autistic son from escaping.

We need more adults, and particularly those who have made a name for themselves, to come out of the closet about their autistic traits.  The legalised persecution of gays (or "poofter-bashing" as some Aussies so charmingly call it) only began to stop when some well-known or at least respected people came out of that closet.

Right now the National Gallery in Canberra is raising money to buy a landscape painting by Paul Cezanne.  Now, of all famous painters, Cezanne is one most likely to have been aspie.  Check out the details of his life; and he never quite got the hang of painting portraits, asking one sitter to 'sit like an apple - does an apple move?'  But above all his paintings are about communicating his particular way of seeing, where every point in the visual field is equally important. Many other artists, from Picasso onwards, took up this vision; but I suggest it was Cezanne who started it.  How would this look in the media - "Taxpayers pay millions for painting by aspie"?

(Re coming out of the closet, my real name's David Cooke and I'm a botanist with the Department of Water, Land and Biodiversity Conservation, South Australia)

Should try being a research chemist. That keeps one excluded. Like when someone asks "what do you do?" "Chemist" "So what pharmacy do you work at?" Like who can you talk to about your work? The sciences get very short change here and those who have a talent for them wind up bing the butt of jokes at school and remorsely teased and bullied about it. I was hence why it took me 20 plus years to return to them.

One does need to have a different way of looking at things to be any good in research. One day those with different neurologies may be prized for their differences rather than put down and ridiculed. Roll on minority group recognition.

LOL.  We should have taken up football when we had the chance.

Dad forbids me to start the campaign, but I'm breaking his rules.  He thinks I'm obsessed with it.  But I'm not.  I'm serious.  And we all are.  I'm going to flood the Herald-Sun with letters.  I want to be heard here!

Was it called The Girl Most Likely To..?

Anyway, Australia only thinks it has respect for cultural diversity. It is sickening the number of times that I have been in conversation with white people who think that, as I am white, it is safe to assume that I am as racist as them. They then spout hateful rubbish expecting me to agree with them. Which I don't. They then react as if I have tricked them into saying such things...

Ten years ago I spent 5 weeks in Australia, visiting Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra plus various places in between.

Coming from Scotland, I was struck by how very conservative and yes...casually racist the Aussies were.  Obviously, I'm speaking generally here, but the pervasive atmosphere for some reason made me think of 1950s Britain (which I never knew as I was born in the '60s).

I struggled with the fact that in a country in which white people had only lived for a couple of hundred years, there should be any concerns about or bias against "immigrants".  Australia is full of immigrants - they're the ones who've been running the show for 200 years.

Umm, touchy subject there, Marcia.  I'm not an immigrant: I was born here, thank you.  So were my parents and grandparents.
Alison

Ok, point taken.  I didn't mean any offence and I didn't mean that all Aussies had those attitudes, although I didn't make that clear in my post.

You should take a look at this:

http://us.st12.yimg.com/us.st.yimg.com/I...35_1420448

There is some language, but I think you might find it funny none the less.

I need somebody to take over my job.  Causes too many arguments.  I'm serious enough to not stop it completely, but to pass it on.  Even worse, I'm "growing out" of aspieness and I'm trying to force it back into me!

Here's the link to the forum:

http://www.aspiesforfreedom.com/showthre...#pid257407

I just wish to point out that I live in the City of Greater Dandenong, a place where people from over 200 countries live.  It's an immigrant's town and I'm the most bullied person at school (I'm the only aspie around here).