this post was submitted on 28 Jul 2023
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Autism
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Nobody is saying that neurodivergent people can't do small talk, it's that it is oftentimes a dreadful experience for them. You do understand the difference, yes?
It's a bit like telling someone genetically predisposed to disliking cilantro because it tastes like soap to "just eat cliantro... everyone can do it!"
Fine, but beware of getting on the "I was born this way and I can't change even if I wanted to" train. That's extremely harmful to your personal growth, because even if you were truly different genetically, it can be used as an excuse to not learn or change, even if you were capable of it.
You could have just admitted you were wrong and move on but you had to say something else to save face.
The thing is I can do small talk, it just costs a lot of energy that I'd rather use for something more important. And I honestly don't see a reason to mask all the time and pretend I'm not who I am.
While I might mask in short interactions with strangers I refuse to do it with people I know. They'll have to accept me the way I am. And that, in fact, is personal growth as well. To accept yourself the way you are and stop pretending to be something you're not.
And where in the game is the free will to simply not play the game? Shouldn't that be an option as well?
This comment gets under my skin because in this community for autistic folks we have heard this kind of thinking our e-n-t-i-r-e lives and NT never ever ever ever understand just how much effort it takes for us to mask in order to fit in with their arbitrary ass rules that we consider hella dumb. I long for the day when a NT person comes into communities of autistic people and says, "wow, you know what, all this you're saying makes a lot of sense and this social protocol IS hella dumb and doesn't actually serve any valid purpose and I'm with you! I'm going to help out and join the movement to making society more accommodating to different brains preferred way to be, instead of assuming like everyone always does that the way society is is by definition the right and only way it should and could be." How about calls for personal growth that aren't ableist and full of unexplored privilege and ignorance about what masking actually does to us. Because I'll tell you right now that it is 100,000% devastating and the fact that many of us are keeping it together enough to survive is FUCKING MIRACULOUS and we honestly deserve monetary awards and rest and a fucking break.
Thank you for saying what I was trying to express and just couldn't. It hurts so much to be told "just act like 'normal' people so you don't seem to be 'disabled'". We're not disabled, just different!
I'm disabled. I can barely deal with normal amounts of noise. Banning cars and ads would go a long way to making me less disabled, but unfortunately I just have a lower tolerance for attention violence, and we live in a society of frequent attention violence.