this post was submitted on 22 Feb 2025
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Autism
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Autism isn’t an inherently bad thing. I have friends and a cousin with autism and they’re awesome and socialize and are just fine in society in every way. Stigmatizing it to make vaccinations seem horrible is just stupid in so many ways.
I mean autism is an inherently bad thing in that it's basically just raising the difficulty of life across the board, and that's for high-functioning autism. Low-functioning autism is its own beast. There are aspects to autism that would make someone think "oh no this could happen to my child?!". Still better than the imagined alternative obviously.
this isn't true, lots of aspects of autism make life way way way way easier especially in the age of technology. There are so many things that are utterly obvious and trivially easy for me that allistic people around me can barely wrap their heads around.
autism in a society that doesn't hate nonstandard people is just a sidegrade, there isn't really anything about autism that is inherently difficult, it's just different.
I have an autistic parent. Family that I had to rely on as a child. Autism is not a positive thing. It doesn't make you a bad person or somehow morally less, but it does make you an emotional drain on everone you interact with.
There are some examples I’ve seen where, frankly, the difficulty is more that neurotypical people who’ve never had to try or learn how to actually communicate get mad when the bullshit script isn’t being followed. The only problem is that that group of autistic people have more difficulty not being honest, even if politely and constructively, when “tradition” is horseshit.
The challenges are fake in way too many cases, is what I’m saying. Same with ADHD people being forced to fit into a mold that doesn’t even really fit the neurotypical people. It could so easily not be a fucking problem.
It's a little bit of columb A, a little bit of column B. Nothing about having to stim or occasionally going nonverbalhas anything to do with the bullshit script. And, while I also hate the bullshit script, it's unfortunately here to stay. Humans are social animals, so being less able to interact with society at large isn't a fake problem. If anything it's not unlike being unable to fluently speak your native language, which is quite obviously a problem. Of course society as a whole should accommodate people with autism, but that's a solution to a problem that very much exists.
Going non-verbal or finding a less disruptive stim for work environments is a challenge but being able to do things like work from home more, or even just be left alone to do your fucking job, would help. Unfortunately there are too many people who believe that if you don’t love being in the office and prefer to stick to yourself that you’re “not a good fit”. So yea it really is part of the script.
It does not have to be here to stay and things are getting better, just painfully slowly. Your lack of imagination or adaptability is part of the problem, though.
The issue is more aligned with the joke “how do you spot a monolingual person? They’re speaking English.” Neurotypical attitudes dominate management positions(even if the people in them aren’t but have forced themselves into that mold) and refuse to budge. No communication breakdown is ever their fault, ever, but any kind of neurodivergent person must learn how to interact in their way, that person’s way, that other person’s way, etc.. It really is like an anglophone making fun of another’s accent while barely hanging onto English. I’m anglophone, and I learned French so that other’s around me didn’t have to feel like they constantly need to accommodate me.
Extra note: a lot of the people I know who follow that script don’t even understand it that well themselves. They’re clutching at some “rules” that say what is and isn’t polite conversation, which tell you when to do what, and which say that include, for some reason, the idea that nothing can just be talked about point-blank which leads to all-to-common problem of people not knowing what the fuck is going on. These are the rules that state that if you don’t swear or yell while actively harming someone then you’re “polite” but if they resist at all then they’re being “rude and making a scene”(even if all they’re doing is respectfully trying to understand why you’re being awful). If you watch two neurodivergent people talk they get along just fine, better even because they’ve had to learn how to adjust, how to have patience, etc. and aren’t spend the conversation impose some fucked up sense of morality on the other person.
TL;DR: You’re kinda proving my point by saying that there’s really only one valid way to communicate and softly fighting the notion that things can get better. Also yes agree that there are the low functioning cases but the bar for “low functioning” is way higher than it needs to be. I’m
I think you got me wrong there. I'm not saying there's only one valid way to communicate. However, neurotypical people will always use the bullshit script when talking to each other and will try to apply it when communicating with neurodivergent people. You can educate them to be more accommodating, but it'll always be like one person speaking English and the other Chinese; no matter how much you teach them most people will only vaguely understand what's going on, and when you add all the bullshit that comes with large organizations there's a fundamental limit on how much things can get better.
Man I was so on board with what you were saying until you referred to autism as a “problem” that needs a “solution”. Autism isn’t bad. Autism isn’t a problem. Autism doesnt need a solution.
I think you misunderstood me there. Autism isn't a problem*; people with autism not being able to effectively communicate with neurotypical people (and vice versa of course) is.
*some exceptions apply.
Yeah vaccines being good/bad is one set of politics. It's a whole other thing to add autism in just to use it as a reason to hate something else.