How come the outside world hates us?

Post Reply New Topic

I don't get why the outside world hates us so much. Seriously. For the most part, we don't tend to be jerks. Just different.

Does the outside world hate us? I'm not sure they do. People can act in ways that are insensitive or even cruel, but that's to do with them and what is happening in their own heads and hearts.

It's awful that being even a little different or awkward or sometimes clueless can make people recoil, and that feels hurtful and cruel.

I don't get the sense that people hate me. People seem to like me, but I'm a hard person to get to know. Most people just think I'm very shy and quiet. They don't know I'm on the spectrum. Most don't know that much about autism.

Who says they hate us?
I've never heard that, except from one former member who was preoccupied with the idea.

The average NT seems to be just full of hatred. I think there is something about ND's that make us less hateful and less sadistic as well. At least some of us.

I would suspect that autistic men are more likely than autistic women to experience outright hatred from NT's, whereas autistic women are more likely to experience condescension, manipulation, or harassment.

Some posters have questioned whether the outside world hates us.

Here's my response: Based on the stories a lot of us have from our school days, I'd say it's safe to claim the outside world hates us.

The hatred is less noticeable once we're out of school. Probably because we no longer spend all day in a school full of our peers (The typical workplace is a lot smaller than the student body at the typical school).

That being said, some of us even have stories of facing hatred in the real world.

Consider a primitive tribe. The men of that tribe depend on their NT talents to function as a team, either when hunting or defending womenfolk from neighboring tribes, as they can instinctively collaborate on these endeavors.

An autistic man lacks these instincts, and is a burden to the tribe. In many tribes he would be allowed to die by exposure or similar means.

However, modern society demands that same man be tolerated and protected, but the others' instincts rebel against that and engender hostility towards the outsider.

Humans may not appreciate the degree to which their behavior is driven by instinct. As a child, I was taught that instinctual behavior was applicable only to animals, but maybe that's not true.

Many people are victims of bullying when they are in school. It’s not just an autistic thing. It’s easy to make generalizations about the world based on the behavior of some people, but their behavior does not reflect most people. Even though it can seem like it, most of us weren’t bullied by all or even most of our peers when we were in school/school-aged. It’s usually just a select group. I’m not saying that it doesn’t cause a lot of harm, but I don’t think it’s fair or accurate to claim that the “outside world hates us.”

The autistic men I know offline do not feel particularly hated because they aren’t.

I don't think all of us will agree with this, although it may have been worse for my generation, when those more "mildly" affected by autism weren't diagnosed and therefore didn't "officially" have anything wrong with them, but our peers saw us as different, misunderstood our behavior, and acted accordingly.

But I guess younger autistic men, such as my wife's 20-year-old nephew (diagnosed with AS when that was still a thing), haven't really experienced intense bullying. They spent their school years with the "special" group or attended a special school and everyone basically new why their behavior was atypical.

Many people are bullied whether they are autistic or not. I experienced some physical bullying by boys. It still wasn’t most boys that I knew or the world at large.

I think my dad and brother are on the spectrum, but they haven’t been diagnosed. Neither of them experienced bullying by most of their peers, just a subset of them. My son and nephew who are diagnosed haven’t experienced any bullying yet. They are 12 and 13.

It’s probably a good idea to avoid an “us vs. them” mentality. Autistics can be jerks, too. NTs can be compassionate. We’re all people.

It's usually just a few "leaders" who actively bully. Others can be quite civil when those aren't around, but don't openly defy those leaders. What you say pretty much jibes with my personal experience. I vaguely recall my first girlfriend, who I now believe to have been on the spectrum, telling me she'd been bullied in school but I don't recall any details.

Most seem to experience some level of bullying unless they are among the select few of ultra-popular kids.

Boys tied me to a tree and hit and kicked me when I was 9 or 10. That was just one of the incidents.

I think 'hate' may be too strong a word. But autistic people in particular are statistically very much underemployed & often unemployed, versus people who are considered to have a different disability than autism. This is well documented by the national autistic society in the UK.

One of the reasons why autistic people are effectively frozen out of the economy in many cases, is because employers don't understand that autistic people can have high strengths in certain areas, and don't exploit the potential of autistic folk which is a form of discrimination (which could be interpreted as hatred by some).

Autistic folk, in a similar way to black folk or women, are less likely to be promoted, less likely to earn better wages and so on.

My feeling has always been that society 'dislikes' autistic folk. Socially impaired folk are often ostracized by society. I think if people don't perceive this, then it is not because the discrimination doesn't exist, but because people aren't aware of it.

https://www.autism.org.uk/what-we-do/news/new-data-on-the-autism-employment-gap

Last edited by blitzkrieg on 16 Sep 2023, 1:45 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Anyone who is different from the herd can be bullied.The kid with the thick glasses, the chubby one, the one with cerebral palsy, the kids that ride the short bus.
Society as a whole can be cruel to anyone who is different.

What's the short bus