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, if such a autism workshop as AngelDust suggests does happen, would you mind telling us how it went, during the workshop and afterwards? It seems like a good idea, especially against ignorance. Not sure if it really reaches people that do it intentionally, they may just find something else. I hadn't even thought about this possibility that she may be doing this on purpose, guess I'm usually quite naive... Maybe she isn't though, she may not think much about her comments at all. Like a woman suffering from MS told me that the visible problems aren't really the worst to deal with because others help her when they see she can't walk very well at the moment or use her hands properly, but what really gets her down is having to rest a lot despite "looking great" as some colleague of hers kept telling her and then still feeling incredibly exhausted. Presumably that colleague didn't really mean to hurt her, hope yours doesn't either.