4 ms·

I understand where you coming from, and I do agree. I approached learning social skills as rigorously as I did technology books, and it has helped me grow a hug

by larve 4y ago

I understand where you coming from, and I do agree. I approached learning social skills as rigorously as I did technology books, and it has helped me grow a huge network of friends of all backgrounds, get married, move continents, get on well with pretty much all of my colleagues. It also ironically made me think I was not autistic for decades, because how could I be since I have such good social skills. But I still have values that I hold on to. If someone adamantly states they are right about something, and turn it into a “social skill showdown” where one has to feign agreement and cave in to some sort of authority, then count me out. I know other people do it, I kind of understand why, but it’s not for me. I don’t think it’s cold at all, it’s just me prioritizing my values. What I’m realizing as I write these articles and am more open about my introspection is that a lot of allistic people, for all their talk about empathy and theory of mind, really don’t try very hard to see things from the other side. Maybe I can’t intuitively chose just the right words to make my question not sound patronizing, maybe I don’t even understand what “sounding patronizing” is. At that point it’s really on that person to put in a bit of effort and skip over the jab and realize the question is probably not meant to patronize. Otherwise it’s like asking a blind person to just look where they’re going when they’re walking into a wall.

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knaik94 4y ago
With additional context, I think that's fair to ask but I want to believe there's still things you can meaningfully do to make these interactions feel more intuitive. I would argue that allistic people do see from the other side but have a hard time understanding why austic people end up with a different conclusion. People care how other people see them, that's true to a certain degree. People might not change, but everyone feels affected by other's perceptions of them. There's a lot of conditioned connotations that come from how we grow up in society, so it's not a small bit of effort to move on from a jab or patronizing talk. If someone has worked hard to gain respect and not feel insecure about themselves, patronizing talk is hard to move forward from. In that situation it doesn't matter if it was intentional or not. People like other people that make them laugh, so I don't know how helpful this will be but I would say try your hand at incorporating some humor into your speech, if you don't already. Focus mainly on humor that punches up, lean towards the humor of Hasan Minaj and not towards the humor of The Big Bang Theory. It's also not about feigning agreement or caving in to authority. You have to let other people be wrong. It's more nuanced than I can go into here via comments, but I imagine you understand. Letting other people be wrong shouldn't be about prioritizing your values, it's about respecting their learning process as well. If you want to prioritize your values despite understanding that it comes at the cost of respecting other people's learning process, that's a choice you can make. Intent doesn't negate the consequences of how words might affect someone else. I am trying my best to be respectful, I hope I didn't offend with anything I said because that's not my intent. I apologize if I did already at some point. Thank you for the healthy discourse with me, I appreciate it.
- larve 4y ago
  These are all good points. It probably would have made sense to write in the article that there are so many resources out there tackling the problem of "the autistic person should make an effort to learn the rules,", something autistic people are very aware off. There's not many resources that frame the problem from the other side of things, which is "despite how much effort we put into not running into these problems, it still happens. why?"

by larve 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

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knaik94 4y ago

With additional context, I think that's fair to ask but I want to believe there's still things you can meaningfully do to make these interactions feel more intuitive. I would argue that allistic people do see from the other side but have a hard time understanding why austic people end up with a different conclusion. People care how other people see them, that's true to a certain degree. People might not change, but everyone feels affected by other's perceptions of them. There's a lot of conditioned connotations that come from how we grow up in society, so it's not a small bit of effort to move on from a jab or patronizing talk. If someone has worked hard to gain respect and not feel insecure about themselves, patronizing talk is hard to move forward from. In that situation it doesn't matter if it was intentional or not. People like other people that make them laugh, so I don't know how helpful this will be but I would say try your hand at incorporating some humor into your speech, if you don't already. Focus mainly on humor that punches up, lean towards the humor of Hasan Minaj and not towards the humor of The Big Bang Theory. It's also not about feigning agreement or caving in to authority. You have to let other people be wrong. It's more nuanced than I can go into here via comments, but I imagine you understand. Letting other people be wrong shouldn't be about prioritizing your values, it's about respecting their learning process as well. If you want to prioritize your values despite understanding that it comes at the cost of respecting other people's learning process, that's a choice you can make. Intent doesn't negate the consequences of how words might affect someone else. I am trying my best to be respectful, I hope I didn't offend with anything I said because that's not my intent. I apologize if I did already at some point. Thank you for the healthy discourse with me, I appreciate it.

larve 4y ago
These are all good points. It probably would have made sense to write in the article that there are so many resources out there tackling the problem of "the autistic person should make an effort to learn the rules,", something autistic people are very aware off. There's not many resources that frame the problem from the other side of things, which is "despite how much effort we put into not running into these problems, it still happens. why?"