But seriously, is there anybody out there? Probably no, since this blog has been, shall we say, dormant?
I’ve committed the serious misstep of going where the audience seems to be rather than writng and letting the audience come to me. But as my blog continues to cobweb over itself and my facebook posts get longer and wordier it occurs to me that perhaps I should just freaking write on my blog. And so. And so.
The world is full of people with Aspergers who are blogging about having Aspergers so I don’t know how much my voice is going to add to the chaos. If you read through the 10 years of this blog it’s probably apparent to you that yes, I do indeed have Aspergers. As long apparent to you as it was to me and those who know me but not to medical science who took awhile to catch up with the differences between female Aspergians and male Aspergians. Basically, the females are the wordy ones, the ones who use 50 words where none will do. The stereotype of the silent, staring Aspergian is that of a male with the condition. So most female Aspergians are “weird” and “chatty” and “dress in baggy clothes” but aren’t what folks think of as oh-my-gosh-help-my-child-is-autistic.
I’m going into all of this because I feel like a lot of my life right now is spent in the act of trying to translate Aspergian into Neurotypical. Case in point: a photoshopped joke on Facebook. Twice now I’ve said “that’s photoshopped” and twice now I’ve gotten reamed by people who insist that I need to just let it go and accept that it’s funny.
Welcome to the Aspergian mind. If a joke is factually incorrect we cannot without great difficulty move to the point of saying “but it’s still funny” because all we see is that it is _not right_. Which, ok. You can think it’s funny. I don’t care. But you need to allow me to see the world my way and that way, the Aspergian way, is to say that “it isn’t funny TO ME because it’s obviously based on an incorrect premise.”
I’m not asking the Neurotypical world to stop considering things funny. I’m asking that you realise that I have just as much right to say it isn’t funny as you do to say it is. My voice and viewpoint are just as important. And no, this isn’t just about a joke. It’s about the way the world is when you have Autism Spectrum CONDITION. World, it’s only a disorder if we are harmful to ourselves or others.
So that’s what I’m blogging about today. I guess it’s slightly more palatable than God or politics. We’ll just have to see.
I haven’t been reading as much because you haven’t been posting here as much. 😉 (I read everything you blog.)
Yes, it’s been dead here. Which, if you read it all–and thank you–may be a welcome reprieve. 🙂
I’ll read you here, or there, or wherever you choose to write though I don’t really peruse the blogging circuit much these days so if you don’t post a link to Facebook, I may not even know you’ve posted here (though I’m totally gonna bust out my blogging handle for nostalgia’s sake).
You can count me as a NT who also doesn’t find photoshopped jokes funny (that is if the punchline requires the assumption that the photo manipulation is legit). If the joke IS the photoshopping, that can be funny (ie. Worth1000), but otherwise the dishonesty aggravates me.
Yes! I’m glad someone else gets it.
I had this EXACT thing play out twice over the exact same photoshopped picture.
I am happy that you’re back to writing in a longer form.
I love reading your blog. This is a well written explanation of Aspergers, but anyone should be allowed to find something unfunny regardless of condition!
I’m happy you’re writing somewhere that I read!
I’m not on the Asperger’s spectrum (that I know of), but I have the same reaction as you to jokes that depend on an incorrect premise — unless, of course, I am together (online or IRL) with a bunch of my friends engaging in hilarity based on the idea premises don’t matter.