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> If you say you have Aspergers on certain forums nowadays people will flame you, call you a Nazi ...what? how? That's insane.

faeriechangling 4y ago
Hans Aspergers worked in a Nazi hospital, cooperated with the Nazis, was a Fascist, was a Nationalist, and had various non-woke views typical of an Austrian doctor in Nazi Germany in the 1930s. I've repeatedly seen heated arguments over if Hans Asperger was actually a Nazi or not. It is almost certainly the case that he referred autistic children to a hospital where they were euthanised, and I've heard some back and forth as to if he knew/was complicit, but it's certainly a bad look for that to even be a question. Aspergers also has another issue which is that it has frequently been portrayed in popular culture as "mild autism", and arguably that's how the diagnostic criteria read, and there has been a lot of historical emphasis on the employability of people with Aspergers specifically. This has been very controversial, as if you remember how I was talking about the killing of autistics, the Nazi's weren't killing all autistics, just the ones they felt were least useful to them. So really in a lot of ways Hans Aspergers is symbolic of the inequality in treatment amongst different autistic people. A group of people who participate in communities where users have VAST differences in their quality of life for arbitrary reasons. In any case, there's many reasons the word "Aspergers" has become controversial, that and the fact the idea of Autism and Aspergers being discrete things fell out of scientific favor more than a decade ago. I literally have a diagnosis of Aspergers disorder, I know other people with the same diagnosis, we all avoid using the word because it's become an antiquated landmine.
- mid-kid 4y ago
  I have a diagnosis too, and I've never heard about any of this, nor do I think it has much if any bearing upon the meaning of the word. People have a general understanding of it, even if specific conditions vary, which is why the word is useful to me when talking about my psyche. I think it's quite a stretch to go from this to calling someone a Nazi. Thanks for explaining, though.

faeriechangling 4y ago

Hans Aspergers worked in a Nazi hospital, cooperated with the Nazis, was a Fascist, was a Nationalist, and had various non-woke views typical of an Austrian doctor in Nazi Germany in the 1930s. I've repeatedly seen heated arguments over if Hans Asperger was actually a Nazi or not. It is almost certainly the case that he referred autistic children to a hospital where they were euthanised, and I've heard some back and forth as to if he knew/was complicit, but it's certainly a bad look for that to even be a question. Aspergers also has another issue which is that it has frequently been portrayed in popular culture as "mild autism", and arguably that's how the diagnostic criteria read, and there has been a lot of historical emphasis on the employability of people with Aspergers specifically. This has been very controversial, as if you remember how I was talking about the killing of autistics, the Nazi's weren't killing all autistics, just the ones they felt were least useful to them. So really in a lot of ways Hans Aspergers is symbolic of the inequality in treatment amongst different autistic people. A group of people who participate in communities where users have VAST differences in their quality of life for arbitrary reasons. In any case, there's many reasons the word "Aspergers" has become controversial, that and the fact the idea of Autism and Aspergers being discrete things fell out of scientific favor more than a decade ago. I literally have a diagnosis of Aspergers disorder, I know other people with the same diagnosis, we all avoid using the word because it's become an antiquated landmine.

mid-kid 4y ago
I have a diagnosis too, and I've never heard about any of this, nor do I think it has much if any bearing upon the meaning of the word. People have a general understanding of it, even if specific conditions vary, which is why the word is useful to me when talking about my psyche. I think it's quite a stretch to go from this to calling someone a Nazi. Thanks for explaining, though.