The opposite of ableism

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I agree with all that.

Internalized ableism is sly and tricky. This sounds like someone torn between relief knowing what's up and finding out that there's advice and coping mechanisms, and realizing that they're part of a group they've always thought badly about. It's a super interesting mix of shame, guilt, relief, and curiosity, and it comes off as being a judgmental toxic douche.

Well, no...
Because the group I dislike are those who deliberately piss me off because they’re as*holes.
I have no problem belonging to a group of autistics.

It’s all about trying to understand what is in people’s hearts, and whether they have good motivations.

Once I know someone is autistic it is easier to believe any annoyance was unintended.

Mrs Peel, I thought you expressed yourself well regarding the women with late diagnoses and I agree with you.

Did you really need a diagnosis for that though? When you are trying to do something, can't you tell whether you are trying your hardest? Can't you tell whether something you care about is really important and not just something you are "making a fuss" over? Couldn't you just use your own judgment and experience to figure these things out?

Maybe you should speak for yourself only. And this thread I started isn't actually about being "more understanding" of people. It's about people's negative and judgmental attitudes towards disability and certain traits. Being unable to hold a job or a conversation cause a lot of problems in life, but they are not terrible. They are not good reasons to hate oneself or to think poorly of people who have no diagnosed disability. Some people just can't do some things, whether they are diagnosed with something or not. To be more understanding of the people with diagnoses is kind of biased. Everybody has reasons for their behavior.

I don't think any of these comments necessarily applies to late-diagnosed people only.


I'm not one of the people who has said that people use autism as an excuse, but I am going to respond to you anyways: I wouldn't say you aren't allowed to use autism as a reason, because you are free to do or think whatever you want. But autism actually isn't a good reason to stop trying to do something. If you are actually unable to do something, that is a good reason to stop trying.

Do you understand the difference? Just because you are autistic doesn't mean you can't do certain things. Instead of thinking "I'm autistic so I can't do this," the most productive way to think is "Am I actually capable of this? Is it so hard it's going to make me very ill? Do I really want to accomplish this or am I blindly following others?" etc.

Basically, you don't decide on the basis of whether you are autistic or not; you decide on the basis of whether you can and want to do the thing or not. A diagnosis is just a description of a person's functioning; it does not determine a person's abilities.

This way of thinking works for everyone, disabled or not, diagnosed or not. And if undiagnosed people reflect on their lives this way, maybe they won't be working themselves to death before they get diagnosed and feeling like a diagnosis set them free from their self-abuse. People need to know themselves and respect their own limitations instead of relying on diagnoses to set limits for them.

Not an official document but a well reasoned opinion of a competent specialist - yes, I needed it.
My abilities vary enormously in time and I'm a "sprinter" type, capable of short, focused concentrations of effort. When I tried my hardest, I succeeded for a short time and then burned out quickly and got sick and completely incapacitated. I wasn't able to figure it out on my own, especially when I got burned out by "easy" tasks like social life but not by "hard" tasks like complex Math and life was a mix of them all the time.
Teachers in high school believed I was doing drugs because of these drastic swings in my abilities.
For most of my life, I couldn't.
I needed three years of therapy to learn to trust my own judgements.

Oh, goody.
This thread isn't in the fracking Haven. lol

I have never felt a need to "mask".
I embraced my uniqueness, even if others didn't like it.
I still do, and I don't give a frack if anyone has a problem with it now, either.

Since I don't have to socialise for a living, I feel no pressure to explain myself, any longer.
I used to see myself as an autistic ambassador, a few years ago, but I have outgrown the need, now.
I just keep to myself and do my own thing.
Life is simpler and easier, that way.

The new me, as a result of the self-actualisation process, has discovered "people", in the last couple of years, so it would be nice to feel understood and accepted.
But if it doesn't happen, it wasn't meant to be. <shrug>
I am more than a bit stoic, even these days, with my new-found emotional wants.

Personally, I don't need people to understand my social disability, as a result of my autism.
To a large extent, I blame these misunderstandings/complications/irritations on allists, as does Tony Attwood.
I think it healthy to externalise the problem if it is justified.
Hint: It is justified.

We live in a looney bin where the inmates have control of the asylum.
There isn't anything I can do about, but I am not going to feel bad that I don't fit into mainstream allistic land.
Perhaps I should, because I am no longer sure what I want of this life system, any longer. <shrug>

I am in a crazy emotional/philosophical place, atm, but I don't think the solution to my semi-confusion is to kowtow to allistics so as to be part of their cockamamie social system.
But then, I am older than you.
And "the heart wants what the heart wants", so who am I to judge?

What I said probably has no bearing on you.
But it is something I needed to "say", to externalise so as to move on, I guess.

A weird place, am I, as Yoda might say.

I wouldn't know.
I have never pissed off anyone in my life.




Very true.
That is why Penny and Leonard are so forgiving of Sheldon, in "The Big Bang Theory".

Intentions count.
The trouble is, a lot of people don't take that into consideration.

Most of what you have said I agree with.
But had you gone through what I have, you would probably be angry too.

I straight out tell people to their face that we aren't wrong, we are different.

I agree with what you are saying, in theory. Ideally one would feel so confident about oneself not to need the autism diagnosis to be able to accept ones own behaviours.
For myself though, I never had that self-confidence. People judge us on our behaviours whether it’s right or not. If we care about what people think of us, it is natural to feel upset about when we are judged to have behaved badly.
Maybe at the heart of this is that you are assuming that everyone is doing their best and trying to do the right thing. So you think we are being ableist or inverse ableist by judging people from behaviour.
My point is that I do not believe people are always trying their best to do the right thing. There are people who deliberately behave badly.
Until we have the autism diagnosis, those of us with low self-confidence tend to be influenced by the reactions of those around us to believe we may be inherently bad rather than impaired.
Not all of us have your confidence.

The bottom line for me is, knowing what autism is all about allowed me to drive out a lot of the confusion in my life.
"The Truth will set you free", sort of thing.

For me, it was never about having a poor opinion of non-autistic people.
I always, overwhelmingly, had sympathy for other people who were struggling, also.
Isn't this a tendency that those on the spectrum have?
Inherent decency?

Well, I thought so.
To be honest I’m a bit dumbfounded at being told I have ableism as I’m a very accepting person in general.
Maybe I do sometimes measure myself by non-autistic standards and find myself wanting.
it’s related to having spent much of my life absorbing the attitudes of those around me to what I “ought” to be able to do.
That kind of “internal ableism” doesn’t disappear overnight when you get diagnosed, especially if diagnosed late in life, it takes time to recognise it as such and adjust.
Seems like some here could have more tolerance to how different life experiences may have shaped us, rather than jumping straight to calling out the mixed feelings we have during our adjustment as a problem.

Not to me when we first met.
You took an instant dislike to me. EEP!
Yes, I am a skunk, but I had my anal glands removed, so I don't stink any longer.

Haha, sorry Pepe!
It is true I think you are completely incorrigible, irreverent and utterly Exasperating... a true test of my self-proclaimed tolerance!

But back to the OP...
it just occurred to me that maybe I am seeing things differently from Starkid not only because I’m late diagnosed but because I’m a mother. With kids, one needs to set boundaries as to what is acceptable and what is not. And sometimes kids need to be pushed a little to realise they can actually do something which they truly thought they could not.

Same in society. If we assume everyone is trying to do the right thing and we forgive every bad or harmful behaviour, intentional or not, what will happen?
Some may fail to develop their skills as fully as they might.
And with no one daring to speak against them, The narcissists and sociopaths will take control.