samsonlonghair wrote:What are your thoughts regarding bronies and the autism spectrum?
It's completely coincidental. The brony fandom is overwhelmingly kind and accepting, so it's natural that people with autism - people who, for the most part, have a much harder time fitting in and being accepted in society - would gravitate towards that. It's a similar reason that a lot of my students want to attend a HBCU; more than anything, it's where they'd feel the most welcome and accepted.
The intended tone was a little bit unclear given the nature of a text-based medium, so I'm going to assume that you didn't intend any negative connotation, but I don't think that there's anything wrong being on the autism spectrum, so in my mind, the question is a lot like "What are your thoughts regarding black people and basketball?" It's coincidental and irrelevant, but a negative meaning will often get inferred from the question. As someone who's been in the fandom for several years, "They're all autistic" is the second most common pointless attack we get (right after "They're all pedophiles," something particularly insulting to me given that I'm a teacher).
Just to be clear, I at no time thought you had intended that to sound insulting at all. I'm just pointing that out for future reference since I know the fandom is a pretty foreign thing to most people.
