Talk:Autistic culture

Not notable
this is not a notable subject matter come on now —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.10.105.239 (talk • contribs) 20:09, 31 May 2007

I believe something should be written about the history of autistic culture, although I am not knowledgable about its history, so it will need to be written by someone with more knowledge than I have. Q0 07:26, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I had to model after the Deaf culture article to write the "Is Autistic Culture a Real Culture" section. I hope this was ok. Q0 17:51, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)

The first guy is right, this article is pretty much a joke. A passing glance reveals that the article is self-serving and masturbatory. This article appeals to a very small group of people and the information contained within it is trivial, it should be deleted. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.15.51.214 (talk • contribs) 11:46, 18 July 2007

I disagree with those who say that the topic is not notable. However, I believe it would be more appropriate to merge this article into autistic community and/or sociological and cultural aspects of autism rather than to delete. Q0 08:04, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Unverified information in "Relation to Geeks and Nerds"
A quote from the article: "Unlike the Deaf culture, which recognizes and accepts many people who are hearing, the Autistic culture generally shuns neurotypical people (NTs), and the sentiment among the Autism rights movement generally considers people who have self-diagnosed to be part of a fad which considers Autism/Asperger's as a mere personality type."

That contains two separate assertions that are at odds with what I've seen of autistic culture, and one that is somewhat at odds with what I've seen of Deaf culture. There are no citations backing these things up, either.

Basically, there are segments of the Deaf community that do shun "hearies". And large segments that consider some hearies (especially hearing children of Deaf parents, and interpreters) part of Deaf culture. (I don't have a cite for that but I'm sure this could be found somewhere.) So there's a fair amount of diversity of opinion about hearing people among Deaf people, and while the statement as general is probably true, it shouldn't be used in contrast to autistic culture.

Because the segments of autistic culture that reject NTs are, like in the Deaf community, only small segments, with most of us not bearing any malice, hatred, rejection, etc towards NTs. Many people in the autistic community have had to go to great lengths to show that we do not in fact hate NTs. The following article: http://web.syr.edu/~jisincla/History_of_ANI.html is a history of one autistic community that was fairly formative for modern autistic culture, and they're explicit about not hating or shunning NTs. I'm sure if you look around you can find other citations that are equally explicit.

The second part of the statement that causes trouble, is that the sentiment among the autism rights movement generally considers people who have self-diagnosed to be part of a fad... etc. You'd again need to cite sources for that, and if you looked for sources, you'd find that there's a great diversity of opinion about self-diagnosis. One autistic man who does not as far as I know consider himself part of the autism rights movement urged conference organizers to verify an official diagnosis for all autistic people speaking at their conferences, and many people within the autistic community responded to this by refusing to show our official diagnosis as a display of solidarity with people who could not obtain one but were equally autistic. Many people in the autism rights movement signed that letter (in fact, more than are on there right now because I've been too busy to update the signatures): http://www.autistics.org/library/whoisautistic.html

So you'd have to find cites to back those statements up, and I suspect if you looked around, you'd find more cites (like the two I provided) refuting those statements.

Silentmiaow 15:14, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

External links section too big
I think the external links section is way too large. When the Aspergian Pride's list was separate from the external links section I thought that was ok because then people would still have a shorter list that is easier to go through. But now with the two links sections there is only one hard to sort through list. I think either the links needs to be divided back into separate "external links" and "aspergian pride links" sections like it was before, or the external links list needs to be cut shorter, or the external links section needs to be divided into subsections to make it easier to sort though. Q0 08:57, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * There shouldn't be any Aspergian Pride section. There should be only a list of relevant links. People have huge link lists and link farm in Eikipedia. Such lists are also against the purpose of Wikipedia.
 * I have tried to remove less relevant or minor links from this article, but some users keep putting them back without telling any reason. If this continues, I have to complain somewhere. -Hapsiainen 14:40, Mar 23, 2005 (UTC)
 * Most of the links here are already in the autism rights movement article anyway, so I think I'll remove all external links here except those specifically in the "autistic culture" category. Q0 21:21, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

views opposed to the existence of autistic culture
At the moment we've got a bare statement that some people dispute the existence of the autistic culture, but no explanation of these views. That section is in dire need of expansion. Are there any statements of that viewpoint that could be referred to? 195.224.75.71 16:39, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

Removal of the word aspiette
A protest about the instant deletion of the word aspiette:

Oy RN, you do realise that the word aspiette is a real word, it is part of autistic culture, and you have ABSOLUTELY NO RIGHT to undo my actions as you just did right now! This is supposed to be a world of free speech, and yet you just took away my right to put this word here! Geez mate!

(cur) (last) 08:09, 8 October 2005 RN (rv - aspiette was taken out by even Joe, so its obviously not used enough to be in the terms here....)

That is a VERY bad call - and if this goes away, I will contact the admin here! Kitkatsavvy

As the inventor of the word aspiette, I am very sad to see it being redirected to the "Autistic culture" section. Now RN, I don't care how much of a bigwig you THINK you are, this word does get used to call a female aspie an aspiette! Now why don't you GIVE me the right to have my word as it's own listing - just like it is right here - http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/aspiette. Now would you please give me a separate page for the word aspiette again or I will report you!


 * Dear Kitkat - Wikipedia is not the place for every new word that someone has coined - it is for widely established words in some form. Ryan Norton T 16:07, 8 October 2005 (UTC)


 * Respectfully Kitkatsavvy, if you can demonstrate from an authoritative source that it is used in prevalence, that word can stay. For example, if the word is printed in an authoritative source not on the internet, then it is considered factual and relevant to creating this encyclopedia. Otherwise, it will have to be removed, likely as a neologism. --HappyCamper 16:24, 8 October 2005 (UTC)


 * A Google search for the word shows only this:
 * A bunch of Italian documents, because "aspiette" is apparently a word in Italian
 * A bunch of web pages that say things like this:


 * "I AM the official inventor of the word Aspiette! There are some of you out there saying that just because my word aspiette is not in Google yet, it doesn't mean that it shouldn't be in the dictionary! Why do you trust your faith in google so much! Does that mean that from now ON, a word HAS to be FOUND in a search engine in order to be classified as a new word? I don't think so, and if you do, you are an absolute idiot who has defeated the whole purpose of inventing ITSELF!", see also  and


 * So basically, you made a word and you want it in the dictionary and wikiepedia. It doesn't work that way. Words get to be included in reference material when they have established significant usage. One or two people doesn't cut it. (If it did, all the goofy family slang my family has would qualify!) "Aspiette" can be shown to be used only by you and maybe one or two others. That's not appropriate for WP or the dictionary -- in fact, I think it should be removed from Wiktionary as well.


 * Anyone can invent a word. The hard point is to get your neologism used. Good luck with that. ManekiNeko | Talk 00:21, 11 October 2005 (UTC)


 * Personally, I'm not wild about turning "aspie" into a gendered adjective and a diminutive gender at that. I know there's controversy about the majority of autistics being male, and they're still trying to figure out if that's true or if there are just a lot of autistic girls slipping under the radar. Maybe that's why you want to have a gendered adjective stating I am not just autistic, I am a female autistic. It's the affix "ette" that bothers me. Most of the autistic women I know are anything but -ettes, and the only other thing "aspiette" brings to mind is something used for personal hygiene. I know this isn't the issue, and the real issue is that I've never seen "aspiette" before. It's going to have to be used a lot more, by a lot more people, before it can be considered part of the general jargon. Look at the trouble we've had getting people to accept that neurotypical is legitimate and not POV inspeak. Bluejay Young 02:47, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

209.129.49.65 03:21, 9 March 2006 (UTC) Prometheuspan 03:22, 9 March 2006 (UTC) I have Aspergers, and I am familiar with the issues. In this case, Neurotypical defies the conventions of neologism because it is a neccessary glossary word to even have a legit discussion. Aspiette is a pronoun affecation, and Aspie allready applies to both males and females. I think actually that you really accidentally ended the case when you called yourself the words originator. That means it is def a Neologism. Don't get me wrong, I am a pro Neologisim person, but the limits of writing >>textbooks<< aren't the fault of the Wikibookians or Wikimedia, they are the conventions the public has come to expect, and if we don't conform to those conventions, what we end up with is a whole lot of people that won't respect us. The truth be told, You have been given enormous berth, allready this is pushing the limit of the difference between a Encyclopedia and A collection of group memoirs. I'd like to see you continue, and I am fascinated and amused to find so many aspies here. Please quit beating the WikiPedianss about the ears for doing their jobs. As an interesting aside, there are fun ways to cheat. For instance, you could write a paragraph on Aspie culture, and include a bit about words and neologisms of that culture. In that context, you become simply a reporter of undisputable facts. 209.129.49.65 03:21, 9 March 2006 (UTC) Prometheuspan 03:22, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Merge
I noticed that someone merged autistic community and autistic culture without a discussion on the talk page. It is not appropriate to merge without discussion. First, there needs to be a proposal on the talk page, and people need a chance to state objections. Q0 18:44, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

To avoid duplication, please discuss the proposed merge in Talk:Autistic community. 195.224.75.71 09:49, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Insults
Can Autie and Aspie be used as insults like "You nigger loving Aspie/autie."?
 * Like "That page was written by one of those dumb auties" or "all those aspies ought to be locked up" -- that sort of thing? I have never yet heard it. Most people I knew who wanted to insult autistics called us retards or spastics because they didn't see the difference. --Bluejay Young 01:16, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Living away from metro areas
I think not living in a metropolitan area is one part of the culture.


 * What? Are you the person who wrote this:


 * Popular misconception is that autistic people live away from other people due to the lack of socialization, and their tendency to like solitude. For example, such as living in an rural area rather than a urban area, however there has been some autistics that can maintain living in suburb or large city like Los Angeles. However if an autistic lives in urban and/or suburban area he/she might be more prone to poverty and bullying, which is what most autistics suffer from. It is unknown why, but it has been proven that the closer an autistic is to a metropolitan area the more likely he/she will have more difficulty in life.


 * It has been "proven"? If so, you have to state by whom. Removed until further notice. --Bluejay Young 05:10, 25 August 2006 (UTC) Good golly, miss molly.....

More books to mention?
What about the hard sci fi novel "Distress" by Greg Egan? It has an explicitly aspie activist character, a main character who I think is aspie too, and an aspie narrative voice. There has been speculation about the author in an article about AS on Locus online, and a well-known technology pioneer who is though to be autistic has cited Egan as a favourite author.

What about all of those well-known autie and aspie autobiographies? THese are the most prominent form of literature about autistics.

Moved to talk page
I've moved this into the talk page, because frankly it looks like the person who added this was trying to start a discussion, which is not what Wikipedia articles are for.

Is autistic culture a real culture?
Not everyone agrees on what a culture is, or what should be its defining characteristics. However, most cultural anthropologists as of 2006 define a culture as follows: (1) Culture is based on symbols, abstract ways of referring to and understanding ideas, objects, feelings, or behaviors -— and the ability to communicate with symbols using language. (2) Culture is shared. People in the same society share common behaviors and ways of thinking through culture. (3) Culture is learned. While people biologically inherit many physical traits and behavioral instincts, culture is socially inherited. A person must learn culture from other people in a society. (4) Culture is adaptive. People use culture to flexibly and quickly adjust to changes in the world around them. (Source: Encarta article on culture)

Some argue that autistics are perhaps in the beginning stages of forming a real culture. Many features of what are commonly called cultures are visible in the autistic culture. There are shared beliefs, organisations, language, and art that are specific to the group, and there is a tendency to marry within the group. Autistic culture can be learned via the growing number of books and websites, and through gatherings such as Autreat. An ability to rely on other autistics for emotional reinforcement or pragmatic support may allow autistics to adjust more easily to the world-at-large. Jim Sinclair's history of Autism Network International includes an explanation of autistic culture.

Nevertheless, there are some who dispute the existence of an autistic culture. More discussion of this issue is required.

Robrecht 16:04, 16 April 2007 (UTC)


 * so pretty much what you're saying is it's some nerd shit that's come about thanks to internet groupthink / internet community mass reinforcement, i don't think that's exactly notable (not that this article is in any danger of being deleted with the "aspies" guarding it of course) 64.251.141.215 10:01, 29 July 2007 (UTC)


 * It should be noted that all I did was move this from the actual article to the talk page. I did not write this. Robrecht 12:29, 18 September 2007 (UTC)


 * As a matter of fact that is not what I meant at all. When I wrote those paragraphs, the article contained some mention of controversy over whether or not 'autistic culture' was a real culture, so I inserted a definition of what constitutes a culture according to current standards in anthropology. People could then judge for themselves. If there is need for the paragraphs to be removed that's fine, but there is no need to get hostile about it. Culture is not 'groupthink' and is not merely a question of 'mass reinforcement', that's the whole point of the definition. If you think the article as a whole should be deleted, then by all means propose a deletion and invite comment as per standard Wikipedia procedures. --Bluejay Young 20:22, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

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