Critics Debate Autism's Role in James Damore's Google Memo (themarysue.com)

James Damore "wants you to know he isn't using autism as an excuse," reports a Silicon Valley newspaper, commenting on the fired Google engineer's new interview with the Guardian. But they also note that "he says being on the spectrum means he 'sees things differently'," and the weekend editor at the entertainment and "geek culture" site The Mary Sue sees a problem in the way that interview was framed. It's the author of this Guardian article, not James Damore himself, who makes the harmful suggestion that Damore's infamous Google memo and subsequent doubling-down are somehow caused by his autism... It frames autism as some sort of basic decency deficiency, rather than a neurological condition shared by millions of people.... This whole article is peppered with weird suggestions like this, suggestions which detract from an otherwise interesting piece.. All these weird suggestions that autism and misogyny/bigotry are somehow tied (as if autistic feminists didn't exist) do unfortunately detract from one of the article's great points.

Having worked at a number of companies large and small, I can at least anecdotally confirm that their diversity training rarely includes a discussion of neurodiversity, and when it does, it's not particularly empathetic or helpful... Many corporate cultures are plainly designed for neurotypical extroverts and no one else -- and that should change. I really do think Lewis meant well in pointing that out. But the other thing that should change? The way the media scapegoats autism as a source of anti-social behavior.

Comments

Re:I must be cognitively impaired...

[AmiMoJo]

The memo seems somewhat reasonable if you read it in a perfect vacuum and have zero knowledge of the last 100 years of study in the areas of equality, women's rights and diversity.

Ignoring those things made his intentions seem malicious, because it's the standard tactic used by people who are malicious. He was given an opportunity to clarify, but instead doubled down.

It's possible that was because of his autism, it's possible it was for some other reason. At this point we don't really know what he intended, innocent or otherwise.

Of course, it's very hard to have an actual discussion about this when ACs rant at you about "feminist SJWs" and communists, but I'll try anyway.

Re:Willfully missing the point

[mjwx]

The point of the (well written) original article was that Damore had handled things poorly due to his condition, not that his opinions arose due to his condition.

This.

The guy wasn't a jerk because he had (claims to have) Asperger/Autism, he's a jerk because he's a jerk.

I'm sick of autism/Asperger Syndrome being used as an excuse for people being a jerk. People who have autism are not inherently mean or arrogant, in fact most of them are the complete opposite. When talking to someone who has a disorder on the Autism spectrum, they aren't being rude, they're shit scared and the further along the spectrum they are, the worse it gets. Put simply, they are very slow to trust. Once you get past that they tend to be kind and gentle people, sure there are a few arseholes, same as any type of person but not as many as people think.

Any Autistic person who is functional enough to land a job, let alone a job at Google simply wants to get along with their colleagues and improve their life. This is the kind of shit doctors told their parent's that they'd never been able to do 20 years ago so for them its an accomplishment and it annoys them to no end seeing people Autism as an excuse for bad behavior (and as always, have difficulty expressing this).

Finally, when people associate negative things with functional autism, its usually because of another mental illness (paranoia, paranoid delusions and severe depression are somewhat common) that Autism exacerbates but isn't exclusive to Autistic people.

he describes how he was associated with people he had never supported following the media backlash

Well, he went straight to not one, but two alt-right youtubers instead of going to a somewhat reputable news publisher. Even going on Fox News would have looked better (they certainly would have been able to coach him to spin it better) and they certainly would have been beating down his door to get him. He's entirely responsible for the way people perceived him. Now it sounds like he's trying hard to salvage some semblance of a career.