Work today...

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At work today, my colleagues were talking about autistic people. I don't think it was intended as mean spirited, but it was.

They were laughing at how one person's daughter who works with autistic children has so many stories to tell and how it is just hilarious. They were dying laughing about
a little girl who had echolalia and could only repeat what she heard, and a little boy with no filter, he just said what he was thinking.

I wanted to cry because these children are just like me. Their differences aren't to be mocked and laughed at. It makes me feel so unsafe too. I know I can't share who I am or ask for accommodations in this place, and I get doubly frustrated and pissed off because I work in education and these people need to advocate for all children. This is our #&#^ job.


I don't know if there is much to discuss here, but I have to share with those who understand. It just sucks.

Am sorry you had to go thtough that.... Cannot blame you for feeling , how you did.. It was pretty impressive that you did not just start bashing heads ..... Am not as sure i could have contained myself as well. One would think that some kind of workplace rules might have,already been in place for situations like that ? Usually can be vocal about stuff like that . Unless i can percieve
that the actions are potentially intentional .

Hi Jakki!

Oh, it was hard not to speak up and bash heads, on so many levels. I know calling these people out is the right thing, and there are rules you're right. I have called things out in the past, but I have found it is like so many things in the NT world- so many double standards. If I follow the rule or mention the rule, then I am putting a target on my back and there goes part of my career potential. It is maddening. And it hurts. It feels like such a betrayal to me and autistics in general, and children who can't speak for themselves. That part especially pisses me off. Those of us who can't speak need those of us who can to do so, and I feel like I failed today in that respect just to save my job prospects. It is an awful, awful feeling.

I bet you could find something within those people which would give you a good laugh

If you get along with those people, maybe you could tell stories about an autistic person you know, and how this person overcame prejudices, etc.

I like that solution kraftiekortie. Thank you for giving me a different perspective.

Agrees with kraftie ! ,, and yes that double standard thing at work is a very delicate situation and must admit, it might be safer to avoid rocking the boat. And hoping that krafties advise would do the trick !

I understand why you're upset, but on the other hand people do get a laugh out of "special needs" children or adults but don't mean it horribly. When I worked in a care home for elderly people with dementia, some people did laugh about the funny things the patients did - but not in a horrible way. We expected dementia patients to behave the way they do and we understood why and everything, but we still couldn't always help but find some of the things they did hilarious. One of the patients would pace up and down the hallways and flick light switches on and off, and sometimes if we were outside we would see different lights turning on and off in different windows upstairs, and we knew it was that particular person and we would laugh.

Not all laughing is judgemental. Sometimes people laugh if they think someone's actions is cute (autistic children can be cute). Sometimes people laugh out of admiration. I probably made the teachers laugh at school when I wasn't intending on making them laugh.

I was trying to write something like that. You have made the point well.

Some people need to fund humour so they can relax and let off steam.

I have often been used by others to talk about me for their amuseament, and I don't mind it because I know they are not doing it because they hate me, but doing it because they find me amusing...

I "Played" on this in my schooling days as a form of masking. I quickly learned how, by acting thick via a secondary foem of masking, I would be accepted as by acting thick in an amusing way would somehow create a senario in which others could bond with me where when I did not do this, they would become hostile towards me.
The only downside is that as it was an act, apart from being tiring to do and keep up, there would come a point when my masking was discovered, and when it was the bullying took place...So when I worked, I soon learned to work until the cracks appeared in my masking, and then leave by either finding a new job or just handing in my notice. For the first decade or two in work, I called this "My two year cycle" as it usually took two years before I would leave.

Thank you Jakki.

Joe90,
You make many solid points here, I appreciate what you are saying. I do hope it was laughing because they thought the kids were cute, but I still have concerns. I explain them more fully to Mpuntain Goat below.

Mountain Goat,
What you say is the part of this which worries me and upsets me. Having to mask like that until you can't, and as a result feeling pressured to switch jobs- that is the part that is disturbing. Adults may laugh at cute autistic children, or teenagers, but I feel we largely aren't in on the joke, and I think many of us know we are being laughed at and this does take a toll on our well being. This then creates an even deeper divide in the idea of otherness that exists between autistic and allistic people.
The "cuteness" factor also eventually wears off, and then as adults, we are left to play a role, and if we can't keep it up, we are bullied, or our ability to work is put at risk. Not to mention how laughing at the perceived backwardness of another can be infantalizing, derogatory and psychologically hurtful to those being laughed at.
We can certainly play along to get along, but I feel it comes at a great cost to our wellbeing- and that to me is not okay.

I don't think you have failed in any way shape or form. You've heard something that has upset you. You've been slightly outnumbered. You're in a situation where you feel you cannot report it and also you may have been slightly in a state of shock when you were witnessing this.

Your actions at the time were to keep quiet and not show that you were upset and then you have come here to a place of support to seek out a solution.

That is far from failing.

If your colleagues were doing this out of some kind of cruelty then at least now you k ow what they are capable of. However the chances are they are not sick and twisted to that extent. You now have the opportunity to think calmly about what you could do in the future if this happens again.

There are loads of ways to be proactive without being passive aggressive or sarcastic or without causing a fuss and getting people into trouble. Sometimes people just need educating and you can do that without even speaking.

Information leaflets on the coffee table. They don't even need to know that they came from you.

Humor is a difficult topic. There's so much misunderstanding regarding how it works that even typically very good-willed people can accidentally 'appreciate' some pretty horrid things.

Over time the spectrum of things I'd laugh at has changed greatly, and continues to do so to this day. It's not just a matter of what one allows themselves to laugh at, but also a matter of education, perspective and the state of one's body (drugs, exhaustion, emotional state, etc).

Two important elements of humor are surprise and novelty. Novelty is easy to understand. Jokes get old and everyone is familiar with that. Surprise is less so, because it so often ties into novelty. But both together makes for an interesting combination. It makes for completely nonsensical things earning some of the biggest laughs.

And that's where the morality of humor can get pretty dicey, not just because of the 'innocence' that new surprises can have, but because of what people do with it.

Some people will run with their natural propensity to laugh at something as an excuse to ridicule, while others will just treat it as an enjoyable but unknown phenomenon and form their moralistic judgements separately.

Add to that the possible tiny subtleties between laughing 'with' vs 'at' vs 'about' someone, and whatever other dicey gray areas, and you've got a recipe for a hugely inconsistent cultural phenomenon that's just as likely to hurt as it is to heal someone regardless of intentions.

One way that I treat toxic humor is to temper it with the awareness of a person's intellectual capabilities and the limits to it because of time and opportunity. Maturity doesn't come easily, and with the huge disparity between what humanity knows [as a whole] vs what humanity teaches [on an individual basis] it's no surprise that we are so prone to moral misjudgements. So, I take the somewhat objective and deterministic perspective that it's normal for people to perform within their limits. It makes it easier behave civilly around those I might not have civil thoughts or emotions towards, and to approach situations from a less emotional and more constructive standpoint.

That being said, being part of the action has always been a problem for seeing and reacting as we wish we could, especially in real-time, and especially if what's potentially at stake is our well-being, so I feel for you Shellbelle. I've been through a lot of similar situations.

people laugh when they are uncomfortable. maybe they are afraid of taking this thing seriously.

Exactly!
There was a famous comedian/actor who played a character who couldn't say R and had to say L instead. When he changed the Rs into Ls the word he still said a real word at times. Just another word. People laughed. Is this ok? I think so.
I guess it depends on how you do it. Comedy can be a good way of bringing things up.

sound like you became the class clown

Continuing that theme: "I read that . . . . . . . was Autistic." ^{Just pick a dot}

And if you do mention a famous likely-autistic be prepared with a rejoinder. For instance:

---"I read that Elon Musk is Autistic."
---"Yeah, well that kid is no Elon Musk!"
---"Well...are you?"

Yes. It was the only way I had to try and fit in. Prior to that I hardly spoke a word.