6 ms·

I understand the sentiment, but there's a reason it's called the autism spectrum. I work with several software engineers with autism who are as capable as thei

I understand the sentiment, but there's a reason it's called the autism spectrum. I work with several software engineers with autism who are as capable as their peers. Sure they may have behavioral quirks, but not significantly more so than the normal variation in human behavior. Their brains don't seem to work in an inferior or problematic way, just different. On the other hand, I have a close relative with more severe autism who could never read and understand this article, could never type a comment such as yours. She's incapable of holding a job or living on her own without assistance. Her mother passed away young, and her older sister, just 19 at the time, had to take on the responsibility of being her sole caregiver, and she will have that burden for the rest of their lives. For some it may be a different variation of the human experience, but for cases as severe as my relative's, I find it hard to believe that a cure or prevention for autism wouldn't be a massive quality of life improvement for all involved.

ModernMech 2y ago
Indeed, my ex wife was incapable of living on her own or holding a job. I have a whole social circle of autistic friends of different abilities. Some still live with their parents. Men in their 40s living with their parents. Women who left home for the first time at 30 only to have to move back within months. My one friend is a sex worker because she can't hold down a real job. She sells her meds and her body to get by. I lived with my parents last year, at 36, but I moved out and got a 1 bedroom. It was touch and go for a while, I still can't cook for myself, but at least I can take care of my cats. I'm never going to have children. I'm never going to have a house. A family like my parents had. My sister as well, well she just got a boy friend so maybe not. The through line problem here is not autism. Despite the range of (dis)ability, the thing that makes it a problem is how autistic needs are unmet by a society that expects us to be worker bees. My ability to type this message and read is not a constant. There are times when I am non verbal. There are times when I cannot read because the letters are all jumbled in my head. When I'm able to read and write and speak, society values me. When I'm not, society devalues me. You want to take autism out of the equation so that I can be valuable to society. What I'm saying is that society needs to be reoriented so that autistic people are valued whether or not they can read or write or speak. Although I have to say I'm unsettled by you speaking for someone who can't speak, and deciding unilaterally that "curing" them would be a massive quality of life improvement for "all involved". Did you ask them?
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- MajimasEyepatch 2y ago
  > My ability to type this message and read is not a constant. There are times when I am non verbal. There are times when I cannot read because the letters are all jumbled in my head. When I'm able to read and write and speak, society values me. When I'm not, society devalues me. You want to take autism out of the equation so that I can be valuable to society. > What I'm saying is that society needs to be reoriented so that autistic people are valued whether or not they can read or write or speak. People like to say stuff like this on social media, but I can never quite figure out what they actually mean. Society emerges from interactions between people. If someone can’t communicate, how exactly are they supposed to participate fully in society? All people deserve love and support and dignity regardless of their ability to contribute economically, but I’m curious what this “reorientation” would actually mean in practice.
  - ModernMech 2y ago
    > If someone can’t communicate, how exactly are they supposed to participate fully in society? It's not that autistic people cannot communicate, it's that we communicate differently. For example, I cannot talk on the phone. I just can't. I could explain all the reasons why, but I feel very dismissed here so I'm not going to be vulnerable anymore, but suffice it to say it's something I cannot do, and a lot of autistic people cannot do. This means people like us can't have jobs which require a lot of phone communication. Accommodations that would allow autistic people to communicate in their preferred way would lead to greater employment of autistic people, but such accommodations are rarely offered for various reasons. It's other things too. For some people it's lights. For others it's a uniform. For others its noises. For instance, I can hardly go into grocery stores because they play loud music, there's a lot of noises from beeping registers, and the lights are bright and garish. All retailers are like this, and that's where many entry level jobs are. If I can hardly shop there without wearing sunglasses and headphones, then I could never work there because workers are not allowed to wear noise canceling headphones. Then there are people who require service dogs. You'd think that would be a solved issue, but my friend was just denied entry to a place because of her legit service dog, not even an emotional support dog. They said she couldn't have one because she didn't look blind. Then what, she has to explain to some putz about her autism, expecting he'll understand? No, she backed off and went home and now she won't go out again. It took her that much just to go outside and she was turned away by some busybody, so it's back to being a recluse for a bit. And that's another thing, is the world could be a lot more accepting of how ND people identify, that would go a long way too. My friend I just mentioned says that her experience as a transgender person is inextricable from her autism. I'm not sure what she means 100%, but also I do, autistic people have a complicated relationship with gender and sexual identity, and a lot of people are very very against those feelings. Autistic people who are transgender (there are many) have a hard time existing in public life because they are shamed, ridiculed, vilified, beaten, and even murdered for who they are. Do you think it's easy for someone who faces those dangers to be employed? There are many transgender homeless people who suffer as a result. I could go on and on, but all of these things I've listed are ways in which autistic people are marginalized in society, and they don't necessitate "curing" autism to fix, or even really reorienting society as a whole. It's not because they cannot communicate, it's because they cannot participate fully in public life. The solution is to just let them participate in public life. To make things better for everyone involved, we can just be accepting of people's differences and not force them all to be one way, and support them when those differences mean they need help to survive. We can afford to do that as a society I think, why not, isn't that the point of the whole exercise?
somenameforme 2y ago
Then people should stop conflating the two. This whole "spectrum" nonsense is nonsense. Your coworkers are not autistic - they are weird or whatever other more PC term you might want to use, and that's great - many, if not most, great engineers are!. There is no need to pathologize differences in people. Your relative, by contrast, is. If you have a habit of feeling sleepy at work, it's not like we say you're on the narcolepsy spectrum. It's just a completely dumb concept. People like your relative, or the kid who sits around flapping his hand and starts freaking out if anybody interacts with him - those people are obviously not just 'weird'. They clearly have severe mental disorders, and if we want to call whatever it is that they have autism - fine. But if we do, then we need to stop calling people like your coworkers, Bill Gates, or whoever else also autistic.
- cubefox 2y ago
  > Autism is known as a “spectrum” disorder because there is wide variation in the type and severity of symptoms people experience. https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/autism-spectrum-disorders-asd https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/autism-spectrum-disor...
- rjmunro 2y ago
  There is a continuous range of people in between. Where do you draw the line?
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  - somenameforme 2y ago
    This is like asking where to draw the line when somebody is bald. Are you bald if you have 1 hair? Yes. 2? 3? 137? There's of course reasonable room for discretion in saying what is or isn't bald. But it isn't reasonable to say somebody with a full-on afro is on the spectrum of being bald. Literally some of the most high functioning and successful individuals are being diagnosed as "on the spectrum" of what is, in its "real" form, a completely crippling and disabling condition that yields individuals who would have simply been classified as mentally retarded in the past. This is just completely nonsensical.
mewpmewp2 2y ago
The problem is there's no such thing as "Autism". It's a survey and observation of behaviors that "oh you don't quite behave like we see 90%+ of people to behave socially, so you must have a disease. Let's call it autism." You are talking as if Autism was some sort of virus that you catch and it disables some people a bit, and others a lot. Some people have hard time, then deal with those people and help them, based on the symptoms, but don't say you have to prevent some made up label to group certain set of behaviors which many are perfectly happy to be with those set of behaviors and perhaps even proud to be thinking differently than most.
jskdndbwkd 2y ago
or maybe your successful coworkers and your close relative have two completely distinct conditions that don’t actually exist along a continuum

ModernMech 2y ago

Indeed, my ex wife was incapable of living on her own or holding a job. I have a whole social circle of autistic friends of different abilities. Some still live with their parents. Men in their 40s living with their parents. Women who left home for the first time at 30 only to have to move back within months. My one friend is a sex worker because she can't hold down a real job. She sells her meds and her body to get by. I lived with my parents last year, at 36, but I moved out and got a 1 bedroom. It was touch and go for a while, I still can't cook for myself, but at least I can take care of my cats. I'm never going to have children. I'm never going to have a house. A family like my parents had. My sister as well, well she just got a boy friend so maybe not. The through line problem here is not autism. Despite the range of (dis)ability, the thing that makes it a problem is how autistic needs are unmet by a society that expects us to be worker bees. My ability to type this message and read is not a constant. There are times when I am non verbal. There are times when I cannot read because the letters are all jumbled in my head. When I'm able to read and write and speak, society values me. When I'm not, society devalues me. You want to take autism out of the equation so that I can be valuable to society. What I'm saying is that society needs to be reoriented so that autistic people are valued whether or not they can read or write or speak. Although I have to say I'm unsettled by you speaking for someone who can't speak, and deciding unilaterally that "curing" them would be a massive quality of life improvement for "all involved". Did you ask them?

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MajimasEyepatch 2y ago
> My ability to type this message and read is not a constant. There are times when I am non verbal. There are times when I cannot read because the letters are all jumbled in my head. When I'm able to read and write and speak, society values me. When I'm not, society devalues me. You want to take autism out of the equation so that I can be valuable to society. > What I'm saying is that society needs to be reoriented so that autistic people are valued whether or not they can read or write or speak. People like to say stuff like this on social media, but I can never quite figure out what they actually mean. Society emerges from interactions between people. If someone can’t communicate, how exactly are they supposed to participate fully in society? All people deserve love and support and dignity regardless of their ability to contribute economically, but I’m curious what this “reorientation” would actually mean in practice.
- ModernMech 2y ago
  > If someone can’t communicate, how exactly are they supposed to participate fully in society? It's not that autistic people cannot communicate, it's that we communicate differently. For example, I cannot talk on the phone. I just can't. I could explain all the reasons why, but I feel very dismissed here so I'm not going to be vulnerable anymore, but suffice it to say it's something I cannot do, and a lot of autistic people cannot do. This means people like us can't have jobs which require a lot of phone communication. Accommodations that would allow autistic people to communicate in their preferred way would lead to greater employment of autistic people, but such accommodations are rarely offered for various reasons. It's other things too. For some people it's lights. For others it's a uniform. For others its noises. For instance, I can hardly go into grocery stores because they play loud music, there's a lot of noises from beeping registers, and the lights are bright and garish. All retailers are like this, and that's where many entry level jobs are. If I can hardly shop there without wearing sunglasses and headphones, then I could never work there because workers are not allowed to wear noise canceling headphones. Then there are people who require service dogs. You'd think that would be a solved issue, but my friend was just denied entry to a place because of her legit service dog, not even an emotional support dog. They said she couldn't have one because she didn't look blind. Then what, she has to explain to some putz about her autism, expecting he'll understand? No, she backed off and went home and now she won't go out again. It took her that much just to go outside and she was turned away by some busybody, so it's back to being a recluse for a bit. And that's another thing, is the world could be a lot more accepting of how ND people identify, that would go a long way too. My friend I just mentioned says that her experience as a transgender person is inextricable from her autism. I'm not sure what she means 100%, but also I do, autistic people have a complicated relationship with gender and sexual identity, and a lot of people are very very against those feelings. Autistic people who are transgender (there are many) have a hard time existing in public life because they are shamed, ridiculed, vilified, beaten, and even murdered for who they are. Do you think it's easy for someone who faces those dangers to be employed? There are many transgender homeless people who suffer as a result. I could go on and on, but all of these things I've listed are ways in which autistic people are marginalized in society, and they don't necessitate "curing" autism to fix, or even really reorienting society as a whole. It's not because they cannot communicate, it's because they cannot participate fully in public life. The solution is to just let them participate in public life. To make things better for everyone involved, we can just be accepting of people's differences and not force them all to be one way, and support them when those differences mean they need help to survive. We can afford to do that as a society I think, why not, isn't that the point of the whole exercise?

somenameforme 2y ago

Then people should stop conflating the two. This whole "spectrum" nonsense is nonsense. Your coworkers are not autistic - they are weird or whatever other more PC term you might want to use, and that's great - many, if not most, great engineers are!. There is no need to pathologize differences in people. Your relative, by contrast, is. If you have a habit of feeling sleepy at work, it's not like we say you're on the narcolepsy spectrum. It's just a completely dumb concept. People like your relative, or the kid who sits around flapping his hand and starts freaking out if anybody interacts with him - those people are obviously not just 'weird'. They clearly have severe mental disorders, and if we want to call whatever it is that they have autism - fine. But if we do, then we need to stop calling people like your coworkers, Bill Gates, or whoever else also autistic.

cubefox 2y ago
> Autism is known as a “spectrum” disorder because there is wide variation in the type and severity of symptoms people experience. https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/autism-spectrum-disorders-asd https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/autism-spectrum-disor...
rjmunro 2y ago
There is a continuous range of people in between. Where do you draw the line?
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- somenameforme 2y ago
  This is like asking where to draw the line when somebody is bald. Are you bald if you have 1 hair? Yes. 2? 3? 137? There's of course reasonable room for discretion in saying what is or isn't bald. But it isn't reasonable to say somebody with a full-on afro is on the spectrum of being bald. Literally some of the most high functioning and successful individuals are being diagnosed as "on the spectrum" of what is, in its "real" form, a completely crippling and disabling condition that yields individuals who would have simply been classified as mentally retarded in the past. This is just completely nonsensical.

mewpmewp2 2y ago

The problem is there's no such thing as "Autism". It's a survey and observation of behaviors that "oh you don't quite behave like we see 90%+ of people to behave socially, so you must have a disease. Let's call it autism." You are talking as if Autism was some sort of virus that you catch and it disables some people a bit, and others a lot. Some people have hard time, then deal with those people and help them, based on the symptoms, but don't say you have to prevent some made up label to group certain set of behaviors which many are perfectly happy to be with those set of behaviors and perhaps even proud to be thinking differently than most.

jskdndbwkd 2y ago

or maybe your successful coworkers and your close relative have two completely distinct conditions that don’t actually exist along a continuum