“Yall…”. Xitter holier than thou keyboard ninja. It’s wrong to mock people but OP must feel like a saint.
It’s literally just a regular term to refer to a group of people, this has similar vibes to me as freaking out that your kids got a lesson of pronouns in English class
No, nothing wrong with the word y’all. It’s the generalization: “Everyone is bad, and i will set you straight”
Not to defend the insulting but most people don’t realise that the person is autistic. Autism has different spectrum and some of the symptoms are very subtle for the untrained. I have a family member who is diagnosed with autism late in life, which explains a lot when we were growing up.
That is true and fair, and the fact that plenty of these issues come from ignorance is good enough for me to think that not everyone that the post is calling out is some sort of irredeemable moral failing. Though that only goes as far as the people involved are willing to listen and understand that on the best of days, atypical, innocuous behavior isn’t something you should be mocking, that you only have the impulse to do so because your monkey brain wants to punch someone down the social hierarchy ladder and that’s pretty fucking dumb; and on the worst of days, it’s yet another contributing factor to complete social alienation and internalized shame for autistic people.
thats the joke tho
Does anyone have that image of the fucked up fork meme that was going around a few days ago?. I hated that one and was telling about it but couldn’t find it.
Is it this one? I never saw it, but I googled “fork meme” and this was a likely candidate.
That fork looks like it would be handy for keeping a window propped open
Maybe we should raise our standard to “don’t bully.”
While I agree that we should avoid bullying rather than just avoiding bullying specific groups, this might go too far. We should just make a whitelist of people who you can bully, like Republicans or people who watch reality television.
If we’re going here…
Whitelist isn’t the preferred nomenclature. Use terms like allow-list or permit-list.
So now what do we call the opposite list?
Usually a deny-list or a block-list.
These are the inclusive terms that are getting adopted in IT, at least, and they usually work in that context. Maybe not for everything.
So what the heck are we calling “Grey-hats” now?
Edit: not to mention the other two hat terms
Don’t forget about the whole master/slave thing or how often programmers kill children.
I think grey still is acceptable, at least until the martians start demanding equal rights.
I think terms like “legal grey area” don’t have the same connotations as black/white do, because “grey” isn’t really used as an adjective for a person.
I still refer to our oldschool Linux admins as greybeards. I think that’s okay because there’s like 5 oldschool female Linux admins in the world and they are chill as hell.
At my company, white hat hackers are to be called “offensive security researchers”. Black hat hackers are to be called “attackers”.
and reddit user
And lemmy user for good measure
No. It may feel good in the moment, but doesn’t change anything. It just reinforces their belief that the world is out to get them and makes us hypocrites, or if done regularly enough, turns is into the beast we would destroy as e also feel bad about our behavior and ignore those feelings long enough (they’re there for a reason). And sure, there will be momentary lapses and negative feelings we didn’t know what to do with them. That’s when it’s time to face our shadows, again, and do the work. It took me a half a century to get there, but I’ve begun trying. I hope you will join me. It’s an individual work, but we can support each other, if you’re game.
Sadly we love hierarchy dominance just about as much as we hate how much it makes us look like apes.
Teachers and school administrators almost always side with bullies. They can’t help themselves.
What have you got against apes, ya damn dirty hominid?
they are not efficient enough in warfare
Oo oo uh gnrshk
I call it an invisible caste system. There is so much perceived superiority over even the simplest of things.
I know. My child had a terrible time* of it, during their school years. And I’m slowly* becoming more aware, because I’ve almost no filter and blurt out whatever crosses my mind. I’m addressing it, but reversion sneaks up on me. I just have to keep working at that, and way too often, missing what seems obvious to others or very belatedly.
*Yay autocorrect
I’m autistic, but I can pick up on most sarcasm and most implicit statements
That’s great!
Good on ya, I can’t and it really sucks.
Do you sing? Do you listen to rap and watch standup comedy? These things helped me. Also, doing impressions.
I also can pick up 100% of the sarcasm and implicit statements that i notice.
Everyone does. We just don’t notice them. … Why the hell. Did I write this?
well sometimes if you don’t know the person that well or if it’s a loaded issue they’re talking about, you just have to come out and say “I can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic”
… He was implying that you may very likely have no idea that you’re missing implicit statements and sarcasm, because you’re, well, missing it.
The main meaning is still there and most of the time, nothing happens if you miss the implicit or sarcastic meaning, so it’s very likely you’ll never notice you missed it.
You actually have no real way of knowing if you are good or bad at picking up implicit/sarcastic meanings, because you would have to check each and every statement and depend on whoever you’re checking with to be truthful and/or good at picking up thesr statements as well. If you don’t do that and just go from your own experience, it’s actually impossible for you to tell how good you are.
It’s kind of funny that I have to explain this because this is a perfect example of you missing the implicit meaning, right within a discussion of the topic.
congratulation
Autistic sarcasm is the best.
autism certified sarcasm :^)
It’s almost like autism is a spectrum and it can go from hardly noticeable to so severe that you can’t survive without constant supervision and assistance.
Same here. It’s something that can be learned
It really depends on the way someone’s autism effects their social skills. Not everyone has the capacity to learn these skills, Autism does create a skill cap for many people.
It’s also a question of involved effort. I was in a form of ABA therapy as a kid and I was capable of learning to identify sarcasm and read social cues, so I did.
But it doesn’t come naturally to me, it requires a level of concentration and conscious processing that I don’t hear non-autistic people discussing. It causes headaches and migraines and after a few days of work, using these skills every minute of the day, I’m exhausted and struggle with basic tasks at home. I don’t have these same issues with exhaustion or conscious processing when I’m with other autistic people (I work in disability programming, I coordinate/admin 3 days a week with mostly neurotypical people, and run programs 1 day a week with mostly neurodivergent people, and there’s a big difference on how much “effort” it takes to understand people in those two environments)
Not saying it’s not worth learning. If you can learn these skills they are incredibly important and at the bare minimum they will keep you safe.
But as a society we need to accept that for a small subset of people with disabilities, these skills are unachievable, and reasonable accommodations will still need to be made, and for a slightly larger subset, accommodations may still need to be made on occasion because while someone may have these skills, they might not have the cognitive capacity to employ these skills 100% of the time.
Autism does create a skill cap for many people
I’m sorry what? This is a new concept in neurology to me: a new type of nervous system that cannot learn beyond a certain point?
Every time I hear the current “wisdom” about autism, I thank god I wasn’t diagnosed until adulthood.
I told my dad I trained my cats to sit and wait quietly for dinner. He said “but you can’t train cats”. I said “You can train anything with a brain”.
Same way here, I am deeply skeptical of this “skill cap” concept you just mentioned. Is there any science on that?
I think the reason the idea of a “skill cap” feels instantly incorrect is because there is obviously no point at which any human “stops learning”. There will always be more to learn an more that someone (autistic or not) can learn.
The skill cap applies to specific metrics of measuring skill gain.
A large number of people with “level 3” autism who are non verbal will never learn to communicate verbally as fluently as non-autistic verbal people, even with decades of supportive education. But that doesn’t necessarily mean they have a “communication skill gap”, there’s a lot of communication skills that can and will be developed with the right support. But expecting someone in that situation to “try harder” and “learn to talk” is unrealistic, when the more achievable goal should be “learn to effectively communicate”.
I just never had issues with it in the first place.
Now, basically every other kind of nonverbal communication on the other hand…
That’s the equivalent to the “colorblind” approach
What you’re describing is something like “racism blindness”.
“Colorblind” means that you, yourself, don’t take a person’s race into account when judging them.
It does not mean you don’t see racism happening to them. That’s not what the blind part is being blind to.
It’s not intentional for sure but that’s what happens effectively. That’s a critique from PoC.
And the analogy to the post is quite good, I think. If you don’t take race into account, do neither take into account what is socially associated with race. People intuitively like people more that are similar to them, that’s not necessarily optics but music taste, accent, shared experiences; all more or less directly linked to race.
I think how much people favor people of their own races is probably a function of how safe they feel interacting with other races, which is itself a function of how dangerous a racial faux pas would be, which would be inversely proportional to how color-blind a society decided to be.
Increasing sensitivity to racial microaggressions and other involuntary grievances, and increasing the social costs associated with those things, increases the potential danger of an encounter with others of other races.
That’s my prediction at least. I’d love to see data to know whether it’s true.
If you work culturally and politically to make race a personal minefield, racial diversity becomes a threat. You multiply that natural human xenophobia into an inability to connect. You increase divides.
As someone with OCD but without ASD, I can understand a bit of this. But a helpful tip is not to bastardize something people are enjoying that you, yourself would have an issue with as a way to rationalize your dislike.
For instance… If you have an issue with a certain type of food, don’t make fun of it while people are eating it and they won’t feel attacked and respond in the like. (it’ll just become a tit-for-tat and devolve)
Instead of saying “Eww… I’m not eating mushrooms, they’re a fungus and they’re gross and they feed off rotten things.” Just give a bit of obfuscated truth and say something like, “No matter how many times I’ve tried, my mind just won’t let me do this or eat that.” No need to explain any further as many people can have issues with different things, so there’d be no need to give your diagnosis.
ASD with contamination OCD here. I hate mushrooms, but strangely enough, love tempah. That’s basically soy curds glued together with edible mold.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Brains are weird.
Well, then you shouldn’t eat any plants and after that anything else, because plants feed of rotten things (soil) and everything (including us) eats plants.
… this just reignited my desire for a boyfriend, but like, one that’s also autistic, so he fucking gets me. We’ll have lunch in perfectly comfortable silence at a busy diner and judge people that talk too loud in public. It’ll be great!
Some friendly advise. A neurodivergent partner can be great but you can never assume they will be similar to you in the same setting. Coping mechanisms can be opposites and what is comfortable for you may be stressful for them.
Me and my partner are both on the spectrum and i wouldn’t have it any other way but its common for at least one of us to deal with something at any given time (so there are few true breaks from stress) and at worst our challenges can amplify eachother.
In the end everyone is unique so maintain an open mind when dating and try not tp judge all neurotypicals the same way.
Maybe I’m autistic because that sounds fucking awesome. Fuck small talk. I just like existing by people I care about.
Yeah fuck small talk, let’s throw shade at the people around us!
My wife is autistic, can confirm lots of happy, comfortable silence. We also have a collection of white sounds, and different rain sounds from around the world lol
I recently had someone acting high and mighty with me pretending I was a bigot in literally every way to try to win an argument about joking about wealthy people being lizards. They rounded it off by saying I was using big words to bully her because she was a woman. I had no idea she was a woman, and frankly I don’t care because she’s clearly dishonest and ableist AF.
She’s probably one of the rare un-wealthy lizard people. They get really sensitive when you talk about rich lizard people.
Whoever considers picky eating a problem can take it up with me, my friend is one, which simply means I get to eat the stuff she doesn’t want to, and she can order something she might not like, knowing I will eat it anyways. It’s a win win
I’m autistic and the opposite of a picky eater. That being said, when introducing people to new food you have to be extremely patient with them. A lot of things look, feel, and smell different that what most people are used to
My 4 year old is autistic and definitely didn’t get the picky eating thing out of the autism grab bag. This morning he mixed rice (with soy sauce) & relish and gobbled it up 🤮
Is that a picture of your son eating that relish?
Thank you friend, from an autistic person with food issues.
Additional thanks from a fella whose brain reacts to weird textures in my food by gagging or vomiting. It’s so embarrassing, especially around friends.
I used to have that with zucchinis for whatever reason, so I definitely understand where you’re coming from. First time eating quiche years ago was hell, nowadays I love it
Bananas for me.
What about cucumbers? I got a love-hate relationship with those
I have two or three foods that cause that reaction. I’ve just said that I’m allergic. Saves a lot of explanation.
In a way, you are.
Hey, someone else with the same issue as me!
Yeah it sucks. So I end up getting a lot of the same things over and over again because I know what the texture will be.
‘Hurr durr you’re so picky’ - or maybe I just don’t like gagging and vomiting and can’t control that reaction genius.
As a father who either has to prepare the same meals over and over, or else make two separate meals, I do not share your positive outlook
It gets much better when the kids become co-responsible of their own alimentation.
Alimentation
It smacks of Victorian literature. I’ll be adding this one to my verbiage, thanks.
Leave it to us non-native English speakers to bring up extremely obscure English words out of nowhere.
Taking each of those symptoms in isolation, how would someone know that person is autistic? Pretty sure the sentiment behind the “I would never bully someone for being autistic” statement is that if they knew the behavior is caused by a condition then they wouldn’t bully that person. The difference being that it would then be assumed the behavior is due to something out of their control.
You could take the absolutist position of “don’t bully anyone for any reason” but how absolute is that position? Is it not okay to call a politician an idiot or an asshole for doing something you don’t like? What if they have a condition that makes them behave in a way that you call idiotic or assholeish? A child refusing to even try to eat something their parent worked so hard to make could be considered assholeish behavior, are we to assume it’s because they have autism and thus never call them out on it?
Imo it doesn’t matter much whether that behaviour is caused by some recognized condition or is just their personality. Someone could have texture related issues with eating certain food and not be autistic, doesn’t make them an asshole for not wanting to eat it (not to mention that almost no one likes all food). In the end we’re all mainly a product of our genetics and environment, and the specifics of what people should and shouldn’t be considered responsible for is a whole philosophical argument in itself.
You can criticize people for their behaviour regardless, as the other commenter said there’s a difference between criticism and bullying. And I don’t think “I’m autistic” is any better or worse a reason than “I just don’t like it” (using that loosely here, could include the whole range of extreme responses like vomiting). Because autism here in the end is just a label saying “congrats, you have a recognized reason to not like it”. There’s no way to know what precisely is going on in someone elses head regardless.
Is it not okay to call a politician an idiot or an asshole for doing something you don’t like?
It’s pretty fair to call a powerful individual an asshole if they’re using the unequal power dynamic to fuck up peoples’ lives.
What if they have a condition that makes them behave in a way that you call idiotic or assholeish?
Insults are inherently irrational, using derogatory terms is never rational. There is no clear and objective way to determine if an insult is “justified”, because justification and logical thinking is subjective. When using insults, it’s important to consider the goal and results of the insult. Why are you calling a person an idiot? Is it because they’re acting in a way which you find “weird” or “annoying” or even “aggressive”, and you want to feel better about yourself or harm them emotionally?
In your example, the perspective is that a person holds power over others and is using it to cause harm in one way or another, and it’s felt that the person doing it is in control of their actions, so even knowing that an insult will bring no improvements they just feel an emotional pressure to vent.
That’s a scenario where it becomes obvious that justification is subjective and, even if it were reasonable to decide it’s unintentional, some people just feel helpless or angry and want to take out their frustration on the person they feel is doing the actions.
You use bullying when you want to achieve something. Self-satisfaction, emotional manipulation, emotional abuse, fitting in with others, whatever. Bullying is a tool to try to shift power, to bring someone else down, whether it’s to “level the playing field” more or to put someone below you.
So what goal do you have when you call someone who’s stimming or fidgeting or breaking down crying a derogatory name? What goal do you have when you call a child an asshole for refusing to eat a certain food? What goal do you have when you have when you call a politician an idiot?
Are you trying to emotionally abuse them into acting a certain way? Are you trying to gain self-satisfaction/relief and express your frustration at their cost? Are you trying to change other peoples’ perceptions of the person? Are you just trying to hurt / punish them with no end goal because you feel they deserve it since you got stressed by their behaviour?
It’s ignorant to for intent to be the default assumption. Always assume that someone could be different from you and that they may not be at fault for something you don’t like. Then consider things you wouldn’t do if they happened to have some sort of difference from you. That’s the basic idea of treating others with sensitivity. If you think a person has certain harmful beliefs or does certain harmful actions, would you treat them differently if they had ASD or dysthemia or NPD?
Treat anyone the same way you would treat them if they were neurodiverse. Your opinion of them shouldn’t generally change if you were to someday know that they had ASD or something. That’s an important way to stave off unjustified biases and treatments towards disadvantaged peoples.
A child refusing to even try to eat something their parent worked so hard to make could be considered assholeish behavior,
I mean if you’re down with blaming the children for being whatever you think of as misbehaved… I think “kids are assholes” is a funny phrase but unjokingly pinning the fault on the kid for their behaviour as if they choose to be reluctant to eat and calling them an asshole is a whole nother level of unempathetic. Kids are not rational and shouldn’t be bullied.
are we to assume it’s because they have autism and thus never call them out on it?
Generally if children (or pets) refuse to eat it’s because there’s something causing them to, maybe it’s stress or emotional trauma, or maybe it’s sensitivities caused by a disorder, or maybe it’s an underlying illness like ulcers or cancer, or maybe it’s because they have a certain biological reaction to the food, or maybe literally anything else. The mere idea of “calling out” a child in the first place is dumb, as if they’re to blame for what foods do or do not repulse them or what causes them stress.
What do you is be a good parent and support your child, helping them get through the obstacles they were given. Not get upset at them, subconsciously blame them, and then be surprised when that sort of attitude towards them emotionally pushes them away or traumatizes them. Which is a typical experience for people with Autism and ADHD because most people, and most parents, default to assigning fault to the person they associate with issues, and raise their child thinking of them as a burden.
The key word here is “bully”. It’s also a tricky word because the line where bullying starts is often blurry. There’s a context-dependent spectrum of gray that makes up the difference between bullying and calling someone out on assholeish behaviour. I think you’re right that absolutist poisons don’t work here.
My reading of the initial post was somewhat different than yours. I imagined the person saying “I would never bully someone for being autistic” as someone who believes themselves to be a Good Person™, despite engaging in bullying behaviours. My brain went there because I’ve known people like that. Maybe they would refrain from bullying someone who they knew as being autistic, but if they take that approach, they’re going to inadvertently bully a heckton of autistic people for their autistic traits, just because they don’t know they’re autistic. I don’t think that’s okay.
I interpreted the original post as advocating for being more tolerant regardless of labels or identities, because often, we don’t know the full context behind a behaviour. A complement to this is that being autistic doesn’t exempt you from being an asshole. I want to be called out for shitty behaviour, but I don’t want to be bullied.
I feel like I’m articulating my point badly, but something that’s underlying this entire comment is a book I read a while back named “Racism without racists”. It looks at racism as a product of the system, and how neutral or even good people can be a part of perpetuating it. Acknowledging this is a necessary and often uncomfortable step towards dismantling unjust systems and it doesn’t mean that people are Bad People™. When people feel attacked and perceive “the system that we are a part of and that some of us benefit from is structurally racist” as being an accusation of “you are racist”, it leads to them becoming defensive and refusing to acknowledge the address of the broken system.
I think ableism functions in a similar way. Society is ableist on so many levels, but I’ve found discussing this to be difficult when I have to walk on eggshells to avoid people becoming offended as if I have accused them of being ableist (even if I haven’t used that word at all and am focussing on constructive discussions about way forwards). It feels hypocritical when people consider themselves an ally, but then have the audacity to take a basic access request like “please don’t label the event as wheelchair accessible if it isn’t” and make it about them, becoming outraged. My take on the original post is that it’s directed at this kind of hypocrisy.
FWIW I thought you articulated that quite well, it helped clarify some things for me. But I do understand your apprehension.
Thanks, I appreciate it. I think perhaps that what I meant by that part was “Oh no, I have already written a lot and I still have more to say. Ah well — farewell brevity! I see now that you were never going to be a part of this runaway comment”
A fellow long-winded mdash user fighting ableism? Keep doing the good work! :)
I see, you weren’t being as concise as you’d hoped. I get that. I often make long posts too because of how often people misunderstand me I try to anticipate that and head them off in order to not have to get sidetracked re-explaining things. That’s me anyways.
- You shouldn’t really bully anyone autistic or not
- Don’t mistake someone trying to encourage positive behavior as bully. Just because you have one of these behaviors doesn’t mean you correctly self-diagnosed yourself with autism either
Which ones of these are bad behavior?
None of them are exactly bad behaviors. Just encouraging trying new things and effective self regulation as positive behaviors, is my point
Upholding the hegemony of neurotypicality as the “acceptable” way to be, and the encouraging of neurodiverse people to mask their (fine, unharmful) behaviours. Masking which actively harms them.
All this does is promote ongoing ableism. I beg that you read something about the experiences of autistic people and come to understand how marginalized and harmed they are by this continual shaming of these traits. Traits that are not harmful, or even uncommon. They’re just different, and less normalized.
Thank you for your perspective, my intent isn’t to cause harm, so I will take your comments to heart
Meltdowns often include bad behavior. If your meltdown includes slamming a door, cursing at someone, yelling in an inappropriate setting, disparaging someone else’s preferences, choices, or lifestyle: that’s bad behavior and someone calling that out, or excluding you from activities due to those behaviors isn’t bullying no matter if that behavior can be explained by autism or not.
Encouraging someone to do something doesn’t mean them not doing it is bad. I can encourage you to try mayo instead of ketchup on your fries, without implying that you’re an asshole for eating your fries with ketchup. Also, I’m pretty sure me saying “maybe you’d like fries with mayo if you tried it” isn’t bullying. I faced a lot of these issues when I was younger, and while I don’t think it works like that for everyone, I genuinely got over a bunch of them by just forcing myself to confront them.
The point stands that people should be less self-centred when it comes to what’s ‘normal’, but some of the examples in the tweet come off as (ironically) quite judgemental.
Also, I’m pretty sure me saying “maybe you’d like fries with mayo if you tried it” isn’t bullying
It is kind of dehumanizing though, because who over the age of fifteen hasn’t yet experimented with various french fry sauces?
The presupposition here is that they didn’t try it.
Positive according to whom? What’s positive for you may be destructive for me.
I’ve ulcerative colitis and it’s flared up. Medical advice is no to low fibre, no veg unless it’s boiled soft like a mush, no garlic, no onions, no mushrooms, no red meat, no sweet corn. I can only eat white meat, fish, white rice, potatoes like mash, white breads like a loaf, bagels and brioche. I’m not being a picky eater, I literally can’t eat some things because they’ll fuck with my gut and make my disease worse. Fuck inconsiderate people.
I’m really sorry, I had colitis and it was awful. I really hope you find some relief from it.
It’s getting better day by day and I’m going on a biologic which suppresses my immune system so hopefully with the new med I’ll rarely have flares again.
That sounds tough. I once knew someone who had a medical issue with severe dietary restrictions like you, and a tone deaf coworker was like “haha at least you can lose weight, sounds great!” FFS
Tell me about it. My flare up started months ago and I’ve dropped a clothing size. Everything I have is baggy on me now. It’s been so bad that I’m being put onto immune suppression medication in the hope I don’t have flares again. I also have autism traits like sensory issues and being unable to make eye contact as well as poor reading of social ques.
I’ve also had stomach issues that cause sudden, rapid weight loss, and it all started with some weird food poisoning, but that sounds horrific. I realize how fortunate I am, now, and wish you the best and speediest healing.
What a minute…autism is not a blood type?
This is just straight hypocritical from them
With how frequently I see hypocrisy I’m beginning to hypothesize the neurotypicals aren’t good at, at-least, that kind of logical consistency.
How good are you with keeping promises?
