Asperger Syndrome Dreamwidth Community

Hey guys, the Autistic Exchange signups are open for business. It is a fanfic exchange by autistics for autistics, about autistic characters (whether they're on the spectrum in canon or not).  There are a wide variety of fandoms in the tag set--87 fandoms from every main category AO3 has.

If you are somewhere on the spectrum (and questioning, self-diagnosed, and professionally diagnosed autistic people all count!) we would LOVE to have you join the fun.

I've written a blog article criticising Simon Baron Cohen's recent work Zero Degrees of Empathy (also called The Science of Evil, exposing some of his leaps of logic and other fail:

Simon Baron-Cohen, Autism and Empathy

Also worth reading is Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg's recent essay on this subject; she has also launched a new blog to address that issue.

Grr.  So, of course the autistic kid in tonight's episode of Criminal Minds is lower-functioning than Rain Man.  Never mind that most people with autism (particularly ones who are diagnosed as children and whose parents put time, effort, and money into therapy as this kid's parents obviously have) are higher functioning than that.  I could deal with that; after all, there are definitely people that low-functioning, and it's what the whole drama of the episode is based on, that they need to figure out a way to communicate with the kid to find out who kidnapped his parents.  Then Reid is at the kid's school talking with his principal, and spouting off about how autistic kids are more logical than others--often true--and how they see patterns more clearly than other people do which is false.  The reason people with autism get obsessed with patterns is because they have a harder time figuring out patterns than most people do, and so cling to the patterns they do understand (often numbers, statistics, a daily routine, etc.) as a kind of shield against a world that they find chaotic and often incomprehensible.  If you can't find the pattern in the sound of a large crowd, if your brain is trying to take each voice and sound and figure out what it's saying, then a crowd is overwhelming because you have problems tuning out what's just background noise and what's the person you're trying to talk with.  That's one of the reasons that people on the autism spectrum tend to prefer "blander" or less intense sensory stimulation (dimmer lights, quieter sounds, fewer spices, less touch, no perfume or cologne), because they can be overwhelming. 

And then we found out, he's a genius piano player!  (Well, maybe not genius, but certainly very good, and it's apparently the only thing he can do besides stare at the ceiling.)  Which is not necessarily impossible, or even implausible--given his parents' profession, if he got obsessed with music, he might spend hours practicing while in his parents store.  But combine it with virtually non-verbal, and it plays right into the whole "idiot savant" stereotype.

I like the picture flipbook stuff, though, that's well done and accurate.  The kid acting like a zombie the whole time, or a robot, is definitely not.  He wouldn't look or act like a normal kid, no, but he wouldn't be a zombie.  Aside from one instance (shrieking at being touched), I kept expecting him to either keel over dead or go "brains BRAAAAAAIIINNNSSSSSS!"

Of course, a large part of my kvetching is because Criminal Minds is usually so good, so it sticks out when it isn't.

A blog carnival is an event where various people write posts around a single topic and link them together at the end. The topic of this carnival is the intersection of asexuality and the autism spectrum. The scope of this project is general. Any topic that deals with the intersection of asexuality and autism fits within the aegis of the carnival. If you’re not sure, submit it anyway and we’ll figure it out.

We are asexual bloggers on the autistic spectrum who want to explore the intersection between autistic and asexual identities. The basis of this project is to have a conversation about our unique experiences being autistic and asexual without looking for a “cause”. We want to create a safe, non-judgmental space to talk about the issues that affect us. If you identify as asexual (or demisexual, or gray-a) and as on the autistic spectrum (diagnosed or not, AS, autism, PDD-NOS, NLD), you are invited to write a blog post for this project. If you are not asexual and autistic you are welcome to contribute provided you focus on the issues experienced by this particular intersection. The scope of the project is general, and open to any experiences of being autistic and asexual.

However, please keep in mind that asexuality here is to be discussed as a sexual orientation in its own right, not as discussion of the desexualization imposed on autistic people by mainstream culture.

If you want to write a post but don’t have a blog, please contact Ily at sanfranciscoemily@gmail.com or Sciatrix at sciatrix@gmail.com about doing a guest post. Please have your post written by 31st January and comment on this post, this post on Writing From Factor X or send an e-mail to Sciatrix or Ily about your post by then. Note that the hosts reserve the right to reject posts by anyone if they feel they do not follow the guidelines of or are not in the spirit of the carnival. The posts will be compiled on Writing From Factor X for posterity. A post with the compilation will go up there in the beginning of February. Be a part of this exciting project!

–Sciatrix, Kaz, and Ily

An edit: Possible topics include but are not restricted to coming out experiences (both asexual and autistic), relationships, gender expression, young adult experiences, treatment by medical professionals, integrating identities, or dealing with stereotypes. This isn’t meant to be a comprehensive list, only general ideas.

...even if Benedict Cumberbatch (the latest actor playing him) thinks he is.  Thank you to laurajv for writing this up so I don't have to.

Sherlock, and how he doesn't have Aspergers.

I get so annoyed by people who assume that anyone who isn't perfectly socialized is an aspy.

I'm not posting this publicly to this community's LJ counterpart for reasons that will quickly become obvious, though I've alerted the mods and may also make a friends-locked post.


In short, an LJ staff member and maintainer of the "Oh No They Didn't" community has been using a sockpuppet account to harass people on LiveJournal news posts-- and in one case, taunted a user for having Asperger's. Although LJ claims "We have addressed this issue internally", his user-head graphic is still green, indicating that he is still employed by LJ.

More info here and here.

Anyone have any ideas of how to start a mass uprising? ^_^

Article in the paper last week, in the health section, about Aspergers.  Such a collection of cliches I have never seen in my life.

On the bright side, I'm slowly talking to people at work about Aspergers, how it specifically affects me, and what would be helpful to me.  It seems to be going well.  Low doses of information at a time is helping.  Also, having figured out a few metaphors to explain my thought processes.

So today Autism Speaks revealed its latest PSA, titled "I Am Autism". Originally announced back in August, the press release at that time encouraged families to submit videos of autistic individuals for a PSA that would "shine a bright spotlight" on autism.

So what did the video end up being?

This monstrosity.

Since the video isn't captioned, I'm bothering to actually listen to the whole thing, painful as it is, to transcribe it here. (Hopefully I got the genders of the speakers right; some of them were hard to tell...)

( Transcript )

...I have no words. Gah. This is worse than the Ransom Notes ads, and it's from an even bigger organization.

But this kidnapping-style rhetoric is, amazingly enough, not the most bothersome part of this ad to me, as bad as it is. No, the most bothersome part is... well, remember that press release I linked to above? Yep. The entirety of the video footage accompanying this rhetoric is made up of those reader-submitted video clips. I wonder how many parents went in thinking this would be a fluffy, "we are the world"-style thing, only to find out that this is what their videos were attached to...

Edited to add: Left Brain/Right Brain and Cat in a Dog's World both have some wonderful commentary on this. And Kowalski has an utterly brilliant parody idea...