Has anyone asked point-blank "are you stupid??!"
Or, some variation thereof? E.g. "Are you a moron / ret*d / nincompoop", or "Were you dropped on your head as an infant?", or "Do you have some sort of mental problem?"
Now obviously, these questions are rhetorical - and not constructive and bridge-building at all.
They usually seem to come about from misinterpreting "what they REALLY meant" in responding to someone's verbally stated wishes to you. Or, not being able to predict how so-and-so might react to something you did that you thought, logically, made total sense.
Or, possibly when asking to clarify "obvious" expectations - asking one too many questions.
I think a clever retort to this sort of very insulting rhetorical question would be: "No, I just have high standards for things making sense. There's a fundamental difference."
Or "No, I just have an alternative thought process."
I remember on one occasion I got a more veiled version of this insult where somebody asked me with derision, "What do you do for a living?" I replied, truthfully, that I had a successful career in CS/IT, and the person replied "Oh, THAT explains a lot!!" again with a derisive scoff.
On another occasion, I got a more stinging insult of "I don't know how somebody like you manages to stay employed."
Which, I think sums up their aggressive and hateful responses like those at the top of this post: they just "thin-slice" us as being mentally incompetent not-all-there people who are burdens on society. They just conjure up some gut image / archetype of "our kind" even if they've never heard of ASD.
Of course, in some situations you may have to just endure the abusive remark like if it's a boss or someone high up in the org hierarchy... or if it's a customer and you're in a customer-facing job like retail or counter service or something. Well, then again, in this day and age there's ever more signage being posted that the company has "zero tolerance abuse policies" on verbal abuse of staff, and the aggressor will be asked to leave or police will be called. I haven't been in one of those jobs since my youth in the '90s, before my diagnosis, but it had its stressful moments
I can imagine that for my fellow Aspies, if they've found themselves in such a customer-facing post and having to deal with the rants of a Karen or a Kevin, they'd have to muster the courage to tell them to leave and you won't tolerate abuse. However, if the manager gets involved one too many times, they'd soon surmise that YOU are the cause of the abusive customer snapping and calling you names, and they'd probably sideline you to the back doing menial work. Or, they might just fire you
I really think that once any one of us gets an "Are you stupid?!?!" type of blow-up, it's the beginning of the end.
This is something that has definitively happened to me plenty of times. Sometimes people even thought I was only pretending to not understand and playing with them.
For this reason I felt confused about my abilities for a very long time. On one hand I was academically gifted, had good grades, and on the other hand I couldn't comprehend "basic" stuff. I ended up internalizing the belief I was "stupid".
Responding "I just have a different thought process" sounds like a good idea, especially when I don't want to disclose my ASD.
funeralxempire
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Probably.
Bad idea though; if someone needs my help and treats me like I'm stupid, I'll give them more reasons to believe it until they leave.
This was especially good when I did tech support because it made those calls too long to review, it kept me on the line and therefore not taking more calls and ultimately it frustrated the hell out of the person who was insulting.
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Bad idea though; if someone needs my help and treats me like I'm stupid, I'll give them more reasons to believe it until they leave.
This was especially good when I did tech support because it made those calls too long to review, it kept me on the line and therefore not taking more calls and ultimately it frustrated the hell out of the person who was insulting.
Ah ,that's the right way to go!! The good ol' passive-aggressive treatment. It's not like they deserve any better!
True, it might be cutting your nose off to spite your face, i.e. bringing yourself down as well as them, but if the person doesn't have any perpetual degree of power over you, then why not respond in this manner? hehe.
Unless, of course, the person at the other end asks to complain to a supervisor / manager... and the call's recorded.
uh-oh...
"what is wrong with you"??? more times than I could count. "you damn dummy" the same.
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funeralxempire
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Bad idea though; if someone needs my help and treats me like I'm stupid, I'll give them more reasons to believe it until they leave.
This was especially good when I did tech support because it made those calls too long to review, it kept me on the line and therefore not taking more calls and ultimately it frustrated the hell out of the person who was insulting.
Ah ,that's the right way to go!! The good ol' passive-aggressive treatment. It's not like they deserve any better!
True, it might be cutting your nose off to spite your face, i.e. bringing yourself down as well as them, but if the person doesn't have any perpetual degree of power over you, then why not respond in this manner? hehe.
Unless, of course, the person at the other end asks to complain to a supervisor / manager... and the call's recorded.
uh-oh...
There's no way in hell they were going to spend 10 minutes or more reviewing a call.
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Only because of either having those stupid emotional fits or those off days due to hormonal changes.
Of course, I utterly hate it.
It's not who I'm and what I would be.
It's my body, and unfortunately, I'm trapped in it.
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MuddRM
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Nicest retort I would get in college, and was in a lesson with my clarinet professor (who was also the band director) was “you knucklehead!”
You don’t even want to know the language used by my father and my brothers.
At least people in the church don’t have an issue with my autism, considering there’s another family in the congregation that has a child that’s on the spectrum.
My soon-to-be former apartment manager is giving me the boot because my apartment doesn’t meet minimal HUD standards. (I’m currently in a public housing situation). I told the manager when I moved in I was on the spectrum and would need help. Ditto with the PACE organization that provides assisted living services to those of us that still prefer to live in the community. Unfortunately, NO ONE LISTENS, AND NO ONE GIVES A DAMN!
You don’t even want to know the language used by my father and my brothers.
At least people in the church don’t have an issue with my autism, considering there’s another family in the congregation that has a child that’s on the spectrum.
My soon-to-be former apartment manager is giving me the boot because my apartment doesn’t meet minimal HUD standards. (I’m currently in a public housing situation). I told the manager when I moved in I was on the spectrum and would need help. Ditto with the PACE organization that provides assisted living services to those of us that still prefer to live in the community. Unfortunately, NO ONE LISTENS, AND NO ONE GIVES A DAMN!
Ahh geeze, sorry to hear that!! Wonder what triggered the musical prof /director? I thought that people on the spectrum tended to be good at music (I've had mixed experiences myself), and wouldn't be very nuanced instruction...unlike some arts... it's more definitive chords and finger positions. Was it the fine motor skill issues that caused you (and him) grief?
The really sad part is that none of them apologized when I turned out to be correct.
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As a child, I am asked whether I am quite normal? They think and also say, that I am a moron, an idiot and other insulting words.
Now some people are more subtle about this. They are angry for no reason. Or they are right but the tone is very hostile, sometimes even threatening. And I often face people with psychopathic traits. They are manipulative and use gaslighting techniques. A possible reason is that I am not only autistic, but also very intelligent (and they consider that as a threat). I was a prodigy as a child to a moderate degree. I was as intelligent as way older children.
The really sad part is that none of them apologized when I turned out to be correct.
Yeah, could've been that you were more rational and not as emotionally invested in the situation as they were (being typical NTs, sigh), so you revealed the unspoken truth verbally, the emperor's new clothes as it were, so they thought you were a (social) imbecile for violating that protocol.
As a a young law firm associate, I once had a partner at a major New York law firm (not my own) call me the stupidest lawyer she had ever met. This after ten minutes of me trying to explain to her how a letter of credit works. I suspect she thought that I thought that she didn’t know what she was doing. Well, she didn’t.