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Essay on stigmatization
Essay on stigmatization
A thesis between aspergers and autism
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Asperger’s Syndrome Laura Mann wrote an interesting essay about how words can hurt people who go against the social norms. It was in response to a man who had written a memoir about how his lack of masculinity led people to call him names like “faggot” and “queer.” Every time he was called one of those names, he tried to debunk it. The people who used those words were often uneducated. My life has been filled with similar experiences. My lack of social interaction has led me to go against the masculine norms. I was born with a disorder called Asperger’s Syndrome (why the MS Word dictionary won’t accept that is beyond me). People who have Asperger’s have an inability to socialize with other people and make small talk. Although it is a form of Autism, it is not a mental disability, though most people think it is. It is a developmental disability. Throughout my life, people have been callin me “retarded,” “slow,” “special” (in the uncomplimentary sense), and other words of that nature. But I cannot say that I blame them, because I have certainly done things that would mak...
The r-word is one of the most repulsive words in the English language; it humiliates people and is used colloquially without second thought. The word “retard” causes nothing but anguish. The r-word was first used in a medical discipline (e.g. “mental retardation”). The pejorative forms of the word “retard” and “retarded,” however, are used in society to deride people with intellectual disabilities. I find this social injustice unacceptable, especially because the r-word is often used to call people without intellectual disabilities “stupid.” When the r-word is used incorrectly, it reinforces the painful stereotypes of people with intellectual disabilities as being less-valued members of society.
In the 1940’s two doctors in different countries observed children displaying similar behaviors and deficits. One of the doctors was Viennese pediatrician Dr. Hans Asperger and the other was a child psychiatrist named Leo Kanner. Dr. Kanner was the first of the two doctors to report his observations. What he described were behaviors similar to those seen in children with what we call Autistic disorder. The behaviors affected the children’s communication, social interaction and interests. Dr. Asperger later published an article discussing what he dubbed “Autistische Psychpathen im Kindesalter” which translates to “Autistic Psychopathy”. Although some behaviors overlapped, there were differences leading to the belief that these doctors were documenting two different disorders. The two most prevalent were the differences in motor and language abilities (Miller, Ozonoff). Another was Asperger’s belief that his patients were of normal or above average intelligence. It was not until 1994 that Asperger Syndrome was entered into the Diagnostics and Statistics Manual of Mental Disorders Fourth Edition (DSM IV), finally becoming an official diagnosis. At the time, Asperger Syndrome (AS) was labeled as a subcategory of autism along with autistic disorder, childhood disintegrative disorder and pervasive development disorder. Since then, the community of people with Asperger Syndrome has grown to love and better understand the disorder that they live with every day. Some of them have even affectionately named themselves “Aspies”.
Albert Einstein, Bela Bartok, Alan Turing, Bill Gates, Thomas Jefferson and I. Is this a list of Geniuses? People who have changed history?
In 1944, Asperger’s disorder was first discovered by Hans Asperger who was a child psychologist and pediatrician who described a group of boys between the ages of 6 and 11 as “little professors” because of their interests and use of language (van Duin, Zinkstok, McAlonan & van Amelsvoort, 2014). In the DSM-IV, Asperger’s disorder (AD) refers to individuals who have an average or high IQ, but have difficulty in social interactions, poor communication skills and restricted interests (Wing, Gould & Gillberg, 2010). Another component in the Asperger’s diagnosis in the DSM-IV was that the individual did not meet the full criteria for an Autism diagnosis (Ghaziuddin, 2010). On May 13, 2013 the DSM-V was published, which was followed by extensive controversy surrounding the removal of the Asperger’s diagnosis. Some individuals diagnosed with AD under the DSM-IV prefer that label to being diagnosed as autistic. Additionally, many individuals with AD and their families feared that services would no longer be available to their children. Proponents of removing AD from the DSM-V asserted that there was no reliable difference between AD and Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) and that combining these disorders would increase reliability and validity.
Kathie Snow believed that other people’s attitude towards others is the greatest obstacle facing people with disabilities. According to Kathie Snow (2010), “The real problem is never a person’s disability, but the attitudes of others! A change in our attitudes leads to changes in our actions. Attitudes drive actions” (P. 2). I completely agree with Kathie Snow in this regard because this is more than just language; it is the attitudes we have towards
Many people across the world are unfamiliar with disorders associated with autism. Some people do not even know what autism actually is. Asperger’s Syndrome is one perplexing disorder, of countless, that needs to be acknowledged. Although it is one of the more well-known disorders, an understanding of Asperger’s is far from common knowledge. There is an abundance of misconceptions and people unaware of what Asperger Syndrome actually is. Being uncertain about the characteristics of a person with Asperger’s allows people to go through life not understanding the disorder itself and people who have it.
Autism spectrum disorder and Asperger’s syndrome, a higher function branch of autism spectrum disorder, affect many adults in the world. These disorders affect the development of thinking and social skills. Many adults have difficulty leading normal lives due to the effects of autism spectrum disorder and Asperger’s syndrome. They have difficulty in school, at work, and even in the social situations of everyday life. The paper examines how autism spectrum disorder affects adults in fields such as: difficulty with higher education, difficulty with finding and keeping jobs in the labor force, and difficulty with social situations. The paper will be concluded with how society views autism spectrum disorder and what it believes should be done.
Autism Spectrum Disorder is rapidly changing as new developments are being made. The release of the fifth Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders has altered the way people see and diagnose autism.
Autism is a pervasive developmental disorder of the brain that severely impacts socialization, communication, and may even cause obsessive or repetitive behaviors. Autism delays the brain's normal development, and is also correlated with a milder form of the syndrome known as a pervasive developmental disorder not otherwise specified (PDD-N OS). Since it was first identified in 1943, there has been increasing rate in new diagnoses each year. Muhle, Trenracoste, and Rapin (2004) found that the rate of diagnosis for Autism has risen 556% between the years of 1991 and 1997. Many feel that this increase is due to a shifting of diagnostic criteria, or newer defining characteristics of the syndrome. The expansion of the diagnostic criteria also indirectly relates to the increase of services provided for Autistic children, therefore increasing the shift. Because of this increase of diagnoses, more awareness has been brought to pediatricians, further increasing the rate in which Autism is diagnosed ("Autism," 2010). Glasson et al. (2004) found that the frequency in which the disorder is diagnosed has risen to almost 60 per 10000 people. Another factor in the increase of the diagnosis of Autism is that children are being diagnosed at a much earlier age. Parents are identifying problematic behaviors earlier in a child's life, sometimes as early as 8 months of age (Bristol-Power & Spinella 1999).
In this article, Shaw and Lee describe how the action of labels on being “feminine” or “masculine” affect society. Shaw and Lee describe how gender is, “the social organization of sexual difference” (124). In biology gender is what sex a person is and in culture gender is how a person should act and portray themselves. They mention how gender is what we were taught to do in our daily lives from a young age so that it can become natural(Shaw, Lee 126). They speak on the process of gender socialization that teaches us how to act and think in accordance to what sex a person is. Shaw and Lee state that many people identify themselves as being transgendered, which involves a person, “resisting the social construction of gender into two distinct, categories, masculinity and femininity and working to break down these constraining and polarized categories” ( 129). They write about how in mainstream America masculinity and femininity are described with the masculine trait being the more dominant of the two. They define how this contributes to putting a higher value of one gender over the other gender called gender ranking (Shaw, Lee 137). They also speak about how in order for femininity to be viewed that other systems of inequality also need to be looked at first(Shaw,Lee 139).
I was criticized for minor things like getting my clothes dirty or refusing to stay still to get my hair done. These comments grew more and more frustrating as I got older and eventually became far more critical with references to how I played, the clothes I chose to wear, and even being told I was too loud and that my interests weren’t normal. When me and my grandmother went to visit other family member’s I would always be asked questions that seemed entirely inappropriate to me as a small child like whether or not I had a crush or a boyfriend but I noticed no one ever asked my male cousins these questions as though their value wasn’t based solely on their ability to attract the opposite sex. My disinterest in things like hair and make-up led to me falling behind my peers when it came to matters of appearance. While other girls were discussing their extensive morning routines I was showering and shoving my unruly hair up into a ponytail. This also meant that I was falling behind when it came to personal relationships as my female friends were discovering boys, boys were treating me like an anomaly. I was consistently asked if I was a lesbian
I had a classmate that had cerebral palsy and was in a wheelchair. I did not feel any way about her because I did not know that she had cerebral palsy until she told me. I treated her like she was a normal person, but other people in my class feelings towards her were not so nice. She was would always ask questions in the class because she had struggles and people in the classroom would yell at her. They say come on you ask so many questions, but she never bothered me. The feelings that come up when I am around people who are disabilities like blind, deaf, cerebral palsy, are obese, and etc. is I do not feel any different when I am around someone who does not have a disability. I think that people with disabilities are normal. People who disabilities should feel like they are not different from me or another person in this world. They might have severe struggles; we should not judge someone on the struggles they have. People who disabilities describe themselves as “invisible” because people just pretend that they are not there. People tend to ignore them when they see people disabilities in public with disabilities. The words my family and community use to refer to the above groups of people is disabled because we had a family friend who was disabled. My parents hated when we or people we knew used the word “mental retardation” or just
My chosen scene is from a popular T.V. show called How I Met Your Mother. This show goes with gender stereotypes and goes against gender stereotypes. The show is about a group of friends, Lily and Marshall being an engaged/married couple, Barney the single “player”, Robin a Canadian tomboy, and Ted the main character, who is a hopeless romantic trying to find true love in New York City. Ted, over the past couple episodes meets a girl and she becomes his girlfriend. In the meantime, he’s spending all of his time with her, Lily and Marshall have a romantic weekend planned leaving Barney and Robin to hang out together, they decide to have a “Bro” date. Robin and Barney do typical guy things, such as; smoking cigars, playing laser tag, and making fun of their other friends for being in relationships, particularly Ted. They make jokes like, “Ted’s to busy being in a lesbian relationship”, and “Ted can’t drink because he’s pregnant, because he’s a girl.” However, Barney praises Robin for being an awesome bro. Robin is a gun enthusiast, hockey loving Canadian, and an expert on cigars. Throughout the series, Ted looks for love as his friends make fun of him, and Robin continuously gets praise for her tomboyish ways. The show uses gender stereotypes for comedy, showing that it’s more socially acceptable for a woman to have more masculine hobbies but a man can’t have “feminine” qualities without being rebuked by his friends. My goal is to look at these studies to determine whether males and females are socially rebuked for being “sissies” and “tomboys” on equal levels, or if their gender makes a difference in how severe the consequences are for not being in the norm.
My disability also resulted in social isolation from others my age; many kids and adults were ill at ease around me. Even my friends were involved with activities that I couldn't keep up with, and I was left behind.
People with disabilities are still people, they are people with hearts and they are actual physical beings; people with disabilities do their best to live every day to their fullest, yet that is still not enough for others. I feel like as a whole, humans are generally uncomfortable with people who have disabilities. Let’s think of it this way, people live their life every day in their normal lives and then they come across a person with a disability and suddenly their life is interrupted, like it is such a barrier in their flow of life to come across someone different from themselves.