About the existence or inexistence of Asperger Syndrome

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Even when a group, ( disabled by the structure/arrangements of society ), is very big, ( eg: women ), it can take a while for society to concede that they are after all not inferior. And even then make little effort to make allowances for their particular needs, ( time for mothering, breastfeeding, etc, if and when required ).

So what would it take for society to acknowledge that rather from suffering from any disorder/dysfunction etc people diagnosed AS are being disabled by society? What kind of "pressure" would it take to force society to admit that there is nothing wrong with us at all? ( nothing wrong with repetitive activities/movements, with special interests, with little eye-contact, etc ).

Medical names are not generally given to non-pathological conditions. Aspergers Syndrome is a medical term, it implies that there is something wrong with us.

The word "homosexual" was invented by doctors to describe a pathological condition. Gays, queers, etc, do not like using the term, however much "legal clout" it has managed to achieve, ( hence "Gay Pride, not "Homosexual Pride" ).

Interestingly many women under about 30 do not like to be called women; they prefer "girl". And the media feels similarly. Very often articles/news programmes will refer to 19 year olds as "young girls". Which makes 15 year old females infants.

Women, homosexual, and of course many names for black people; terms given by those in power to subordinate groups tend to "stink".

That is why I like the name Wrong Planet, because unlike many other sites, it refuses to use even a small part of these medical terms that are used to justify society's disabling of us.

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I agree with junior1 that psychologists and psychiatrists have little real idea what they are doing. My college major was in sociology and we studied such things as the norm and social deviancy, etc.... Am I correct in assuming that on these boards--sometimes it is okay to discuss sociology and sometimes it is not? Where is the line drawn?

Also agree with ManErg that those in the psychotherapeutic profession get ego satisfaction from being allegedly able to fix the faults they see in others. IMO about 10% of therapists are competent, and that's being generous. Most of the rest are so inept they couldn't find their way out of a paper bag.

As ouinon said, we are labeled so that society doesn't have to accommodate us. It isn't that we are defective, deficient, disordered, disabled, dysfunctional, have a condition or syndrome....rather it is mostly that we are unable and/or unwilling to confrom to a social system we want destroyed. Which social system itself is defective, deficient, disordered and dysfunctional...

So I would say to the psychotherapists--if you want to fix something, fix society. We are not the problem and we, the majority of us, don't want fixing.

If people like us were in the power, and corrupted by it, we could just as easily make a case for some NTs being disordered and dysfunctional, based on their need for company, their inability to think things through on their own, their need for stimulation/entertainment, their hypo-sensitivity to sounds, etc.

These people would be identified early on in life by their reluctance to do anything alone, their inability to hold an opinion when not backed up by other people, etc, and they would be given medication to control this, and behavioural therapy to make them more like the rest of us.

But we are not in power. And society would rather not take us into consideration. To avoid the issue, of our disablement by the social norms of the 20th/21st century, it has invented a disorder, which it calls Aspergers.

But perhaps some ( inconvenient ) minorities will always be disabled like this, and medical labelling just happens to be how such exclusion is justified now, rather than by race, or sex, or sexuality, in all of which "justifications" science has repeatedly played a crucial role ... .

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I have no idea how one could sensibly construe that a tendency to seek out the company of others and do things cooperatively occurring in a species that is socially gregarious as a major survival strategy, is dysfunctional.

My cousin has aspergers syndrome. You can tell he has it. He waves sticks in front of his eyes for hours each day. In a conversation he only talks about his favorite TV program. He plays by himself. He was diagnosed with classic autism when he was 2. When he was 3 it was changed to aspergers syndrome because he was talking. He has autism. the type of autism he has is aspergers.

Are you a troll, or are you honestly that mentally different? I think it is pretty clear, you are being asked by an authority figure to stand down, and you are being argumentative. Personally, i would temperarily ban you long enough for this thread to disappear on its own just for turning what could have been a legitimately helpful thread into something outrageous and pointless. As most of the people I know would say, if you don't have something good to say, don't say anything at all. And yes, this post was meant in a constructive fashion, take it as that.

About as easily as scientists managed to persuade people that women were immature, unstable, over-emotional and fragile because they had wombs.

And why girls were not supposed to study beyond puberty because it would interfere with the blood flow to their developing uterus/reproductive organs, ( once again according to highly respected scientific theory just 120 years ago ).

Like science was able to convince people that women had smaller brains than men, by shifting the goal posts about brain-body ratio, from weight ( which actually showed women had bigger brains than men for their "size" ), to height, ( which luckily showed men as having bigger brains, for their "size" ).

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How exactly was that sensible?

It's extraordinary isn't it, what people will believe, if science has some theory/studies to back it up, and it suits the status-quo/powers that be. ( In the past it used to be religion/God/the Bible which had this role ).

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No, that doesn't quite express it.



Yes, a two-dimensional figure spinning round and round. I know that's not what it's supposed to be but apparently neither is anything now. I'd rather live in a twirling 2D world than this conceptual vacuum.

It is ironic, or tragic, that society and science between them have taken advantage not only of the great majority's almost unquestioning respect for science/scientific theory, but also our own tendency to "believe people".

So that, for example, we believe the double-speak which says that we don't understand NTs when in fact most "NT"s find us baffling, incomprehensible, confusing, strange. This is classic projection; accusing the other party of what one is oneself guilty of.

I think that the end of the 19th century, and the whole of the 20th, saw us caught in a pincer movement, disabled both by social changes, and by chemical overload/disturbance, ( diet, petroleum, and other manmade changes to our "chemical" environment ).

The chemical overload leads to chronic/frequent depression, fatigue/lethargy, anxiety, irritability, confusion/"brain-fog"/disturbance of cognitive function, and general loss of capacity. And in that state we obviously fail to convince society of our usefulness.

And to complete the vicious circle; we have even more difficulty dealing with the social changes, ( which happen to be favourable to those now referred to as "NT"s ), aswell as exclusion/discrimination, etc, when we are depressed, anxious, irritable, confused, etc.

Society/NTs conclude that we are dysfunctional/disordered, ( I'm not paranoid, so I don't think that society did this deliberately ), but we don't have to.

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How many more people will the machine, ( of school, science and medicine ), have to label dysfunctional/disordered before society realises that it is society itself, ( including the environment it creates ), which disables, ( turns difference into disability )?

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Actually it was quite easy to pick up that the boy had AS. He wasn't as affected as the other children were. He could speak better, had facial expressions and his only problem seemed to be those violent outbursts. I also wouldn't call them tantrums. The difference between a non-autistic child and autistic child having a tantrum is the non-autistic child will have a tantrum to get their own way, the autistic child wouldn't stop because it isn't about getting their own way.

AS is harder to pick up in people than autism is. On the outside they look like NT's. It's only when you get to know them that you find out they have AS.

I saw plenty that I didn't like about the pompously ovberbearing controlling attitudes of some of the adults.

I saw individuals that were responding to social pressures and stresses in unique ways - and it is unique, because I apparently have AS yet never behaved like these children.

I did not see any children who would benefit from a label.

As to "outliers in social behaviour". This is not a helpful concept in assessing the correctness of behaviour. Why? Because there will ALWAYS be outliers! Whatever therapies, ECT, prodding with cattle prods you use, when you line the population up, 50% will be in the bottom half, 50% in the top half. 10% will be in the bottom 10%. If we could treat that 10%, then a new lowest 10% will take their place! This is taking a huge leap of imagination in assuming that some real therapies actually exist, which is certainly not the case at the moment, other than placebo effect. "Hey, I've been much improved since someone started listening to me instead of parents/teachers continually making me listen to them"

The conclusion of this is a population of identical machine-like people. Then we will all be identical, all inarguably normal at last. Is this what we want? The very idea is appalling. Is it the underlying aim of those who want us all to be 'normal'? A population of identical machine-like automatons would suit certain sections of society very well. Those who seek to rule us and sell to us. By labelling behaviour as 'normal' and 'abnormal', you're doing their work for them. Don't expect a reward.

Good point.

I was thinking about "filters", and how social structures/demands/arrangements act as filters, and when the holes are rounded the square/angular shaped are caught in the mesh, stuck, and can be rejected. And, as you pointed out, in any population there will always be the slightly less round, which will need filtering out in their turn... .

When will society think that people are homogenous enough? ... When they are like in Brave New World? I can't help wondering what it is that is driving this search for homogeneity? ( in food, and experience/entertainment etc, not just in the human being ).

Isn't it fairly classically "autistic", to desire more and more of "the same", to reject, be disturbed by, unpredictable/uneven/unmatched variety, ( the kind of variety you get at Sock Shop and McDo is acceptable though ). Why is society behaving in such an "autistic" fashion?

Has it always done so? Or only at certain times in history? Or just increasingly in the last 150 years? And now its autistic behaviours are coming back to haunt it! People who behave "autistically" have become "monsters" which frighten it. Like a particularly "scary" living reflection.
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Last edited by ouinon on 15 Mar 2009, 1:07 am, edited 4 times in total.

Maybe the power provided by petroleum, ( the equivalent of tens or even hundreds of millions of years of sunlight burned up in just the last 150 years ), corrupted those people/societies with access to its power, causing them to behave like temporary/megalomaniac/despotic gods.

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