Autism Exists FFS

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I mentioned being autistic on reddit and this woman PMed me to say that she doesn't think autism exists because everyone is selfish so why separate some people off. Then she went on a rant about actually genuinely selfish people, like racists and things like that.

That isn't what autism is.

For goodness sake I'm tired of people thinking autism is just selfishness. I think this is because of either crossed wires (NTs struggle imagining what it's like to be autistic so legitimate autistic requests are seen as fussiness) or because of idiots who say they're 'autistic' as an excuse to be selfish. I've come across some very manipulative, clearly either NT and nasty or mentally ill (such as sociopathic) people like this myself.

But autism exists

For me, autism looks like a mix of things good and bad. Some of the bad things are genuinely disabling and put me at risk.

Far from being selfish, my lack of theory of mind puts me at risk from others. I can't pick up on the intent of others which puts me at risk of bad people. I've been groomed as an adult. I also empathise way too much both with people, animals and even inanimate objects.

I get light sensitivity and, to an extent, other sensory sensitivities. All my life I've had some form of sensory sensitivity. When I was a kid I couldn't even try on clothes in shops because of the label. I suspect the reason I'm now the size of a kid is because I didn't eat much at all as a child because of taste sensitivities, I was so skinny and it took til my mid 20s not to be underweight.

And, yes, I'm going to keep saying 'neurotypical' rather than 'normal'/'healthy'. Because as well as this bad stuff, autism gives me a good imagination, an amazing memory, a very detailed mind and essentially an ability to focus for long periods of time.

Even things which seem 'negative' such as my hyper empathy or my light sensitivity can help. My sympathetic nature makes me kinder to other people. My light sensitivity, which physically hurts at times, is probably the reason I can read books at dusk.

Worst thing is, at first I thought that she was on my side. Since she said 'theory of mind is an outdated idea'. I do think the idea that autistic people can't be sympathetic (sympathy is something way too stigmatised) because we can't do theory of mind/guess what the other person's feelings/intent are is nonsense.

I also think the idea that autistic people can't learn to make other people happy is nonsense. We're very good at rules and picking up on patterns so we ought to be able to learn 'so and so doesn't like hugs' or 'such and such likes to listen to the radio' etc if the pattern is repeated enough or if we're explicitly told. My gifts were the best ones for our family this year, apparently, because I remembered specific stuff about all the people.

Ugh. I needed to rant on here, away from ignorant NTs like her. Autism isn't selfishness and it does exist...

I am always REAL WARY of people who PM me out of the blue. Even when they are attempting to win my confidence or my favor, I wonder what their motives are. I usually give such people a perfunctory reply indicating little interest in continuing to communicate with them. Open forum for me, baby!

I have never participated much at reddit because I don't care for the interface, but my impression based on reading a few threads is that there are some real idiots there who, more importantly, don't have good reality testing about their personal "theories" of the world.

There's always going to be people who see the stuff they invent as being factual. And you can't really reason with someone like that.

Some people can't be bothered to do their homework i.e. find out more about the subject before dismissing it or trashing it.

Lots of people think like that about "invisible disabilities" like mild autism, ADHD, dyslexia...

Maybe one day we'll be able to show them our little holographic brain scans...?

this was a traumatising experience, no doubt. but please do not let apparent imbeciles grate u))) clueless, stupid, etc, just well, there are ignore buttons. and/or u can be so rude to them, so even their tiny 2 neuron structure between the ears would gather "i dont want to talk to u" xD thats what i do when i see something like that (and yes, i am a horrible person xD)

We like you nonetheless! We need people who speak their mind without fear!

No point sometimes in trying to interact with the willfully ignorant who don't really want to understand.

thanx enviro xD THO its not about fear. its about anger, more likely. and perpetual trauma. and triggers. sorry, i should stop now.

At least your acquaintance on Reddit invented a creative new way to be....an idiot!

In my experience NTs typically think that "autism equals mental retardation" (and cant even keep aspergers syndrome and Downs syndrome straight).

At least she had advanced to the level of ...you know...seeing the syllable "aut" in "autism" and recognizing that "aut" means "self". And she (or folks around her) must have reasoned that "therefore autistics must be people who are selfish".

I've been limiting my social media interactions more and more every day. Reddit is one of the many platforms I never subscribed to. From what I saw in the few times I peeked into it, people can be very abusive over there.

You can't reason with the ignorant.

I think this is because I tried to explain theory of mind and she wouldn't listen. What I mean by theory of mind is trouble understanding people's motives. That leads us to being taken advantage of.

I do think of the 'aut' myself but that means selfish as in self contained not selfish as in user. Users are invariably mentally ill with things like psychopathy or on a smaller level, are NT. Autistic people tend to be the used, not the users.

When I was first told I had Asperger's as it was called then, I got worried because I found it hard to separate from Alzheimer's and didn't want Alzheimer's at 16. Of course, I then researched it like Aspies tend to and was never against it after that.

I don't tend to like social media in general. But I spoke of this publicly and tried to stop sounding 'SJW' by saying non-autistic versus autistic rather than NT versus aspie (even though I hate this self-censorship) and people are generally agreeing with me.

If she contacts me again over this, I'm blocking. I've stopped the PM function too, I don't like it because people could contact me openly with all sorts using that. It was a bit of a wakeup call.

You just embody Socrates' statement that the unexamined life is not worth living. She'll never understand what that means. Why question anything when you have all the answers? That's her.

She probably didn't grow up hearing about all these autistic people, and now that she does it conflicts with what she was taught the world was. So she rejects new information.

i am sorry for being a bore, but aspergerian is a case of autistic, not a synonym (such as, all aspergerians are autistic, but not all autistic people are aspergerian); and NT (neurotypical) is not a definition for non-autistic people. word u are looking for is allistic. neurotypical means, a person with no noticable mental health/neurological variations (so all NT are allistic, but not all allistic are NT. they can lose an NT status or never have had it if, for example, they get ptsd OR manifest shizophrenia). confusing terminology ONLY brings more chaos and miscommunication, and we have too much of both, dont u agree?

I'm not sure.

I don't want my autism gone. If it went, I would be a totally different person as it's all I've known and it has positives as well as negatives.

I want my social anxiety (diagnosed, separate from my autism) gone. In fact, I think it is healing with the medicine. I've gone from being a complete recluse at the time of my breakdown to actually socialising almost as much as I did before my breakdown, in the space of 5 years.

Social anxiety isn't me but being autistic is.

So if I wasn't autistic, I'd be NT with an illness.

Asperger's is just what I was diagnosed with and a more specific way of describing a subset of autism.

I don't really know about neurodiversity beyond social anxiety and autism (specifically Asperger's) so I can't talk about other things with any sort of expertise.

My guess at the source of this widely accepted misconception is that autism and sociopathy can appear similar from the outside looking in. We know they are opposite because we know how we feel and it's really frustrating to not be able to communicate it. People judge on behavior they see and only very rare kind people will take the time to ask why did you react like that. I wonder how many people are misdiagnosed, either as autistic when they're sociopathic or vice versa, from doctors who don't bother to ask what the internal experience is.