I enjoy a robust debate with a variety of opinions any day: esp when those opinions are well stated & come from a sincere place as they do on this forum. I left another forum (called something like incorrect ball of rock in space ;-) ) because someone who disagreed with something I said about racial equality offended his 'pro-Aryan' sensibilities. I was more than prepared to listen respectfully to his views, but he wasn't ready to reciprocate. At one point, the threatened to find out where I lived & harm me (!) My dingbatometer went off & I left that site never to return.
As for obeying rules, as a Canadian, I'm a lot like that too: overall, Aspies & NT Canadians are law-abiding as a group (with an assortment of crooks & what-not like one finds in every nation). Like the rest of you, I tend to prefer slight modifications I see coming to sudden abrupt major changes. As for breaking forum rules, I don't see where anyone so far has done that. We may have at times skirted the boundaries, but if nobody ever did this, we'd be utterly at the mercy of those who are posed to make rules the rest of us are bound to obey.
Many of us Aspies, I find, fall into 2 broad categories with some middle ground people. We tend to be gullible OR sometimes suspicious (some might say a little paranoid). I lean towards the latter. This, combined with being very detail oriented lends me my unique way of seeing things. I'm sure each person here too sees things uniquely partially as a function of their experiences, their detail-orientedness & how trusting they are. None of these positions are either right or wrong since we've all had different experiences!
Gomendosi above mentions the critical help & support he's received from Nts in his life. I've met some amazing ones too: I once had a professor who had devoted the bulk of his life to helping downtrodden tribal people in Ethiopia during a famine AND a civil war! He had bullet holes stitched shut all over his torso from where he was injured multiple times trying to save the lives of strangers. He was a Belgian.
The problem for me is not that we get identified as Aspies, but that this identity becomes excessively pathologized by the overwhelming majority of those in the NT world. The same thing was done to other groups who were tagged as different be it for race (Blacks particularly in America, Jews & people with so-called disabilities in Nazi Germany, LGBTQ all over the world etc.) A situation in which any one group can call itself a 'majority', proceed to label 'others' as minorities & then play a determining role in their status, rights, access to society, enfranchisement & overall fate is by its very nature unjust & unequal.
What I strive to achieve in my interactions with the NT society is to raise their awareness of this form of inequality & place it incumbent upon ALL of us to work towards a more level playing field. People who use wheelchairs accomplished miracles in Europe especially regarding getting laws changed regarding the accessibility of buildings, sidewalks, restaurants, workplaces, metro stations & shops. When NTs designed & built these structures, they weren't intentionally trying to harm people in wheelchairs, they just were thinking from a majority normative perspective. Unless these issues get raised, the world will remain a difficult to navigate place for Aspies as well. Speaking out & pointing out flaws in a structure is not equivalent to 'bashing' or bigotry. My purpose isn't to harm anyone or insult anyone: just to turn what's considered normative on its head & force the mass cultural discourse to examine, critique & improve itself through looking through Aspie eyes.
