lacktheknack said:
Huh... are you remembering the time long ago that I told people I have TS? Hmm. If so, your memory is terrifying, and if not, then you accidentally took a heck of a blind shot.
TBH, Tourrete Syndrome and the term coprolalia were both in my mind specifically because of of the characters in the Robert Kroese
Mercury series suffers it and I'd just finished it (well, finished it again) last night. When I went looking for another issue that might have a similar effect, that was the first thing that popped into my brain.
And then I had this strange urge to make a snowman, but that's neither here nor there.
The point being, I didn't remember you or anyone else saying they had TS on here, so it was just a random coincidence. Or, as Mercury would call it, synchronicity. Sting might call it that, too, but I didn't just finish listening to The Police.
But the thing is, Tourette's sufferers aren't analogous with Asperger's sufferers, because there's lots of utilizable coping techniques we have available to us. "Tic Transfer", for instance, is a method of literally replacing our worse tics (say, howled swears [the stat, by the way, is less than 1% of sufferers have this tic, or one in a hundred thousand people]) with something hidden (foot twitching) or at least inoffensive (I'm currently suffering a round of head tossing, for instance), reinforced with repetition and constant awareness. Concentration, for another, tends to override tics, as your brain is busy. That kind of thing.
I'm actually aware of this, as I've been coached through a process similar or identical to it to deal with 'tics' generated by obsessive compulsive disorder.
But that doesn't make it a bad analogue. It means it's not 100% parity, but behavioural modification in the case of TS has varied results and isn't always very effective on younger individuals. Besides, that doesn't change the nature of the condition as off-putting, potentially alarming or even 'offensive.'
And yes, I know most TS sufferers don't shout things. that's why I said the ones who didn't were most of them. Sorry if I wasn't specific enough.
Autistics are often coached in similar methods to my understanding, and other forms of coping. Did the kid deserve it because he wasn't coping, then, I wonder. If the difference you're drawing is that those afflicted with TS can cope, that seems to say that it would be okay to punch someone for disturbing you if they don't cope, despite what you said both before and after this point. Otherwise, I don't see the point of even bringing it up. Except to point out that TS and ASD are not identical, which was never contested.
Because I know and have experienced these things, I do hold fellow Tourette's sufferers up to a higher standard. An asshole who declares "It's because I have Tourette's" is just an asshole with Tourette's, unless they're currently "transitioning" their more offensive tics.
Suppression is possible, just hard.
Suppression of compulsive behaviour is also possible. However, I've been various forms of management (therapy, behavioural treatment, medication) for over 20 years now and I'm still coping with issues. In particular, I've broken most of my compulsions, but I still have a very obvious oral tic that I can't seem to get a grip on. And so far, no professional's made headroom.
Again, in case this is your issue, I will state that OCD is not the same thing. The point is, just because something's possible doesn't mean someone's a dick for not succeeding. I mean, I'm a dick, but said tic is probably the least dickish thing I could do. When I'm a dick, you'll know it. I will verbally dress down people, call names, etc. And that's not OCD. Yeah, if I said I'm an asshole because of OCD I'd be an even bigger asshole. But that's not the point.
What is the point, however, is that on top of behavioural tics and similar, ASD sufferers do tend to have an impaired sense of social context. This further complicates things. not only does one need treatment to manage social behaviour, not only does that treatment not always prove effective, but ASD sufferers may not really understand the need. As I said before, Aspergers isn't one exact level, and different people suffer different levels, so it varies from person to person.
But again, an autistic who does something wrong might simply not get the context.
On that note, if I have underestimated the social obliviousness of Asperger's sufferers (as I appear to have done), then my apologies and I'm less on the side of the parents. It still seems strange to me that so many parents don't understand the mental state of someone they seem to interact with fairly often.
They picked on the developmentally challenged folks in my school a lot. People who saw them would call them retards, spazzes, freaks, mutants, etc. People who had daily interaction did not get it at all.
I'll go one further. I live right near a school for the Deaf. We have a town full of Deaf and Hard of Hearing people around here. You'd be surprised how unable people are to cope with the Deaf in a town swarming with them. We have relatively few people in this town who are developmentally disabled when compared to the Deaf community. People don't like people who aren't "normal." I'd think you'd experience this first hand, but maybe you're lucky. It seems to be exceedingly common.
But speaking of luck, maybe you shouldn't hold people to a higher standard automatically. You don't know how much better/worse they have it. Just because you did it doesn't mean everyone else can. I taught myself algebra while other people in my school were struggling with division of complex numbers. I'm an autodidact, and maybe not the best, but I learn fast and well. Doesn't mean I should assume everyone else can. There are high functioning people with TS and there are low-functioning. There's high-functioning autstics and low-functioning. I severely suspect my father suffers from Aspergers or similar, but he's managed to make it for himself despite having serious failings in the area of social skills. Dude's a fucking genius when it comes to other things, and it provides him a Gregory-House-style tolerance factor to a lot of people, I think. Buuut he's never going to be 'normal.' Other people in the same boat can't manage even a normal job.
What I'm saying is 'one size does nto fit all.'
We can't really know, can we.
Unfortunately not.
