Note: This is not my actual attitude to neurotypicals (I’m using that term specifically because it’s more precise than non-autistic here). But it mirrors the way autistics are often addressed.
How have you learned to compensate for being nearly incapable of directly perceiving your surroundings?
Why do you think your life is worth living if you don’t have an intense area of interest? Don’t you miss it? Are you in denial or something? Don’t you understand this is a fundamental aspect of the human condition?
How do you deal with your dependency on social information? Have you done anything to reduce that dependency? If not, why not?
Surely you must miss the all-encompassing joy of simple perceptual experiences. Don’t try to tell me that all your canned, pre-filtered experiences of sunsets and the like hold a candle to watching a tiny spider crawl across the carpet or rubbing a fuzzy blanket on your face. Nobody would believe anything that ridiculous, you’re just trying to romanticize neurotypicality.
How do you feel about being most likely to give birth to children who have your own limitations? Don’t you think that’s irresponsible?
How do you compensate for your inability to perceive body language? What do you mean, you have a kind of body language of your own? Nobody’s buying that, that’s just silly. Science hasn’t proven that.
How do you deal with being unable to perceive minds different from your own? Doesn’t that limit you socially?
Have you considered LSD for your perceptual deficits? If you haven’t, don’t you think it’s just a little bit ridiculous to say you’re against all parents giving LSD to their children? I know you talk about distorted thinking, hallucinations, sensory overload, and other minor side-effects, but isn’t that a small price to pay for being able to perceive the world more directly? Don’t you want to enjoy a normal life, or at least have the next generation able to enjoy one? Aren’t you just a tad rigid? You shouldn’t apply your experiences to everyone you know, every child is different.
What? You’re against LSD in children? I bet you just want to let kids have seizures, too. Would you deny a diabetic his insulin?
Speaking of which, you shouldn’t be saying that behavioral therapy is a bad way for neurotypicals to learn. I know that you say you have your own ways to learn, but we have all this proof that we can at least make you indistinguishable from your autistic peers. Don’t you want that? If you’re indistinguishable from your autistic peers in your every movement and word, then how can you continue to claim you’re not autistic?
Don’t you think you ought to stop speaking for all the severe neurotypicals out there? They’re different from you, they can’t even carry on a proper conversation with an autistic.
Have you learned to make real conversation with strangers instead of just measuring them up socially and moving on?
Why do you think you should have any say in the treatment of neurotypicality? You can’t be saying you want to let it fester untreated. You know what can happen then, and besides when you want to learn about a disorder, you go to a real expert, not someone with the disorder.
How can you say that neurotypicality is not devastating? Lots of autistic parents feel devastated by their neurotypical children. Can’t you understand that means it is devastating, even if in your one solitary single case you don’t think it is?
I feel so sorry for you, you poor thing. I have no idea what it’s like to have such awesome limitations. You’ve overcome a lot just to be able to talk to me, I’m sure.
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Most Excellent!
Good list of questions. I love how the themes of most of the blogs I read right now are similar…
I love it! Thanks for making my day
Amanda, please write a book. You’re one of the most accomplished writers I read. A fantastic post.
ok
“Don’t you think you ought to stop speaking for all the severe neurotypicals out there? They’re different from you, they can’t even carry on a proper conversation with an autistic.”
made me laugh out loud.
you’re my hero.
** resounding applause **
Every curebie cliche is summed up perfectly. Great!
And yes, please, please write a book.
I learned a lot on this blog and even linked to it in a blogpost today. But this came across as bitter. Then I realized that you forgot the (unspoken) one about “Am I not amazingly liberal, tolerant, and broad-minded just to listen to you and sort of understand?”
heh
Great post.
Was talking a while ago with another NT who works in the area of autism, and we got talking about flapping. So we tried flapping - and it’s incredibly calming and catharthic (well, to us it was). Being open to new experiences that are defined as ‘weird’ and ‘wrong’ is difficult, but very interesting.
That is tremendous. I think I’m going to print it out and keep it by my desk.
I’m not sure whether you were serious or not when referring to this post as “bitter,” but if you were, that makes no sense to me. These are certainly questions I get asked and see other autistic people asked, I was just turning them around to show how ridiculous they were.
Oh and I’m also curious (dus7) where your blog is. Your profile doesn’t seem to show it.
This set of questions are somehow everyday-questions to me, in a way. But execellent turned around by you, amanda, thank you
Figure I might as well comment at the original source, bumping into Autism Diva’s link. :)
Great post. Puts things in perspective. Reminds me of people who praise some topic I find silly, disgusting, or otherwise not worthy of my interest, and then say “You don’t know what you’re missing!”
Surely you must miss the all-encompassing joy of simple perceptual experiences.
Nah, I just go to Vegas.
Great post, though.
I found out about this blog entry from *two* degrees of separation away: Susan Senator said she’d seen mention of it on Autism Diva’s blog. There are only a few excerpts on Susan’s blog (but also a link here, at least).
People need to see the whole thing, to understand how *true* it is, not just how funny it might sound.
(Someone needs to invent something like a GNU “copyleft” for blog essays, so that essays that really need not to be partially quoted out of context can identify themselves as needing to be read in their entirety.)
Anne says: “Nah, I just go to Vegas.” Glad I was not drinking coffee when reading that…
Joel says: “You’re my hero.” I second the motion.
– Phil, standing carefully just beyond the range of your throwing arm :-PPP
Yeah you’ve had experience with that throwing arm too. :-P
Although I’m actually getting better at not throwing stuff these days. I threw my glasses the other day but I hadn’t before, done that in awhile.
[...] Edit: I forgot I wrote this, but I’d certainly love to throw those back at people. [link] [...]
This is superb. Sorry I missed it the first time. Turns the tables on those addressing us.
“Don’t you think if you were more autistic, you’d grow up without the pain of autistics being aggressive towards you?”
“Don’t you think you can go to sensitivity satiation therapy for that fingernail on the chalkboard problem you have? That way, you could function in society and in classrooms better?” (btw, chalkboard scratch doesn’t bother me like neurotypicals).
“Don’t you think that you could finally realize your self worth if you were better able to focus?”
“Don’t you think you’d be better adjusted psychologically if you could stim at least once in a while? I have so much difficulty getting my neurotypicals to stim. They seem to lack all desire for this exercise. It can’t be healthy.”
“How can you tolerate not being able to go out with the autistic girl or boy at the prom, getting a job in the autistic world and becoming part of the online text communities?”
“You don’t know what younger neurotypicals go through and the amount of effort that’s involved! It’s exhausting. Day in and day out, there is never a peaceful moment.”
M, I tried flapping after I figured out I was
autistic. The way I like is to hold my middle finger
with my thumb and rotate the hand/s really fast. It
feels like the stress flies out through the (loose)
fingertips, though I am sure this is not accurate. I
don’t do it all the time, but sometimes it is just the
thing that makes sense to do.
(Hah, what I was missing when I didn’t know my
autism!)
Amanda this list is great. I would have been laughing
but it was making me think too much.
I forgot that you haven’t written a book yet. You
should, if only because you should be paid to write.
This blog is so useful.
Is this an awfully materialistic thing to say? But in
our society money is a symbol of giving value to
effort and the product of the effort…
Oh Amanda!
This list completely cracked me up! You simply MUST post it on that forum!
:D
I already did.
Excellent! My son is on the autism spectrum somewhere (I consider him Asperger Lite) and I feel his greatest gift is his ability to concentrate and focus, and block the world out for hours..
And I do find stimming very beneficial; if they encouraged neurotypicals to do this in classrooms, there would be a whole lot less disciplinary problems…
[...] is the very same woman who maintains the blog Ballastexistenz: http://ballastexistenz.autistics.org/?p=52 [...]
[...] somebody who is already involved in the autism community, you probably need to read Amanda’s Questions for Neurotypicals on Ballasexistenz. I don’t have the time to explain what that all means to the rest of the world, [...]
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