Published on 12, July, 2020
Hi fellow men. PS (ladies you can chime in if you wish to add anything too) open to all.
I wanted to get a bit of understanding from the men out there. What do you think about being a man with autism? Is it hard? What support do you get? What do you struggle with? For example aggression, anger management, exclusion, social isolation etc.
What do you wish people understood more about being a man? What is being a man to you? What values create a man?
I personally have certain values I will list here:
- treat women with respect and kindness. I believe women deserve to be treated with respect. I always hold doors open for women and let women go first on the bus etc. Just common decency to me but just little things that make me me.
- doing what I believe to be right. I try and follow my heart and do what I know or feel is the right thing to do in the moment.
- patience. Being patient and taking my time with things. Not rushing into the first thing that comes my way but rather instead taking my time and letting things take they’re natural order.
- no tolerance for drugs. Having the inner strength to say no to drugs and being willing to set those boundaries with those I meet through my everyday travels.
- self control. Having the ability to control my self and not act on the first impulse that I feel. Having the self control to stop myself from making daft decisions (ties into next point below).
- maturity. Having wisdom in years and experience to set an example to younger folks of how to treat others and be in the world.
So yeh this was just some ideas, just a fun topic nothing serious. Feel free to share your own values and experiences of being a man.
Yellow tree 118 said:- treat women with respect and kindness.
I try to do the same but in the UK I get a lot of odd looks or hear comments after of "he was creepy" - I suspect it is because of how I hold my expression and talk slightly different to neurotypicals.
Sometimes if feels as if there is nothing I can do that does not result in being shunned by females unless they actually know me.
The one thing I wish was different is for women to explain what they want rather than endless games around social or romantic situations where I took many years to learn the basic rules.
Yellow tree 118 said:- no tolerance for drugs.
I avoid these other than medication. I suspect I would become too easily addicted so refuse to give them a chance.
Yellow tree 118 said:- self control.
I've worked really hard on the mental discipline for this and it has been very successful for me professionaly and personally. It took decades to master but is worth it.
Yellow tree 118 said:- maturity.
I've sounded older/wiser when I was young but found many other things that I was late in growing out of (enjoying cartoons and reading comics being some). I've always been much more sensible and practical about other things due to my approach to them (ie research and consider the angles before persuing) which got me treated like the grandad in work situaitons.
It's difficult when you're accused of being creepy and you didn't realise. It would be fine if someone pulled you aside and was like "listen, you're making people uncomfortable" but no one does that.
Being accused of being creepy is horrible, or even "sensing it on the wind" is horrible.
I had to first learn and define what "creepy" really is, then examine myself and see how much actual "creep" I had, and how much is that mysterious misunderstanding that I now know to be caused by Autism.
AFAICS I'm not actually creepy but I have got some "weird" and probably should keep it on the downlow more than I do.
Oh I've had lots of people say they got a bad feeling about me. But how was I meant to know that when no one told me?
Telling me "by the way, that thing you said was a bit creepy" is not going to be the end of the world. If anything, I would welcome it.