Published on 12, July, 2020
Does this make any kind of sense to anyone?
For me, society seems to be present me with a choice
1. Act normal, uptight and be accepted on the surface, as a walk down the street, but feel depressed, isolated because I have internally obliterated some of the essential quirky parts of my character.
2. Relax, act a bit quirky, and have people avoid me in the street, and be treated like some kind of rapist, mad animal or wierd alien sub-species.
From my own perspective, it seems that people outside have this extra, unnecessary layer, that is like an armed militaristic assault vehicle designed to convince people of their social status - it makes them seem fake, uptight and often rather reactionary, even if they identify as progressive or left wing, because they can't see past their social conditioning needs, that they push in my face at every possible mimenf. If I try to conform to their behaviours of physical uptightness, pushing out my personality like some kind of armed militaristic assault vehicle then my body has to become extremely tense indeed, it's like I'm absorbing all their uptightness, and externally I seem to go to the extreme of their behaviour and often appear robotic or irritable or unreasonably idealistic.
So, that's my dilemma either become robotic or be treated like a potential alien-weirdo-rapist.
Sound familiar, or not?
I live in a village where there is this lad, roughly 17. He is autistic, but to a much greater degree than me. He dresses as a Jedi to go outside and i often see him in the street practicing with his light sabre.
Many people laugh at him or pretend he doesnt exist. The first time i saw him i walked right up to him and said 'dude that is the coolest thing i have seen all year'.
He looked at me and simply said 'thank you.'
Given a choice i am always my quirky self. Let the people laugh or ignore me. That way i know that the people that talk to me are not hostile.
Encouraging him was probably the most evil thing you have ever done in your life. He needed guidance on how to blend in and interact with society, not the contrary.
Why would that be? Why should everyone blend in.
You have a very small minded view. I dont blend in. I dont want to. Neither does he.
T said:I think the way you seem to think gay people are a fairly homogenous group who can easily "be seen as a single body by the public" actually shows how easily autistic people could be seen in the same way.
I think I laid out the thinking very clearly - do you really believe that the public can see such a disparate group who have a single label as a homogenous group?
What other group of people can you think of who have achieved anything like this have such as nebulous range of traits?
Being autistic is not a single trait. It is a label covering a huge range of traits and this is the core reason I think we will not be seen the same way.
I think the way you seem to think gay people are a fairly homogenous group who can easily "be seen as a single body by the public" actually shows how easily autistic people could be seen in the same way.
Gay people aren't any less different from each other than autistic people, especially if you include all people who experience same-sex attraction (idk why this thread keeps shorthanding anyone who isn't strictly into their own sex out of existence).
π Bees π (they/them) Autism resources in bio #stoptheshock #NothingAboutUsWithoutUs said:You've gone so far from the original point to split hairs over something not relevant to what I was talking about in the first place
The conversation moved on from the original point long ago.
I was very clearly talking about a detail that was brought up as part of it and made it clear what it was and even laid it out plainly to save your time, but I feel you are the one who is now willingly ignoring the point for some reason.
Conversations evolve and arguing that it wasn't what you wanted to talk about and throwing the toys out of the pramb reflects poorly on your debating ability.
You are still trying to compare gays and autists. One group has a single identifiable trait that earns them the label of gay but autists are a massivly complex grouping of traits that are only identifiable through a slightly arbitory definition of autism (ie if you get more than an arbitory score on tests to see if you have enought of a diverse range traits at a high enough level).
It is like comparing apples with a baked Alaska.
Why does the comparison matter? Because of how we are seen by the society we are railing against to get recognition and accommodation from.
A famous quote is something like "you have met one autist and you have met only one autist". We are typically nothing alike so for us to be seen as a single body by the public we are going to have a massive struggle compared to gays for example.
I'm interested in finding out how we are going to present ourselves as a unity - something people can identify and accept that we need to have changes in society made for us.
I believe this will be incredibly difficult so I'm looking for ideas to help develop a strategy for this.
Does anyone have a suggestion on how we can work towards this?
You've gone so far from the original point to split hairs over something not relevant to what I was talking about in the first place I'm just not going to talk to you anymore Iain because you're being wilfully ignorant to what I have to say.
π Bees π (they/them) Autism resources in bio #stoptheshock #NothingAboutUsWithoutUs said:No. Look it's very simple: we are talking about categories of people, and the categories are gay people and autistic people.
Completely wrong,
We are talking about easily identifiable groups of people with identifiable traits.
The point was that one easily identifiable group (gays) could advicate for their rights while autists (who are not easily identifiable for any single trait) are in a much smaller group and are less able to advocate for their rights.
The whole issue is around autists being so hard for the public to identify as a group and that we are only identifiable as smaller groups with similar traits (eg don't like crowds) and that these small groups are statistically much smaller than groups like gays.
Your insistence on changing this to be about a groups with nebulous traits (ie all autists) is why I said it looks like you have an agenda. Please stop trying to make this about something else.
π Bees π (they/them) Autism resources in bio #stoptheshock #NothingAboutUsWithoutUs said:But again that is irrelevant, because we are not talking about individual traits
You have failed to read the parameters of the discussion so have wasted more of your time I'm afraid.
I think we need to reset the parameters of the discussion so you can get on the same page. My input started in relation to this post:
Judge Dredd said:ASD are about 4% of the populace, even less. There is just not enough clout and manpower to influence society as a whole.
I believe official stats on autists with a diagnosis are currently around 1% of the population while gays are around 3.1%
For autists to be seen by the general population as a group we need to be identifiable with one or several identifiable traits (otherwise we will experience the "well everyone is on the spectrum then mate" response from the public) - expecting a wider understanding and acceptance is not a realistic expectation in any sensible timeline.
On that basis I don't think we are going to get the force behind us to be able to make progress in the way that gays (or the LGBTQ... group) have managed,
Is that simple enough to follow?