This blog title was chosen for a reason. There is often repeated phrase that occurs among people with Asperger’s is that we feel like we are from a different planet. A good example of this is the website WrongPlanet.net which was created by Alex Plank. The site itself is meant to be a community site for people with Asperger’s. The title of the website itself is representative of the idea that I mentioned about Aspie’s sometimes viewing themselves as being from a different planet. The idea has become widespread among Aspies, so much so in fact that a culture has developed based on this widespread view that we are not like people who don’t have autism. We have even developed a term for non-autistic people: neurotypical. Many members of the autistic community believe in neurodiversity.
There are two groups of thought in the autistic world. Those who want to cure autism and those who believe in neurodiversity. Mike Stanton in “What is Neurodiversity?“describes it this way:
“The idea of Neurodiversity was developed by autistic people in opposition to the pathologizing model. According to them autistic people are not disordered. They have a different sort of order. Their brains are differently wired. They think differently. They do not want to be cured. They want to be understood.”
Up until the 1980s mothers were blamed for the autistic behavior of their children. Autism was often called Refrigerator Mom Syndrome. The focus eventually shifted to a more genetic component. It was from there that people began looking for a cure for autism. However, many people who have autism began to feel that they should celebrate their differences especially the differences in our brain functions from people who did not have autism. As with any group in order to differentiate from the group they are separating from by labelling them. The name neurotypical basically refers to someone who does not have autism. The autism community chose that word because the word normal had too many negative implications. Neurotypical as a term rejects the idea of a normal brain because that would mean that anyone who has autism has an abnormal brain. Also what would constitute a normal brain remains to be determined because brain functions depend on factors that are relevant and different for every person.
I belong to the neurodiversity movement because I am proud of what I have accomplished and I am proud of the unique way in which I look at the world. I don’t refer to myself as being neurodiverse as an individual. As part of a community I am neurodiverse. I can no more be cured of autism more than cows can fly upside down. I am not certain I want to be cured. Too much of the discussion of autism revolves around finding a cure as if I and all other autistics have a diseased brain.
Welcome to Aspie Land! 