Harder in America to be Autistic then elsewhere in the west?

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American culture has always been very extroverted and thought of people in terms of winners and losers.

In the last few decades celebration of individuality once a key American value which in some ways helped people on the spectrum has been disappearing. Lately a zero sum mentality* has taken hold. This means any "out of the box"** conclusions we come up with will be likely dismissed. For youthful Autistic-Americans helicopter parenting*** phenomenon of recent decades has been controlling and smothering. And suspicion of difference the post 9/11/Columbine/Sandy Hook era has been discussed here endlessly.

I do not know enough about how Autistic s elsewhere are judged to make a judgement how we rank. I know Central and Latin American culture maybe more extroverted then the USA. Many Americans, especially those of us that feel different have been drawn to the United Kingdom because it appears to have an eccentric side. British posters here paint a different picture. There is a whole thread about how unaccepting France is.

*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-sum_mentality
** http://www.thefreedictionary.com/out-of ... x+thinking
***https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicopter_parent

Last edited by ASPartOfMe on 30 Dec 2013, 2:50 pm, edited 2 times in total.

I wouldn't think so. The unemployment rate for people with Asperger's is higher in most European countries than it is in the US. I was suprised when I joined this board to see how well some of the Americans were doing for themselves.

Last edited by Kurgan on 30 Dec 2013, 10:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.

The whole world has sucked since the 2007 financial crisis.

Just as inroads were being made to gain recognition and understanding for Asperger's and Autism, just as we were beginning to make progress to being given a chance to find employment and acceptance, that happened.

And it transferred billions of dollars from ordinary taxpayers to banks, which we never saw again. Shops have closed, prices risen, unemployment gone up. Mortgages defaulted, lives lost - and a new more divisive than ever income differential has become normal.

The banks have not leant much of the money back to businesses and meanwhile cuts have been made to services that help people - education, health care, welfare, transportation.

Things have become so dog eat dog that I don't believe anyone but a small minority has any sympathy for disabled people anymore. I doubt you will find anywhere in this world that is accommodating to Aspies.

I live in a pretty rural part of Canada that's a bit isolated from the rest of the country, and I'm pretty sure the majority of people living here have never even heard of Asperger's. Of course, I didn't either until my diagnoses in 2001, and I think I'm lucky I was diagnosed at all instead of everything I did being blamed on being "behaviorally dysfunctional", supposedly spoiled and overly sheltered by my mother, and even "mildly ret*d". Nearly everyone I went to school with had to leave to find real work, even a real education. I didn't have those options, and to this day I'm an unemployed, unemployable loser whose dreams and goals in life all crumbled to dust. The end.

The world outside the US recovered quickly from that financial crisis. The problem was that after Europe recovered, some countries were affected by the Euro crisis. With that being said, a lot of states in the US seem to be doing fine today. Furthermore, the tabloids never inform you on how much Poland and the Baltic states have developed for the past ten years, or that Iraq, Brazil, Botswana and several other countries (that's not China) have been rapidly developing for the past ten years.



And yet, Americans still own large houses, they still drive expensive cars with lots of horsepowers and leather seats, they still buy the latest video game consoles and they still eat more than any other people do. It seems to me that Americans took the good times during Clinton (let's be realistic here: he deserved that blowjob) for granted.

My take is that North America and especially the US is, at least outwardly, highly against conformity. It is definitely more individualistic at least in comparison to China, Japan, North Korea, India, many African countries and the Middle East. I'm not so sure about continental Europe or the british isles.

I suppose it depends where in America, no?

The USA is huge and contains so many different cultures. State to state, city to city. NYC is going to be dramatically different from Alaska or Alabama. Some areas of America may be more difficult for ASD individuals, but others may be optimal. It's a big country with a massive diversity of cultures.

Same goes for here in Canada. Being in the suburbs of Vancouver, where we have one big melting pot of immigration and influences of every culture and language around the world, as well as a thriving tech sector, I think it's an extremely Aspie friendly place to be. But I don't think I'd want to be in some other areas of Canada where the people are much more homogenous and differences are much more easily spotted.

First Question: Define "the west".

I am going to define the west they way they do in this thread http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt248494.html

Why? because after I started this thread which was intended to compare the USA vs the world, I noticed the other one was up.

Also, for people with disabilities to find jobs, there has to be jobs to start with. In the USA, you don't have to hire someone with a disability just because they have a disability...they have to be a top contender for the job based on their ability to do the job.

When jobs are scarce, every job has lots of very-qualified people going for it, and someone with a disability is even more marginalized as few people with disabilities have lots of job experience.