If you are thinking of leaving the forum ...

Peter said:

we need these conflicts these arguments because they are the vaccine against extremism and snowflake oversensitivity.

No Peter

'We' should be capable of respecting the boundaries and vulnerabilities of other members of the forum and remembering that not everyone thrives on conflict.

For some of us, conflict is a trigger to past traumatic events.

For me it’s a question of intention.

I’m here in the hope of learning more about my condition, meeting people facing similar challenges and hopefully providing some mutual support.

I thought that’s why we’re all here.

Now I might hold an opinion on some random topic that would upset someone here. If I do make such a post i hope I’d have the maturity to say “sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you, let’s move on to another topic”.

Because what could I hope to gain by upsetting a stranger on a forum? a stranger who could potentially help me with my own problems.

And that’s the crux of it for me. Why do some people seek to pointlessly upset other people in a mutual support forum.

I can’t think of a good or honest reason.

Amerantin (former member) said:

I’m here in the hope of learning more about my condition, meeting people facing similar challenges and hopefully providing some mutual support.

I thought that’s why we’re all here.

To add context some of us, the issues we're dealing with as autistic people, is being vilified for words or views considered politically incorect etc. I would say that that is part of autism. Autism both A) can contribute to making us less socially conforming and B) make us less sensative in the way we express ourselves. So when we have long angry debates on here about whether person Xs views or words were aceptable it is very much at the heart of the chalenges some autistic people face.

We as Autists NEED people to be more tolerant of boorish behaviour! We aren't exactly known for our social charm...

Bullying, it seems after reading many comments here, is very much in the eye of the beholder. 

There is a Christian concept which helps me a great deal in these situations, "Hate the sin, not the sinner".

There is a member here who sees my attempts to build bridges with people who's ideals I find reprehensible as somehow dishonest or perhaps the correct word is disingenuous.

To be honest I can kinda see his point, I have often wondered to myself why I don't just write certain sorts of people off and leave them alone, which in many cases does end up being the only sensible option.

I've noticed that people tend to bully those who they find boorish. Now Boorishness, like beauty, is somewhat in the eye of the beholder and somewhat defined by the society in which you participate, which makes it a LOT harder to eliminate that people make out even if you don't have Autism.

Bullying, looks a lot easier to eliminate, but as is very clear form many posts a lot of people here don't know when they've stopped making a fair representation of their point of view and slipped into bullying behaviour.

There's not a lot of what psychologists call "insight" showing in some conversations, that's for sure. Bee's summed it up nicely in a P.M. once. "If you can't say anything nice, then try to say nothing at all". For those who read our posts it must be obvious that both he and I occasionally fail in that effort and each time it seems to ourselves we were "fully justified" at the time. Speaking for myself, I find sometimes after reviewing my conduct that I was only partially justified, if at all. And occasionally (it's thankfully rare, but it happens), actually mistaken..

I hope that helps explain some of the behaviours we have been seeing, and maybe even suggests an alternative way of looking at even those members with whom you may have profound disagreements with..

We as Autists NEED people to be more tolerant of boorish behaviour! We aren't exactly known for our social charm...

Bullying, it seems after reading many comments here, is very much in the eye of the beholder. 

There is a Christian concept which helps me a great deal in these situations, "Hate the sin, not the sinner".

There is a member here who sees my attempts to build bridges with people who's ideals I find reprehensible as somehow dishonest or perhaps the correct word is disingenuous.

To be honest I can kinda see his point, I have often wondered to myself why I don't just write certain sorts of people off and leave them alone, which in many cases does end up being the only sensible option.

I've noticed that people tend to bully those who they find boorish. Now Boorishness, like beauty, is somewhat in the eye of the beholder and somewhat defined by the society in which you participate, which makes it a LOT harder to eliminate that people make out even if you don't have Autism.

Bullying, looks a lot easier to eliminate, but as is very clear form many posts a lot of people here don't know when they've stopped making a fair representation of their point of view and slipped into bullying behaviour.

There's not a lot of what psychologists call "insight" showing in some conversations, that's for sure. Bee's summed it up nicely in a P.M. once. "If you can't say anything nice, then try to say nothing at all". For those who read our posts it must be obvious that both he and I occasionally fail in that effort and each time it seems to ourselves we were "fully justified" at the time. Speaking for myself, I find sometimes after reviewing my conduct that I was only partially justified, if at all. And occasionally (it's thankfully rare, but it happens), actually mistaken..

I hope that helps explain some of the behaviours we have been seeing, and maybe even suggests an alternative way of looking at even those members with whom you may have profound disagreements with..