Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-70.36.68.115-20150302004042/@comment-198.254.215.219-20151103223858

I know is this from a while ago, but I'd like to add my two cents.

You all clearly don't know much, if anything, about autism. I myself am autistic, and let me tell you, Ruby certainly seems autistic to me.

First of all, Asperger's Syndrome isn't even a diagnosis anymore. It's all just "Autism Spectrum Disorder" now. Secondly, the 'spectrum' in question isn't just a line that goes from 'severe' to 'mild' - it isn't like that at all, actually, and phrasing it in such a way is hugely disrespectful to autistic people. All of us just have different traits, some of which are more obvious than others.

Autistic people can, and often do, have empathy, including 'hyper-empathy'. That really isn't a huge factor anymore in determining whether or not someone is autistic. However, Ruby, from what I've seen of the show (up to halfway through season 2, and that was a while ago) does not seem to have very much empathy. I think the people who say she does are confusing empathy with compassion; you see, a lack of empathy does not mean that a person does not care about others. It just means that it's harder for that person to tell what others are feeling. While Ruby is very compassionate, she does seem to have difficulties reading people, and her way of talking and interacting with others is very similar to mine. She's only ever mentioned having friends back at her old school once that I can remember, and it is possible that she only had one or two. But, it is important to keep in mind that autistic people can make friends, lots of them in fact! It's just harder to make them, because of our difficulties reading other people.

There's also her interest in weapons, which seems to go far beyond her classmates', and is probably a special interest. A special interest is a term for when an autistic person is, for lack of a better term, obsessed with something specific, and it brings them great joy and excitement just to learn about this thing. Fits very well with Ruby's love of weapons, does it not?

Oh, and as a final afterthought, stop saying "has autism". It's huely disrespectful, as the vast majroity of autistic people perfer identity-first language ('autistic' rather than 'has autism'). If you're going to discuss whether a character is autistic, at least do your research first. Maybe actually ask an autistic person rather than going off stereotypes?