Scottish Autistic Person gives some insight into his view of the condition (WARNING: Long blogpost)

I've been working on this for a wee bit so I do apologise if this doesn't make much sense at first.

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Scottish Autistic Person gives some insight into his individual view of the condition

Hello everyone, apologies for the very long post.

After years of wrangling with myself, I took the decision to join this forum and give some detailed analysis of my experience of being autistic. I've written about this before on a blog I used to have but it would be better posting something similar here since this is much more relevant a place than an obscure website where not many people apart from family would have seen my rambling.
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I was diagnosed aged four with Autism Spectrum Disorder and Semantic Pragmatic Disorder under the old DSM classification. Up until recently I was very reluctant to understand my own condition since I grew up during a time when information related to autism was very scarce and the condition was a guarantor for people to instantly avoid me. (In some ways it still is).

As a result I feel like I am underdeveloped for my age (some of this is due to long term circumstances such as the Industrial Revolution's impact on society) - I don't have a varied diet unlike most folk, my taste in music is underdeveloped because I didn't actively understand what music really was until I had left compulsory education, and - importantly - I struggle to get on with other males due to my lag in social understanding and my desire to be sociable outside of work is difficult to work up since most people my age are used to being rejected constantly until they succeed.

In Scotland or any country with a small population or relative social cohesion these factors matter more in different fields. I've tended to notice when I've tried to analyse my childhood there's a good deal of crossover between autism and various sociological factors, so sometimes I'm not so sure whether it's just me or there's some underlying thing that affects everyone.

My parents moved to Scotland in the late 80s, to one of the new housing estates being built at the time. I went to school in rough areas which were far removed from the comfort I was used to at home. Both of my parents spoke in a generic English accent and made it feel like I had to concentrate a bit more on recognising all of the different variations of Scots spoken. My speaking voice is a reasonably well rounded Scots and can be bent to accomodate the various regional Scots accent, but my internal monologue (the voice inside my head) speaks like an Englishman.

Essentially I seem to embody the sort of socio-economic divisions that genuinely matter, even in a country like Scotland.
Now whilst I theoretically could find a way to socialise with people who have similar interests or personalities, this isn't really that easy or in many cases even possible here. The reality is that most men my age tend to be either in a trade, or at uni, or on drugs, or married with children, and more importantly fully Scottish, fully laddish and developed.
 
They related to Still Game, I related to The Mighty Boosh. Not that I'm trying to insult them by saying they're incapable of being interested in cultural stuff (they are), it's on a personal level - casual insults, one-upmanship, patter, Call Of Duty, McDonalds, hippety-hoppety rapping music featuring African-Americans from the ghetto - or on the other extreme, metal that all sounds the same, League Of Legends, eSports, anime, comic books, Elizabeth Woolridge Grant et cetera.
I hope it's not just because of the influence of American culture. Americans aren't to blame themselves though.
I can barely tell if my eccentricity or politeness is a threat or seems suspicious to working class Scots. It's hard to leave the house when you have to deal with being accosted by kids or people looking at you as if you've just molested a child. Or you are the reincarnation of Adolf the Hitler. Or Orville.
Then there's the additional factor of being a small country so the complexity of social language is greater. Our tendency to be futuristic, punching above our weight and out of joint with the rest of the UK means that keeping up with new things is made more difficult.

It was hard for me to fit in and make friends with the boys at school, and most of the people I knew were girls. This female dominated environment has had a significant psychological effect to an extent where I singled it out when working with Scottish Autism a couple of years ago to create my Autism Profile. You can probably see this visibly judging by how much I've written.
If I say anything that sounds sexist or misogynistic it's as a result of this conditioning. It's still hard to glance at successful and confident women without feeling bitter. (Mind you I've seen some normal blokes have absolute fits over our First Minister) It seems like any constructive criticism of female behaviour leads to some people knowing everything about you and practicing psychological warfare to further isolate you from the civilised world.
Girls seem to get all of the help in the world whereas boys seem to have nothing. I would've thought that interpreting mental health into mental strength would've been something the British Army would've picked up on, balancing self-confidence with decent behaviour (which is why rugby is just as good a game as football).

Anyway enough of my rambling.
Please fire away with any questions or queries you have, I'll be happy to answer them here or via e-mails. As I've said some of it might delve into me rambling about socio-economic issues but I'll try my best.