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Greg Wallace's autism excuse for sexually inappropriate behaviour

TheCatWoman

I don't know if anyone has seen anything about this, but Masterchef presenter Greg Wallace has been sacked for sexually inappropriate behaviour towards numerous women over a number of years. At first he dismissed the complaints against him as middle class women of a certain age who didn't understand his humour and some of making it up.

Now he says' he's autistic, and my first thought was 'Really?' I think he's trying to use autism as an excuse for bad behaviour, I don't know of any autistic people who think it's OK to remove thier trousers, when wearing no underwear in front of female collegues, open the front door to someone wearing only a towel and then remove that towel once they're inside, or run down the street after them touching thier backsides. I've never heard of this sort of disinhibition being an autistic trait, he's still in denial that what he did was wrong and now says he's autistic like that makes it OK.

It's not OK, it's not OK for anyone autistic or not and I think that a man of his age would know that. What really annoys me is the feeling that he's attempting to jump on a bandwagon and use his "diagnosis" as an excuse, for inappropriate behaviour, giving te impression that all autistic people are like him.

I think we should start standing up to people like him and the media coverage they get using autism as an excuse.

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  • I have not been following the Gregg Wallace case and to be honest I do not want to. There is war all over the world, children are suffering, people are being bombed and starved in countless countries and yet the front page of every paper is (from what I understand) whether a man made inappropriate jokes on a TV show.

    What I will say, and this is NOT a comment on the Gregg Wallace situation as I do not know the facts and he sounds like quite an unpleasant person, is that autistic people, especially men, can find it hard to know what jokes and comments are appropriate, especially sexual ones and can often be accused of inappropriate behaviour as a result, especially if they are mirroring what they have observed from other men and are trying to be "one of the lads".  It took me years to understand what context different jokes could be said in and I found it a very hard social norm to learn. 

    As autistic people we often struggle to interpret other people's reactions to things so we may also be unaware when we have hurt or offended someone as well, or misinterpret their reactions so that we believe they are actually enjoying the behaviour and finding it amusing. It truly is a minefield. 

    As I said none of this is a comment on Gregg Wallace, I have no idea what he has or hasn't done, it is merely observations based on some of the other conversations in this thread

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  • I have not been following the Gregg Wallace case and to be honest I do not want to. There is war all over the world, children are suffering, people are being bombed and starved in countless countries and yet the front page of every paper is (from what I understand) whether a man made inappropriate jokes on a TV show.

    What I will say, and this is NOT a comment on the Gregg Wallace situation as I do not know the facts and he sounds like quite an unpleasant person, is that autistic people, especially men, can find it hard to know what jokes and comments are appropriate, especially sexual ones and can often be accused of inappropriate behaviour as a result, especially if they are mirroring what they have observed from other men and are trying to be "one of the lads".  It took me years to understand what context different jokes could be said in and I found it a very hard social norm to learn. 

    As autistic people we often struggle to interpret other people's reactions to things so we may also be unaware when we have hurt or offended someone as well, or misinterpret their reactions so that we believe they are actually enjoying the behaviour and finding it amusing. It truly is a minefield. 

    As I said none of this is a comment on Gregg Wallace, I have no idea what he has or hasn't done, it is merely observations based on some of the other conversations in this thread

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