RE: D/s and Asperger's Syndrome

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Aswad -> RE: D/s and Asperger's Syndrome (7/3/2007 5:30:08 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Calandra I mentioned that lying is sometimes acceptable and he maintained "No it's not" It is entirely a personal choice. But how that choice can work, depends on your moral strategy. Many aspies adopt the professed values of their society, but apply them rigidly. In a way, this is commendable; if lying truly is "wrong", then it must always be "wrong". Otherwise, lying is not the "sin" in itself, but merely a symptom of the "sin". More or less "wrong" is hard for most aspies I know. I find it hard myself. I think aspies are particularly fond of treating lying as "wrong" because they are fact-centric. I, too, feel worse about lying than much else, but lack a rational argument to support that. If you pick the damage done as the "sin" instead, however, most aspies I have met can work with that, and at that point, shades of gray do enter the picture. Hence, it is much a matter of picking the right thing to object to. Again, it depends on moral strategies. I have mentioned Kohlberg's works in the past, as well as my own variations on the theme. Many aspies seem to settle on "stages" 4 and 6; most NTs seem to settle on stages 3, 4 and 5, but with more relativistic reasoning. Part of this, I think, stems from aspies being raised to think moral absolutism is the ideal- or only- thing (most NTs believe this), but they are a lot more capable of implementing moral absolutism than NTs are. NTs make exceptions, aspies do not, in general. In short, raise an aspie with a set of values, and you will be shown where those values take you. That is part of why I devised a very complicated scheme for my own morals. I share the distaste for the notion of there being more and less "wrong", and the notion that there are, objectively speaking, any gray areas regarding what is "right" and what is "wrong". If there are gray areas, morals are nothing more than a guideline, and I have compassion and such for that instead. Hence, I used inductive logic to go from examples where I knew I wanted to retain a specific result, determined what I was optimizing for, and how I was optimizing for it, before writing this down. In the end, I had a tiered set of axioms, to which I added some that I wanted to subscribe to or felt necessary to make it work. The tiering represents the way I used to optimize things. Then I used deductive logic to formally derive the interactions between the axioms into a formal system. The net result is a fairly complicated moral code that has no shades of gray, but nevertheless very closely approximates "regular" western morals in most areas that affect day-to-day living, while there are some areas that diverge wildly. Most of those that diverge are divergent from what is professed, rather than what is practiced. A good place to start is to ask whether it is okay to hurt someone; I expect "no" is the answer. Then ask why, then, it is okay to hurt someone during play; eventually, consent comes up. Consent, then, is an exception to the rule, in a way; even aspies tend to have some. From there, one can "awaken" to the idea that the issue is complicated. The path to finding a stable, acceptable and consistent set of ethics is a long and frustrating one, however. But, yes, the hypothetical example demonstrates the fact that morals are an optimization problem. Morals do not deal with true-false dichotomies, but optimizing for the "least bad", always. In many everyday situations, there is a "no bad" alternative, but not always. That is why we optimize for some "bads" over other "bads". Most aspies can get this, but there is a bridge to cross. Putting morals in a system can probably help. Note, though, that I'm not saying there is anything wrong with the rule-based approach either. Different strokes for different folks, etc... Morals have always been, are, and will always be, subjective. quote: On my ethical "compass", murder is a greater "wrong" than lying is. Some might judge the "wrong" based on the directness of the consequence, though. Personally, I pick the same as you do in that hypothetical scenario. But I get why some would consider lying oneself to be worse than not preventing someone else from doing murder. One is a direct violation of a moral imperative, the other is adhering to a moral imperative with the consequence that someone else does something that would be wrong for you to do. quote: If I wished to avoid lying and becoming an accesory to murder, I suppose I could turn the first person away when they asked for my help.... Only in a legal sense, and moral duty transcends law. Or, at least, in my opinion it does. quote: She'd always ask me to lie if her husband ever asked about her smoking. [...] Either way, by standing up for MY beliefs, the issue was resolved in a way that I am comfortable with. ~nod~ The central point, in my opinion, is to explain that what she is doing is weighing on your conscience. That is what you did, from what you wrote, and I'd agree it is a good resolution. Whether she was there to smoke or there for you is kind of beside the point. Either a person is a good friend of yours, or they are not. Finding out doesn't change which is the case. Some say ignorance is bliss. I prefer to know.

CitizenCane -> RE: D/s and Asperger's Syndrome (7/3/2007 6:05:35 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Aswad My issue is not with NTs having, or using, empathy. It is with not distinguishing between emotional logic and rational logic. Both are valid and important tools, but for different uses. In the IT field, and probably most engineering fields, a strong concept in those who do well, is "use the right tool for the job". We collect tools in our toolboxes, and pick the one that best fits the problem we have been given. The same applies for rational logic vs emotional logic. Emotional logic is well suited to picking goals and so forth. It fills in the blanks, and has a lot of utility in this sense. Priorities and motivation flow easily from emotion, and that is something it probably should do, in most cases. This does not necessarily lead to very uniform goals or whatever, but it does lead to a direction that is suited for the individual in question. Rational logic is well suited to reaching the goal. For instance, if your emotions tell you that life has value, then rational logic is what will best be able to secure life. This is the place where people tend to go wrong, and probably where the proverb "the road to hell is paved with good intentions" originates. Emotions have originated a valid problem, but then NTs use emotion to guide them to a "solution", which often just aggravates the problem, or deflects it temporally or spatially. Note that I do not sort instinct under emotional logic. If something calls out "there is something wrong here", then chances are there is, and you just haven't found out what yet. Back to the drawing-board, find, fix, try again. My view is that rational logic should be the tool by which emotional needs are satisfied. One of the defining traits of humans is their ability to defer immediate gratification. Using logic, rather than emotion, to approach a solution is an extension of this. Otherwise, you end up with nonsense efforts that "feel good" but raise hell. The "national security" efforts in the US at present are a good example. Much of what we despise in history shows signs of the same thing. Emotions are good, but they don't solve problems on their own. Logic is good, but it doesn't do anything at all by itself. Used in tandem, the two can accomplish very much. I wonder if this is part of what yin / yang means. With yang as emotion, and yin as logic. The interplay as enlightened life. I could just be odd, though. I think we're in pretty solid agreement, although I actually make an effort to be less precise than you about many things. I quoted the last part of your post because I think it's very clear and correct (although I would use the word 'instinct' differently than you- you seem to be using it to refer to a sub- or unconscious assessment of a situation, where I would use it to refer to genetically driven behavioral tropisms). Emotional reasoning on it's own is certainly dangerous stuff, which is one of the reasons trauma-based reasoning tends to be pretty faulty. The amygdala just isn't big or sophisticated enough to carry the load of complex, long-term thinking. The major point I was trying to stress though, was that since we live in a world full of people, AS or NT or whatever, who almost all have strong emotions, it's in our interest to have a good understanding of what those are and how they work. NTs tend to be very ignorant about aspie thinking (hopefully that will change over time); but most, in my experience, are willing to find out about and adapt to it when it's brought to their attention in a constructive way (and the people involved are significant to them). Of course, they aren't always all that successful at really understanding, and even when they do understand, it's difficult to change old habits and assumptions. This is just as true for aspies, perhaps more so due to a tendency toward inflexibility and the predictable results of the negative experiences they recieve from NTs, so I'm not overly optimistic that the NT world is going to become aspie-friendly any time soon, or that aspies in general will get all warm and mushy about NTs, but I do have hopes that, like racism and sexism, a lot of the difficulties between NTs and aspies will fade as new generations are raised with better information and less ego-centric expectations.

Aswad -> RE: D/s and Asperger's Syndrome (7/3/2007 6:14:47 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: teamnoir Aspies have a tendency to hyper-focus. Kind of like the opposite of ADD. ~bzzzt~ Wrong. Would you like to play again? [:D] ADD is my primary problem, with PDD-NOS as secondary; effectively, it's one thing, but the pdocs need two labels to stick in their charts, otherwise they won't be happy, and neither will the computer systems this stuff goes into. I know a lot of people who have only the ADD side of things, and have studied it extensively. Some types of ADD can truly be described as inattentive. Most types of ADD cannot, depending on how you define "inattentive". Many types of ADD feature hyperfocus, of the exact same nature and extent as for aspies. Not to be nitpicking or anything, but ADD is as misunderstood as Asperger's. quote: Much of the traditional vacuousness attributed to autistics can be explained in terms of perseveration, (the formal name for hyperfocus). Depends on the kind of autism. In some cases, particularly the "fully withdrawn" ones, I think you would see a reversal of some of that vacuousness, and much of the introversion / withdrawal, by administering a µ-antagonist, possibly along with a κ-antagonist. That's just speculation on my part, though, based on my experiences with opioids, and those of aspies I know. quote: For anyone who's interested, there's a thriving community of aspergers folks on livejournal that's really quite super. There's tons of aspie communities online, ranging from the purely aspie newsgroups, to the mixed ones, like Jerod's site (CrazyMeds). IIRC, Jerod himself is an aspie, although he also has the distinction of being one of the überspazzen, i.e. he also has enough other disorders to make a mini-DSM of his own.

Aswad -> RE: D/s and Asperger's Syndrome (7/3/2007 6:50:23 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: CitizenCane I think we're in pretty solid agreement, although I actually make an effort to be less precise than you about many things. Solid agreement? I think I lost another cherry. [sm=biggrin.gif] (Please pardon the language, and the coarseness of the joke, I'm feeling a bit bubbly today.) Could you elaborate on the bit about making an effort to be less precise? I do try to avoid excessive precision sometimes, but I'd like to compare notes. quote: I quoted the last part of your post because I think it's very clear and correct Thanks. quote: (although I would use the word 'instinct' differently than you- you seem to be using it to refer to a sub- or unconscious assessment of a situation, where I would use it to refer to genetically driven behavioral tropisms). Correct. I sometimes use it the same way you do, but in this context, I was talking about those sensations (not entirely cognitions) that sometimes enter the mind unbidden. quote: Emotional reasoning on it's own is certainly dangerous stuff, which is one of the reasons trauma-based reasoning tends to be pretty faulty. Not just trauma-based reasoning, but also the larger phenomena, whose name I don't know. For instance, after WW2, the sun-cross is outlawed in Germany, Roman salutations are quite universally frowned upon in Western civilizations, and eugenics is entirely taboo. Those are the negative responses, while the positive ones would include the introduction of ethical standards in medical research, the initiation of the Milgram experiments, and so forth. The sun-cross is nothing more than a religious symbol, that the Nazis twisted for their own use. Roman salutations are sanitary and aesthetic; a lot of my peers use them exclusively, but only the cæsar's side of the salutation, since anything else would have the police breathing down our necks. There is no implication of sympathy with nazism involved. It is simply a respectful, convenient and sanitary way to greet someone, and more aesthetic than shaking hands. Eugenics are certainly a sensitive topic. But the taboo aversion to it makes discourse about it nearly impossible, meaning no reasonable standards can emerge. As a result, those places where it is taboo will not even touch it, and those places where it is not will employ it indiscriminately. Neither is necessarily the most constructive approach. It is a complex topic, both ethically and otherwise, but not thinking about something has rarely been the best way to deal with that thing. Again, not sure what this is called, but it is definitely related to the trauma response. quote: The amygdala just isn't big or sophisticated enough to carry the load of complex, long-term thinking. ~nod~ That, and it does not have the facilities for analysis, IIRC. Most analysis, as I recall, is performed by the neocortex, using a highly repetitive pattern that performs what is known as a HSM algorithm. These have now been replicated in computers, by the way; a software package implementing them is available for research and commercial use. quote: The major point I was trying to stress though, was that since we live in a world full of people, AS or NT or whatever, who almost all have strong emotions, it's in our interest to have a good understanding of what those are and how they work. Clearly. Leaving the state of human knowledge in the field at merely pushing the big buttons for personal gain (politics, advertising, etc.) is counterproductive in the extreme. And, like NTs, aspies also need to get over the "y'all are odd, I don't want to deal with y'all" response, in the long term. Short-term, it can be a way to find mental relief, but it doesn't change anything for the better. quote: I do have hopes that, like racism and sexism, a lot of the difficulties between NTs and aspies will fade as new generations are raised with better information and less ego-centric expectations. That would be pretty nice, for everyone. There are constructive roles in even NT societies for aspies, but they are rarely filled. For instance, aspies might be highly suited to colony ships, if humanity ever gets to the point where they decide to spread the eggs around different baskets. The rigid discipline required, and the hard survival decisions that might have to be made along the way and after settling, are much more suited to the aspie mind than the NT mind. Many aspies can also be content with a lot less social interaction, relieving the need for a huge crew for that particular purpose, although one would still need a way to prevent the problems associated with a limited gene pool. I think aspies would be less reluctant to go the route of using artificial insemination, though, which would reduce the space needed to carry a larger gene pool.

Kumasan -> RE: D/s and Asperger's Syndrome (7/3/2007 9:54:16 PM)
I really have nothing to add to this conversation apart from my thanks to everyone for the discussion. I've felt I have a mild case of undiagnosed AS for several years now, since I first read of it. I follow a lot of the symptomology closely for some things (fantastic memory for trivia, very high intelligence, difficulty interacting in unfamiliar situations, dislike of talking on the telephone, etc.) enough to really think it possible. Yet there are many things that I don't track with (inability to empathize, misunderstanding of sarcasm, etc.) that I'm also never quite sure. But either way, it comforts me a great deal to know that there are other people out there who are at least similar to me in a lot of ways. It kind of reminds me of when I found out there was a larger population of people out there who actually liked to tie up willing girls and there were willing girls out there who wanted to be tied up!! And all the time before, I thought I was just weird. No, I'm not weird. I'm not weird for being a Dom who loves the lifestyle and I'm not weird for being a guy who has AS and has still lived a good and full life and is really proud of being a little "eccentric" to other people out there. Thanks again.

teamnoir -> RE: D/s and Asperger's Syndrome (7/4/2007 12:13:38 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Najakcharmer From the AS point of view, you have it dead on except for this: I need to be walked through your expectations in a completely literal, deadpan and factual manner, not because there is a gap in my understanding, but because there is a gap in your communication. I am not psychic and I do not speak your bizzare, contradictory and non-factual emotive version of the language. I don't understand your culture-specific allusions to "like you should" or "what is proper" or "an appropriate length of time" or "just the right distance". Minutes, seconds, inches and feet please. I'm not from around here. Nicely put. quote: I am completely blind to the social cues that you read like an open book, so if you refer to them and expect me to use them as landmarks, that's like telling a deaf person to wait until he hears Beethoven before doing something that you want him to do. You'll be waiting a long time. Thank you for restricting your comment to you. Personally, I am capable of learning nonverbals, have done so, and do so fairly well now. There's a hypothesis that aspies aren't blind to nonverbals - rather, we see a larger number of nonverbals and just don't know which ones are expected to be conventionally ignored. I know this is frequently true for me and is one of the reasons that I am successful with NLP - I notice small nonverbal discrepancies that most people miss. quote: I'm aware that it can be extremely frustrating to deal with someone who is literally blind to the social cues and nuances that you can read and understand effortlessly, where you must explain in endlessly precise micromanagement terms what is socially appropriate and what is socially inappropriate. It is equally frustrating on the AS side to deal with people who try to communicate with cryptic games and coded ritual babble instead of just saying what they mean, and who constantly expect you to perform a feat that is the literal equivalent of responding to musical cues when you are partly or completely deaf. I'm not sure I like the musical analogy here. I'm not deaf. I'm capable of learning to read nonverbals and of understanding social cues. The way in which I'm different is that I didn't pick that stuff up shearly by osmosis as most NT's seem to have done. Instead, I need it specifically and explicitly handed to me. But I can learn it. And that counters the "deaf" analogy. quote: Whose "fault" is it when NT's and AS expectations clash? Most likely neither, or both. If you're an NT, it's a mistake to arrogantly blame the AS just because you're "normal" and they're not. Of these two sets of brain wiring, a lot of us who are on the AS side like ours a hell of a lot better and feel that it adds rather than subtracts from the richness and satisfaction of our life experience. It is the responsibility of both people in the communication, not just one, to speak in a way the other can clearly understand. We're also not as rare as people used to think. I believe the current cdc number is one in 88 boys are diagnosable as aspies given the current diagnostic criterion, (which suck). When better criterion are developed, I expect that number to jump considerably. My own estimates are more like 7% of the north american population. That would make aspies a minority only slightly smaller than the number of african americans in the US - and only slightly smaller than the number of gay people in the US.

teamnoir -> RE: D/s and Asperger's Syndrome (7/4/2007 12:24:31 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: CitizenCane Well, one eye-opener for me here has been the large proportion of reported and self-reported female aspies. I wonder now if the statistics I'm familiar with on the preponderance of male AS people are just bad data collection, perhaps having been skewed by the way in which Asperger's intersects with 'normative' male behavior. (I can imagine that milder cases of AS in males often develop more obvious symptoms because the behaviors have more parallels with male NT behaviors than is the case with females, for instance). Of course, there's a major epidemic of autistic-range disorders in this country, most likely fueled by environmental factors of some kind, and these factors may be less gender-sensitive than whatever the earlier, rarer triggers were. There are two major factors playing into the errors of the current figures. First, the diagnostic criterion for aspergers especially, but really all of the autism diagnoses suck. They basically can't be applied to adults. Many therapists and doctors understand this and thus hand out HFA or ASD (autistic spectrum disorder) diagnoses instead. Since the scientific community doesn't really have any objective way to determine who is or isn't aspergers, they don't really have any way to count us. Second, there's a questioon of pathology. Most of us participate in bdsm. That's why we're here, yes? And yet, only a small portion of us have ever been to see a doctor for our bdsm interests, much less do we have a "sadomasochism" diagnosis. Yet we're still bdsm folks, right? Well, the same is true of aspergers. Most aspies are sufficiently functional that we aren't pathological. We don't have a sufficiently driving need to seek a diagnosis. There's little to be done for us anyway, so for adults, the biggest reason for a diagnosis is simply validation, (or accomodations for those who are genuinely disabled). In the same way that a census of "sadomasochism" diagnosis wouldn't really count the number of people who are into bdsm, the number of people diagnosed with "aspergers syndrome" doesn't reallly count all of the aspies.

teamnoir -> RE: D/s and Asperger's Syndrome (7/4/2007 12:40:42 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Najakcharmer It's been suggested that AS is the next logical step in human evolution, freeing the intellect we have evolved from the now mostly useless and arbitrary constraints and compulsions of primate social behavior. I don't know as I'd accept that as being completely true, since AS is too closely linked to real and severe functional disabilities in many individuals. But autism does have sufficient eufunctionality and inherent advantage also linked to it that the trait has been successfully retained in the human genome. I have a related theory. Ever read any Larry Niven? Pak protectors? Basically, he posits a sci-fi universe in which human beings actually have three stages of life: infancy, adulthood, and protector. Pak is the name of the species which has these three phases. Unfortunately, pak protectors don't work so well with each other, being hugely stronger physically and intellectually than human adults, by somewhere around a factor of 100. And, pak protectors are only created when a pak protector helps a human adult to ascend. Earth, then, is an orphaned planet since we've been without a pak protector for millenia. So my related theory isn't one of evolutional progression, but rather evolutionary diversity. Aspies are the shaman, the outriders, the explorers. We ride ahead of the herd, off to the side, and behind it. We're not "normal", but the normal people wouldn't exist without us. We don't replace them so much as we complete them. Or as one clever poster in the lj aspergers community put it, "without us, y'all would still be partying in dank, dark caves".

teamnoir -> RE: D/s and Asperger's Syndrome (7/4/2007 12:45:41 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: LittleWolvenOne In general, a submissive (or dominant) who as Aspergers Syndrome would need very clear VERBAL communication. They seem to need the "bottom line" as some people say. They frequently don't use/understand slang or sarcasm. This is because of the lack of ability to interpret non verbal cues. They can be very shy or have social anxiety. They can some times feel overwelmed by stimulus, such as back ground noise, crowds, etc. This some times results in a "disconnect" where they become easily confused. Usually this would be a good time to have them "center" and "focus" on thier submission and have come back when they can think clearly. They will usually need a place of stillness and they can go to to recollect them selves. They can also have a strong need for routine or structure. It is common for people with Aspergers syndrome to be perfectionist who feel the need for approval and a verbal verification that what they are doing is correct. When in groups, there will some times where they may not understand some thing that others take for granted or learn by observing. It can also be a really good idea to have them look for a service that can become specialisation as people who have asperger's syndrom have a tendency towards a specialised interest that very few other's share. This can also also be a downside because they can also become obsessive over a fetish or activity such as leather or shoes, if that is thier thing. This is too simplistic to be accurate. We are capable of learning. Personally, I'm an engineer by trade and education. But I'm also a certified practitioner, certified master practitioner, and certified health practitioner of Neuro-Linguistic Programming, (NLP), a certified hypnotherapist, an ordained minister, a certified sex educator, and I'm working on a certificate to teach tantra, (although I've been teaching bdsm sex magick for over a decade.) I lead people all the time, whether from dom space or not. I often do so nonverbally. And I'm an aspie.

teamnoir -> RE: D/s and Asperger's Syndrome (7/4/2007 12:53:13 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: CitizenCane Clearly there is a genetic component to AS and other forms of autism, but the evidence is strong that environmental factors are at least as, and probably vastly more, significant in the majority of cases. The instances of the more severe forms of autism (which are easier to track) have been increasing exponentially and cannot be due to purely genetic factors. AS is only recently becoming well recognized, so it's difficult to determine to what degree that population is increasing or whether it's simply a matter of better reporting, but my interpretation of trends is that it, to, is rising sharply at a rate not explainable by random pairings of existing alleles. Having lived through the "discovery" of the epidemic of childhood sexual abuse... Having lived through the "discovery" that multiplicity, (ie, DID or MPD), is no where near as "rare" as was once thought... And seeing that the current diagnostic criterion for autism suck... I'm not convinced of any of these things. I think the rising numbers will continue to rise for some time precisely because the medical community hasn't even figured out how to tell which of us are aspies yet. I'm not ruling out an environmental component. I'm just saying that we have so many variables in flux that it's far, far too early to think that there's even anecdotal evidence for this.

teamnoir -> RE: D/s and Asperger's Syndrome (7/4/2007 1:00:01 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: GeekyGirl I'll grant you that Aspies might be able to learn empathy via some mathlike-logic...but why in the world would we WANT to? I originally started that process myself because I thought it would make me a better top. I was working on it under that pretense for over 15 years before I ever heard about aspergers. Think of it as a play toy. Or as a simple skill for enhancing bdsm play.

teamnoir -> RE: D/s and Asperger's Syndrome (7/4/2007 1:04:47 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: petdave Word of advice- "Do you know who the father is?", despite displaying interest in the conversation, and even when delivered with positive inflection, is not the "right" first response. Sigh. A local scene "couple" is pregnant. And a local group has set up a baby pool for betting on birth day, time, weight, length, etc. I thought it was hilarious to ask if I could bet on paternity, and apparently some people agreed, although a few became strangely outraged. Seems to me it's only funny if you believe the couple is completely in control of planning their pregnancy, (which I presume). And it's only offensive if you suspect otherwise.

teamnoir -> RE: D/s and Asperger's Syndrome (7/4/2007 1:07:44 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: rhythmboi i ain't convinced, y'all...in the war-ridden society we live in, i think empathy would go alot farther than bluntness or logic as far as creating peace and equality. bombing the crap about of people has been logically justified again and again, but it doesn't stand up much to empathizing with those who are getting bombed. it's unfortunate that those in political power don't use (or perhaps have) empathy skills. You've got it backwards. It's emotional persuasion that leads to pointless loss. Calculated strategy is a completely different issue. quote: a related question: is not being able to experience empathy the same thing as not having a conscience? in that case, is AS a kind of sociopathy? It's a misnomer to say that we lack empathy. I have empathy and compassion. What I lack is strong skills for expressing empathy or validation. I've been working on my validation skills for over a decade but I still suck at it.

teamnoir -> RE: D/s and Asperger's Syndrome (7/4/2007 1:15:12 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: GeekyGirl I have very definate ideas of right and wrong...For example, "stealing is wrong". "Murder is wrong." "Rape is wrong." "Breaking the law is wrong." etc. I have no problem forming a conscience and feeling "right from wrong". I was this absolute when I was younger. However, as I've aged, I've come to the conclusion that all moral decisions are situational. For each of the wrongs you list, I can construct a situation in which I would take that action, do so willingly and without hesitation. There's a logic loop here. If you define "murder" in terms of the thing that's wrong, then if killing someone isn't necessarily wrong, you'd be forced to come up with another word for it, (like execution or war). Mine has a logic loop too. If I would do it, then I can't allow myself to conclude that it is "wrong". That's part of how I, personally, deal with shame and guilt.

teamnoir -> RE: D/s and Asperger's Syndrome (7/4/2007 1:19:17 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: cloudboy People with that syndrome have a hard time connecting to others and relating to anyone on a emotional level. I think a sub with aspergers looks to a Domme for structure and protocols. Absent those, he might otherwise find women bewildering and confusing. This isn't true for me. I find women more or less understandable, actually. At least, any confusion I experience around them doesn't seem to be related to their gender. And I do indeed connect with people on an emotional level. I do it well enough that I teach it. (tantra).

teamnoir -> RE: D/s and Asperger's Syndrome (7/4/2007 1:23:57 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: HalloweenWhite Er....ok, you may have already thought of this, but anyway. My neice has Aspegers, but she's only seven, My sister is kind of an expert on it. If you think it's any use to you, I'd br happy to help you;if you have specific questions about the condition I could pick My sister's brains and suggest books/websites, things like that to you based on what My sister knows. At this point in time there's a huge gulf between the information available on childhood aspergers and the information available on adult aspergers. Since AS only hit the DSM in 1994, anyone born much before that missed the window for being diagnosed as children. So there's an entire epoch of people born before that who largely haven't been diagnosed, and theres a huge wave of children born after that who, by and large, actually have been caught by the public school system and diagnosed, (often accurately). Since these children are not currently responsible for their own well being, (ok, some of them are aging into early adulthood now), there's a strange political gulf as well. What I'm trying to say here is that we're discussing adult aspergers and adult aspergers really is a significantly different experience and a significantly different phenomenon at this point in time due to the history of the diagnosis.

teamnoir -> RE: D/s and Asperger's Syndrome (7/4/2007 1:37:54 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Aswad Asperger's is distinct from autism. There are highly functioning and poorly functioning individuals in both groups, and the view that it is a form of highly functioning autism is a minority opinion in the professional community, as far as I know. This minority view can be confusing, as it increases the incidence of people being diagnosed as one thing when they should be diagnosed as the other, leaving laypeople with the impression that the groups are the same. This isn't strictly true. In the DSM-IV, aspergers is listed as a type of autism. And adult aspies generally consider themseives to be autistic or autists. The comparison comes from the political divide between adult aspies and parents of autistic children. Aspies often claim to speak for autistics, including autistic children. And parents of autistic children are often quick to point that out that since adult aspies CAN speak coherently, they are clearly in a different kettle of fish than their children, who cannot. They often use the aspergers/autism division to describe that difference, although it's a misnomer by DSM standards. That aspergers is typically a form of HFA is not a minority opinion at all, but essentially a consensus of both autistic people and professionals. Most adult aspies continue to identify as autistic, in part due to the political solidarity with these autistic children. There's a good overview on this in wikipedia, as I recall. quote: One of the most prominent differences is with regards to language. The language distinction is one of the bogus requirements. This has essentially been discarded now with respect to adults because this history is generally not available for them.

teamnoir -> RE: D/s and Asperger's Syndrome (7/4/2007 1:43:03 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: GeekyGirl Aswad, you sound like you're saying that aspies should be taught that it's ok to lie sometimes. It's not. Ever. I disagree. Lying is an endemic part of our culture. Everyone does it. Even you. Lying to one's self, dissociation, forgetfulness, are a natural part of our psyche's defense mechanisms. The real questions are around when, how, and to what end people lie. There's also a lot of semantic wiggle room about what constitutes a lie. I tend to have a pretty flexible definition of the "truth", but then, I don't really believe in objective truth anymore either.

teamnoir -> RE: D/s and Asperger's Syndrome (7/4/2007 1:59:01 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Aswad quote: ORIGINAL: bladedom A very high percentage of softare developers suffer from the syndrome, or it could be stated that software development is one career that is suited to such folks. No, the percentage is not very high. I disagree. I went to a prominent engineering school and I've been working with engineers throughout my career. I live in silicon valley. And I can assure you that the percentage of aspies here is significantly higher than it is in other parts of the country. I can also assure you that the companies I work with and for typically contain 30-80% aspies or people I suspect of being aspies. Most of them are neither diagnosed nor self identified. The difference has been recognized colloquially for at least 60 or 70 years. Those of us who are different recognized each other long before aspergers hit the DSM. When I was in college, we simply talked about the engineers vs the people who were just there learning engineering to use as a 9 - 5 job. Ironically, when I started talking with an older coworker about it recently, that was his take as well. He said, "Oh, but all the good engineers are like that." And I had to defend the NT engineers. We also have a significantly higher rate of autism in the local children than most areas of the country have. Autistics breeding with autistics produce more and even more strongly affected autistics. It's one of the anecdotal data points for the heredity of autism. Recent aspergers experts also claim that roughly 95% of self identified aspies really are AS. There's very little in the way of secondary gains for claiming the syndrome. Yes, there are people who attempt to claim AS as a causal agent, ("It wasn't me, it was my AS what dun it"), but this is a pretty transparent ruse used by people of all neurotypes. I've heard it used at least once on this thread already.

Aswad -> RE: D/s and Asperger's Syndrome (7/4/2007 8:06:50 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: teamnoir There's a hypothesis that aspies aren't blind to nonverbals - rather, we see a larger number of nonverbals and just don't know which ones are expected to be conventionally ignored. I know this is frequently true for me and is one of the reasons that I am successful with NLP - I notice small nonverbal discrepancies that most people miss. Hmm... [sm=idea.gif] Actually, now that you mention it, a lot of the compensation mechanisms that many aspies develop are actually dependant on clues that are fairly subtle. At least, a lot more subtle than the clues they aren't picking up. ~g~ Related, when me and nephandi see people, we sometimes point out to each other things like people whose body dynamics indicate a specific kind of martial art. When an NT friend of ours, with longer MA experience than ourselves, is with us, he doesn't spot it without help, and it takes him longer to analyze. This also helps to spot when someone is playing at something they are not. For instance, people who try to project a different body language than they usually have, just seem "wrong", it's like you have shoehorned a different person into that body, and it can be kind of disconcerting, depending on how divergent their signals are from the situation. I'm not sure if Ekman did anything regarding this, but he covered the face pretty well, and found that it is almost impossible to cover up fake signals without tons of practice with an external person and a high-speed camera. quote: But I can learn it. And that counters the "deaf" analogy. In theory, yes. In practice, no. In practice, it's more like your deafness has spontaneously remitted. See, you can learn it, yes. As can most aspies. But until and unless someone teaches them, they well and truly are deaf. It's like putting wax buds in someone's ears while they are a baby. For all practical purposes, they are deaf until someone removes the wax buds. Deaf is an apt analogy, because one has grown up without any notion of what the "missing sense" can convey, and without building anything on top of that "sensory" input. When you suddenly start to get that input, because someone has taught you, there is already a lot of stuff "missing". Things that you would have built on top of the "social sense" from childhood, if you had been completely taught early on. I would very much like to see what an adult aspie would be like if, as a child, s/he had been diagnosed using the eye-following test, and taught to notice all these little clues by someone who understands both sides of the divide pretty well. I suspect there would be major differences. From the aspie mindset (strict), it counters the deaf analogy. From the NT mindset (looser), it does not. And aspies are explaining to NTs here. Hence, the analogy is apt. quote: My own estimates are more like 7% of the north american population. That would make aspies a minority only slightly smaller than the number of african americans in the US - and only slightly smaller than the number of gay people in the US. Interestingly enough, it would also make it a genetically distinct population, with a migration pattern that corresponds to the hybridization hypothesis. From my own observations, Norway has an abundance of "village originals" (semi-literal translation of the term) and other "quirky" people whose behaviour and thinking fits very well with what I would expect from aspies. These are, obviously, undiagnosed at the moment; in order to get any mental diagnosis up here, you need to have a clinically significant impairment by your own standards, or be a threat to yourself or people around you, which means you can fit the criterion, but still go home with no diagnosis. If we assume that my observations are correct, it would match the hybridization hypothesis' prediction that the northern regions should have more aspies, more autistics, and more ADHD'ers. As a side note, I think it would be better to remove the syndrome, and put up a new axis instead. Basically, one to hold different neurological wirings that aren't necessarily illnesses; there might be others. Then one puts the problems associated with being an aspie in there as diagnoses instead. That would probably result in better tailoring of the treatments. Of course, it would also require a paradigm shift from parent-centric to patient-centric, which will never happen as long as parents pay the bills, so...

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