This war that you think exists between us and NTs is all in your head

Stormpaws · 2022-07-12T16:28:22+00:00

people dont think NTs know we’re autistic or whatever. but studies have PROVEN that they are biased against us from the moment they meet us and we are disproportionately bullied. and people do care

ilovefignewtons02 · 2022-07-12T14:31:41+00:00

People at work definitely care. All you need to do is skim some posts on this sub to see all the discrimination people on the spectrum face in the working world. Bizarre take

That-ISA-Slot · 2022-07-12T16:17:30+00:00

You know.... That is bullshit to serve your opinion that black and white.

Ever been out, and people just did not like you, because you are on the spectrum and you dont even know it yet? Yes that happens.

Now figure the same situation, but you are still looked at, as something wierd. A freak. And nobody know why. Nobody know you are on the spectrum. Not even YOU.

And 16 years later you get diagnosed at the age of 38, and you finally know why. And it is not "a war", it is just the majority of people who can not stand your personality, because you are off to a degree that they can not pinpoint. And it all is in the realms of the un-said category. Something people do not talk about and that is just how "normal" people react in their sub contions.

Mindless_Challenge11 · 2022-07-12T14:31:47+00:00

here’s another tip. Just stop talking about it.

No, I don't think I will.

Without continued advocacy and debate, the circumstances of ND people will never improve.

hawkeyepitts · 2022-07-12T15:23:21+00:00

TL;dr Complaining about legitimate frustrations and negative experiences doesn’t mean we’re having a war with NT’s in our heads.

The narrative that everybody on this subreddit has a burning hatred for NT’s is complete bullshit and gaslighting at it’s finest. What are all these blatant anti-NT posts that you’re complaining about?

Every so often you see someone post about the numerous, countless toxic posts against NT’s. And I’m always like, what the hell are they talking about? I’ve been on this sub for over a year and lurked long before that, and the excessive NT hate that people love to condemn is just not there.

The fact is that a lot of us DO have negative experiences with people due to our condition, and people should be able to let off steam about the things that frustrate them with others who can understand. For many people (myself included) this is the only place I feel understood as far as life with autism goes.

gileswithachainsaw · 2022-07-12T16:08:26+00:00

i agree that the us vs them mentality gets taken too far, but the idea that NTs don’t care if you’re autistic unless you bring it up simply isn’t true. even if they don’t know it’s autism they’re picking up on, they get an “off” vibe from all but the best maskers and instinctively avoid us or assume low competence. ostracizing those who are different is a survival mechanism and i don’t necessarily fault them for it, but it will not get better unless we demystify social phenomena that put autistic people at a disadvantage. pretending it doesn’t happen won’t make it go away.

GalapagousStomper · 2022-07-12T16:19:24+00:00

Yeah, don’t talk about being an Aspie and rely on the goodwill of NT employers…lol…

Indorilionn · 2022-07-12T15:49:43+00:00

I'm all for not creating a trumped up divide between "us" and "them", because both dumb and unhelpful. But your take is just differently awful. Your post is one big blob of entitlement, repressiveness and passive aggressiveness.

that’s because you’re still living at home.

And what would be the problem with that? Furthermore, no of course not. It's just as much a topic living with flatmates you can trust and partners.

unless your behavior is interfering with the job.

And guess what? Personal issues always interfere with work and professional contexts. When parents die and relationships end and sickness strikes or mental health suffers under our living conditions - that gonna affect things. So does a day where autism makes funktioning difficult. And to demand to just function like a cog, is harmful to all.

Just stop talking about it.

No. Normalize talking about it and get rid of people who do not want to deal with your ASD. Because it's a part of you, for anyone who's a friend of yours or otherwise a part of your life, it's gonna be a part of that relationship - and it is not going away.

Srsly what a trainwreck of a post.

AcceptableAnswer7 · 2022-07-12T14:49:19+00:00

Just stop talking about it.

Yeah this is where you lost me. I agree that there's not some big us vs them like a lot of ND pretend there is, but you're just advocating ND people to mask and ignore their difficulties.

Maybe your autism doesn't cause you issues on a day to day basis and you're able to just ignore it and live as normal. Not everyone here is so lucky.

LeLand_Land · 2022-07-12T15:45:04+00:00

"Just stop talking about it"

No.

We are facing a lot of societal and cultural issues that cause depression and a lower standard of living for the average ND. This is because we exist as an invisible group, and can easily be ignored. If anything we need to be loud and boisterous so that ourselves, and hopefully those ND's after us, don't need to mask as often, can accept ourselves for who we are, and most importantly, have society understand us in some capacity.

TLDR: Talk about ND stuff more.

Sample_Interesting · 2022-07-12T15:34:04+00:00

Yeah, I mean, it's mostly just my social anxiety telling me people give a crap when they clearly don't, unless it's obvious I'm acting "off".

BucketSentry · 2022-07-12T15:53:59+00:00

I agree not every NT is against you, but its heavily based on people's experiences. Some people on here have been treated awfully by people, so i can understand why they're more anxious about NTs (genuinely my heart goes out to you guys who've had these awful experiences sincerely hoping you're all doing better or working towards getting there.)

Dusty1000287 · 2022-07-12T16:10:24+00:00

Mask as well as you can and play your quirks off as you being unique. It's hard I know but it gets easier.

roqueofspades · 2022-07-12T15:37:08+00:00

Convinced OP is a troll or just deeply entrenched in self-hatred and wants to force it on the rest of us especially considering their replies

istarian · 2022-07-12T14:10:39+00:00

Ranting about what other people are talking about really doesn’t contribute much.

56BPM · 2022-07-12T15:01:43+00:00

Massive strawman going on here. Nobody is suggesting that NT are obsessing over aspies.

People have valid complaints, and you are a troll for ignoring them and making this absurd post.

Kyoshi20 · 2022-07-12T16:07:56+00:00

I strongly disagree with the OP. I was repeatedly bullied SPECIFICALLY for having Autism/Aspergers in not only back in HS and before, but in 2 jobs, and implicitly in another for my disability causing me to not work "fast enough". There is a literal mountain of evidence online and from first hand accounts of others with Autism that there is a heavy amount of discrimination towards us. When there is a conspiracy whether implicit or explicit that aims to strip us of our pride, dignity, economic self sufficiency, and very sense of existence via dubious "cures" and other fascist eugenic like programs facilitated often under the guise of helping us this is very much a war on Aspergers/Autism. I consider myself proud of who I am and I will not stay quiet and "keep to myself" about who I am just to "fit in" with a backwards morally inferior NT society that places superficial capitalistic BS over true love and respect.

For too long we have had to bear the burden of guilt and shame for merely being who we are and existing. Merely asking for what NTs take for granted on a much more common basis than us. People with Autism have the highest unemployment to my knowledge of ANY minority group and it is not because we are useless, it is because we live in an economic system that is eugenic by function and is controlled by you guessed it mostly NTs or virtually all NTs.

AlarmingSolution3662 · 2022-07-12T14:09:19+00:00

You got the "nobody cares" part right. You're also assuming everyone who are at odds with them, aren't successful, and you're wrong.

exgiexpcv · 2022-07-12T16:07:42+00:00

They don't discuss it in terms of NT and ND, it's simply "You're different. You're weird. You don't fit in."

This is Gaslighting 101.

SorriorDraconus · 2022-07-12T16:20:26+00:00

Thing is I don’t think they CONSCIOUSLY care that much. On the other hand I DO think we trigger the uncanny valley effect and they often see us as a competing subspecies at least subconsciously.

That is very different from hate or war and I do agree especially since my love and parents are non neurodiverse that the hate and us vs them is not cool.

FukudaSan007 · 2022-07-12T16:53:31+00:00

I don't think NT exists

twofacetoo · 2022-07-12T17:21:55+00:00

Fucking 110% this with a cherry on top and a kiss goodnight

Evinceo · 2022-07-12T15:27:26+00:00

While not a perfect take, I do think that we're in a phase of paranoia about NTs in this sub and I think pushback against it is ok.

I'll post my usual take: you really don't know if the people making your life difficult are NTs at all, and a lot of the problems I see pointing to NTs are really issues you'd have with people of any nature. Look deeper at what creates and maintains the systems that cause you problems, don't let "NT" be the end of the examination.

lordofthemanor87 · 2022-07-12T14:39:01+00:00

Exactly, nobody gives a shit about us as 'aspies.' Your personality traits might lead to bullying in high school if you let them, but it isn't because you're on the spectrum specifically, it is because you're just different. People have been doing that for as long as we've been a species, it isn't targeted towards you because you're not NT, it's just human nature to ostracize those who are different. It's just regular human nature to target those outside of the norm. Those who are ugly, gay, tall, short, fat, skinny, all get the same treatment.

Once you grow up and live in your own house surrounded by only people you want to be surrounded by, you'll understand that zero people give a shit that you're ND. There is no war, OP is correct.

2022-07-12T14:22:02+00:00

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Reasonable_Use6280 · 2022-07-12T14:19:42+00:00

Sovvy but I evolve trough conflicts and I like how my life is going thanks to this.

I'll keep my state of mind.

But props for trying

AccurateEmu2914 · 2022-07-12T15:45:54+00:00

I find this viewpoint refreshing. I’ve fallen into the NT distain pattern myself recently. Upon reflection though, you’re right, it’s fundamentally the responsibility of the 1% to modify their behavior, not the 99%.

I started out from that stance and got lost somewhere along the way. I have done years of ABA with my son to make sure he doesn’t have the same social/interpersonal handicaps that I do. What I would give to go back in time and give ABA training, even just a few coping skills, to myself as a child! Knowledge is power, and we can round off our own rough edges if we want to.

SamJSchoenberg · 2022-07-12T15:07:28+00:00

Nobody bullies autistic people because of their diagnosis. They bully them because of their poor social skills.

2022-07-12T15:30:47+00:00

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Yogurt-Night · 2022-07-12T16:21:14+00:00

The real war is between me and myself

peakedattwentytwo · 2022-07-12T17:04:05+00:00

That has never been my experience, and I'm pushing 60. I'm utterly harmless and interfere with none of my coworkers' attempts to do their jobs, yet somehow my oddities are a topic of interest for these people. This could be because as a young person, I would not accept direction or guidance, even from folks who were paid to provide it, and so failed to study anything that would have afforded me an opportunity to work at an interesting job among other weirdos.

I have extreme auditory processing challenges, though, so with my industrial earmuffs and white noise apps, I'm rarely aware of them laughing at me any longer. Weirdly, I did really well on an online test of one's ability to determine mood based on a slice of brows and eyes, which confirms that I'm not as poor at reading people as some might think.

skyehobbit · 2022-07-12T17:09:23+00:00

Is there a "war"? No. And I've never seen it described that way. It is an "us vs them"? Yes, at times but not often a specific us vs. a specific them. More like, us vs their way of thinking, us vs their expectations, us vs their ignorance. A culture war.

I am 38, ASD, with plenty of comorbids. I do less masking now than I have ever done. I spent years as a stay at home mom with my kids and that undid a lot of the programming I'd been taught to "fit in."

It's great. I don't force myself into uncomfortable situations, I don't play at being an NT when I'm out with friends, in my last job I barely masked at all. At this point in my life, you get me. Just me.

I changed a lot of minds on what ASD is, and constantly answered questions. But I got lucky with this group of people. My job prior to that did not go as well.

Your post talks about how we all learn to mask to fit ib - but the point we are making is that we don't want to mask. We want to be accepted for who we are. That's the "war" we're talking about. It doesn't have to be something NTs do consciously, esp if they've been introduced to the concept of ND as individuals and not symptoms and they keeping treating NDs as their ND.

And where that is possible is highly subjective.

fietsvrouw · 2022-07-12T17:19:37+00:00

Give it a rest. Bullying of autistic people is so ubiquitous that Frith proposed it as a diagnostic criteria. 20% of aspies and 10% of auties are employed because of workplace discrimination. 15% of autistics with a college degree are employed. on average, they earn 4600 per year - meaning the discrimination is so severe, that most cannot support themselves.

You think you can erase that from the world by pretending there is no distinction, pretending that autistics are responsible because they see a divide - that is your own personal delusion. We see these posts all the time. This is a safe space for autistic people to vent and express their frustration at the reality they face. If you don't like it, read something else, but stop trying to take a safe space away from autistic people. NTs do not need your protection. Autistic people do.

houseontherock · 2022-07-12T17:26:38+00:00

Im leaving this sub, peak cringe

frostatypical · 2022-07-12T17:34:42+00:00

But, but but... if its not Us versus THEM what else can I do? This tribal mindset works for me! This is how I get my specialness and you cant take that away!

ARL2D2 · 2022-07-12T16:32:34+00:00

This sub is turning into r/autism

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