Lack of Empathy

One thing you'll often find on lists of Asperger's autism symptoms is lack of empathy or caring for others, and I think that's (for lack of better terms) an absolute load of baloney. The harder you look, the more you see things like it: things saying autistic people are incapable of forming emotional attachments, or even love. I'm not sure if I should be outraged or saddened by things like this. There are many reasons why it may seem like someone with autism doesn't care about others, but I've never come across one who really didn't care about others at all.
One reason is the afore-mentioned lack of social skills. My mom tells me that, when I was very young, I was constantly saying things like "Mama, that lady has a ring in her nose. Does she know that she looks silly?" I had no idea that such comments could hurt feelings then. I remember being instructed not to tell people if their house stunk, and I couldn't understand why. If their house stunk, why not tell the truth? These comments wouldn't have offended me, and in my lack of social knowledge, I had no idea they would offend others. This can lead to accidentally hurt feelings and the appearance of a complete lack of caring for others.
A second reason is that they might not know how to show it. If someone is distressed, and autistic person might simply leave them alone. This isn't for lack of caring, but the opposite. The autistic person might have wanted to be left alone in such a situation, so their way of helping is to leave a distressed person alone. I've come across situations where a person is upset and realized that I had no idea at all how to comfort them. Because of this, I probably came across as cold and uncaring.
Lastly, they may be looking at the situation so differently that they can't find any reason to be unhappy. One thing I hear about autistic children living in religious families is a lack of grief at the death of a loved one. In such situations, the child has been informed that the deceased has gone to live in a paradise called heaven. They are not old enough to think about how this will affect the world in any way but the loved one being happy in heaven, and thus find no reason to be upset. Or maybe someone is upset at being insulted. To an aspie, especially children, they may not think being called fat or ugly is anything to be upset about. Again, they cannot understand why the insulted person is unhappy, and make no attempts to console them because of it.
If autistic people were unable to form connections with others or have empathy, then we'd all be sociopaths and likely murderers. The extremely low crime rate among those with Asperger's alone should prove we are capable of empathy.

Wait, Were You Kidding or Not?

One problem common among people with Asperger's autism is a complete lack of social skills. All the unspoken rules most children pick up as easily as breathing must be taught to autistic children. Most parents do not realize the need to teach something they never had to be taught, and it takes their children hard years to learn these skills alone. Autistic children are often labeled as loners who don't even want to interact with others. I have always wondered if this disinterest in others is just part of autism for some people, or if it's learned after repeated failure in social situations.
When I was very young, I had no friends. None. Not even someone who pretended to be my friend. Sometimes another social outcast would talk to me, but even the outcasts usually had better options for interaction that me. It wasn't that I didn't want to make friends. In fact, the opposite of that was true. I desperately wanted a friend. I'd see groups of other people and marvel at how happy they looked together, wishing every moment it could be me. I felt like a ghost, completely separate and invisible. Looking back, I can see exactly why I couldn't make a single friend until I met another outcast in fifth grade: I didn't know how to interact.
Imagine being dropped on a planet full of aliens. They look just like humans, so they think you're one of them and expect you to play by their rules. The only problem is that their rules seem completely nonsensical and absolutely no one will tell you what they are. An alien talks to you with familiar English words, but you can't understand what he means. You unknowingly offend dozens of aliens because you don't observe their odd customs. Everywhere you turn you are shunned for reasons you don't understand, or seemingly no reason at all.
That was my life for many years. I would completely miss the importance of everyday things like a handshake. Even after I made friends with a fellow outcast and began to try and mimic them, I would often trip over every social hurdle presented and fall flat on my face. One example is being asked how you are. The correct answer is "Good. How are you?" It took me years to understand that people didn't really want to know how I was when they asked. After learning the correct response, I tried using it. People would give me strange looks when I gave the answer, and I had no idea why. I was giving the same answer as everyone else, so what was the problem? It was how I said it. I said it rather emotionlessly and quickly because it all seemed like a pointless formality to me, which was not what others expected. Still, since no one pointed out what my mistake was, it was a long time before I figured out the problem.
Another thing that impairs social skills in children with autism, especially Asperger's, is eye contact. Many aspies find eye contact extremely uncomfortable, so they avoid it. This means that a lot of communication is missed completely. Remember how I said I knew I was giving my response wrong somehow because the other person gave me a funny look? I had no idea people communicated with their faces beyond a smile or frown until junior high, because no one pointed it out to me before then. I would never know if what I did was a success or a failure because I wasn't getting any more feedback than you would from a brick wall. This led to many broken social rules and accidental insults where I didn't even know I had done anything incorrectly.
I think the day when I gave up on most social interaction was around first grade, when a new kid came to the school. I decided that I would stop being the weird kid so this person who didn't know me would become my friend. I failed miserably. I think this is why so many aspies stop interacting with others completely. It's often no more than thinking you can do nothing but fail.
Today, as a senior in high school, I still don't know all the unwritten social rules. I still find non-literal speech going right over my head, and I could count the number of facial expressions I am able to reliably read on my fingers. Luckily, I've been able to make a few more friends, and being around them teaches me every day. With friends, I can ask questions like "why did he laugh at that?" or "why did he just touch him on the shoulder?" and actually get answers. In this way, I have gone from being 'that weird kid' to seeming like a normal teenager.

A Spectrum Disorder

There are a lot of question out there as to what exactly it means for something to be a spectrum disorder. I think the easiest way to explain it is by comparing it to color. Imagine every shade of blue ordered from darkest to lightest. At the lower end you have the darkest colors and at the higher end you'll find the lighter colors. Autism is similar in that people on the lower end of the spectrum are more likely to have extreme difficulty living alone, severe mental retardation, and physical symptoms such as tuberous sclerosis. Those on the higher end are usually able to live alone and tend to have high IQ. Someone with autism could be placed anywhere on the spectrum, just as the color blue can be any shade.
Asperger's is a bit controversial when it comes to fitting in with autism. Right now, it's officially a type of high-functioning autism discovered by Hans Asperger. However, some think that it should not have a unique name and just be diagnosed as high-functioning autism. Others say that Asperger's is too different from classic autism (autism on the lower end of the spectrum) and should be separated from autism completely. I honestly don’t care what they do, the name they give it won’t change anything.
Another thing about Asperger’s is how people pronounce it. The most common pronunciation sounds like as-burgers, and can be quite embarrassing to say. It is also sometimes pronounced as-per-jers, which is slightly less embarrassing but not technically correct. It's no wonder that you find statements like "I think I'll just say I have nerditis," on autism-related forums (nerditis coming from the high IQ and lack of social skills often found among those with Asperger's, fitting the stereotype of a nerd.) To avoid being ridiculed, the term aspie is often used on the internet for people with Asperger's.
The number of people being diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum has grown dramatically over the years. Experts can't agree if this is cause by it being under-diagnosed in the past, over-diagnosed now, or both. People are also wondering if environmental triggers are causing autism in higher rates, but there is no definitive proof of this.
I've heard people who think autism is severely over-diagnosed because many of the people on the spectrum are simply spoiled brats with parents that can't accept they are doing anything wrong. I kindly ask these people to take a long walk off a short pier. Yes a spoiled child and an autistic child may both have a meltdown over something simple as a slight change in schedule, but the reasons are different. The spoiled child throws a fit because he/she believes the world revolves around them and that they should be able to do anything they want whenever they want it. An autistic child has a meltdown at a schedule change because they need an exact schedule like fish needs water and a change in schedule results in huge amounts of anxiety.

A Cure!

...Is actually not something I'd ever want, nor is it something I believe will ever be found.
Autism is not a disease. You can't just get a shot or take a  pill that will destroy autism like you can with the flu. Autism is a way of thinking, part of the way your brain works. There's no pill for that. Maybe we'll be able to alter a brain to cure autism in the distant future, but I doubt a procedure like that can ever be considered safe or even legal.
Another thing is that I'd never want a cure. Asking to cure autism is like asking to cure comedians of being funny, it's taking away a huge part of their personality. I see things differently than most people, and I never want that to go away. I love the hum of electricity, the texture of a soft blanket, and even the way the light hits a gravel road. These are things most people ignore, but I find beautiful. Every negative of autism is worth it to me just so I can be moved by the beauty of things others find mundane.
I'm not saying that there's no reason for treatment in some cases. I occasionally take anti-anxiety medication when things overwhelm me, and there's nothing wrong with that. I believe that some autistic people, especially at the lower end of the spectrum, can really benefit from treatment such as classes on social skills and some medication where the benefit outweighs the side-effects. I just don't think trying to wholly remove autism from a person is right, or even possible.
Saying you wish someone didn't have autism is like saying you wish a non-autistic person had been born in their place. As I said before, autism is not something someone lugs around behind them like a suitcase. It is part of our brain, present in every thought, and the color of our world. The day I want to go without Asperger's is the day I want to go without skin.

We're still here

Sometimes I hear things from parents about how autism stole their child somehow. There are a lot of variations on it, but what it boils down to is that people think their child has been stolen by autism. This is one of the saddest things I hear.

I could go on for miles about this topic, but it comes down to this: We are still here. Autism did not steal us away in the night. We do not struggle in chains of autism, disabled under a crushing weight. this is who we are.

Special Interests

I'd say me favorite thing about being an aspie (Short term for someone with Asperger's) is this. Many people with Asperger's autism have a special interest, something they focus on almost obsessively for long periods of time. These can be just about anything, but the most common one I've heard of is transportation (cars, trains, airplanes.)
My interests vary from month to month. I'd say my only constant is computers, although I'm a lot less intense with it than with other things. Sometimes I start talking to my friends about playing around in an operating system, or a new graphics card I read about, and their bored expressions surprise me. Sometime I forget that glitches and .bat files don't interest everyone like they do me. There is an Asperger's stereotype about people going on and on about absolutely boring or extremely obscure topics, and this is probably where it came from. Every girl can go on endlessly about shoes because it’s such a common interest among neurotypical (normal, average) girls, but an aspie might have trouble finding someone who wants to listen to facts about cars built in the 1980s.
My varying interests are all over the place. I’ll often fall in love with something and then research it until I know more than most of the people composing fact lists in the first place. I breathe facts, eat them like fire, love them. Most of the time, my interests will take up a few weeks or months and then become boring. With some, I fall in love with them over and over again between other things. I know huge amounts about things that interest me more than once. An odd recurring one is Pokemon. No matter how silly I tell myself it is, Pokemon keeps drawing me back in. I can recognize all 649 of them by the sound they make, I can name nearly every glitch ever to be discovered in the games, and I know enough trivia to write more than one book. I just can’t help myself, I love to know.
Sometimes I notice obsessive interests with unexpected things in unexpected ways. One is food. I went for at least a year living off almost nothing other than Hot Pockets. I felt no real want to eat anything else. Yes, I might eat pork chops if they were handed to me, but why have those when I could have Hot Pockets? Right now, it’s rice. Almost all of the meals I’ve made for myself in the last four months (at very least) have had rice in them. Why? Why not. Right now, rice seems like the best option in any situation I can think of. I’m sure that I’ll eventually get tired of it and make some other food the staple of my diet, but for now I see little reason not to eat it at every meal.
As for the why of an interest, it isn’t easy to describe. Why one might choose a certain interest over the rest of the world, I have no idea. What I do know is how it feels to have such an obsessive interest. It’s like walking out of a stuffy room and into a spring field. It’s like feeling the sun on your face after being cold for too long. It’s like breathing easy for the first time, like relaxing, like smiling, like feeling full after being hungry all day. The faster I consume facts about my interest, the more wonderful it feels. I imagine it a bit like fire, consuming every shred of information, reaching high into golden light and warmth. To put it in as few words as possible: It’s my favorite feeling. Why learning about computers gives me that feeling when model cars doesn’t is a mystery to me.

Anxiety

I've chatted online with many autistic people, and quite a few of them (including myself) have issues with anxiety. Personally, anxiety has always been a big problem for me. This is sometimes caused by a legitimate problem, like finding out too late that I'm not ready for a big test. However, it is often caused by something seemingly inconsequential or nothing at all. I have accepted this as one of the drawbacks of autism. I find that this problem can be managed if you stay healthy, avoid known anxiety triggers, and learn to deal with stressful situations to the best of your ability. Most people with autism that deal with anxiety have a way to self-soothe. This is often called stimming (self-stimulating), although this term often not completely correct since most of these behaviors are to sooth instead of stimulate. Some stims are nearly unnoticeable, like running a hand through your hair or tapping your foot. Others such as hand flapping and rocking are not only noticeable, but are often associated with serious mental disability (and I do NOT consider mild autism a disability in any way.)
I have found that one must find what they can and can't deal with when it comes to stimming. If your most comforting stim is hand flapping and you don't care what others think when they see you, then go ahead. If you find yourself embarrassed or ashamed from a stim, I suggest to try new ones until you find one that works reasonably well and is not too noticeable. If push comes to shove, remember that the most important opinion about you is your own. This may sound like something from a corny motivational speech, but it's true. If you have to do something noticeable, then do it without worry. No one is perfect, and you don't have to be either.
Something I've run into time and time again is the "Why don't you just stop?" speech. Why? The reason is I'm experiencing enough anxiety to make me feel like I want to scream, or at least cry. Stimming lessens the feelings of anxiety greatly, and can change hours of anxious misery to a just a minute or two. For people who don't often deal with anxiety, please remember this: It may seem like nothing, but to them, it's everything. Anxiety can bring a mind to a screeching, screaming halt. Anxiety can make you feel like the world will tear apart, starting with you. Anxiety starts small, then feeds on itself, growing big enough to suffocate and breeding more of itself in the process. Remember that this cycle can be put to a stop before it becomes unbearable if you'd just let the person rock, or flap their hands, or do any other harmless soothing behavior. Remember this, and you can spare someone from feeling like the air is trying to suffocate them. You can change a day in a moment.

Has autism or is autistic

People say a lot about whether the correct term to use is "they have autism" or "they are autistic." Some say that "they have autism" is incorrect because they do not lug around autism like a hiking backpack full of rocks. After all, when was the last time you heard "she has womanliness" instead of "she's a woman"? Autism is often such a huge part of an individual's personality that they feel it wrong to refer to that part like you would a suitcase.
On the other hand, saying "they are autistic" still isn't right for some people. The word autism has a lot of negative connotations with many people, and very few people want these to follow them like a label everywhere they go. Then there's also the fact that no individual is just a big walking ball of autism with nothing more to them. Personally, I've always felt that calling someone autistic is a bit like ignoring all non-autistic parts of them in favor of an easy label.
As for which is superior, I don't think either term is perfect. There's always someone who will feel offended by either term. I use the "they have autism" way of saying it to try and avoid slapping a label on anyone who has autism/is autistic, but I worry that I'm still offending people.
To put it simply, you can't win. The saying goes that "you can't please all the people all of the time," and it's true. You just have to either use the term you favor or find out the preferred term of who you're talking to.