Subtle Bullying

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First of all, this isn't a "woe is me" thread because feeling sorry for yourself is useless but when I objectively look back on my past jobs I can see I was the victim of numerous examples of subtle bullying. I recall one person who would constantly make vulgar jokes and comments because he saw it made me uncomfortable. This went on for months; he was on a different shift so I would only see him in passing every couple of days. A friend told me"I don't know why he is doing that but you have got to find something that bugs him and joke on that to get him to stop". After numerous attempts I finally found his achilles heel and joked on him 1 time and he stopped teasing me immediately.
Another instance, a co-worker would literally walk away from me as if being in the proximity of me was repulsive to him.
I was also teased about my sexual orientation to which I would respond "I'm not gay but what would it matter if I was?
When I look back I can see numerous examples of being treated differently because of my HFA. The sole reason for this is to acknowledge that all people are not going to accept us and to recognize discrimination when it does happen. What types of subtle bullying/discrimination do you face?

It happens to me at school a lot. Im not offended or hurt by it, even though i think it is wrong

I am sure it happened, but I did not recognize it then and still don't. Bullying is a matter of intent as much as behavior. How I am supposed to know the intent of people decades ago? It is hard enough to know intent now, and you have to be really good at knowing intent in the case of subtle bullying.

i thinking some teasing isn't always meant to hurt but is playful and meant to make you laugh.
Bit like when you were at school and there is banter between mates.

For example, one may say something a bit rude or bit annoying to another just to get their attention.
But dont really mean anything buy it.

In some ways it may simply be a way of communicating.
I think that if you can laugh it off and let go of it. It stops bugging you.

I grew up with an older brother who constantly teased me from the day i was born.
I grew up finding it hard not to say cheeky things to people, although i rarely say anything to hurt but out of mischief and fun. However, i occasionally will say something mean in self defence if someone is being really horrible to me or someone else.

Often, those who are real bullies are really insecure and have their own weaknesses. So if you suss out what their weakness is, such as a big nose or a funny haircut. You can hit the nail on the head.
But like i say, i dont do this to hurt people generally unless they really deserve it.

I do say generic things that are just a bit of school boy banter, and to people who are equally playful to me.
The problem with some people on the spectrum is that they can be happy to be really mean thinking it is funny, but when you say anything back. They see you as the bully without realising what they have done has been really nasty. They can be oblivious to their own meanness and also amplify your meanness or see it when it really isnt there.

but there ya go. this is the wonderful would of Autism.
I recently realised that i hate hanging out with most neurotypical people, but I also hate hanging out with people with autism and learning difficulties. As both sets are extremely stressful to be around for different reasons.

I delusionally was momentarily under the impression that i might fit in around aspo's, but as people on the spectrum are so broad and diverse. i realise i find most of them hard work and stressful to be around too.

But never mind. At least i still have a piano.

I also didn't pick up on when I was being bullied when I was a child. Looking back I suspect the moments I was picked on.

In second grade I was told about a new girl that is next door to our class and they told me she talks funny and looks like me and has the same name as me. I didn't realize until I was 12 that those girls were just being mean to me because they were basically saying I was bad as her but she had Down's syndrome and I didn't.

In third grade a girl hands me a Kick Me sign and tells me to put it in this boy's chair and I am confused about why she wanted me to do it when she could do it herself. Looking back I realize she was being mean and was using me so I would get the blame and not her.

When I was five, I remember my best friend crying and she was looking at her arm saying I scratched her. I didn't know what a scratch was and I thought she was talking about her goosebumps and I couldn't understand why she was saying I made those bumps on her arm which she was calling scratches. My mom then runs her finger across my arm leaving a white mark saying "see Beth how it feels" and I stare at it waiting for those bumps to appear thinking they looked cool. I was oblivious about the whole thing and why my friend was crying and saying I gave her those bumps. I later learned in life she was a pathological liar and very manipulative so I figured out she was lying to my mother at this time and I bet her crying was fake too but they were real tears. This girl was about four years old then and even then she was already lying and manipulating my mother and I had no way of defending myself and she knew it so she took advantage.

In second grade a girl on my bus used to ask me what an imagination is and I didn't know what it was so I didn't answer and she kept asking me what is an imagination. This was a girl who didn't like me and wasn't a very nice person. My mom told me in my teens she was trying to provoke me so I will hit her so she will hit me back.

After finding out that my choir teacher was a sneaky bully, I now wonder if all the things she has "accidentally" done to me were intentional. There was a time when I worked on a song for one of our shows for the parents and I memorized the song and I was ready to sing it and when I asked her at the show when I would perform it, she told me I wouldn't be doing it because I don't know the song. I felt relieved luckily because I felt too nervous to sing in front of everyone by myself. There was another time when we were putting on a show a year later and I had practice the Charleston dance with my class and my teacher told me this was for freshman only so I had to sit out. I was the only Junior in class so I sat out. Then after the show ended my choir teacher is apologizing to me saying she forgot I was in the dance because the class is mostly freshman so she didn't know and she totally forgot. There were other times but I can't think of more right now. But I wonder if this was all intentional but she made it look like an accident because she was a bully and very sneaky about it because she only went after one student at a time so if they complained, they looked crazy because no one else had a problem with the teacher and the teacher would do it subtly so no one would notice. I didn't know it happened until she did it to my brother so that explained the bad talk I would hear about her in high school. I just thought then those kids were not following her rules and were blaming it on her. When it happened to a good student in my grade, I thought it was all a misunderstanding she was having with the teacher because there was no way she would all of a sudden be a bad student in show choir. She eventually quit that class like my brother did. But she will never be welcome on my Facebook that's for sure.

In 6th grade these girls from my class told me about a singer named (insert dirty name here that starts with Jack) and told me he was a cool singer. They kept telling me about him so one day I decide to look him up when it was my turn to be on the computer because I was assigned that day to use it. So I look him up and I find weird images and then i get told to get off the computer. I am oblivious why and I am told this was inappropriate what I am looking at. I asked why and I tell the student teacher about the singer I have been hearing about from the girls. The ring leader got busted because I remember the next day she apologized and she sounded very sincere and remorseful but I am not sure if it was an act. I knew she apologized because she was told to by the adult and I know as an adult you can't force anyone to apologize and adults do make kids apologize so I think they are most likely fake apologies the kid is doing.

I have another memory of being in 6th grade and I am walking back to my desk and this girl gives me a compliment. I thank her and then she gets upset with me saying she was being sarcastic. I am confused because I couldn't understand what being sarcastic meant and why she was even upset with me. I don't know if she was trying to make me feel bad or if she was making fun of me and I just didn't pick up on her social cue.

I remember being on the playground and these girls would ask me questions about myself and then they would walk away upset and I thought they were upset with me for being nice to them because they wanted me to be mean for no reason. But no my school counselor told me in 8th grade they were trying to get me upset and the questions they were asking were not appropriate and they got upset because I didn't get upset.

The last subtle bullying I remember is this random lady my mom and I met while looking at a house for my brother and his then girlfriend and their son. This lady is treating me differently and I think it's all in my head and my imagination because she was telling me things like she doesn't want me looking at the house flyers because the prices on them are wrong and my mom already has one. Then next she closed the guestbook in my face and told me I didn't need to sign it because my mom already had and we both live together so it wouldn't make sense for me to sign and put in the same address as above. That night I over hear my mom talking to my dad saying how she didn't like how the lady treated me and my dad goes "She probably asked too many questions and she didn't like it" and my mom goes "I want to complain about her, so we need to tell (insert one of their friends here who is also a real estate person) and let her know about this. If she thinks that behavior is acceptable, how else does she treat her other customers?"

And there is that guy at work so I am not sure if he was bullying me or not but he stopped.

When I look back even when I was grade school, now with hindsight; I can see I had been bullied numerous times. I could never understand why if I was polite and courteous to someone that they wouldn't reciprocate. One instance that comes readily to mind is how someone described me (in front of me as if I was incapable of hearing or understanding). I had a low-functioning brother and the way I was described was I was super-smart and my brother was super-dumb.
I fully realize that this was the hand I was dealt but I still grapple with why the mere presence of someone with HFA pisses some people off.

Hi Aspinator, I see you and I are about the same age.

Everything you described and maybe even more. Just for being me.

Something about us just pisses people off. And if you're smart (as in certain areas quite a few Aspies are), then you become an even bigger target.

So there were two days in my life that I would point at as being perhaps the best. The first was the day I walked out of high school, for the last time. Finally graduating, I had a sense of leaving a prison, as that door closed behind me.

Then, the second one was when I retired from a long term job. I put up with all the crap that Aspies put up with, but I stuck with it because it came with a pension, and one that I could get fairly early. Never more would I be stuck associating with people I didn't want to.

And that brings me to today. I haven't solved many (or even any) of the problems you described, but one thing I have solved, is that I can pick who I want to be around and try to make sure that it's people who won't piss at me all the time. I feel quite a bit better now.

It's still lonely sometimes, because like many Aspies I always could use another friend. On the other hand, now that I don't have to be forced to go everyday to be picked on by the "alphas," I have much nicer conversations with so many more people than I used to.

School and work are hell for a lot of Aspies. We should be big winners in those areas, because for all of our social disabilities our attention to detail sometimes can allow us to excel at those things. But so many of us fail to live up to our potential, because we piss people off so badly they just have to do anything they can to keep us from succeeding. And those NT's are right when they say that a lot of success is about social connections.

Thanks for your response Stevens2010. You are very fortunate to have a pension as it seems that is a thing of the past.

You're right about that--I am very lucky. I think the one thing that saved me while being an Aspie is that I developed a skill that I could sell. It was in demand so I ended up working in a job that would put up with me. These days, the new-age work place is all about social skills. There aren't as many job securities, employee benefits like pensions and so on are much less common, and therefore the typical Aspie is the first to get dumped when inadequate social skills don't match up with the NT agenda.

If a person can't develop and rely on a social network, then the only real option is self-sufficiency, which requires earning a decent living. When I think about how lucky I was, my thoughts turn to how narrowly I escaped some of the more self destructive options.

I typically see people have a smirk on their face when I happen to look at them while passing by. I don't know what it's for, but it definitely contributes to me deciding to never participate and voluntarily voice my opinion on things, because I'm just wary of further being mocked (and thus becoming aware that people are obviously 'bullying' me and that the previous smirks were no coincidences. I think I aim to be as ignorant about the situation as possible, for my own mental well-being. However this furthers how deeply I dissociate and I end up looking like even more of target because of how un-present I look).
It's unfortunate that it's still happening to me in college, I have no idea how I could survive in a workplace...

A group of students I didn't know decided to approach me randomly and say hello to me at break. This would make me confused and uncomfortable, because I did not know them, and didn't know how they knew me, or why they were saying hello, and then they would laugh at me. I have difficulty recognising people by their faces, so I was worried that I should know them from somewhere, but didn't recognise them. This went on for about a year, and then the group left the school (they were 3 years older, and so graduated). It sounds silly, but it made me quite anxious and intimidated.

I was bullied a lot during my GS and MS years. Most teachers did not do much, but after my dad passed the day after I turned 12 {this was in 2002}, many peers and some teachers viewed my father's passing as a reason to pick on me.