Published on 12, July, 2020
Since my diagnosis, one woman at work has gone out of her way to seemingly belittle my condition.
She constantly says that I am 'getting away with things' and that as a woman she suffers far more and has far more problems than me. She says that period pains and the menopause would make my autism seem very trivial.
Not being a woman, I do not know how these things are. My attitude in the past has always been that trying to have a battle between conditions as to which is worse is pointless. But perhaps some of the female autistics here could tell me whether their autism has a greater effect on them than their 'womens problems' or vice versa. I certainly do not want to belittle the things that women have to put up with and never would.
I think my work colleague is somehow 'jealous' of the fact I have a support worker and have had my work changed in order to accommodate my autistic tendencies. Could this be the case?
Hi Trainspotter,
I’m pretty disappointed that a colleague has said these things to you. It’s not appropriate for her to do so.
There may be many reason why she said what she did. She may be utterly ignorant and not have a clue about Autism. She may be trying to ‘normalise’ your autism in a misguided attempt to make you feel included. She may genuinely believe Periods are worse than autism. She may be jealous of the adjustments you are receiving at work. Or she may simply be harassing and discriminating towards you and cleverly using the fact that she has Periods to confuse and disguise this fact.
None of the above reasons are good enough.
What concerns me most is that you feel as if she has gone out of her way to belittle you and that she constantly makes reference to you 'getting away with things.' It is not relevant what 'justifications' she may be attempting to offer for her behaviours i.e. whether she is saying these things to you 'because she has bad Periods' or 'women have it worse,' or whether she has two heads. What is important here is that she is being potentially harassing towards you about your Autism, your adjustments at work and your legitimate use of a support worker, regardless of what justifications she is currently using as her excuse.
I therefore think it might be wise to set aside the 'are periods more debilitating than Autism?' debate as it is totally irrelevant: it is not possible to compare two different things in this way. What concerns me most is if she is using the fact she has Periods (or some such other claptrap) to disguise her blatant discrimination towards you.
There is no justification for belittling or disrespecting you, no matter how bad her Periods are or any other such suspect 'reason' she may be currently giving. The fact that you are not a woman and therefore feel unable to argue your case back to her (because she has Periods and you don't,) suggests to me this is intentional on her part, to use a reason for belittling you that you have no knowledge of (and no 'power' about) and therefore don't feel you can fight back against.
So I would start ignoring the 'Periods comments' entirely and see past them instead to what she is actually saying to you about your Autism and your work adjustments.
You may want to approach HR and politely request that they offer all staff an Autism workshop so they can gain a real understanding of Autism and the potential challenges it can present. You can even offer HR that you are concerned (suspect) that staff (without naming any individual at all at this point) may be unsupportive of your adjustments at work and you thought that, by educating the workforce on Autism in general, it may head off any potential misunderstandings that may currently exist and help avoid any potential issues in the future.
If this woman's potential harassment of you persists after staff training, I would take it higher to HR. Don't let her 'Periods issues' confuse your judgment on what is acceptable behaviour from her and what isn't.
If HR do organise an Autism workshop for staff, I would invite HR to attend as well (consider it self-protection if you will) as, in my experience, nothing ferrets out a discriminating colleague quite as well as a good workshop can. Where, by their attitude towards the material presented and often their (sometimes ignorant) questions, resistance and complaints towards the subject matter itself, can often tend to show them up quite clearly for exactly what they are.
Best of luck.
Very well said. Getting to the crux of the matter not the camouflage.