General Autism Discussion

This is, sadly, not as true as it should have been. Some early women's rights campaigners were proponents of human rights in general and were motivated to fight for the rights of racial minorities by a sense of shared struggle.

But there were also plenty of early women's rights campaigners who were racist as fuck and who saw male former slaves getting the vote in the US and the mixed-race male children of wealthy colonial officials returning to Europe enjoying all the same rights as their white male parent and whose entire reason for seeking, among other things, the right to vote boiled down to 'If those those filthy n-words get the vote, then we Christian white women should get it too'.

In modern feminism, however, intersectional principles are a cornerstone for most schools (and most of the ones for which they aren't are on the extreme fringe).

I'm not surprised by the women's rights movement going in both those directions. And the reasons for those directions.

Marginalized groups do marginalize other groups. There were problems with systematic racism and discrimination in Philadelphia's "gayborhood" pretty recently, actually.

It makes sense that autistics would be split into "ewwww, I'm not like those autistics!" and "come on, we should work together and not fight over such differences!"

I decided to watch all of the 10-minute Sesame Street clip featuring Julia, the autistic muppet.

I'm not totally sure what to think. The comments are full of people who think it's a great idea and did a great job. I do think the idea is great. And it shows the other characters playing with Julia, though entirely on Julia's terms. It also portrays a meltdown (I've never had them before) and how it works, and how others can help her with it.

This has potential to help kids understand autism (some forms of it at least) better. But... as currently is, I have a few issues, and ideas of things they can do better in the future. Now I'm aware this is just one clip, and more will come later. And I'm sure autistic advocates will chime in with their ideas, and Sesame Street may learn from them. But here are my current thoughts.

First, my observations:

• Everyone plays with Julia by adapting to her needs, to a high degree. To the point where her jumping around turns "tag" into "boing boing tag". They change the rules to not just invite her, but to be about her.
• It's great to see an explanation of a meltdown and its possible cause. Especially the explanation that sirens are louder to Julia than they are to other people. It gives a reason for her behavior that makes sense.
• Julia's autism is explained by saying "for Julia, that means", which is an attempt to explain that autism is not the same for everyone. A smart move. By itself, it won't explain enough though; I think they could go further with that.

Now, my ideas of what they can do to build on this idea:

• Once in a while, show another character with autism, and let others react to how different that character is from Julia. Imagine showing another character with a very different form of autism, having everyone be confused because "he's not like Julia!", and having someone else explain what their form of autism is. Maybe show an adult with a mild form of autism? An older character with a milder form? Someone with Aspergers traits, like a character who talks endlessly about their obsession and has awful social skills? They could show that character being taught what they did socially wrong and how they should do better.
• There should be some attempts, if possible, to have someone teach Julia how to interact with others. See, I'm very afraid that kids will see autism as something to be resentful of - a person who doesn't follow the rules and must be catered to. If they recognize it as containing a learning disability involving social skills, and the skills as something that can be learned, then they'll have a more positive view of it since it's not just "do everything that person needs and expect them to not know the rules".

I want to see Julia incorporated naturally into the show with the other characters, but if every time Julia is onscreen she ends up sucking all the attention towards her and her needs, she'll be like a Black Hole Mary Sue of sorts - they need to find a way to balance making her a natural part of the show without it being "Here's Julia, here's her needs, let's all do what she wants". Otherwise, what message will that send children?

While I'm not a fan of the emphasis on "we're amazing" that they're using to talk about autism (it makes me think a lot about how "special" is used to mean "disabled"), here is Sesame Street's talking storybook on Julia's autism.

WARNING: PLAYS SOUND. Get ready to mute your tab or lower your speaker volume.

Anyway, the storybook doesn't seem bad. It shows Julia's differences and how her autism has her doing things differently, like lining up toy blocks in a row rather than making towers to knock down, or spinning a car's wheels rather than playing with it imaginatively.

I just think that while their heart is in the right place, and they have the potential to do a lot of good, they need to carefully think about just how their autism awareness is going to work.

edited 14th Apr '17 8:19:54 PM by BonsaiForest

So, I've been designing a science fantasy setting and I've thrown in an element that relates to people on the autism spectrum specifically, and I just wanted to make sure that it sounds okay to others.

One of the many alien races is the Illsva. They have a habit of building ridiculously huge space stations out of intricate clockworks and their technology is generally more advanced than average. The thing is that they're really hard to negotiate with because the species has Very distinct emotions and their forms of negotiation require acknowledging emotional states. Except that they're empaths who don't show any sort of emotion physically, exacerbated by the masks they wear, and their empathic abilities are really hard to perceive by non Illsva. Like, if one's really angry, you might feel very slightly uncomfortable if you're in the same room, but that's about it. So almost no one has ever gotten anything meaningful out of them. However, after they met humanity, it was found that about 5% of people on the autism spectrum (anywhere on the spectrum, it seems almost random) can read the empathic field the Illsva emanate, giving Earth a huge leg up over everyone else in dealing with the Illsva.

The idea I'm going with is that the mental differences in autistic people (compared to alltistic people) can occasionally randomly result in a much stronger than normal ability to receive telepathic and empathic signals. (Humans in the setting can receive both in general, it's just usually weak enough that it doesn't mean or do anything.)

There could also be a subset of the Illsva population that has emotional and mental responses similar to most humans who are treated by the rest of the Illsva as the "other".

edited 15th Apr '17 6:13:08 AM by M84

And if those two subgroups are the ones who can talk to each other, that sets up some interesting dynamics.

I imagine First Contact would have been complicated as a result. For example, what if first contact with the Illsva was with one of their neurologically atypical population (who behaves like a neurologically typical human) and a neurologically typical human? That would lead to the mistaken initial belief that humans and Illsva are very similar.

Edit:

The whole "neurologically atypical people having special abilities" idea reminds me a bit of SCP-870, though that involves schizophrenia instead of autism. Schizophrenics' brains are wired just differently enough that they can notice SCP-870, a predator of humans that is able to completely evade human perception.

edited 15th Apr '17 6:16:15 AM by M84

In the setting, first contact between humans and Illsva actually occurred by accident. There's a really big galactic civilization called the Dominion, and the Illsva are members. When Earth joined, the Illsva just kind of ignored us, like they do to most of the people in the galaxy. But on the galactic capital, someone on the autism spectrum ended up sharing a taxi with an Illsva and the human made a reference to the Illsva in question being frustrated about something. The Illsva government found this staggering and at first assumed that all humans could do that, but research eventually showed that it was 5% of autistic people.

I do like the idea of some of the Illsva having a sort of "backwards autism" where they're visibly more emotional though. It could create the foundation for an interesting sort of love story.

The main plan I have for this though is a side character who serves on a hospital station in orbit around Jupiter is an lllsvan doctor. He has an intern who's a guy, about 22, with autism. The doctor is trying to train the human to broadcast his emotions into the empathic field the Illsva employ. Aside from occasional flashes, it doesn't really work though, but it does create a ton of breakthroughs on what exactly autism is.

edited 15th Apr '17 6:22:58 AM by Zendervai

In that scenario I imagine that opened up a lot of trade opportunities for humanity, if 5% of their autistic population were the first people outside of the Illsva race to actually understand them.

As for the doctor and his intern...is this going to go into Transhuman territory? For example, the doctor will consider installing an implant in his intern to let him tap into the empathic field?

edited 15th Apr '17 6:26:00 AM by M84

But installing an implant would be cheating! And that is the reason. The point is to try and encourage it to develop naturally.

And there are a couple other species that can read the Illsva, but one of them (the Tetrites) don't really like the Illsva very much (the Tetrites find covering up the hair extremely offensive, the Illsva cover their hair pretty much all the time, and there's several other things like that) and the other one has an extremely low population and rarely if ever leave their homeworld. There is trade, there's just not that much. The Illsva are also the only ones with control over the hypergate leading to the Dominion capital, mostly because they can be trusted not to abuse the privilege.

I'm using the idea in part to explain why the Dominion as a whole cares about the Earth since Earth, in the setting, is kind of a backwater. We're mostly asked to join the Dominion because we're right next door to a criticially important system.

edited 15th Apr '17 6:34:12 AM by Zendervai

So the Dominion basically asked Earth to join them just so that humans don't become the interstellar equivalent of a bridge troll?

edited 15th Apr '17 6:36:05 AM by M84

Yeah, pretty much.

Hmm. So it seems I've been surrounded by the autistic community and their opinions so long that I've lost touch with nts. What is the average nt's view about autism? Do they know anything about the neurodiversity and disability rights movements? Do they know Autism $peaks is bad? (I just had the misfortune of seeing an Autism $peaks bumper sticker on the highway today, so I'm not too sure..) Do they know that Aspies aren't robots and that identity-first language is preferred and that mass incarceration is an issue among autistics and that people and that "low functioning" people are more than just burdens and subjects of "inspiration"? I know the neurodiversity movement is gaining traction, but has it reached nts yet?

As an Aspie who tries hard to beat the robot stereotype, that's the one I think about most often. If you asked a random person on the street what someone with Asperger's is like, what would they say?

edited 16th Apr '17 6:22:20 PM by Cailleach

They would probably give an answer that is stunningly ignorant and/or offensive, give an incredibly patronizing one in an attempt to seem progressive and on your "side", or find somewhere else to be very quickly since they don't want to risk offending people.

edited 16th Apr '17 6:45:36 PM by M84

"Aspergers? That's... Wait I know this one... It's the thing kids have, that some people think is caused by vaccines... I get the right one?"

edited 16th Apr '17 7:25:41 PM by Silasw

Or they'll reference South Park. The first time I heard that one I had never heard of South Park, so I was really confused. Didn't help that the town I lived in at the time actually had a park called the South Park.

Or they will give an entirely unpredictable answer. Because, you know, randomly chosen people represent the entire world and humanity isn't one large undifferentiated mass of ignorant people.

On average, the answers you get will depend on who and where you ask. Even within the US, you will get very different answers from urban youth with some college education, vs, rural elders without it.

Florida police arrest autistic ten year old.

Florida has a certain reputation, but anyway, arresting little kids for little things like that is stupid no matter what. It doesn't help them at all.

Hrm, I'm not sure what upsets me more, the events described in this article... Or the ones described in the one the author links to in the final sentence. (That's a lie, I'm definitely more upset by the events in the second article, but not in a 'that's worse, so this doesn't matter' sense).

The fact that the author is using the event as an excuse to go "hurr murrca sucks" is the second most upsetting thing about all this.

Actors with autism finally get the star treatment, from New York Post.

Autistics have argued that actors on the spectrum should be considered for playing characters on the spectrum. They got their wish here.

How a new job fair is battling the stigma around autism. Canadian news source.

Data entry. A job based on the "good with computers" stereotype that does not require an actual brain.