AskAnAspie

Right-wing Aspies?

Q: First, let me say how glad I am you have this website. My 4-year old son is an Aspie. Anyway, if you had to guess, do you think most Aspies would fall into any particular religious or political camp? I know that's a tough question unless some kind of survey has been done. I ask because it seems that due to the "rage for order" many ASD people have, they might tend to lean towards the right in both religion and politics. I hope I am wrong about this, though. I'm proud to have an Aspie for a son, but a Republican would be hard to accept... ;)

Sharon

A: Congratulations, you win today's "Fun Question of the Day" award ^_^
All three of our panelists wanted to answer your question, so here are
all three answers:

From Brian:
Oh ho ho, you have opened one heck of a can of worms! We've talked about
this question quite a bit at club meetings. I'll try to keep my answer short
so that other panelists can add to it.
First, I know Aspies who fall in a number of places on the religious and
political spectrums (not to mention the autistic one). There is a certain
degree to which the "rage for order" does impact both religion and politics.
But the fact is that "order" doesn't have to mean authoritarianism; it can
just mean coherence. Fundamentalism is coherent. So is atheism. So are a
number of points in between. (I'm not a Catholic, but I get quite annoyed
when Catholics do something the Pope, rest his soul, has told them not to do
-- not because I love the Pope, but because it makes them seem incoherent!)
The plurality of the Aspies I know, however, don't believe in a conventional
God, or have no opinion on the matter (though they are without exception
kind and moral people). There are also those that do.
Similarly with politics. The Republicans may be the control freaks of our
political spectrum, but the Democrats are no less ardent in pursuing their
own brand of social justice. Meanwhile, I'm a Libertarian. (Now *there*'s a
coherent philosophy -- government's function is to protect its citizens'
life, liberty, and property, and that's about it!) My shot-in-the-dark
limited-sample-size anecdotal-evidence-based guess is that Aspies tend to be
more liberal than conservative, partly because it's the liberals who are
less likely to throw rocks at us (or try to exorcise the evil demons
possessing us, as I understand one Aspie's mother did). On the other hand, I
know Republicans who are wonderful, tolerant people. It takes all kinds.
--Brian

From Wiley:
I would bet you could find an Aspie for every possible political or
religious belief. But I have noticed a couple of trends:
1) There are a lot of Aspie libertarians. (I'm deliberately using a
small 'L' there, plenty of them have issues with the actual Libertarian
party.) It's basically a grown-up version of the Aspie childhood
rejection of "Because I said so" arguments by adults.
2) There are a lot of Aspie hard-core liberals. I put myself in this
catagory. Aspies tend to have a very strong sense of fairness, and if
they don't take the libertarian path of constanly defending their own
rights, they often wind up working towards defending the rights of
other people. And they tend to find concepts like racism and
homophobia to be illogical, which they are.
3) There are a lot of Aspies who reject organized religion. They may
have personal spiritual beliefs, but reject the idea that you should
hold something as a religious belief because a book or a person told
you to. Again, this is a catagory I put myself in. I had to describe
my religious beliefs in a single sentence the other day and came up
with "What you get when you combine a neopagan, an atheist, and Baruch
Spinoza." A lot of these Aspies who feel this way about orthodox (in
the origional meaning of the word) religions but still want the social
structure of a Church become Unitarian Universalists.
4) There are a lot of Aspies who like the automatic social structure
provided by religions like the Jehovah's Witnesses, the Church of
Latter-Day Saints, or the Church of Scientology where believers
automatically spend the majority of their time in a structured Church
environment. These sorts of churches provide social contact with other
people, but in a nice predictable manner in which everyone has a
clearly defined job.

So there are a number of extremes that Aspies tend to gravitate to.
But there are also a lot of possibilities in between, and if your
family is relatively liberal, I don't think you need to worry too much
about winding up with a blind follower of George Bush. And if you do,
I've heard that with the latest ABA techniques they're getting close to
curing Republican Syndrome ^_^

Wiley

From Lynn:
I would just like to add this to what the other panelists have said. I was
talking to my brother's girlfriend about how you choose a religious path,
and she said I must have chosen Catholicism because I like firm rules to
obey. I wish I had thought to say this to her, but I actually resisted
converting for a long time because I like rules so much (my family isn't
anything in particular, and I attended various Protestant churches
previously). I know that what I like isn't always a good indicator of what
is good for me, and indeed a lot of stuff about Catholicism (particularly
the attempt at sensory overload at Mass - rich music, brighly colored
sanctuaries, incense) makes me very uncomfortable, even shaky. I try to
enjoy the parts I can, and assume the rest to be spinach - something I hated
as a child but eat regularly for pleasure as an adult.
-Lynn

Where can Aspies get jobs?

Q:My Aspie son will graduate this spring and has never held a job, but wants to. He has had several interviews but no luck. any suggestions on that first job?
-Mary

A:My advice would be to find a job that best matches his knowledge set. It's generally best for folks on the spectrum to avoid jobs like supermarket cashier that are loud and involve a lot of customer interaction. Does he have any special interests? Having an aspie-level cache of relevent knowledge often makes up for some of the social niceties that aspies may have problems with during an interview. Also, people in the technology inductry tend to be more forgiving of aspie quirks, because there are so many aspies (diagnosed and undiagnosed) in the industry. As for general purpose Aspie job suggestions: libraries tend to be good matches for aspies. I remember the first time I realized people would pay to put things in the correct order, I was in heaven. Public libraries tend to be strapped for cash at the moment, but if you live near a University, University libraries tend to have high turnover rates as students graduate or their workloads change. That would be my all-purpose aspie job suggestion.

"Autism" vs. "Autistic" communities

Q: Hello,
By clinical definition, Asperger Syndrome and Autism are two related, but distinct diagnosis.* One can be clinically labeled "Asperger's" or "Autistic", but not both. Yet, why do some people with Asperger's call themselves "autistic"? Is this a dysphemistic attempt to make Asperger's appear to be as serious as autism, or is it just slang?. This causes confusion. For example, your mission statement starts out "The mission of AskAnAspie is to build a bridge between the Autism and Autistic communities." How does the same word get split into two different communities? How does one build a bridge between the same place? If there is a real difference between the two, then why use the same word? Perhaps you can explain this to those of us in both the neurotypical and the neurotypicalism communities. We like bridges, too.

Lenny Schafer


* Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders - Fourth Edition (DSM-IV), published by the American Psychiatric Association, Washington D.C., 1994, the main diagnostic reference of Mental Health professionals in the United States of America. ("High functioning autism" is not a clinical term, not clinically defined, but perhaps another dysphemism for Asperger Syndrome.)

Firstly, thank you very much for including us in yesterday's report.
We've gotten more email in the past two days than in the previous two
weeks. Secondly, two of our panelists wanted to answer your questions,
so here are both replies:

From Brian:
I'll let Wiley address the part of your question about our mission
statement; she has quite an important distinction in mind, though I agree it
could use clarification. But as far as why many Aspies call ourselves
"autistic," I think there can be a few reasons, none of which is dysphemism.
Many Aspies -- quite probably most -- don't like the idea of treating
Asperger's as a crippling disability, so putting ourselves in the same broad
group as classic Kanner's Syndrome autistics, whatever else it may be, is
probably not an attempt at dysphemism.
So, is Asperger's a form of autism? Good question, and one that's widely
debated in the psychological community. It's partly a matter of semantics.
"Autistic disorder," as the DSM-IV defines it, is quite broad and somewhat
subjective. I would venture to say, however, that Aspies meet a whole lot of
the key criteria for it. (Note that Asperger's, disorder 299.80 in the DSM,
is closely related to classic autistic disorder, 299.00, and I would venture
to say that most or all Aspies meet the diagnostic criteria for 299.00.) In
fact, the diagnostic criteria for Asperger's are in many cases identical to
those of autism. The DSM rightly says that we often share with other
autistics a difficulty with nonverbal communication, a kind of friendship
not considered "appropriate to developmental level" by psychologists, need
our routines, love our perseverations, and stim constantly -- all traits
seen throughout the autistic spectrum. Some of these traits cause autistics,
including Aspies, serious problems -- some intrinsic, some a result of
living in a world where most people are not on the spectrum. Other traits
are, simply put, wonderful.
It's not just in the DSM that Asperger's and (especially high-functioning)
autism get lumped together or even identified with each other, either. Check
out the OASIS Guide to Asperger's Syndrome, which (among other sources) says
that AS, autistic disorder, and pervasive developmental disorder-not
otherwise specified are all usually considered autistic-spectrum disorders
(p. 18). But there is substantial debate on the matter; compare
http://www.udel.edu/bkirby/asperger/as_thru_years.html ("although the idea
of a continuum of PDD along a single dimension is helpful for understanding
the clinical similarities of conditions along the spectrum, it is not at
all clear that Asperger syndrome is just a milder form of autism or that the
conditions are linked by anything more than their broad clinical
similarities") with
http://www.nas.org.uk/nas/jsp/polopoly.jsp?d=114("Asperger's syndrome
is a form of autism"). And many sources recognize this
debate; one of OASIS' articles, at
http://www.udel.edu/bkirby/asperger/aswhatisit.html, says explicitly, "some
professionals feel that AS is the same as High Functioning Autism, while
others feel that it is better described as a Nonverbal Learning Disability."
So one quite cogent answer to your question of why some Aspies call
themselves autistics is because there's a good case to be made that we are.
It largely depends on how you define "autistic." If you think Kanner's
syndrome, with its associated pattern of difficulty learning language and so
forth, is the only "real" form of autism, then Asperger's is not autism. But
the similarities between Asperger's and autistic disorder as defined by the
DSM are truly striking, to the point where some would question whether it is
useful to make a sharp distinction. Certainly parents of Aspies have found
information for parents of Kanner's patients helpful, and vice versa. So
even if you don't buy into Asperger's as a form of autism, or even doubt
that it's on the spectrum at all, you can see the study of the relationship
between the two as a form of bridge-building!
--Brian
"Sir, I think all Christians, whether Papists or Protestants, agree in the
essential articles, and that their differences are trivial, and rather
political than religious." --Samuel Johnson

From Wiley:

I think Brian has done a great job covering the "Spectrum v. Separate"
debate, so I'll just add my personal reasons for thinking of myself as
autistic. Having read a large number of books about autism and
articles both by people on the Spectrum and by professionals, the vast
majority of it reminded me of myself. When I talk to people on the
"Autism" part of the spectrum, I can recognize the way their minds work
as being much more similar to my own than the minds of neurotypicals.
It's true that under normal circumstances I don't have the same
problems with language as someone with classic Kanner's, but even
there, if you put me in a stressful situation in which there is
background noise, I have a great deal of trouble speaking or
understanding spoken language. If at those times I meet the full
diagnostic criteria for autism, and at other times meet nearly all of
them, I don't think it's too much of a leap to think of myself as
autistic. More importantly and apart from any diagnostic criteria,
when I talk to other people on various parts of the autism spectrum,
they seem "normal" in a way neurotypicals never do. It's important to
remember that while to most people, autistic people are weird, to
people on the autism spectrum, it's nearly everybody who's weird. It's
incredibly difficult to quantify or put into words, I can just tell
that I have more in common with people on the Spectrum than off it.

As for your question about the wording of our mission statement, I
agree that having two such similarly named communities is confusing.
But we aren't the ones who named them. When groups of parents with
autistic children began to form, the community of those parents and the
professionals who helped them became known as the "autism community".
It is centered around parents, and parent topics like respite care,
special education, and treatment. When autistic adults began
establishing an online community, the logical name for that community
was "the autistic community." It is centered around autistic adults
and their issues, like disability rights, self-advocacy, and simply
having a chance to talk to people with the same sort of neurology.

It makes sense that these are two separate communities. They have
different aims and are composed of different people. It would be nice
if their names were a little easier to tell apart, but I can't really
think of a better name for either group. What I think doesn't make
sense is the lack of communication between the two groups. When an
autistic adult goes to a meeting of a parents' group, they are often
either made to feel unwelcome by strongly pro-cure organizations who
worry that adult autistics are only there to make a scene, or they
simply feel out of place at a meeting where the sign-in sheet asks for
the age of their child. Parents who try to join the autistic community
generally have more luck, although sometimes they are rejected by the
more radical hard-liners in the autistic community who feel that anyone
who even implies any form of autism has even the slightest disadvantage
is necessarily evil (a view which I, by the way, do not share in the
slightest.) And most parents don't even know there is such a thing as
the autistic community.

That is why we want to try to bridge the two communities. While they
are different enough to warrant separate groups, they ought to be each
other's staunchest allies, not wary strangers and occasional all out
enemies. When the Autism Society of America has a lobbying day for
special education funding, adult autistics should be lobbying right
there next to them. And when adult autistics are concerned that a new
Public Service Announcement by Cure Autism Now implies that they lack
minds and personalities, they should be given a fair hearing.

But trying to fit all of that into a mission statement would make it a
little unwieldy ^_^ I apologize if the shorter version was confusing,
we're working on some way of making the language clearer.

Wiley