Societal and cultural aspects of autism

1800s: Martineau · Tocqueville · Marx · Spencer · Le Bon · Ward · Pareto · Tönnies · Veblen · Simmel · Durkheim · Addams · Mead · Weber · Du Bois · Mannheim · Elias

The pathology paradigm advocates for supporting research into therapies, treatments, or a cure to help minimize or remove autistic traits, seeing treatment as vital to help individuals with autism, while the neurodiversity movement believes autism should be seen as a different way of being and advocates against a cure and interventions that focus on normalization (but do not oppose interventions that emphasize acceptance, adaptive skills building, or interventions that aim to reduce intrinsically harmful traits, behaviors, or conditions[3]), seeing it as trying to exterminate autistic people and their individuality.

Out of eleven conditions assessed in one study, participants with autism spectrum disorder exhibited the highest rates of assortative mating.

[30] British psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen said that an increasingly technological society has opened up niches for people with Asperger syndrome, who may choose fields that are "highly systematised and predictable".

[14] Autism may express differently in the sexes, with many females on the spectrum presenting more subtly than males and may be more adept at developing more sophisticated social masking behaviors.

These coping mechanisms can take an immense amount of time and energy to learn and practice and can, as Shana Nicols states, "more often than not lead to exhaustion, withdrawal, anxiety, selective mutism, and depression".

[41] Women may be more concerned with how they are viewed by peers and the failure to connect with people outside of their immediate family could lead to severe anxiety or clinical depression.

[14] Autistic girls may suffer additionally by being placed in specialized educational programs, where they will be surrounded by males and further isolated from female social contacts.

Lack of diagnosis can also lead autistic women to have higher rates of depression, anxiety, and self-esteem issues as they are left without a clear understanding as to why they do not "fit in" with their peers.

This may be related to social isolation and elevated levels of anxiety along with a need to control their environment more fully,[36] although a complicating factor which is just being explored in the scientific literature is that functional disorders of eating and digestion such as IBS, GERD, food allergies, gastroparesis et al, as well as sensory issues common in autistic people generally, may contribute heavily to "disordered eating" behavior which is physical, sensory, allergic, or pain-related rather than psychological.

[41] Although sample sizes are too small to draw firm conclusions, one study suggests that autistic women are less likely than males over the long term to marry, have families, go to college, have careers, and live independently.

Children with AS are often the target of bullying at school due to their idiosyncratic behavior, precise language, unusual interests, and impaired ability to perceive and respond in socially expected ways to nonverbal cues, particularly in interpersonal conflict, which results in them being sought out by classmates and rejected.

[53] Children with AS often display advanced abilities for their age in language, reading, mathematics, spatial skills, or music—sometimes into the "gifted" range—but this may be counterbalanced by considerable delays in other developmental areas, like verbal and nonverbal communication or some lack of motor coordination.

Lack of support and understanding, in combination with the child's anxieties, can result in problematic behavior (such as severe tantrums, violent and angry outbursts, and withdrawal).

[58][59] A second issue related to alexithymia involves the inability to identify and modulate strong emotions such as sadness or anger, which leaves the individual prone to "sudden affective outbursts such as crying or rage".

[60][61][62] According to Tony Attwood, the inability to express feelings using words may also predispose the individual to use physical acts to articulate the mood and release the emotional energy.

[66] The intense focus and tendency to work things out logically often grants people with AS a high level of ability in their field of interest.

[84] Some autistic individuals learn sign language, participate in online chat rooms, discussion boards, and websites, or use communication devices at autism-community social events such as Autreat.

[91] Conducting work, conversation and interviews online in chat rooms, rather than via phone calls or personal contact, help level the playing field for many autistics.

[93] In one survey of Nigerian pediatric or psychiatric nurses, 40% cited preternatural causes of autism such as ancestral spirits or the action of the devil.

[94] On 2 April 2009, activists left 150 strollers near Central Park in New York City to raise awareness that one in 150 children is estimated to be autistic.

The project is also working to enable autistic people to gain the right to advocate for themselves (along with their supporters) in all policy decision formats from government to a general committee.

[116] At Autreat—an annual autistic gathering—participants compared their movement to gay rights activists, or the Deaf culture, where sign language is preferred over surgery that might restore hearing.

His father, Oliver, described him as socially withdrawn but interested in number patterns, music notes, letters of the alphabet, and U.S. president pictures.

Popular media have depicted special talents of some autistic people, including exceptional abilities as seen in the 1988 movie Rain Man.

[127] Such portrayals have been criticized by both scientific studies and media analysts over the years for fostering a pigeonholing image of autism that leads to false expectations about real-life autistic individuals, with Rain Man being singled out for popularizing it.

[143] In an interview with presenter Nick Robinson on BBC Radio 4's Today, the then-16-year-old activist said that autism helps her see things in "black and white".

[145] American actress Daryl Hannah, star of movies such as Splash, Steel Magnolias and Wall Street, was diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum as a child.

The magazine also reported that on Celebrity Rehab, Dr. Drew Pinsky deemed basketball player Dennis Rodman a candidate for an Asperger's diagnosis, and the UCLA specialist consulted "seemed to concur".

Nora Ephron criticized these conclusions, writing that popular speculative diagnoses suggest autism is "an epidemic, or else a wildly over-diagnosed thing that there used to be other words for".