I get told I am arrogant, mean, "brat-like" and self-centered a lot; however some people, especially young children, seem to like me.
Generally if I get unthreatening "vibes" from people I make an enormous effort to be nice to them, however if I don't I will literally close up (in terms of body language) and either give passive aggressive or monosyllabic responses until they go away.
My mother says I am a difficult person, come across as aggressive and it is hard to have a conversation with me. My (estranged) father also called me "quite vile" in an email yesterday. When I was at school I had no friends and people would often say I was mean (although annoying was the more common perception) for example on the last day of school one year when everyone was upset about leaving their friends and I started laughing at them and saying I didn't care and they perceived this as being mean and insensitive, however from a a psychological perspective I was just trying to hide how isolated I felt.
It's kind of like "What came first, the chicken or the egg?" I suppose. It's a similar dilemma. I don't think an autistic people can be mean though in a generalised sense because "mean" implies intent and I can't really imagine that being the case, at least not without reason or provocation in which case it probably becomes a justified response to antagonism not deliberate unprovoked ill-intent.
Maybe we are mean in the eyes of neurotypicals because we don’t always know the (socially constructed) “nice” things to do, in which case in at least one subjective reality we are. I find the whole concept of meanness strange anyway because generally if someone is mean, they are either wired that way and unable to control it or being provoked by either past or present events, or it is simply miscommunication. In any case, I don’t think it is ever just pure ill-intent.
01 Jan 2012, 9:20 am
