Socializing

Yes that's exactly it I think.

I kind of see it as an issue of fluency, if you're fluent in a language, it seems to mean you're so comfortable with it that you can clearly articulate complex notions and so-on, which are actually a typical element within advancing yourself on a personal level within society, and define your social being in that sense.

If you only have a limited grasp of a language, you're at a distinct advantage in that sense, and vulnerable the way autistics are in a wide range of social situations - it really constitutes a fundamental impairment pervading any number of activities.

What's interesting here I think seems to be that if you follow the model of autistics being naturally different rather than incapable and inferior (and also the wider model of disability being essentially a 'social' issue rather than purely a 'medical' one), you'd imagine that their lack of fluency in communication and socialisation (terms which are actually phenomenally broad) is more or less entirely contextual, and defined by their social environment, rather than resulting from any sort of objective 'deficit' in these qualities - which are the kind of things humanity seems to pretty much pride itself on.

It's becoming a cliche to point out how well non-autistics might manage in a society dominated by about 50 autistics to every non-autistic but until the difficulties and challenges faced by autistics are openly understood and acknowledged, it remains the case, so we can only guess at what autistics as a group are capable of if an environment that was suited to them was established - it seems that all we really know now is that if subjected as a group to a systematic (though doubtless unintended) exclusion, frustration, isolation and prejudice, autistics tend to suffer from mental health issues... hardly surprising really, or something that sets them apart from the population as a whole, given that you might say that they're enduring what amounts to psychological torment.

Incidentally, people seem to rather enjoy the 'role-play' that they're so fluent in and comes so naturally to them it often appears to me... what to me seems like pointlessly overblown emotive melodramatic histronics that serves as nothing more than a distressing waste of energy, spoken about afterwards (once they've calmed down) is often described as this wonderful release of negative emotional energy...

I sometimes feel that some people worry that I don't engage in that sort of thing, and that they'd even like me to do it from their own perspective, kind of like engaging in a loving social 'rough and tumble'... even when it seems to me like a horrible argument full of the nastiest nonsense that they clearly don't literally mean.

It would be presumptuous of me of course to feel a sense of resentment towards a perceived 'blackmailing' into 'being normal' and expressing myself in the accepted, 'healthy' convention - and that's why the weight of the scientific community behind autism can be a real benefit, I know that my brain is different somehow.

But it can be something of a depressing thought for me, to consider that this rather brutish, ineloquent means of emotional expression is simply the way that the world works, and the basic emotional 'currency' that all social transactions are founded upon, from kids in the playground right up to the heads of nation it seems...

But perhaps this is simply bringing to light another issue which will hopefully become more relevant - if autistics continue to be regarded as equal and empowered within society (fingers crossed, eh?) - one of autistics coming to accept non-autistics as being the way they are, naturally, 'warts and all'.

Yes that's exactly it I think.

I kind of see it as an issue of fluency, if you're fluent in a language, it seems to mean you're so comfortable with it that you can clearly articulate complex notions and so-on, which are actually a typical element within advancing yourself on a personal level within society, and define your social being in that sense.

If you only have a limited grasp of a language, you're at a distinct advantage in that sense, and vulnerable the way autistics are in a wide range of social situations - it really constitutes a fundamental impairment pervading any number of activities.

What's interesting here I think seems to be that if you follow the model of autistics being naturally different rather than incapable and inferior (and also the wider model of disability being essentially a 'social' issue rather than purely a 'medical' one), you'd imagine that their lack of fluency in communication and socialisation (terms which are actually phenomenally broad) is more or less entirely contextual, and defined by their social environment, rather than resulting from any sort of objective 'deficit' in these qualities - which are the kind of things humanity seems to pretty much pride itself on.

It's becoming a cliche to point out how well non-autistics might manage in a society dominated by about 50 autistics to every non-autistic but until the difficulties and challenges faced by autistics are openly understood and acknowledged, it remains the case, so we can only guess at what autistics as a group are capable of if an environment that was suited to them was established - it seems that all we really know now is that if subjected as a group to a systematic (though doubtless unintended) exclusion, frustration, isolation and prejudice, autistics tend to suffer from mental health issues... hardly surprising really, or something that sets them apart from the population as a whole, given that you might say that they're enduring what amounts to psychological torment.

Incidentally, people seem to rather enjoy the 'role-play' that they're so fluent in and comes so naturally to them it often appears to me... what to me seems like pointlessly overblown emotive melodramatic histronics that serves as nothing more than a distressing waste of energy, spoken about afterwards (once they've calmed down) is often described as this wonderful release of negative emotional energy...

I sometimes feel that some people worry that I don't engage in that sort of thing, and that they'd even like me to do it from their own perspective, kind of like engaging in a loving social 'rough and tumble'... even when it seems to me like a horrible argument full of the nastiest nonsense that they clearly don't literally mean.

It would be presumptuous of me of course to feel a sense of resentment towards a perceived 'blackmailing' into 'being normal' and expressing myself in the accepted, 'healthy' convention - and that's why the weight of the scientific community behind autism can be a real benefit, I know that my brain is different somehow.

But it can be something of a depressing thought for me, to consider that this rather brutish, ineloquent means of emotional expression is simply the way that the world works, and the basic emotional 'currency' that all social transactions are founded upon, from kids in the playground right up to the heads of nation it seems...

But perhaps this is simply bringing to light another issue which will hopefully become more relevant - if autistics continue to be regarded as equal and empowered within society (fingers crossed, eh?) - one of autistics coming to accept non-autistics as being the way they are, naturally, 'warts and all'.