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?
Funding was arranged through Access to Work and some training was given. Unfortunately, the original idea was to have half a days training, in the event the management would only allow two hours. This in itself made me think that autism was not being taken seriously.
Since the training, about three months ago, the woman in question has not got any better, I think her belief, like the belief of many people, is that autism can be switched off at will if I think about it. I agree it can be 'masked' to some degree but that in itself comes as an expensive cost. I just really think that one cannot argue with a closed mind. But thank you all who have replied, I find it very difficult to grasp an argument or answer when someone comes out with something to which I have no experience of (in this case being a woman) and tend to just accept what is said as a true statement. And I think an argument about a condition which is recognised as a disability (autism) and a condition which is accepted as a normal part of being half of the human race (which I will call for the sake of delicacy 'women's issues') to be something I don't want to get into.