Australians discussing asperger's joke

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Two things:

1)there was nothing arbitrary about that list. It included exclusively things that are invisible from the outside, so that the person has no obvious physical proof that they have the condition

2)I dispute the claim that anything on the list is commonly used as an excuse for being a prick. I think it's far more frequent that people actually have these problems but get accused of faking or exaggerating when they say they do. There are countless threads here where people vent about how often they've been accused of fakery. If you go to boards for anything else on the list, you will likely also find vent threads where people have been wrongly accused of faking or exaggerating.

1) The three things listed were not adressed after and served only as build-up. They could've been any other outwardly invisible things and it would not have mattered.

2) You may dispute it, but that doesn't change how such things are percieved. Perception is a large part of comedy, facts are often of secondary or no importance.

That's the whole problem right there. People wrongly perceive that these things are commonly used as an excuse and this joke perpetuates that misperception. It makes the problem worse. Anbuend wrote a really great post about why that is such a bad thing a couple pages back.

Misconceptions are a great source for comedy, I happily tolerate them if it provides material for good jokes. I preffer to laugh instead of dwell on how others percieve me.
But to each their own, I just don't see a problem.

Lecks, you can't say "i don't care so I don't care" ... I mean you CAN do that of course but then, you're not really telling us why you don't care that NTs think it's ok to encourage others to undiagnose people around them....

Because it doesn't change anything, you know you have autism and their opinion doesn't magically make you just a quirky NT. Diagnoses only matter when done by professionals and even then mistakes can be made, the views of someone who can barely spell autism don't even register to me.

I agree with Lecks, but I can understand why someone would be frustrated. People that encourage others to play psych make Autism awareness that much more difficult to achieve.

I'm just not much of an activist when it comes to Autism. I prefer to live my quiet and boring life as unnoticed as possible by the general population.

there's a difference between caring what they think and being AFFECTED by what they think, whether you like it or not.

Would you like to expand on that?

I think she means you can care what not people think but sometimes what people think can effect you because of how the treat you. If someone thinks you have fake AS, they treat you like crap because they don't think you have it and think your symptoms are nothing and you are doing it on purpose. They don't take your problems seriously.


Am I right?

I don't know about you, but I prefer not to have people like that in my life.

I have probably met people like that in my life so that would explain why I got treated like crap in high school Perhaps they thought I was faking my issues. My office clerk at my last job just thought I didn't use common sense and I would try and explain to him without using "Asperger's" and he still didn't get it. Now I am realizing sometimes you do have to use the word so people get it and not think you're stupid or something.

I keep thinking I can get by in life without people knowing what I have and didn't want my husband telling his family but he did because he didn't want them to think wrong of me.

yep.

I never use the word Aspergers since I'm not officially diagnosed. To do so would just cause most people to roll their eyes and accuse me of just wanting the positive traits.

While, of course, I can't look them in the eye and I'm stimming. Go figure...

I've read all the last posts, only not quoting.
The problem is indeed not what they think, it's the way they end up treating you because of what they think.
And of course I'd rather be surrounded only by intelligent and sensitive people too but ...you know . You don't choose , and when you do choose, sometimes you make mistakes. Some of your friends may appear intelligent and sensitive until you decide to tell them about autism.
I'm not saying I'm affected by what random Joe down the street thinks about autism , but comedy has an impact on society as a whole...