People with Asperger's say it's not a real disorder. Why is that?
I can’t recall ever seeing a self-identified ASD person flat-out saying it’s not a real disorder. Then again, I don’t pay much attention to how people think about themselves; I’m too busy focusing on myself. Perhaps that makes me selfish . . .I can understand why someone with ASD may want to deny having a disorder, though, and both Alex Farley's answer and Elizabeth Weiblen's answer describe conditions where this could happen.“I’m fitting in and coping fine with NTs, so I don’t have a disorder; I’m just different.”Perhaps this is simply a matter of self-esteem. Nobody wants to believe there is something wrong with himself/herself. It’s a bit self-delusional, though . . .. . . especially when one becomes overwhelmed with environmental stimuli to the point where one simply has to escape, to get away from everyone and everything just to reset and recharge. (It’s either that, or publicly meltdown, and you really don’t want to see this 300+ lb. autistic man who has a high pain threshold meltdown in public. I’m doing you all a favor by taking it private.) The fact of the matter is that it is a disorder; the brain isn’t wired up quite the same way as with so-called “neurotypicals”. That’s why we have to learn to “fit in” and “cope”, because there is something about an autistic person, no matter how high-functioning, that is different from NTs.So, empirically speaking, it is a disorder, and it is caused by a different brain “schematic”, if you will, and people do not grow out of it - we just learn to fit in and cope better as we get older.
Are there any others like me who believe aspergers is fake?
Schizophrenia is very real and there is something very wrong with them. I have seen a schizophrenic after he blew his face off with a rifle to silence the voices that told him to hurt his uncle. The hallucinations and delusions can be terrifying or seriously impair their ability to function in normal society. It is not simply daydreaming. Their thought process is very tangential. Ask about the weather and they will tell you about grass growing on mars (a real conversation I had).
Why do several people believe autism doesn't really exist?
Autism has most definitely existed for longer than “the past recent years”.What’s changed, along with a better understanding of the various conditions and a number of diagnostic improvements, has been that people are both more aware of and more “able to see” it.The awareness piece is easy to understand, so I won’t bother explaining it. If you’d like me to do so, please comment, although I can see others have addressed it already.The “able to see it” piece, on the other hand, may need a bit of explanation. A lot of people who are diagnosed as autistic (either high-functioning or otherwise) would have simply been seen as “different” in previous years. A high-functioning autistic person - such as Einstein is often said to have been - was simply classified as a “nutty professor”, which is fine, and Einstein certainly seems to have been happy to play into that. The same is true of other “geniuses with autism” - if you’re a genius, nobody really cares if you’re a bit difficult to get along with.People who were autistic but not high-functioning, on the other hand, would have been institutionalised as being “slow” or “backward”, just as people with other conditions were. Obviously there’s been a move away from that in recent decades (and rightly so), which means that a lot of people who wouldn’t otherwise have been in society in previous years are now out there.
Do you think people who are diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome should be restricted from marriage and sterilized?
No. I'm all for sterilizing people like you though, so you don't reproduce and instill your sick ideas into your children. What are you, Hitler? Many people with autism spectrum disorders are parents and are as good parents as anyone else. Not everyone who has AS/autism is unfit to be a parent and not all neurotypicals are fit parents either. Parenting skills don't always have anything to do with whether the person has a disability/disorder or not. Not all children of parents with AS/autism have it too and even though some of them have it, that's not the end of the world. Did you know Albert Einstein and Isaac Newton are thought to have had Asperger's syndrome? So is Bill Gates. Where would you be if it wasn't for them? Is it really that bad to allow different types of people to be born? Aspies being unfit spouses is an ignorant stereotype. Like all stereotypes, there exist some people that the stereotype fits, but also a whole bunch of people that it doesn't fit for at all and couldn't be farther from the truth. Many aspies are in happy, longterm relationships and not causing any emotional harm to anyone.
Why are so many aspergers atheists?
Some are, some aren't...but Aspergers are far more likely to be Atheists than any other group in society.