Autism and Digital Life: Managing Identity
by DJ Gallagher
(Or Why I Don’t Mention AS On Dating Websites)
I’m aiming to make this entry the first in a series on using the Internet as an aspie. As someone who lives and works largely on the Net–my job is to create products that help businesses define and market themselves online–I’ve thought a lot about the topic of this post. The Internet and I came of age together. It has been a huge force for positive change in my life, and it’s hard now to imagine functioning day-to-day without it. That said, it is also a place where people can be misunderstood, hurt and abused in new (and very real) ways, so some caution and sophistication is needed.
It’s important to be aware of the distinct identities you create when you use online services and websites: of how public they are, how identifiable they are, what they reveal about you, how connected they are to each other, and how to control them. My generation tends to be good at this. Most of the aspies that I know are ahead of the curve, and are adept at managing their identities; but they’re programmers and engineers. I don’t know what level of skill is really typical. So for starters, I’ll try not to get bogged down in the minutiae, and just describe from a bird’s-eye how I go about managing my own identity. And we’ll see where that gets us. Read the rest of this post »
September 16, 2010
Posted in: AS Community & Culture, AS Information & Support
Tags: dating, identity, search, social media, social networks, web
2 Comments
Do Women With AS Have a “Male Disorder”?
by Nomi
Below is the beginning of an article I started writing before I got distracted and started writing something else. See what you think. – Nomi
Okay, I want to be perfectly honest about this: I do not believe autism is a “predominantly male disorder.”
I have, of course, an inherent bias: I am a woman with Asperger Syndrome.
I am not a particularly feminine woman; like most people with Asperger’s, I look down my nose at impractical fancy clothes, decorative accessories, frantic attempts at physical beauty, and other superficial tokens of femininity. Nonetheless, I have never identified as anything other than female, or as any less female than any other woman – and, apart from the cumbersome physical baggage of my sex (I am not, after all, planning to have children!), I really am quite content with being female. Read the rest of this post »
September 7, 2010
Posted in: AS Community & Culture, AS Information & Support, Life
Tags: AS, AS Community & Culture, Asperger's, autism, disorder, female, gender, girls, identity, male, Simon Baron-Cohen, women
3 Comments
Intro, Call for Contributions + Feedback
by DJ Gallagher
(Updated 8/31: new e-mail address)
Hey, all. My name’s DJ, and I recently volunteered to help out with content and Web presence here at AspBlogosphere. I’ll explain about that in a second.
First, a little about me: I am an adult with AS. I’ve got a blog of my own, and I program websites for a living. I’m from upstate NY, but after 7 years in the area I am a Boston techie through and through. I use the Internet to work, chat, read my voice mail, find food and find romance (and some other things with no real-world analogue). And from the local high-tech scene I have learned a great deal about identity and human variation. For instance, if you look closely and in the right places, you’ll see people with a hint of that recognizable peculiarity, that recklessly intense focus, everywhere; and they are using it to do terrifically important things.
Politically I’m something of a left-leaning, digital socialist egalitarian hippy, albeit tempered by the realities of a job in the marketing industry. On the question of religion, I believe in Java 1.6 on 64-bit Linux (a programmer’s joke; really, I’m agnostic). I will try not to let those beliefs, or my armchair psychology musings on the nature of AS–because hey, who doesn’t have his share of those–upstage the core message of my anecdotes here.
If pressed, I would loosely summarize that message as follows. Persist; adapt; deconstruct; defy classification. Blossom. Read the rest of this post »
August 26, 2010
Posted in: AS Community & Culture, AS Information & Support, Life
Tags: blogging, contributing, dj, geeks, hippies, meta, web
3 Comments
Asperger Syndrome and the Quest for Truth
by Nomi
Hello again. I’ve been thinking a lot about Asperger Syndrome and values. Clearly, every Aspie’s value system is a little different. Nevertheless, I do think there are some common values or ideologies that unite Aspies and separate us from most Neurotypicals. The one thing I can put my finger on is TRUTH. For many Aspies, life is one long struggle for what is true or real. Not only do we abstain from lying and detest being lied to by others, we also feel an irresistible, itching urge to correct an untrue situation, any untrue situation – even if the untruth is something spoken by a teacher — and make it true. Hence, we correct our family members and get yelled at; correct our teachers and get punished; correct police officers and get arrested. Read the rest of this post »
August 13, 2010
Posted in: Life, Uncategorized
Tags: Asperger's, atheist, audience etiquette, autism, culture, life, quest, real, reality, scientist, search, true, truth, value
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