neurodiverse @hexbear.net autismdragon [he/him, comrade/them] @hexbear.net 1y ago

Some of the worst ableism I've ever experienced has been from other autistic people and it sucks

To be fair to our autistic women and enby comrades, Its pretty much always been autistic men, but still.

You have no idea how many times I've been like "hey dont say that, thats ableism/a slur" and them be like "get over it/grow a spine/just words" and when I confront them about the fact that i'm autistic they'll say "I am too, so what?".

Just look at my post history right now. There's one I'm arguing with right now.

it happens over and over.

15 comments

I hope I didn't seem demeaning in my last interaction with you where I was talking about cooking. It was meant as a "vote of confidence, you can do this" expression.
- I took it wrong at first but I appreciated it after you clarified. Thank you.
- I think it was in a thread where someone used the r-slur and then defended the usage.
  
  I don't have any doubts he was an autistic dude
dude its getting so much worse in the last year. literally everywhere i see autistic people "giving people the r word pass" or their new one "

spoiler

autist

" but yeah i think the streamer community is where a lot of this is coming from. remember keffels pretending to have autism just so she can say slurs?
- Yeah Destiny fans also think its ok to use the r word. I think too?
  
  yeah I think its all of the usual slur suspects. we should compare the backlash gets for useing the n word vs the r word.most Black internet users even on twitch are not gonna stand for that, and they dragged him hard for his "tactile" n word shit, and summoned the eternal eye of black twitter. but not a peep from the online autistic twitch community. I think autistic people put up with so much abuse, compared to other communities. compared to physical disability activist too they will fuck you up (as they should) if you try that slur shit. Obviously I know why, i personally stuggle with letting "friends" walk all over me, not gonna let people say slurs, but I only started setting hard boundaries like a year ago. a lot of us are just desperate for community. i have stopped using twitch that much anymore though maybe there was push back i didnt see from my casual browseing.
To be fair to our autistic women and enby comrades, Its pretty much always been autistic men

Oh God, this line jogged a memory. On the Something Awful forums, there's a user named Pick who became infamous for posting vile and dehumanizing shit about autistic people despite being on the spectrum herself. Being reminded of her inspired me to go back and dig up some of her quotes, and wow, they are... certainly something.

CW: Ableism

"He's autistic, he will make you cry on the way home from work because you love him and he doesn't give a shit about you at all. You'll cry and scream and punch your steering wheel because you wanted him to love himself and care for you and he doesn't even understand that concept"

"Can autistic men even regret hurting girls? Can they experience regret towards their treatment of other people at all? I've wondered."

"I have autism and my self-loathing is immense and if other people don't hate themselves for it they will kill. ... i despise the acceptance of people like myself."

"The tragedy of autism isn’t the autismo and how sad it is for them, it’s for a world that has to deal with someone who is such a pain that basically no one can like them. That’s why the appropriate response to your diagnosis is deep shame and a compulsion to change, a lot."
- "The tragedy of autism isn’t the autismo and how sad it is for them, it’s for a world that has to deal with someone who is such a pain that basically no one can like them. That’s why the appropriate response to your diagnosis is deep shame and a compulsion to change, a lot."
  
  CW: Violence
  
  That one in particular is like two steps shy of how the Nazis justified Aktion T4
Lots of people treat a diagnosis as a sort of r-word pass, if not in the use of the word then the disparaging spirit of it, and then other letters naturally follow from there
men

/s
- I mean, even speaking as an autistic man, its definitely part of the problem. The "grow a spine" shit is definitely the type of stuff men are socialized into.
  
  There's also a fair amount of good writings out there by autistic women talking about the bad experiences they've had with autistic men.
  
  I've witnessed it first hand irl as well because I went to a day program for autistic people, and a bunch of us were playing a game that involved a lot of jokes and laughter. And one of the only women in the program was just like drawing silently to herself. But she got overwhelmed by the laughter and had a small meltdown and left, and one of the guys playing the game started yelling at her "HOW ARE YOU GOING TO SURVIVE THE REAL WORLD". And the staff did nothing about that which is why I never went back to that program. I figured that was probably something that guy had been told that he had internalized but it was still way out of line.
At least for people online, I sometimes wonder how many of those shitty autistic people are actually autistic people and not just misanthropic NTs with poor social skills because no one wants to deal with their misanthropic ass. White people raceplay all the time online, and I see absolutely no reason why NTs won't do the same. Just look at how autism is portrayed in pop culture. It's always some smug shithead who's good at math or something and who acts like a rude asshole because he (and it's always a man) "tells it like it is" because he "doesn't understand social cues."

For all its reputation, 4chan and similar communities do not strike me as a place where the rate of autism is noticeably higher than the rest of the Internet. Being a socially awkward misanthropic shithead doesn't make you autistic. It just makes you an NT who's also a socially awkward misanthropic shithead. In contrast, furry communities strike me as extremely autistic:

There has been studies shown that autistic children are more quickly attached to plushies and it's common wisdom that this love for plushies extends to adulthood among many autistic adults. It shouldn't be surprising that a group of ND people who are very attached to animal plushies would be part of a subculture involving animal personas.

Furries are socially awkward, but not in some shithead misanthropic chip-on-their-shoulder way like a channer. The fursonas and fursuits and so on are a means of getting around that social awkwardness. There's overall a cheerful desire to emotionally connect with people despite the social awkwardness. In this light, I see their social awkwardness as something that they genuinely see as an obstacle but lack the tools to truly overcome, which points more to them being ND than NT who hasn't practiced their social skills because they got bullied too much at school.

Just having a rich imaginative world strikes me as something ND. NT are far more likely to reject and be more judgmental about rich imaginative worlds by calling it maladaptive daydreaming or something. Not that maladaptive daydreaming isn't something that affects people or that NTs don't know how to roleplay, but frankly, I don't see NTs valuing a rich imagination for its own sake.

The real smoking gun is that furry communities are intensely queer. Honestly, nothing more needs to be said at this point.

I guess my point is that there's far more to autism than social awkwardness (which I don't think is even true since social skills are a constellation of skills and it's extremely unlikely that someone with autism would suck at every single one of those skills, but this post is getting too long). And as for the person who got banned for using slurs, they're just another "autism is when no social filters" shithead who's probably not even autistic.
IRL, yes, I got bullied for my stutter by a fellow autistic just last week. Online, I feel like those are often the sort of autistics who are too ashamed to admit they have autism unless it can score them a quick dunk. As a result, I rarely run into them in autism-focused communities - it's usually just places like reddit.

15 comments