Bullying of Autistic Adults

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The Sad Truth About Bullying Autistic Adults If you're on the spectrum, people are waiting with their loaded rifles to pick you off from every side.

What a very moving, heartfelt piece. Will have plenty of resonance with those of us who gained awareness of our AS in mid or later life. Painful though these pieces can be to read, they are validating too, in a way.

The difficult thing is that sometimes people do and say harsh sounding jokes because they actually do like and accept you.

An example from my pre political correctness teen years. Because I am jewish I would get people throwing pennies in front of me and told to go get it. One day they asked me if I smelled gas. Without any context it sounds anti Semitic, the holocaust reference is seemingly very offensive at face value. Thing is the Italian guy would be told his car was full of bullet holes a mafia hit reference, the Irish guys got the drunk jokes. Since everybody in that group of teens on my block were treated similarly I could tell it was not bullying but “ethnic humor” as it was called then.

When people threw pennies in front of me and knocked my books out of my hand over it was bullying.

But most of the time it is not that obvoius or at least not that obvoius to me. Misinterpret bullying as a joke and I aide in my own bullying and encourage more of it. Misinterpret a joke as bullying I make people hostile to me that were not. For the life of me I can not understand why so many think people are laughing with the TV charactor Sheldon not at him.

Autistics bieng victimized because of not bieng aware they are bieng bullied is often talked about. Autistics becoming cynical and paranoid because we often figured out too late we were bieng taken advantage of and bullied and thus overcorrected is not discussed enough. That is a lasting mental scar also.

Very true. The deer thing is true.

And you know who deer usually trust and stay with? Nobody except other deer.

Maybe we should follow their example.

One day when I was in the hallway of my 6th grade school, I was surrounded by a group of boys. They asked me what my nationality was. I sensed danger and said nothing. They looked at me. I was small and had large ears. They decided I was Japanese. I said nothing.

For the next three years, I was told every Japanese joke ever invented. Whenever they threw a joke my way, I maintained a stone cold face. That was a little hard to do sometimes because I wasn’t Japanese and a few of the jokes were actually a little funny. But if I showed any emotion, the jig was up.

To this day, if they are still alive, I wonder if they remember the little Japanese boy that went to their school. And I am still chuckling deep inside. That is my quirky sense of humor.

Now if I were Japanese, every one of their jokes would have been a dagger to the heart. And it also made me somewhat immune to any other criticisms they leveled in my direction. If they called me stupid, an idiot, a klutz, an imbecile; I knew deep inside I really wasn’t because I was pulling the wool right over their eyes and they didn’t even realize it. This almost made me bulletproof from psychological abuse.

I agree, some of what is called bullying these days used to be a spicy way to make friends with people. My husband and his work friends still behave like this with each other. Back when I went out with my girl friends and gay guy friends we did it too. It makes you uncomfortable to be around a person who doesn’t play along.

Plus, many autistic people lean toward negativity when they are in a social situation they don’t understand. Like, everyone is laughing and I don’t understand so this must be negative. This is just a natural, self protective thing. My opinion is that the best way to deal with it is to simply say “I don’t get it.” If no one explains it to you, I’d be like “okay.” And change the subject. No big deal.

I don't experience it as an adult like I did during my adolescent horror show. Then again... being around as*holes long enough in high school makes you immune to their scent on the street

I think the grim truth I've learned about the work world is it's a bunch of NT's trying to kill each other (financially) and any display of weakness goes down in their dossier against that person. It's not that we're specially 'bad', its that we're super-vulnerable to what they're already doing to each other.

I really don't know what the answer is. I think the only way things could be done better is if a bunch of aspies got together and started a few companies that absolutely killed their competition on quality, then people would have to take note that a group of people - with this 'disability' - cut through the noise and backstabbing, through it aside, and just knocked themselves out producing high quality uber-professional results.

The only thing that stops me from believing that this is likely - a) we do have deficits we have to work around which almost evens the difference and b) few of us are used to swimming in highly competitive environments and in our largely left-leaning mindsets don't know how to completely put aside 'fairness' as a fata morgana (in the business/economic world fairness only exists for the dead, ie. its between you and God when you see the tunnel or pearly gates) and bite any bullet we need to bite in order to survive.

And if you don't pick up on it, that is wonderful because it means they can't get to you and you can't get hurt feelings from it or feel uncomfortable if you don't know.

I have dealt with ignorance at my work but I don't think it's the same as being bullied. I dealt with one co worker a year back and he just did things and would pound on walls and doors startling me and I didn't give him any attention. I have no idea if he was doing that to annoy me or if because he just liked doing stupid things. Then after a while he stopped and then he started to become cool with me and then he moved to another building.