Autistic!Sherlock
I’ve recently read in several places people’s opinions on an autistic Sherlock, and how he cannot be autistic because he is too good at reading social cues and interpreting them.
This is making several assumptions that aren’t necessarily correct.
The worst is that they assume that all autistic people are alike. It is called a spectrum for a reason. There is mild to severe, functional to not functional, genius to mentally retarded and everything else in between. It isn’t as if there is a checklist that you tick off till you get to the bottom and if you’ve checked them all, viola! you are autistic.
My symptoms are not the next guy’s symptoms. People with Asperger’s, like me, aren’t supposed to be good at multi-tasking, yet I am so good at (some types) of multitasking that I took part in a genetic study of multi-taskers. And yet Asperger’s I am.
The next fallacy is the idea that we can’t get any better.
When I was a kid I wasn’t nearly as functional as I am now. You could look at me and tell that there was something very much not normal going on. But I learned. I watched. I took in information and crunched it. I can learn to read social cues. I do read social cues. But it took work and effort to do it since it does not come naturally. And I am a much more observant person because of it.
There are a few things that I am still pants at. I have a poor understanding of sarcasm when it is pointed at me, even though I can use it myself. A lot of sentimental attachment mystifies me because I am so hyper-rational. Emotional dramatics disturb me. I can’t help the fact that I look at people with staring intensity, because I am observing them and crunching that data.
It can be likened to being a lone Earth anthropologist on Mars. You can watch, see and learn, but you are not fully enculturated. You are not part of the culture you observe. We are a people without country in a way, because we have nowhere we belong.
But lone anthropologists are capable of keen insight, even more so than someone steeped in that culture. This is because the anthropologist can see connections that are hidden from the people of that culture due to cultural bias.
I don’t consider this a disability. I am neurologically different from the majority of you. I think differently, but not in a lesser fashion.
I’m autistic. I’m also a professional observational researcher that observes people and makes connections from social cues. I’m also very, very gifted at it. I had to be just to get by. The things I taught myself to normalize myself became a huge asset and a great career.
So, in a way, it offends me when people say Sherlock could not possibly be autistic. Because what they are really saying is that Sherlock isn’t broken enough, or messed up enough, or something else enough to be autistic, as if autism always means less capable. They watched Rainman one too many times, or one autism after-school special. Or…maybe they’ve only known autistic kids, which have not yet grown into more experienced, better-informed adults.
“Oh, he couldn’t be autistic. He’s just too good at what he does.”
Fuck you.