Autistic Hedgehog

[Has no empathy?

Doesn’t give a fuck about your hurt feelings]

mod note: I’ll be honest, I’m not 100% sure I get this one but I think what it’s getting at is that to allistic people, “autistic person isn’t being nice to me when I’m being a douche” = “autistic person has no empathy”. I could be completely talking out my ass, though. 

I. Am. Alive.

Mwahahahahaha!

Ahem. 

So I finally finished my manuscript, and now I’m feeling back up to being a human again. I’ve started getting to some of the stuff in my inbox, and will continue to do so over the next couple days. Sorry for the delay. 

Advice Needed

Okay, I posted this like this because, hedgehogs, I need your help.

It’s all right, Anon. I’m okay, and I can tell you’re genuinely upset by this and really trying to learn; if you weren’t, a number of the things I said in my last response simply would have made you angry.

I don’t know you or your situation, but it sounds to me like you have reasons far beyond this kid being autistic for how you feel. You should never let anyone–yourself included–simply dismiss or devalue how you feel. It sounds as if he’s really not listening to you or respecting you, and that’s simply not okay, autism or no autism. 

This is a tricky situation and I’m really unsure what to tell you. I don’t want to be unfair to either of you, because his rights don’t trump yours. He’s not entitled to hang all over you in ways that make you feel uncomfortable or even unsafe simply because he’s autistic. And this doesn’t really sound like just some phobia of autistic people on your part. Clearly you’re concerned that’s what it is, and from certain angles it can look that way, but there’s a few things that read to me as red flags, and I’m worried about both of you. 

Fellow hedgehogs, please help us out. Do you think there’s anything Anon can say that will get their feelings through to this boy? Should Anon even make the attempt at this point? Does anyone know of someone who might have some experience mediating in this sort of situation? Any advice or suggestions at all would be much appreciated. We all have varying kinds of experiences, and our autism expresses itself in different ways at times, so maybe someone will have an insight that I’m lacking. 

Asperger’s Syndrome Primer: How it Feels in My Head - A Guide for the Terminally Allistic

[Allistic Perception: Socially awkward people just use it as an excuse to be lazy.

Autistic Perception: OH DEAR GOD WHAT IS THAT SOUND MAKE IT STOP need to stim now Oh YUCK texture bleh bus full of people CAN’T BREATHE hey check out everything I know about–ooo shiny is that person smiling at me is it a real smile or a smile-frown is a smrown?]

Because I just had to wake up to the continuation of this nonsense this morning. 

Apparently some allistics simply can’t resist the belief that they know so much more about what it means to be autistic than actual autistic people. Of course, those of us who are autistic know that allistics would be hard-pressed to deal with the constant barrage of sensory perceptions, distractions, confusion, anxiety and fears we face on a daily basis.

So here, allistics, is a glimpse inside the general process of my brain. It doesn’t really slow down or shut up pretty much ever, and this is actually a pretty tame example, but baby steps. Clearly this lesson needs to be approached in small, bite-sized pieces of information for those of you who have yet to dislodge your heads from your asses. 

(Hedgehogs, feel free to send your own examples. An AS diagnosis is not necessary–we’re all autistic here anyway, regardless. In fact, please send your own examples.)

[Autism?

That means ‘less intelligent than neurotypicals’, right?]

There are way too many people out there who think that 'Autism’ is a synonym for 'stupid’.

mod note: I think there’s a huge problem with the way intelligence is viewed in society. We have such a narrow definition of what makes people smart. My father was a brilliant man, but not in any conventional kind of way. He could fix anything (except the Nintendo, but that was honest-to-god the only thing), jury-rig anything, and he had this talent that allowed him to hang all the pictures in a new house first, then put the furniture in and have it all look right.

People love to use the Einstein quote: “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.” But for people like us, for people like my father, the problem isn’t being a fish judged by its ability to climb a tree.

The problem is being a fish that rigged a pulley system so it could haul itself up into the tree by its damn fins and that’s still not good enough for other people, because it’s not the way “normal” people do it. It’s not the way average, easily measurable intelligence would do it. Thus anything that doesn’t match the status quo gets dubbed “stupid”. In truth, very few people are anything like being stupid; they’re just different.

I think where I’m going with this is: Ignore the people who equate autism and stupidity. Their definition of intelligence is far too narrow and their definition of stupidity is far, far too wide.