The Autistic Me

When an autistic adult mentioned to me that he was spending a lot of time and money in cam chats, "tipping" his virtual friends, this raised a few questions for me about how much this was connected to the isolation he felt as a "very lonely Aspie" and how much is a general shift in online access to such "adult entertainment" options. If you aren't familiar with the cam world, you can read the following: Morris, Chris. (2013 Jan. 17) CamGirls: The New Porn Superstars. CNBC.com. http://www.cnbc.com/id/100385730 Richtel, Matt. (2013 Sept. 21) Intimacy on the Web, With a Crowd. NYTimes.com. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/22/technology/intimacy-on-the-web-with-a-crowd.html The more questions I asked of Lonely Aspie, the more I recognized that his problem was less about the adult nature of the online setting and more about isolation in general. Before finding the "cam girls" online, he was addicted to online games. He would spend hours ...

By mid-September there will be an update to A Spectrum of Relationships  on Amazon. This will be a minor, and free, update to the text for Amazon Kindle readers. If you own the book, you will need to manually update the file, however. I don't like knowing there are errors in the ePub editions of the book. Susan and I are making several passes through the text to make sure it complies with AP Style and does not contain grammar or mechanical errors. In at least one instance, the "error" was not an error, but a misunderstanding of my word choice. I wrote that friends "complement" us, meaning they complete our identities and offer us a chance to be more. That is not an error, since I didn't not mean that friends "compliment" us — though I suppose they do praise us, at times. I'm uncertain if the Nook store on BN allows a similar update policy, but we hope to replace the book there, as well. I don't like the idea of charging owners of a boo...

Sex (Photo credit: danielito311 ) "Did you fool around in college?" the parent asked. "I suppose. I missed classes once or twice. And I liked to go to the beach." "No, I meant… fool around  with girls." Parents stumble into this question more ways than I could have anticipated when I started to write and speak about autism and education. No answer I can offer based on personal experience can capture what another college student might experience. Every student is different. I entered college as an honors student, with all the "geekiness" that implies. I was also socially awkward in general, as readers of this blog can appreciate. During college, I lived in a special residence hall with faculty members living among students as mentors. It was not a "normal" experience, I recognize. Some gifted students, some autistic students, are charming and will have active social lives. That is likely to include normal sexual experien...