Does Accepting Your Aspergers appear EVIL to people?

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That's too bad... I never go down the shore... too many people, too much sand, and my skin is hypersensitive to the sun (When on a beach, I get burned in 5 minutes while wearing SPF 45)... not to mention salt water makes my hair look drier than this guy's:

(i DO have a brain, though...)

I've noticed people think I'm selfish because sometimes I just don't know how to connect, even when I'm not being selfish.

People think i'm being rude because sometimes I write short and to-the-point sentences, even when I have no intention whatsoever on being rude. This confuses people. Maybe I should use more emoticons (sp?), but then it looks a bit over the top and false.

People think I don't like them or don't care about them when I do, I've lost friends in the past because of this. I tend to cling to people, and this (I've learned) annoys them. If I make a conscience effort to not cling to people, they think I'm ignoring them (in real life)

You care what artistic emotional types think? Hysterical neurotic narcissists, the lot of 'em. Ignore.

Are 'many people' really 'artistic emotional types'??? Nahhh... Get real.

I actually have a lot of trouble with my emotions: I get angry easily, take things to heart, and live in fear that my next morose mood will lead to weeks (or months) of depression. It just doesn't show unless I make an effort to show it. A lot of people have told me they thought I hated them, even close family members. I'm not completely sure whether it's my facial expressions or what...
As for accepting my Asperger's... I'm still working on it. No matter how unimpressed (or plain disgusted) I am with people, I still need to be able to work with them when I'm assigned a group project or discussion group. To get a job, I'll need to make my prospective employer like me enough to hire me and get along well enough with people that I won't get fired. So I keep pretending, acting "normal" and afraid that people will either pity me or think I'm too much of a freak to get along in their world... neither of which works for the life I want to live (being reasonably successful and happy). I can accept myself... but having to be someone else around other people takes some of the meaning out of that.

Yes, and it's been demonstrated in research. We're in many ways almost exact opposites.

Autistic people will, given enough understanding to know something will harm someone, won't do it if there's any other choice, and care about the difference between right and wrong (but may sometimes lack the comprehension of something and therefore won't know if it's right or wrong). Autistic people (unless also sociopaths) have a conscience.

Sociopaths will understand perfectly well something will harm someone, and do it anyway, because they either don't care or even enjoy harming people for the heck of it (it doesn't even have to be vengeful or anything, but it can be). They know perfectly well the difference between right and wrong and don't give a crap. Sociopaths have no conscience.

To give an example (actually this could have happened to an NT kid too), when I was a kid I stomped on snails not realizing they were alive. And someone told me "That's cruel." I can read either words or tone of voice but not both at once, and in that case read tone of voice only and didn't catch the words, but I got the message, the pain in her voice, and never did it again. The day is etched very firmly in my memory. A sociopath would have, even if understanding the message far more completely than I did, continued doing so, maybe even taking delight in scaring the girl, and not feeling a single twinge of regret. (It's possible for a non-sociopath to have done that kind of thing too, but a sociopath always does that kind of thing and never changes because they have no conscience to cause them to regret it, the only thing that might change one is the fear of being caught.)

They are almost total inversions of each other, really, although of course there's no saying that there can't be autistic people who are also sociopaths. But claiming they are the same thing or similar is really irresponsible, they're extremely different conditions. It's the extremely false equating of them in some people's minds that does so much damage to us. (I don't know that sociopathy is a medical condition, it might be more of a moral one. But it's still just... incredibly wrong, and autism shouldn't be mistaken for it, ever.)

I used to know a guy who claimed to be autistic and was always harming autistic people. Whenever he heard of a sociopath in the news, he said that person must be autistic. I really wondered at times if he was a sociopath who was confused and thought he was autistic because of the exact same issues in the language used about sociopaths and autistic people.

(And by the way, autistic people have theory of mind.)

I can be in empathic agony, yet be completely unable to express it appropriately, if at all.
Either way seems to be interpreted as evil.

I need to go around polling people for the answer.

(walks up to stranger)

"Hello stranger, I have aspergers and I accept it. How does that make you feel?"

I can just see the responses...

"You accept your asparagus?"

"....WHAT burgers!?!?!"

lol. You're right. I should come with diagrams and a presentation. I'll just use a stick found on the ground to point at the pictures shown in the presentation.

Ok, I'll catch this.

Psychopaths are primarily devoid of all non-self-related, altruistic emotion, Aspies are not...

It's probably pretty much the only significant difference, but WHAT a difference...

My mother is a psychopath, my father was probably an Aspie, my whole family is pretty much 50:50...

You notice the difference under those circumstances...

M

I may be speaking for myself, but other aspies may be the same. I don't think I"m actually devoid of emotion at all, but just can't often express it in the way others do, or occasionally don't react to things emotionally the way I"m expected to. Occasionally my emotions have also had a delayed effect, where I don't react until it wall truly sinks in to me.

As far as I know, I'm capable of all the emotions other people are though.

Sound par for the course to me...

I think it's what they call Alexithymia...of COURSE we have emotions.

M

the problem in describing aspies as evil due to a lack of expression of their emotions and showing epathy is that the word "evil" is a term derivived from the most emotional pillar of humanity, religion. Religion depends on irrational and emotional agruments that cant be proved, but must be accepted because they are "good and moral", the opposite being considered evil.

For example, evolution is based upon logic and scientific proof, which plenty exists, to demostrate that haman has evoled from lesser life-forms, with dinosaur bones, genetics and nature as proofs to this theory. But many religious people believed, past and present that such a theory is "evil", because it defies the their only source of truth, God's word. They call agruements to the contarty as "the souless pursiuts of science", and "work of the devil",when in fact, it is the only logic conclusion, so much that some religious institutions have been forced to accept Evolution as fact.

Evil is incorrect therefore in describing aspies because it is saying that in not showing emotion, we are considered "not good(evil)", regardless of how "good" our thoughts/feelings and/or actions might be to the contrary. Often a situation has affected me emotionally, but in the way a non-emtional way, and my reaction therefore appears as though the event that just occured did not take place. I am unable to express myself emotionally as NT's often expect, yet the affects and feelings are the same as everyones else's would be.

Aspies tend to act unbaised in the sense that they many not act emotional or act because of the emtions of the situation, where NT's would usually, but only because they dont see any reason too or because they dont know what to feel. Aspies lives depend on reason and logic, not that emotions are not important, but observed from afar, and thus view the lifes on NT's from afar in their emotion state, at least from a natural level( like learning to express emotion or say certain things even when they dont see any or little reason to act thus)

Emotional people often feel, religion at the paramount of this, that feelings(morales) must be considered over "cruel logic", and consider those that dont follow this belief as being "evil". Things like the US war on terror demostrate that this thought process often permits "evil' acts in the defence of The Morales of The Good Guys. Instead the only reasonable way is to consider logic as the way of the world , and to use feelings, emotion, morales as the thermometer of the positive and negative ramifications of one's actions on the social interactions and morality of humanity.

Basically, aspies show emotions when they feel it is correct to or have reason to, such abilities of emotion just are not as sophisticated or deemed necessary by most aspies.

i apologize in advance for seeming "stereotypical" in my discussion

that is the case for me too.

What offends me most is you state your opinions as proven fact, and put down anyone who might believe something other than what you do - regardless of whether they have made an informed decision or not.

There IS such a thing as absolutes, and there IS such a thing as "evil", though many want that distinction blurred to serve their own selfish purposes.

And, unfortunately, people usually see it as relative rather than absolute. The "bad guy" is whoever you're fighting against, never the guy in the mirror who may be the real source of the problem. It's always someone else's fault. For them, "evil" is simply anything that gets in the way of whatever they want, and that includes never having to look at themselves in the mirror. If someone's got it in their head that they're a wonderful person, and someone asks why they just did something awful, that questioning person has become evil to them.

It's irrational, it's stupid, and it's extremely common. I guess that's what neurotypical life is all about.

No people dont think I am evil for being happy about being on the autism spectrum...