ASD folk should stick together like ethnic minorities

Post Reply New Topic

Most men I know do.

Football is that hobby for most of them.

WOMEN interact via socialising. Sometimes. Only sometimes. Most women I know are in craft circles together and stuff like that.

And besides there's a whole world outside of America/the UK. African Americans versus WASP Americans isn't a big divide because people are constantly interacting with each other, they live in the same country and even same communities.

Botton village is good for some learning disabled autistic people who want to stand on their own two feet while having support of a village where they don't get discriminated against. These people are good with being away from their families for whatever reason & they're content in jobs like working in the shop and cafe and making things.

Also my experience of NT versus aspie conversation is:

NT blokes talk about things almost exclusively

NT women talk about things and people almost exclusively

Aspies talk about probing s**t. Not all of us, but those of us who have an interest in books and philosophy.

Get to know NTs of any gender and they do the same. But they know that kind of stuff can stir up an argument which they don't like so they don't go there right away. Instead, the blokes will say 'what team do you support' and the girls will say 'do you know so and so'. Even later on it will be 'did you see the match last night' or 'do you think so and so and so and so are dating'.

By things I mean hobbies. And yes, model railways can be for children. They can also be for adults - it's different sets, I doubt Mountain is playing with Thomas the Tank Engine kits outside of playing with younger family members. It is sad to replace hobbies exclusively with the internet & TV but that's what some NTs do.

Related issues pertaining to this thread that may or may not be problems for individual members.

Internalized Ableism - Ableism is the belief that disabled people are inferior. When one is a member of a small minority and one is subject to to life long messaging that the majority is right and one suffers lifelong bad consequences from the “wrong” way of thinking it is pretty easy to think of oneself or ones group as defective ie to internalize ableism, racism etc. The autistic who has internalized ableism the NT way of doing things and thinking is the right way and your way of thinking and and the autistic ways of doing things are wrong.

Autistic burnout - This is not all that different from regular burnout. The theory is that autistics are more suseptible to it because we are constantly “pretending to be normal”, or “masking” our autism while for NT’s a lot of these things are innate. What happens is the mentally and physically exhausted person acts “more autistic” thus undoing all that effort at masking. It is a vicious cycle when one feels the mask slipping one doubles down on trying harder thus further exhausting themselves. If one believes one is inferior one will do either use every once of energy to pretend to be normal making one very susceptible to burnout or one will give up.

Severity/Functioning - Autism is a spectrum condition. Some autistics have less natural ability to fit in thus they can not fit in or have to try even harder and thus will burn out quicker and more often then other autistics.

Depression - A common comorbid to autism. It is easy to see why if one thinks one is inferior, is constantly burning out, or not meeting expectations one becomes clinically depressed. Depressed people tend to give up and appear lazy to the outside world and themselves.

The autistic disabilities or differences depending on how one looks at it in does present obstacles to organizing a autistic community.

It is is catch 22 situation, act as NT as one can, burnout, get accused of selling out. Be completely your autistic self and most likely not be very functional in the NT world, get accused of being a moocher.

IMHO step 1 in navigating this maze is to have this attitude towered learning and using social skills. Social Skills are not you, they are tools to get things nothing more, nothing less. They may become part of you and that is great if it happens but that should not be the goal.

Common hobbies can be an important bridge to friendship for many adults too.

I do agree with you that a friendship based only on common hobbies, and nothing else, isn't likely to be very deep, and that facing common challenges together is an important part of a deeper kind of friendship.

However, in my opinion, a well-rounded friendship involves both comradeship (facing common challenges together) and companionship (having fun together).

And it's much easier to have fun together when you have common hobbies/interests. IMO the latter is especially true for autistic people, who tend to have obsessive interests.

I think a better analogy would be the alternative extended families that many LGBT people have created.

What?!  No Cannoli?  I will keep the gun instead.

I am wondering if the op has abandoned the thread.

bigNYC has been banned from WP.

Thanks for the update.

Apologies for mentioning a banned member but it seems like BigNYC only just got here.
Should we not give him a second chance?

This was his second chance - he'd previously posted the same narrative as mrpizzapasta, for which he was warned, before opening this concurrent second account.

Ok thanks for the clarification.

Shame.

Yeah now he's all alone... Apparently nobody can cope with that...

Option A.

Wallow in a 2 bedroom house while doing hobbies.

Awful I know...