Urban Myth re: Autistic Shooter

Here's a piece from the New York Times regarding a
new and (for persons like me) scary urban myth on the
apparent relationship (more apparent than real, I hope)
between persons with autism spectrum disorders and the
perpetration of violent crime:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/12/op...c-shooter.html

"You can categorize such people as having a common madness only if your criterion for madness is their behavior itself. To say that you’d have to be crazy to shoot up a school is not the same as saying that crazy people are predisposed to kill. Fewer than 5 percent of gun crimes are committed by people with mental illness; fewer than 5 percent of people with mental illnesses commit violent crimes.

Tarring the autistic community in this manner — like presuming that most black people are thieves or that most Muslims are terrorists — is an insidious form of profiling. It exacerbates the tendency for people with autism to be excluded, teased and assaulted in childhood and adulthood."

Wow...I can't believe some people are so narrow minded that they think that way. I'm glad this person, and hopefully others like them, are standing up and telling it like it is. It killed me to see that so many people feel this way...that's terrible!

Since this shooting I have heard a lot of comments. Like:

We need to lock them up for good (all autistic people). Autistic people are worse than psychopaths. Autistic people are soulless. Autistic people are the most selfish you can ever meet. There is nothing good about autistic people but society is trying to fool us that they are cuddly and friendly.

I will save the more triggering comments.

But just so you know it, we're worse than psychopaths. Sigh.

I think people don't understand exactly what defines psychopathy and how that is so different from autism.

As implied in the article, autistic people usually don't know that the way they're acting is inappropriate unless someone explicitly tells them, whereas psychopaths don't care that their behavior is inappropriate. Autistic people struggle with empathy, struggle to understand what other people are feeling (although once they do understand their response is usually pretty strong, although that in itself might not coincide with a neurotypical's expectation of an empathetic response); psychopaths don't care how you feel unless it serves their purposes.

Society has taught me, personally, that I need to fear the mentally ill, not for my sake but for theirs. One of my high school bandmates's brother is medium-functioning autistic. Society says I shouldn't interact with him because 1) he's weird (always a valid justification ) and 2) I might freak him out with my apparent normalness or say something wrong thus triggering a meltdown which would be extremely traumatic for him and embarrassing for both of us.

Some time ago I watched a comedy routine by this Australian who was talking about gun control. Other than his dig on Aspergians (summary in trigger tags), it was actually pretty hilarious. And what he said might work if America were a perfect country. But it isn't, and gun control politics isn't what this topic is about.


Moving on.


We could go the more paranoid route and consider that the psychopaths of the world might be spreading these lies around so as to give ignorant people another group of people to hate thus forgetting about the psychopaths and leaving them to do as they please.

Let's do some quick substition:
Then the psychopaths of the world open up a dialogue. "Noooo," they say. "We're not soulless creatures! We're just misunderstood. We are cute and cuddly!" And because many psychopaths are well-versed in acting like normal people and are so charismatic and loud and self-assured, people believe them.

Whereas autistic people are awkward, bumbling, stuttering (or completely nonverbal) nutters and nobody should believe them because they don't look, sound, act the part.

I need to stop before this post becomes a mile long like my others.

Take your time, and don't be afraid to speak up if and when you have more to say.

And me? The best image I can think of regarding living with an ASD starts with tunnel vision (an image most people can recognize, at least). Then, imagine the walls of that tunnel lined with funhouse mirrors (the kind that split your reflection a dozen ways or ridiculously distort your appearance).
To make the image clearer still, imagine yourself looking down the tunnel I just described at your own actions or conduct. You do something, but you don't know enough to trust how other people would react to your actions and thus complete the first "turn." Then, you take your second turn, trying to explain your actions--only to run into the idea that your very attempt to explain what you did makes your original action (the one you did during your first turn) inauthentic. Self-doubt, anxiety, and ultimately depression seem
to be natural consequences of such a situation; however, am I supposed or expected to feel that way?

Thank you for your post, in any case.

Probably the best example I've seen....so true.

This is quoted from a email I received from a website I really like, The Asperger Experts:

We need to talk.

It was recently revealed that the Christopher Harper-Mercer, the suspect in last week's school shooting in Oregon, had Asperger's Syndrome.

Why is this relevant? It's not, but people seem to want to believe it is.

So, let me clear up a few things. Just so we can't possibly be clearer.

A person, a troubled, tormented person, stormed into a school and killed almost a dozen people because he chose to do so. It was a choice that he made in that moment. It wasn't Asperger's that killed those people. It was a man who saw no way out and chose to take as many people with him as he could.

It's heartbreaking.

It's terrifying.

It's absolutely awful in every conceivable way.

My heart bleeds for the people who bled that day.

But you know what?

That's not the real issue.

An epidemic grips our nation, wringing it free of the dignity and integrity on which it once prided itself.

It's not the flu.

It's not smallpox.

It's ignorance.

We assign blame so prematurely, so readily it's absolutely terrifying.

Tragedy does this. It plants seeds of anger that immediately erupt into big, terrible thoughts, actions, and feelings that point fingers at the innocent and ingore the true culprit. It informs, feeds, and fuels ignorance in the most terrible, subversive way it can.

We react rather than respond.

We blame rather than bleed.

We are so focused on hating whoever committed such a heinous crime that we forget to love and bleed for those who lost someone or something that day.

Blaming Asperger's (or mental illness) won't bring those students back. In fact, it will take even more of them from us. Hate breeds more hate. That's the simple truth of it.

Our attempts to make sense of such a troubling turn of events are actually pushing us farther away from a solution.

Harper-Mercer took those lives because he felt alienated, misunderstood. How do you think this newest misunderstanding will go over?

I say this not to be cruel, punitive, or judgemental. I say this because I want us to focus on what's important, on what we're really here for.

And that's love.

Love for the sake of loving. Give for the sake of giving. Be for the sake of being. Chaos only wins if we lose sight of what's important.

Love is, has been, and always will be the bottom line.

Look what I found:

The Hidden Suffering of the Psychopath | Psychiatric Times

That didn't take long.

Everyone is a victim.

Quote:

Originally Posted by -jimi- Since this shooting I have heard a lot of comments. Like: We need to lock them up for good (all autistic people). Autistic people are worse than psychopaths. Autistic people are soulless. Autistic people are the most selfish you can ever meet. There is nothing good about autistic people but society is trying to fool us that they are cuddly and friendly. I will save the more triggering comments. But just so you know it, we're worse than psychopaths. Sigh.

LOL People actually believe that? Comments like that actually make me laugh. You know, not laugh-laugh but laugh-laugh, like a real evil laugh, like totally demonic and sh--t, because I'm like totally evil and sh--t.

(That's me trying to talk like a neurotypical )

It's funny they say "we should lock them up for good". Oh, if they only knew that that is exactly what they've done already, a long time ago! Without physical walls, chains and a locked door, just by belief and paranoia alone.