I don’t know about other autists, but my primary problem with the neurotypical world isn’t that I don’t understand it, it that they don’t understand me. It doesn’t matter how well I can decode the social norms, if I can’t also control my unvoluntary emotional expressions, and also do other things ranging from impossible to unpleasant.
I do understand social white lies. It’s not that complicated. But I still find it unpleasant to speak them. When I was younger I got into trouble for literally being unable to utter words like “thanks” and “apology” when I did not mean them. (My native language does not have the ambiguous “sorry”.) I am now able to tell white lies, but it makes me feel bad, in a way that has nothing to do with morals. The dissonance is just intrinsically hurtful to my sole, in a way that non-autistic people don’t understand and typically don’t respect.
Another common thing is that people assume that if I don’t succeed in hiding my negative emotion this is an invitation/request for them to to try to help me, and then proceed to try to do that, even though they have zero skills, in this. And then they refuse to listen to anything I say, including not leaving me alone when I ask to be left alone.
I don’t want to hang out in a space where the norms are set up to be comfortable to people un-like me, at the cost of making it unpleasant for people like me, and then being told that it’s a skill issue and I should just learn the rules.
I accept that the wider norms will be set up to be good for the average people (i.e. not me). I just prefer to not go there.
I agree, those are two different things: (1) how well can you navigate other people’s world, and (2) the fact that even if you can do it perfectly, your own world is still somewhere else.
As a metaphor, imagine that you are interested in quantum physics, but other people are only interested in celebrity gossip. So you follow the standard advice: study celebrity facts from Wikipedia, read the standard media, practice talking about celebrities in front of a mirror, etc. Twenty years later, you get great at celebrity gossip, everyone loves you, they invite you to all the cool parties, so that they can discuss the latest gossip with you.
...that’s all very nice and useful, but what you would actually wanted to discuss is quantum physics. And frankly, that’s never going to happen. At least, your celebrity-gossip skills do not contribute to this goal. It was never the goal of the standard advice to actually help you with this problem.
and then being told that it’s a skill issue and I should just learn the rules.
This part is not aimed at leogao’s post!
What I was (not very skillfully) trying to point at is people who think that autistic people are just worse at social skills. I’m so fead up with this claim, and is a contributing reason to me avoiding the neurotypicals. But it’s not a claim that I read leogao’s as having made.
leogau’s language comparison is actually pretty great for this. You would not call someone who have a difrent native langue “bad at languages”, but nerutypicals are often mistakenly beleveing that autists are “bad at social skills”.
I also want to add that lots of atuists learn how to interact with the neurotypicals. It’s called masking, and involves learning more than just their wierd customs. It also involves hiding ones natural reactions. I hear it’s common for autistic women to get so good at this that they don’t get diagnosed untill later in life, when the burden of constant masking causes depression or something. This did not happen to me, because I am terrible at masking.
I don’t know about other autists, but my primary problem with the neurotypical world isn’t that I don’t understand it, it that they don’t understand me. It doesn’t matter how well I can decode the social norms, if I can’t also control my unvoluntary emotional expressions, and also do other things ranging from impossible to unpleasant.
I do understand social white lies. It’s not that complicated. But I still find it unpleasant to speak them. When I was younger I got into trouble for literally being unable to utter words like “thanks” and “apology” when I did not mean them. (My native language does not have the ambiguous “sorry”.) I am now able to tell white lies, but it makes me feel bad, in a way that has nothing to do with morals. The dissonance is just intrinsically hurtful to my sole, in a way that non-autistic people don’t understand and typically don’t respect.
Another common thing is that people assume that if I don’t succeed in hiding my negative emotion this is an invitation/request for them to to try to help me, and then proceed to try to do that, even though they have zero skills, in this. And then they refuse to listen to anything I say, including not leaving me alone when I ask to be left alone.
I don’t want to hang out in a space where the norms are set up to be comfortable to people un-like me, at the cost of making it unpleasant for people like me, and then being told that it’s a skill issue and I should just learn the rules.
I accept that the wider norms will be set up to be good for the average people (i.e. not me). I just prefer to not go there.
I agree, those are two different things: (1) how well can you navigate other people’s world, and (2) the fact that even if you can do it perfectly, your own world is still somewhere else.
As a metaphor, imagine that you are interested in quantum physics, but other people are only interested in celebrity gossip. So you follow the standard advice: study celebrity facts from Wikipedia, read the standard media, practice talking about celebrities in front of a mirror, etc. Twenty years later, you get great at celebrity gossip, everyone loves you, they invite you to all the cool parties, so that they can discuss the latest gossip with you.
...that’s all very nice and useful, but what you would actually wanted to discuss is quantum physics. And frankly, that’s never going to happen. At least, your celebrity-gossip skills do not contribute to this goal. It was never the goal of the standard advice to actually help you with this problem.
This part is not aimed at leogao’s post!
What I was (not very skillfully) trying to point at is people who think that autistic people are just worse at social skills. I’m so fead up with this claim, and is a contributing reason to me avoiding the neurotypicals. But it’s not a claim that I read leogao’s as having made.
leogau’s language comparison is actually pretty great for this. You would not call someone who have a difrent native langue “bad at languages”, but nerutypicals are often mistakenly beleveing that autists are “bad at social skills”.
I also want to add that lots of atuists learn how to interact with the neurotypicals. It’s called masking, and involves learning more than just their wierd customs. It also involves hiding ones natural reactions. I hear it’s common for autistic women to get so good at this that they don’t get diagnosed untill later in life, when the burden of constant masking causes depression or something. This did not happen to me, because I am terrible at masking.