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...

One of the questions I was asked this week was how colleges should deal with autistic students who are too tethered to their parents. A college advisor explained to me that she has met too many students on the autism spectrum living on campus who rush home every weekend, and sometimes during the week, instead of making the transition to independent living. "The parents make matters even worse. They call us, they call residential life, they call professors, and they'll even call deans. They don't trust us and they don't trust their children." Okay, parents. Stop it! Just STOP IT. LET GO. As your children head back to school, at all grade levels, you need to accept that your child will stumble a few times throughout the year. He or she will have to deal with stressors that are academic and social. The classroom and the campus are social settings with plenty of difficult lessons for all students. Your job as a parent is to be a safety net, not a safety ha...

Pencils (Photo credit: snowblink ) Writing well does give one a louder, more effective public voice than other individuals. We know Temple Grandin , Dawn Prince Hughes , Stephen Shore , Lars Perner and others because they are autistics with books. Like most writers, these men and women work with editors, publicists, agents, and others to refine their works and reach out to the public. These are not normal autistic experiences, but they aren't normal experiences for anyone. It isn't that autistics who write memoirs are rare, there are dozens of autistic memoirs and essays in print and in digital forms. But, these are not the voices of all autistics or even most autistics. That's really no different from any other group with a few noted writers or public figures. Writers are unusual, period. Feminist writers don't represent all women. Black writers don't represent all African-Americans or other people of color. Gay writers don't represent the entire LGBT...

I have been invited to several support groups for autistic teens and adults over the last six years or so. The people leading these groups do a great job and have a difficult task. Still, many of the participants drift into the dark black hole of self-pity, dwelling on the negatives of life instead of the positives. Yes, a support group exists to help members deal with negatives. But, dwelling on and reliving the negatives can be a vicious cycle as each participant adds another layer of negativity to what is shared by previous speakers. Here are some suggestions to help overcome this challenge: 1) What did you accomplish this week that you believed you might not be able to do? How do you feel about that accomplishment? 2) What have you done recently to improve your life and the lives others? 3) What actions have you taken to be a good role model for others? 4) How are you challenging negative stereotypes about [autism or X]? 5) What do you plan to try in coming weeks? ...

"Tell us what's great about your autism! What's your special gift or talent? What's your superpower?" Really? Clearly the sender (probably using an automated mailing list) isn't familiar with my blog, public statements, or other writings. I don't have superpowers, no special gifts, and no unusual talents that I would attribute only or primarily to my autistic traits. Some talents might be associated with autistic traits, but they might also be tangentially related to genius, effort, parental upbringing, or who knows what else. I've written repeatedly that I do not consider autism a gift. Not even close. I don't buy into the whole "Being disabled forced me to be better!" sloganeering. If you had to be injured to learn to be nice to other people, or an injury led you to some belief in a Supreme Purpose to life, that's fine. But my autistic traits are generally a pain to live with, literally and figuratively. Tell you what's...