give them a break
My special interests are building explosives and mapping out assassination plans, don’t be ableist by calling me a fed!
But genuinely, I agree that there is a terrible bias against autistic and otherwise ND people and it’s so frustrating to deal with.
Oh? You’re not a fed? Name every train and hedgehog
It seems to be a general theme that people don’t trust them, but it’s especially heartbreaking that otherwise inclusive places will discriminate against them the worst. Left wing scenes are socially coded against “dorks,” so the people who become popular in these scenes tend to be on the bully side of things in my experience. Reactionaries use this very dynamic to recruit outcasts of all sorts.
Left wing scenes are socially coded against “dorks,”
Ironically enough, I notice this in online spaces more than real life ones. You’ve got TrueAnon’s “be normal,” its subreddit embracing ableist slurs, that whole Cum Town segment making fun of someone for saying virgin shaming is bad, people on this very site saying “bring back bullying,” etc.
Meanwhile, the IRL leftist organizing spaces I’ve been in have been full of unabashed nerds and very good about not tolerating ableism.
“Bring back bullying” is always the lamest shit. Anyone who still says that needs to do some genuine introspection.
Honestly I’m starting to think that Brace Belden is a left-ish version of Robert Evans (derogatory).
He’s an ass that is sometimes funny
You mean in the sense that he’s a fed?
honestly I can kinda see that, wouldn’t be surprised (albeit Brace is “maybe fed”, Robert is “defo fed”)
I see where this is coming from, but what happens online is a real force. Aside from material relationships between employers, employees, landlords, renters, the majority of people nowadays get politicised online. As for discourse itself, easily more than 80% of it happens online.
And don’t get me started on the people who describe themselves as autistic (who might be in fact of course be autistic) but will throw anyone more autistic than them under the bus. Same dynamic with the stupid debate about the lumpen proletariat that was one of Engels’ – the great man who gave us Dialectics of Nature – (many) bad ideas beloved by him.
To be fair to Engels, he was an outstanding journalist.
And don’t get me started on the people who describe themselves as autistic (who might be in fact of course be autistic) but will throw anyone more autistic than them under the bus.
Anyone who throws fellow autistic people to the killing machine that is capitalist society and pressures are some of the worst class traitors.
I feel as though some of that boils down to the “I’m autistic, but I’m not like that!” mentality that exists for some. For example, I am autistic but am very capable of making it in social situations aside from the uncommon moment where I completely misread a cue or two and everything gets awkward. However, then you look at my sweet wife, who is entirely incapable of being social for a number of reasons. We are both autistic, but our capabilities differ significantly. Folks, including other autistic individuals, need to remember that those on the spectrum come in many different varieties. Have empathy and understanding for them to the best of your abilities.
the people who become popular in these scenes tend to be on the bully side of things
It is very worth keeping top of mind that people with the combination of average to above-average social capability and psychopathic, narcissistic, or Machiavellian traits are adept at climbing social hierarchies regardless of the purpose for which those hierarchies exist or to which they are oriented.
It’s up to everyone else to consider what to do about this and whether or not it’s ableist (or similar) to do anything about it at all, but certain personality traits tend to concentrate in certain roles cross-culturally, and it would be a lot more surprising if they didn’t.
edit: added quote
I think the emphasis on dissent in left wing spaces can make it easier for such antisocial individuals to gain at least some influence. Some ultra-leftist places, I know they won’t describe themselves as left wing but who cares, will behave in the most corrosive ways imaginable. Often much worse than shit you’ll see on certain right leaning imageboards. It really seems to increase the more people hold on to ideas of correctness, or appearing correct, and purity.
Left wing scenes are socially coded against “dorks”
Mine isn’t
Oh shit did I just doxx myself
You’re lucky to be in a scene that doesn’t about superficial things like aesthetics too much.
I have the Autism Gait. I’ve been told that I walk like a cop.
That’s really bizarre. Cops tend to keep their head on a swivel and walk a straight line with very efficient body movements. I kinda walk like a cop because I used to be a long distance hiker before I exploded my knees.
The autism gait is essentially the exact opposite, clumsy and uncoordinated body movements, typically unable to follow a straight line, and usually looking down at the ground at their destination. The pelvis is tilted incorrectly and there’s a slight lean.
I think the only behavioral thing that might be in common would be having bent arms. Autistic people sometimes do T-Rex arms, where cops may keep their arms bent while jogging or power walking because they’re accustomed to reaching for crap on their belt.
FWIW as an autist I don’t think there’s a typical autism gait, I suspect the one thing many autists have in common is that we walk a lil funny, rather than any particular funny aspects.
BTW and just as an aside for general interest, it seems a lot of people diagnosed with ADHD have different/increased sway on a balance platform as compared to normies, so much so that it might actually be diagnostically useful. I find this stuff fascinating, and of course it isn’t surprising that conditions which impact our entire conscious way of being would also impact our way of moving.
That’s not quite right from a medical standpoint. While presentation can vary a bit, there are really consistent musculoskeletal features common to Autism and ADHD which are caused by reduced muscle tone. These are so common that some of them are actually diagnostically helpful.
Virtually all autistic people will have some degree of hyperlordisis of the lumbar spine related to an anterior pelvic tilt. You can also often see rib flaring as a result of this too. Both of these are also pretty common in ADHD and account for the balance board differences from NT people. The severity of ADHD/Autism symptoms are also proportional to the severity of hyperlordisis. That is to say the more severe one’s ADHD or Autism is, the weaker the muscle tone will be and the more the pelvis will be tilted.
Also common but not diagnostically helpful for Autism are scapular protraction, a forward head posture, and a shortening of calf ligaments caused by tiptoe walking.
Because all bodies are different and the degree of pelvic tilt and severity of muscle tone weakness varies there are naturally going to be variations that most people wouldn’t pick up on, but a physical therapist would be able to identify the commonalities.
TL;DR autistic people have a fat ass
I had to be sent to a physiotherapist to correct the issues caused by toe-walking as a child. My calf muscles had shortened and stiffened to the point where I was not able to participate in physical education without severe pain.
As an adult, I suffered from severe back pain until a physiotherapist explained the anterior pelvic tilt and helped me correct the years worth of compounded issues that stemmed from it.
It’s a very real thing.
I also have such a tilt but haven’t experienced any issues derived from it yet. Do you have advice on how I can correct it?
My physiotherapist helped me correct my posture by actively engaging my abdominal muscles to change the angle of my pelvis.
I too had no issues for a long time, but as you get older, your body’s ability to repair itself slows down and the pain can creep up on you.
Squats, bridges, hip flexor stretches, and lots of walking can be effective.
Autistic people don’t have a harder time building or maintaining muscle, they typically do less physical activity than their neurotypical peers. It seems to be somewhere between an executive function thing and a vicious cycle where poor coordination and low muscle mass lead to poor performance and frustration that leads to not exercising which worsens coordination and muscle mass.
Does this then not perpetuate a kind of stereotype? Myself and my brothers have ADHD and are also most likely autistic too but have been involved in team and solo sports all our lives and are relatively fit and have always had pretty good muscle mass. I have basically none of the issues you mentioned above and neither do my siblings. I think we do miss here that the “spike-iness” of one’s autism profile doesn’t necessarily preclude them from liking or engaging with exercise in whatever manner they enjoy.
Fuck, is that why my ass is so fat? I was called bubble butt when I was a kid :(
If it was present before puberty, it is almost certainly hyperlordisis.
It can result in herniated spinal disks, but depending on the degree it can be quite correctable with physical therapy and regular exercise.
my way of walking and knocking on doors gets people to think I’m a soldier a lot, especially since I wear combat boots 24/7
Need a syncopated knock so you don’t worry people
Shave and a haircut, two bits!
What other things have people thought of you guys because there’s something “off” about you that people cant place?
Ive had people surprised I speak the local language because they assumed the “off thing” was that I was a foreigner, I’ve also been misgendered despite having a beard.
Lots of people seem to assume I’m under the influence. I think the body language of chronic pain, whether physical, mental, or both, are often assumed to be drugs, when actually the appearance of being ‘out of it’ can be because much of our mental bandwidth is taken up trying to compensate for pain
This is so real. I’m exhausted all the time and have no stamina because of ME and it’s wild how often people assume that me needing to sit down every 5 minutes means I’m on opiates and nodding off.
It’s not even visually remotely close.
people assume I am unable to hear or speak a lot. like a lot of times store clerks try to speak to me with sign language or by writing text on their phones
That I’m evil, duplicitous or hiding something. People like to believe that they’re very intuitive.
I’m not a fed I’m just extremely square
I am autistic and was once dogpiled on HexBear, but in my particular case I don’t complain, because what I wrote was indeed bad and I later apologized.
I not only adjusted my ideas, but I learned that one must avoid even the appearance of being a chud. Hypothetical example: suppose someone experiences a particular case of black-on-white injustice (it might happen, even if very rare). If then they get emotional and write a screed about “reverse racism”, they might technically not be completely wrong, but every leftist will take them for a white supremacist, even if they were just naive and tone deaf.
I not only adjusted my ideas, but I learned that one must avoid even the appearance of being a chud
I have held the believe that one does actually have the duty to meaningfully distinguish oneself from the chuds.
I saw that happen a few times. I’m fortunate enough to be high masking but sometimes I can see myself in someone being a called liberal or reactionary because they can’t help but being technical on some random definition
One of the masking skills I acquired in activists circles was to always check if a level of factuality is needed for struggle purposes
Same. It’s hard to learn that some parts of a movement are more about tribal cohesion and less about factual accuracy. That doesn’t mean the overall vision isn’t important, it just means that you don’t start “fixing uniforms in the middle of a firefight” so to speak.
I didn’t understand the last sentence:
One of the masking skills I acquired in activists circles was to always check if a level of factuality is needed for struggle purposes
Could you elaborate?
The masking/social skill is that you double check if your desire for technical correctness is actually needed.
Is it helpful? Is it necessary? Does it advance the cause? Or are you getting hung up on minutiae?
Typically the issue is that the clarification is being discussed at an inconvenient time for the group, and you are interrupting the discussion. If you determine that it is helpful and necessary and does advance the cause, the right move is to come back to it later on in a smaller group or individually to gain clarity. If not, just drop it.
When I want to correct someone because they omitted a certain nuance, I ask myself if this error may lead to taking wrong decisions in the future, or if it is a small inaccuracy that isn’t worth the debate. It’s especially important if the nuance in question will make you look more moderate. Correcting people for not being radical enough is more acceptable in good orgs
hexbear is pretty much the only place on this platform where i haven’t been dogpiled yet.
the worst one was when i recently said on lemmygrad that “nobody should get hate for where they were born or other things out of their control” and attempted to have a friendly discussion and i guess i made them mistake of pointing someone’s inconsistency in the response.
i got them responding EXTREMELY angry completely misrepresenting what i meant and called me a “patsoc” (i didn’t even know what that was until i googled it and it doesn’t describe me at all except for the socialist part) and that patsocs should be “boiled”. so, i guess they told me i should be boiled alive or something.
it frustrated me because it makes no sense to engage with someone who is that angry and turning the discussion into a heated bad faith debate, so i couldn’t clarify what i actually meant because i don’t want to debate comrades and that’s what they were in for. i just wanted a friendly discussion and wasn’t mentally in the space for a debate.
this is why i’m currently thinking of making a new account on some normie instance and just not engaging with controversial or political stuff, sticking to stuff like gaming etc.
i’ve been called a liberal, a zionist, a tankie (multiple times), a patsoc and even a pedophile once. it just feels really awful every time that happens, and sometimes it comes from people that have almost identical political views to me. i guess i’m just not used to being called bad stuff and should just have a thicker skin, but what for? is there really a point in being a punching bag online when it feels like shit. idk
i usually don’t even understand what compels people to say stuff like that. it’s not something i do, and i don’t understand why they say those things and it’s really frustrating. it just all seems illogical and when i try to figure out their logic, they get really angry and call me even more names. i don’t understand people in these spaces a lot of the time
got them responding EXTREMELY angry completely misrepresenting what i meant and called me a “patsoc”
Actually what happened is you said the dumbest possible thing in a M-L “tankie” board and expected not to get dogpiled. We explicitly have rules against this kind of thing. No investigation, no right to speak! Even if we’re gonna take what you said at face value of “uhhh I’m completely clueless about politics and everything I say is misinterpreted” what you said was fucking disgusting, BEYOND ignorant and shows a complete lack and willingness to investigate it further and paste over it instead with “kindness and love” hippy idealism as a rhetorical counter (or whatever you were doing here) to land-back and indigenous stewardship.
Case and point.
https://lemmygrad.ml/post/12821517/8731590 Everyone else seeing this thread is free to check the original thread and make their own conclusions. Personally, I think it’s mildly suspicious that this person does this on Lemmygrad and then comes here to Hexbear to cry.
And yes, patriotic socialists, nazbols, duginists, strasserists; they should be boiled. Would make a great show. These are people who know better and have chose America’s shadow.
i had you blocked but since lemmy showed that there’s a reply i opened this out of curiosity which was a mistake. now i feel compelled to reply because i don’t want to be shit on here too because of a misunderstanding.
all i meant was that your argument is not great because there’s israelis saying the same thing. i didn’t intend to make any comparisons to anyone, it’s you misinterpreting what i’m saying like a lot of people are saying is happening to other autistic people in this thread too.
now, please leave me alone. i didn’t name you in this thread yet you continue this conversation, more like debate from your side, from another instance when i made it very clear i don’t want to interact with you about this anymore. i’m begging you, please leave me alone. i don’t want to debate. i told you that. just like you want, i earlier made the choice to not engage in your space. leave me alone, please
FYI on hexbear at least there is a rule “Use of Disengage” to make someone stop replying to you, it’s about halfway down the page: https://hexbear.net/code_of_conduct but it is only valid if you also comply with it.
to keep it meta only, I think if you make a detailed complaint about a very recent thread on a friendly instance, it is to be expected that someone can recognize it and comment. no matter who is correct in matter of politics or etiquette, it is predictable that the debate will be re opened.
🤨
Autistic people can be genuine and be asking questions in good faith, but it can come across as a fed or a liberal.
We can get caught up in the technical def of a word to the point of talking in circles, even if the basic premise is agreed upon. It can cause a lot of miscommunication. It can make it look like we are intentionally starting shit.
people won’t use tone tags online, and it can be very hard to tell if someone is being serious or not which can cause more miscommunications.
Difficulty dealing with morally grey areas.
Probably could go on. Now of course, this doesn’t mean every autistic person is some poor, misunderstood soul. Autistic people can be some of the most reactionary assholes around just as much as anyone else. The problem is figuring out who is who.
I am sure there are unfair and ableist situations in meetings. At the same time, organizing meetings must be run somewhat efficiently and safely for everyone involved and it is not inherently ableist to keep things going or cut someone off if they are monopolizing time or trying to start a new topic. The latter is very common and not unique to people with autism by a long shot and one of he more important things to learn about running meetings. Another skill is resisting the urge to hash something out in the whole group and instead putting energy into organizing outside of main meetings. For example, being in leadership of an education committee is far more powerful - and provides opportunitied to really hash things out - than personally raising issues in main meetings on the context. If this organizing-within-an-organization approach is working, and it tends to more often than introducing questions in a big meeting, then the other folks in the committee or who listen to the Ed sessions will actually do the advocacy for you and make it something that needs little discussion since folks are already aligned. I am mentioning all of this not to be lecturing or saying you are doing anything wrong, but instead because I think it is generally useful advice and because I certainly have to personally resist the urge to correct or clarify during meetings lol.
But just to be clear I am talking about organizing spaces with an agenda, not just casual conversation. When you mentioned, “get caught up in the technical def of a word to the point of talking in circles, even if the basic premise is agreed upon” it made me think of meetings getting derailed but you may be thinking of something totally different.
oh no i was just talking in general. In meetings, we normally have to keep someone as point person cause autism, adhd, and sleep deprivation have a lot of overlap in the random topic department for the reasons that you mentioned.
Oh yeah well that makes sense and I think we should all be pretty forgiving in conversations aside from big transgressions re: oppressions.
some of us tend to talk kinda weird, gives off undercover cop vibes occasionally
I’ve been told I “smell like cops” in the eyes of people on the street. As long as I’m not actually a cop, I don’t care too much, it just means I won’t gain everyone’s trust as fast.
Sounds like something a fed would say
deleted by creator
