Another important quote:

[xiphias]

From beccastareyes: "The autism spectrum and the jackass spectrum are disjoint."

I know some jackasses. I know some people on the autism spectrum. The overlap between the two sets is only as much as would be expected by chance. Having Asperger's, or any other autism-spectrum trait, is neither an excuse for being a jackass, nor a reason to be one. Autism doesn't make you a jackass, and my friends who are autism-spectrum aren't jackasses, nor does their autism push them toward jackassery.

If you act like a jackass and then say "it's not my fault; I have Asperger's", you're just plain wrong. Having Asperger's doesn't make you a jackass any more than being left-handed does.

Comments

[paper-crystals.livejournal.com]

I find most people when they get to a certain degree of asshole require special social skills in order to rise to that level of asshole. You need to be able to read subtle facial expressions very quickly and calculate from them very quickly as well as be a good liar. Typically people with Asperger's syndrome are far too worried about getting through everyday interactions without building up new and special skills for assholery.

At least, this has been my experience. I am not saying that people who have Aspergers as immune from being assholes but they do often lack some of the basic social skills sometimes to be one as part of the condition. Mostly I find people with Aspergers want to talk my ear off about a particular topic for hours on end which is usually find with me because they are usually quite knowledgable about said topic.

Also, another big difference between people who have been assholes to me and people who I know with Aspergers is that people with Aspergers tend to have very little to no interest in physical contact and assholes tend to spend a lot of time figuring out how to get into my personal space.