Autism

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“	I'm POSSIBLY retarded...	”
Chris on his autism, Mumble chat 23 February 2009

“	I'M RETARDED	”
Chris, CWC - Exposing Jeff

“	It sometimes takes me a long while before I can fully comprehend and make an appropriate reaction. In another word, I am Sometimes Retarded.	”
Chris, on himself.

Bionic the Hedgehog "conquering" autism (and "ATcI3") by confusing windmills with watermills.

Chris at war with autism (or "ATSIMU") in China. Too bad you can't fight cannons with fangs.

He plays this card a lot.

Autism is a spectrum of neurological disorders involving the impairment of social interaction and communication. The cause of autism is unknown, but has been shown to have multiple genetic factors. The symptoms usually manifest before the age of 3 and generally irreversible; there is no cure, although the condition can be treated. Autistic individuals are generally not retarded — they mostly have average intelligence — although obviously severe social impairment can coincide with stunted learning and development. Asperger syndrome is generally considered part of the autistic spectrum; individuals with Asperger syndrome generally have above-average intelligence, although they still suffer from the social and communicative impairments. Prognosis depends on the severity of the autism and the effectiveness of its treatment; autistic people may learn to live relatively normal, productive lives or they may have become so unable to function in society that they must be institutionalized.

Christian Weston Chandler has built much of his identity around being autistic. His terror of being associated with severely autistic/retarded people causes him to be overly eager to prove his basic competence and cite his success in primary and secondary education. At the same time, his pride from accomplishing these things in spite of his disability has conditioned him to demand outrageous praise for his slightest efforts and infinite patience for his gravest errors. Moreover, Chris's belief that the entire Greene County Board of Education continues to irrationally persecute him for his autism has left him suspicious of opposing points of view and resolute that anti-autistic prejudice is the reason for any of his setbacks. In short, it is impossible to understand Chris's defensiveness, hypersensitivity, narcissism, irresponsibility, paranoia, victimhood, and self-pity without understanding his relationship with autism.

Chris, in typical Chris fashion, not only seems to think that having autism imbues him with a special significance, but also seems to think that his autism is different from that of every other person in the world who has autism. Because, y'know, everything to do with Chris has to be special. Because he's autistic, Chris is, naturally, better than everyone else (because having autism automatically makes him a genius), and everyone should acknowledge how utterly brilliant he is. At the same time, Chris is not responsible for anything he ever does wrong, because he is autistic and that means it's not his fault if he does stupid things.

High-functioning vs. low-functioning

Informally, autism may be subdivided into separate classifications based on the intelligence and degree of function the autistic individual possesses; i.e., high-functioning, medium-functioning, and low-functioning. Chris has latched onto this concept and will frequently qualify his condition, saying he has high-functioning autism, or HFA. Generally, HFA is loosely defined as the ability to live in the mainstream world as opposed to being institutionalized, near-normal comprehension, fluent speech, and about-average intellect. This lets Chris have it both ways: you can't blame him for his failures because he has autism, but you can't treat him like he's retarded because he's high-functioning and therefore, nearly normal.

Trolls have often noted that the "high-functioning" qualifier is not a clinical diagnosis and is not recognized by the DSM-IV-TR or the ICD-10. This usually goes hand-in-hand with questioning the severity and/or diagnosis of Chris's impairment, if not outright calling him a liar. However, the Chandlers didn't make the "HFA" label up, and compared to kids who can barely speak and just walk in circles all day, Chris is relatively close to neurotypical. Semantics aside, though, even the most casual of observers would conclude that Chris is basically non-functioning.

Disgustingly, but perhaps not surprisingly, Chris detests low-functioning autistics in the exact manner that he fears normal people will detest him. In Mailbag 25, he compares those with low-functioning autism with those who suffer from severe retardation or severe brain damage, thinking that they would have their arms linked together, have deformations, be confined to wheelchairs or crutches and drool and grunt and growl. He has also compared them to "zombies". In his phone call to Matt Devoria. The irony of his resentment toward 'Low Functioning' Autistic people is that he has a severely autistic cousin, as revealed in the autism papers; this probably means that either Chris is not aware of his own relatives (very probable), or he has disowned members of his own family on the basis of them having the same medical condition that he has (albeit more severely affected by it), being the autism-nazi he is.

He explains that he refuses to date a girl with any form of autism because he fears that seeing them will make him think about what he might be like if he had anything other than high-functioning autism.^{[citation needed]} Chris believes he can do much more than any low-functioning autistic could, even as he's living with his parents, has never had a real girlfriend, and shits his pants on a semiregular basis.

Despite all this, though, presuming Chris is autistic, he is high-functioning since he can talk. However, this also means that he has the same medical condition as Bill Gates and the creator of Pokémon, yet he has failed to do anything with his life, hence proving that his vulgarity and failure are utterly his fault.

Onset and diagnosis of Chris's autism

Now GodBearJesus can't get him to shut up.

Chris's version of how he developed autism is best explained in the Song of Christian video. There he explains how an babysitter locked him in a room filled with toys at around age 1 1/2. After bawwwing for hours, he emerged from his lair unable to talk (which implies that Chris could talk before this incident, and that would be in direct contradiction to Chris's own parents stating that he never spoke until around the age of seven); as Chris himself puts it, "God put the mute button on me." Most specialists claim that these symptoms of autism begin to show around that age anyway, so even if the events of the story happened, the babysitter didn't cause the autism. It is far, far more likely that one or both of Chris's parents simply looked for anyone to blame for Chris's sudden loss of language development.

It is not currently clear how Chris came to be considered as "autistic," although Chris has claimed that his parents possess official documentation about this in a safe. When pressed to release this information, he provided a 2004 psychiatric evaluation that states Chris was diagnosed with autism when he was "around age five or six." However, there's no way to be sure if the evaluator simply wrote down Chris's responses to his questions or independently verified them. (For example, Chris might not remember his exact age when he was diagnosed, but you'd think his medical records could be more precise than "five or six.") By the time of the Chandlers' legal battle with Greene County, Chris's autism seemed to have become a universally accepted fact, but the details of how, when, and where Chris was diagnosed remain a mystery.

When recounting his childhood, Chris usually skips straight from the "evil babysitter" incident to age seven, so we know very little about what (if any) treatment he received during this crucial period of development. In a CWCipedia mailbag, Chris claims that when he was young, his parents were told he would never be able to read, write or function on a normal level. He and his doctors have now upgraded his condition to "high-functioning," but apparently his incredibly abysmal upbringing has actually allowed it to progress to mid-functioning at best. However, his characteristics and development throughout his life may put him in the "Childhood Disintegrating Disorder" category, as he has become worse and worse over the years.

In his "Song of Christian" video, he explains that his mother took him to the toy department and coaxed him to read aloud the names of Go-Bots, and later Transformers. Chris says he began speaking again when he was seven— that is, in 1989, when the Transformers line was on its last legs and the Go-Bots line had long since vanished. This would seem to indicate that this form of "therapy" had to have gone on for several years before producing any results.

Persecution

Chris attended Greene County Primary School, apparently without incident, from age 5 until age 9. Problems arose for him in the fourth grade at Nathanael Greene Elementary School, where he alleges that the faculty wanted to remove him from mainstream classrooms and send him to what he calls an institution. He also claims that the teachers at the school held him down and recorded his screams. Chris frequently cites this as evidence that the school was senselessly cruel towards him, for no reason apparent to him except an innate fear and distrust of autistic people. More probable, given Chris's ongoing behavioral issues, is that he forced the faculty to restrain him by refusing to restrain himself. There's no way to know if Greene Elementary treated Chris unfairly, but the incident does suspiciously resemble Chris's arrest in July 2005. The Chandlers sued to prevent the school board from removing Chris from mainstream education before ultimately relocating to Chesterfield County to continue Chris's mainstreaming there.

There's no way to know how much of Chris's attitude about the Greene County crisis is based on his personal recollections or what he was later told by his parents, who themselves seem unusually paranoid about the county's vendetta against their family. However, the result of the incident is clear: Chris emerged from adolescence firmly believing that many people not only misunderstand autistic people but hate and fear them. He seems to believe this prejudice is based not on a person's actions (e.g., throwing fits and irrationally screaming) but on a person's mere identification as autistic, regardless of function. Given Chris's fear of low-functioning autistics, he may in fact think this prejudice is perfectly justified, but wrongfully targeted at a high-functioning individual. Of course, in Chris's mind, he may as well be the only high-functioning autistic in the universe, so he is the one and only innocent victim in "everyone's favorite game, Kick the Autistic."

Chris's tactful and sensitive comments on a news story about a woman with Asperger Syndrome being raped revealed that he believes the media, like the rest of the world, has a bias against autism similar to "Missing White Woman Syndrome", and that the story wouldn't have been reported if the victim was a woman with "proper" autism.

Chris's symptoms

Many trolls dispute the exact diagnosis of Chris's mental condition, on the basis that his observed behavior is inconsistent with various autistic people. CWC-related forums (and other forums, for that matter) have seen numerous testimonials about people who are undeniably autistic but nowhere near as fucked-up as Chris has turned out to be, and in general these forums do not consider Chris to be an example of what all autistic people are like. Quite often, autistics are indeed able to learn social skills to some small degree in the context of intellectual learning. Some can even come off as being completely neurotypical because they have come to realize that, while they believe "normal" behavior has a tenuous definition, they must adapt to others' expectations of what's acceptable if they wish to succeed in life. Chris, however, appears to demonstrate a willful ignorance of normalcy, with a sense of entitlement coupled with an expectation that others should not only understand his ridiculous idiosyncrasies in the first place, but also accept them or even force them upon others.

A layperson may come to the conclusion that Chris is not autistic, and he's just a regular (albeit idiotic) guy with a few "eccentricities" (more like psychotic), or jump to the other extreme and conclude that Chris has full-blown mental retardation. However, Chris's characteristics are most likely a combination of bad parenting and genuine autism. The following are aspects of Chris's character that clearly match autistic tendencies:

Awkward body language, as Chris displays here, is a common trait of autism.

Stacking objects is a common symptom of autism, and is often one of its first signs in a young child.

• Chris lacks a conversational filter. He calls this honesty; normal people call it social retardation. Without provocation he will tell you about his pinkeye and DIRTY, CRAPPED BRIEFS, and how he is a virgin with rage. Only when his mother told him to knock it off did he actually give up telling everyone he's a virgin.

• Chris speaks in a monotone, as evidenced by his many videos. His attempts to sound expressive (see CWC's Message for Ivy) are rather creepy and unnatural. He sounds a little like he is reading off an offscreen cue card. On Song of Christian, however, he sounds a bit more normal, if also a bit like Conker.

• Chris can't show emotions well with facial expressions and body language. See his statement to the women of the world if you like having Chris haunt your dreams. His inability to display emotions on his face has been called a "dead fish expression." When he does attempt to have an expression, it looks very cartoonish.

• Chris has very poor facial and vocal recognition skills. Julie was a 13 year old boy using an obvious falsetto and Chris fell for it. In one chat, the boy made no attempt to disguise his voice and Chris was none the wiser, disclosing personal sexual details. Two images of different people were used to represent Blanca Weiss, and Chris didn't notice. In an AIM Chat with Vanessa Hudgens, she sent him a link to pictures of Megan Fox, and Chris complimented her on them. It should be noted that the two have entirely different skin colors.

• Chris lacks empathy and concern for others. See his plea to Clyde. His suggestion after the loss of Ryan Cash was "find yourself a girlfriend." He asks for ED to please understand him, because he is an "innocent victim of misunderstanding"—he wants empathy from others, but he can't return the favor. This lack of empathy is only magnified by his parents having coddled him as a child and given him no real reason to empathize with other people. Chris primarily sees other people in terms of what they can provide for him; when accused of overstepping his bounds or other wrongdoing, he has no concept of remorse or apology except as something he must do to continue receiving favors. When forced to apologize, he makes insincere apologies followed immediately by further demands.

• Chris is extremely gullible. One need only see his extensive list of sweethearts to see just how easily fooled he is. In addition, not only has he been fooled by trolls pretending to be girls, he has fallen for trolls pretending to be Shigeru Miyamoto and approaching him about making a Sonichu game.

• Chris has trouble developing relationships. This is a common trait among people in general, but Chris is particularly inept at socializing. As stated above, he has no filter on what he says and cannot empathize with others, key things needed for interacting with people. He also pretty much just talks about himself.

• Chris thinks in absolutes and in terms of clearly defined steps in order to do something. He thinks there must be sex on or by the third date. He describes his sadness in terms of his heart level and briefly mentioned a Scale of Respect. He feels that if he just knows the correct steps to getting a sweetheart, he will be able to find one easily. His crash-course in dating and suggestions to Blanca assume that a relationship should follow a rigidly predetermined progression instead of a natural flow.

• Chris tends to use solipsistic neologisms; that is, he creates new words that only he himself understands and expects other people to comprehend them. Many articles on this very wiki have been written to explain the resulting CWC-isms.

• Chris exhibits compulsive and repetitive behavior. He wears the same shirt for days at a time, and uses the same terms and exact phrases frequently. He feels the need to refer to people by their full names, plainly visible when he talks about himself, Clyde Cash, or Adam Stackhouse.

• Chris has an extremely narrow range of interests. He seems to only give a damn about video games, prowling for his next sweetheart, his initials, and Sonichu, so much to the point where he practically places him somewhere in everything he creates. He often wishes to combine two interests.

• Although he does not demonstrate any competency with them, Chris has a fixation on numbers and statistics that would generally be irrelevant to others. He describes measures in concrete terms (e.g. "5 mies[sic] from the city" instead of "outside the city"), and has a particular obsession with times and dates, timestamping nearly every scene in the comic and giving his characters birthdays that have no relevance to the plot (unless it becomes convenient to "age up" the characters). Needless to say, Chris's tendency to blurt out exact dates and times (assuming he's not lying off his ass) has made the job of CWCki chronologers much easier.

• Chris's given reasons for his love of My Little Pony are also indicative of autism. Autistics are drawn to physical sensations which give them a feeling of being 'grounded', and this is probably why Chris finds stroking the hair of these toys so "therapeutic".

• Chris lacks social awareness. One notable instance, as revealed in the autism papers, was when two African American ladies were speaking to Chris about his love quest, when Chris politely told them that they could not be his girlfriend because they were not white. Based on the report of the examiner, Chris believed he was merely informing the ladies as to his prerequisites for a potential sweetheart while oblivious to the fact he was being racially insensitive.

• Unnatural relationships with objects are also a definite sign of autism; this is evident in Chris due to his obsession with his Sonichu medallion. Since autistic people have difficulty maintaining relationships with people they often end up becoming emotionally dependent on objects.

• Believe it or not, the gastrointestinal problems are also indicative of autism.

Oddly enough, he claims to have conquered his autism, or "coming out of [his] autistic shell," but frequently brings it up and uses it as an excuse for just about everything.

Chris's misconceptions about autism

It's not clear that Chris has any understanding of what, precisely, autism is, except that a) he has it, b) it's bad, and c) he's a brave little boy for living with it. His song A-U-T-I-S-M sums up his attitudes about the disorder. Per the lyrics: "A-U-T-I-S-M: what does it mean? Silence and friends unseen! A few brains as well: that is autism! And that makes us seem special to you!" To Chris, that's all it is — a condition that makes you a little smart and mysteriously makes people not want to be your friend.

Chris also seems to only be aware of the symptoms of autism that fit in with his odd, bohemian lifestyle. Asexuality (lack of sex-drive) is very common in autistic people, this is because any form of romance or sex is too intimate for an autistic mind to cope with. This completely contradicts Chris's "Love Quest" and suggests that he is probably trying to compensate for his inability to feel sexual attraction, even if that does mean becoming a pervert.

Chris considers himself to be of "the First Generation of Autistic People," suggesting that he believes the disorder did not even exist before him.

In a May 2010 video, he opined that our society is spending so much time on the internet that we're all becoming autistic. This just went to prove that a) Chris has no fucking clue about his own disorder and b) people with no social contact should not attempt social commentary.

Chris on the causes of autism

There's a broad scientific consensus that autism largely arises from genetic factors. Chris's own case is consistent with the theory that children born to older parents (Bob and Barb were 54 and 40, respectively, when Chris was conceived) are at greater risk of developing autism.

Chris's own expressed views on the root causes of autism are all over the map. He's espoused a few different theories at different times and in different situations.

His oldest theory, dating back to the Song of Christian in the late 1990s, is that the abusive babysitter was responsible for his condition. After she locked him in a room by himself, he says, "I was very lonely, so I just sat there and cried, and... uh that's how my autism began."

In more recent years, Chris has backed off from that theory. During his arguments with Clyde Cash in Mumble 3 from early 2009, he said that "scientifically speaking [autism] has possibly come from a drug, or otherwise it may possibly be genetic," and that the babysitter incident merely "brought out the uh, curse that was buried within me."

When explaining his condition to Matt Devoria late in the fall of 2009, Chris insisted that autism has no genetic factors. In that instance he had an obvious agenda, though — he hoped to convince Matt that any children he fathered on his daughter Kacey wouldn't wind up with the same condition — so it's difficult to say exactly how sincere he happened to be at the time.

To muddy the issue just that much more, in Mailbag 12, from December 2009, Chris blamed the cause of autism on "a shot the doctor's optionally give to the child after birth," apparently in reference to the highly disputed controversy alleging that childhood vaccinations lead to autism. It's not likely that Chris even has an awareness of the facts and assertions of the case, and was probably looking for a throwaway excuse to deny any hereditary factors.

Chris versus Asperger's syndrome

See also: Asperger syndrome

Chris is easily outraged by any attempt to associate or confuse autism (high-functioning or otherwise) with Asperger's syndrome, a similar condition now considered by many experts to overlap with HFA on the autistic spectrum. (In fact, it has been proposed that Asperger's syndrome be placed on the autism spectrum in the new DSM-V, making both the condition and "high-functioning autism" one and the same.) At times Chris has said that he dislikes Asperger's because advocates of the disorder supposedly steal sympathy from autism awareness. He's also claimed that the name is too close to "ass burger" for his taste. In the early days of the CWCipedia Mailbag, asking Chris about Asperger's was the most effective way to troll him, culminating in the Asperchu saga. By now Chris just hates Asperger's because it reminds how angry he got the last time someone brought it up, so his hatred of it has become completely baseless. Chris has declared himself "close-minded" on the subject, dismissing all scientific opinion contrary to his own, and angrily refuses to be convinced that he does not occupy a superior tier of social retardation.

Chris on autism education

Chris is a firm believer in mainstream education for children with autism. Doubtless he picked this up from his parents, who went to incredible lengths to keep him in mainstream classrooms throughout elementary, middle, and high school.

Responding to a letter in Mailbag 12 asking for his advice on how to raise an autistic child, Chris said, "Most Importantly, MAINSTREAM; let your child be free to communicate and associate with the Normal Society. Special Education is okay, but that will not do in the longest run." In Mailbag 15, when asked for advice on how "to succeed despite being afflicted with Asperger's," Chris's only response was, "My advice is to Mainstream the child."

During a video from April 2010, Chris read from a lengthy printout of information he downloaded online about autism. After quoting a passage that talked about how the education of autistic children should be undertaken with the aid of trained professionals in specialized settings, Chris offered his own opinion.

“	As for me though, I highly recommend mainstreaming, lettin' 'em go though normal life. I mean yeah, gib'em the special treatment while they're young...but when you geddem in elementary or middle school... or high school, mainstream is the way to go.	”
Chris, Autism Awareness & Men Should NEVER be Topless

In short, Chris believes that the approach that produced him (i.e., ignoring the problem) is the best possible way to raise and educate children with autism.

Autism cured?

Autism appears to be in Chris's future...

Chris's greatest dream is that his autism might one day be cured (although in 2006 he would have unhesitatingly sacrificed such a cure in order to obtain a PlayStation 3). There are instances of children inexplicably recovering from the symptoms, but there is no known cure for autism that can simply be applied to everyone like Chris's "homo vaccine." Imagine the surprise of the mental health community, then, when Chris revealed in March 2009 that he had overcome his autism once and for all:

Christopher C.W.C.: I'm not going to blame it on my autism; I have realized that I am over that now.

Sarah May: Over what?

Sarah May: Over your autism?

Christopher C.W.C.: yes

Sarah May: . . .

Christopher C.W.C.: anyway, what is it that you want to do?

Sarah May: Christian

Sarah May: Are you serious?

Sarah May: Autism is not influenza

Sarah May: You don't 'get over it'

Christopher C.W.C.: I've broken out of my autistic shell, and I am better able to socialize in public, with the past practices online.

Chris claims during the same chat that he may not be making sense due to a virus, easily allowing for him to retract this. Fortunately, Chris has discovered that stress is a more socially popular scapegoat for his personal shortcomings. Of course, people learn to manage stress but what do you expect?

As of May 2009, Chris seems to have regained Autism and is back to blaming it for all his problems, seemingly believing that Autism is as easy to shake/regain as the common flu. Or he forgot that he even had the above conversation and is just retarded.

November 2009 saw Chris claiming to have cured his autism again as stated at the end of part 2 on his Sonichu Powerpoint presentations (where he describes himself as a "high-functioning autistic recovered"). A month later, Chris says in the revised ED article in response to ED's claim he's "suffering" from autism, he comments "which I still am for real."

Chris's flip-flopping self-diagnosis simply illustrates his misunderstanding of his problems. Since autism is his scapegoat for when he fucks up, to him that's really all it is— a disease that makes people fuck up all the time. Therefore, when he fails he has a bad case of autism, and when everything is going well (such as when he believes he has a girlfriend) he thinks the autism has gone away. What Chris really wants, then, is not a cure for autism but to live a life in which nothing happens that he would need to blame on his autism; that is, a life in which he has a girlfriend and nobody criticizes him.

Things Chris has not blamed on his autism

Chris and other autistics

Listening to Chris go on about "us TRUE and HONEST autistics", you might think he has some kind of misplaced sense of autistic solidarity. But this would merely be dumb, and Chris-chan always shoots for both dumb and repugnant, so in reality he doesn't give a shit about anyone's autism but his own. He calls lower-functioning autistics than himself "windows onto hell" and regards them with exactly the same kind of fear and mistrust he bitches about people treating him with. He has also expressed a disdain for others with high-functioning autism, with HFA being one of the characteristics excluding a woman from being a potential sweetheart. Meanwhile, he looks at people with Asperger Syndrome, who are on roughly the same part of the spectrum as him, as dirty whores trying to somehow steal the limelight from "real" autistics (read: Chris).

Chris has only once included another autistic person in his comics. In emails with Sarah Jackson, she told Chris that her sister was also a high-functioning autistic. When Sarah was included in Episode 19, so was her sister, Rita. When Rita was given dialogue after Sarah's death, what she said made so little sense grammatically (even for Chris's standards) that it is hard to see it as unintentional. It can be speculated from this that Chris, thinking his own autism so much better than anyone else's, was attempting to make Rita seem very unintelligent as he assumes other autistics and people with mental disorders are.

For their part, people with autism universally facepalm when they look at Chris, and wish he'd fuck off and die and stop giving them a bad name. The deleted article about Chris on TV Tropes said it best: they wish he'd Stop Being Stereotypical and embodying the worst perceptions of their condition. The article also noted that to people with autism or Asperger's, Chris was "Paranoia Fuel", that is to say it scares them to think they're like him. For the actual high-functioning autistics out there, Chris himself is the "window onto hell".

The Aspies for Freedom website has had a couple of run-ins with Chris that nicely demonstrate how other autistics regard him:

• Aspies For Freedom thread where Chris or someone impersonating Chris asks for help against ED. The aspies offer the usual advice of ignoring the trolls, which by the way is the best advice.

• Aspies For Freedom thread where someone asks about Chris, but everyone else just wants to avoid the drama. A few of them realize that what ED says is true even though it may be a "hate site". Apparently, previous drama involving Chris led them to disable registration.

Tl;dr: Chris has no support in the online autistic community unless it's from someone who would rather he commit suicide.

See also

• Asperger syndrome
• Aspergers (CWCipedia article)
• A-U-T-I-S-M
• Chris and psychology
• Kick the Autistic
• Slow-in-the-minds
• Stress

External links

• One Winged Autistic
• The Tard-Man - Autistic Adventures - Director's Cut
• Sexuality and Autism