I'm really sick of attacks against NT's here

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Venting is healthy.
What is normal anyway?

Bashing is not healthy.

Those complaints are in the PPR subforum. People are constantly calling each other out about racism, homophobia, transphobia etc. Debates about gay marriage often involve homophobia and counter complaints of homophobia. Debates about terrorism have been known to devolve into racism and complaints about racism. A series of threads about medical coverage devolved into transphobia (via debate about coverage of sex change operations) and complaints about transphobia. The back catalogue of locked PPR threads contains all those things and complaints about those things. Sexism and complaints about sexism are centered in Love and Dating.

PPR has absolutely no threads calling people out for NT bashing because that isn't actually a political issue and so "NT" doesn't ever come up there. I spend almost all my WP time in PPR these days. It comes up in General because General is where people talk about personal interactions rather than politics or sex. One poster even pointed out- to great comic effect- that NTs are hated in General but loved in L&D.

You are absolutely right that NT bashing will not result in discrimination or other negative social effects the way AS bashing does (links to rampage killers, most recently). The minority rarely has power over the majority (exceptions to that get discussed in PPR). Its only negative effect is that creates an echo chamber that feeds alienation and division. The internet makes the echo chamber effect so much worse. There is a subtle difference between venting and bashing. People need to let off steam. But calling out bashing is a protection against the echo chamber effect.

I don't find NT-bashing to be rampant here. It does occur, but it doesn't pervade Wrong Planet.

NT-bashing is like bashing gays, women, men, transsexuals, Aspergians,, schizophrenics, etc.

It's wrong to bash a collective; and apply it to an individual.

Rant on an individual person, rather than a collective, when he/she exhibits behaviors worthy of the rant.

I agree with what you said here. I think sometimes people interpret something as an attack when something isn't.

I don't have anything against NTs. They just are the way they are, and there's nothing wrong with them just being who they are. However, my OWN experience with a certain group of people that is very vaguely defined and fits most of the NTs I have met so far has been negative. I look the same as everyone else, but my manner of speaking, my sensory processing, and my conversational patterns are very different from what most people do/experience and what most expect from me. Some people with AS also act hypersocial and seem to expect NT-like social conventions from others, but most people with ASD do it much less than the general NT population because they can't "fit in", either.

Overall, I've found more acceptance and spontaneous understanding in the ASD population than in the NT population because there ARE many commonalities among us. Whenever I go to a social event with NTs, I pretty much always feel out of place, struggle to follow conversations, and am bothered by stimuli that don't affect anyone else that interfere with my ability to engage with the people. Of course, people probably are just not comfortable with these differences and then shut me out from future associations with them almost all the time through gestures such as deleting me on Facebook or not returning texts. I don't want to be stupid and commit the same mistakes again, so I just have learned to group these people into a "hyperemotional, hyper-socially aware" category and just not involve myself with these people altogether since that just ultimately leads to failure. Most people who fit this category are NTs. However, by choosing NOT to associate with this group of people I am not attacking them; I just don't belong in their groups, period. It has to do with MY differences and is not their fault. I accept them as they are, but associating together is likely to cause both parties too much discomfort that neither of us deserve to suffer. It's sad because we're all humans and sometimes I want to give people/NTs another chance, but I usually end up regretting it.

I was badly beaten by NTs in elementary school. Perhaps physical abuse occurs in both ASD and NT populations of kids. The only reason you weren't beaten by NTs may have been because NTs are more aware of school rules. When I lived in Russia as a kid, there were no prohibitory rules against physical abuse, so I was constantly physically bullied. I think as you get older, people with ASD mature and it becomes easier to understand them and get along with them. I have become very good at figuring out motives behind why someone would physically attack someone else and I am more able to forgive. It's not always for bullying purposes; sometimes the kid may actually think he/she is helping somebody by hitting them just as hitting oneself might feel good. The reasons may be very complex, but obviously if it's malicious in intent, it's always very hurtful.

Also, there are two things I want and need: to belong to a group and to conceptualize, to myself and to others, my own behaviours and experiences. I wish these two things didn't involve compartmentalizing and labeling, but they do. People find it easier to put me into a category of "ASD" instead of trying to understand my own complexities. I either fit their notion of ASD or not, regardless of how much I want to just be seen and accepted as a unique human being without any labels. There is at least a large majority of people seem to need stereotypes or they filter things completely, which means I have to adjust my communication to include these labels.

This is a long post but there are many things I wanted to communicate to you. Hopefully at least someone will read it and think about it.

Thank you for this reminder, Ezra...you sound like a mature, sensible young man, and it shows in your original post.

Ezra I have never mixed with people on the spectrum because I have only known I was on the spectrum myself for the last two years.

What I know about people on the spectrum is the people I know here on WP.

I had no idea people on the Spectrum behaved like what you described.

I hate bullies and I am sorry you have had to endure this in your life.

All my bullies were NTs I had no idea people on the spectrum would carry on the same.

Some people on here make posts saying how much better the world would be if people on the spectrum ran things.

Your post proves this assumption to be wrong.

I get your point. but it seem that you grew up in a totally different environment then I did. I grew up in an all NT world and I was the minority. So yes, I would have a natural hatred towards NT's whether it is justified or not.

There's just no hatred like natural hatred.

The actual reason I joined WP was that I began to notice a lot of this talk about Nt's in the various aspie functions I was attending and became curious to see if many other autistics were doing ti also. If you look at my original messages you will see I focused on this subject quite a lot.

My particular interest around this was and is more along the lines that it is not helpful and even harmful to autistic people to focus on themselves from this angle of looking at a whole group of other people and saying they are different. By doing this they are framing things in such a way that amplifies their experience of their own autism and distorts their perception of others, so making this kind of dichotomy between autistics and so-called nt's keeps themselves from becoming more functional and being happy. It particularly disturbed me that some young people who are deeply suffering come here for comfort and then pick up this distorted point of view and are even encourged to do so, which view is imo bound not to help them.

Anyway, after being here a while, this subject began to lose some of its interest as I saw there are so many wrong ideas and even ridiculous ideas about what autism IS, and so I turned to developing a more comprehensive theory. It is completely amazing and mind boggling to me how very little people here in general seem to understand about autism and how easily they buy into wrong notions and ideas about autism and society in general. I am still trying to digest this realization and decide if if is even worth my time and effort to even bother going any further and try to present my theory which is basically complete.

Attacking NT's as a group is attacking all the good to great family members, friends, colleagues I have had the pleasure to interact with over the years.

Thank you...I'm glad to know someone understood what I was trying to say there.

Maybe sometimes people do attack NTs here...but I haven't seen it so I'm not sure what prompted this thread.



Same for me...and really I feel like I can speak best, only from the vantage point of my own experiences, if that makes sense. My life experience tells me that most people - people who are most likely to be neurotypical people - have certain traits and tendencies that just don't mesh well with me. I can not say something like "all people are the same inside" because that is not what my experience tells me.

Also when we basically "seem" the same as other people, and the differences are less obvious or visible, and maybe hard to understand why you are having difficulty with something because everyone expects you to just be normal, that is when it becomes more important to figure out exactly what it is different about them vs. us. I wish the people here who are complaining about posters using the "us vs. them" mentality could understand that.



Yeah that is something like the way I was categorizing people, and long before I even knew anything about autism or what it might mean to be "neurotypical"...I just noticed that a lot of people are much more social than me, and more emotional and reactive in ways that make me very uncomfortable.



Yes same for me. Although I prefer to say it is due to mutual differences, not solely my own differences.



I'm sorry you had to go through that. I wasn't ever hit by anyone at school, other than one time a teacher spanked me. I was verbally bullied a little bit, but no worse than any other kids, as far as I could tell. I don't remember seeing any kids beating each other up in elementary school, I don't think it would have been tolerated where I went to school.



That's great for being able to forgive, especially forgiving children who may not understand how hurtful they are being. Except I've had a tendency to take it too far, and view adults as being like children who didn't understand, when they really should have known better. And I'd totally let someone off the hook for doing something that was hurtful to me. But I noticed some people use that to take advantage or justify what they are doing, or just flat out go into denial that they are doing anything that could be hurtful. So at this point I don't care about the underlying reasons, I just won't put up with it anymore.

My worst experiences by far have been with people who are mentally ill, who may or may not be NT, and who may or may not be wholly accountable for their actions (and how much a mentally ill person needs to be held accountable is a whole other thing I have been trying to sort out).

Anyway when I am talking about NTs, I am not really thinking of the people who have hurt me the worst in life. I am usually thinking more of the common, everyday behaviors most people have, that feel alien to me and the way I am, that irritate me and frustrate me and exhaust me and make life needlessly difficult, behaviors that can be attributed to differences in neurology.

dianthus wrote: (selected parts of the entire comment:)

Have been thinking about this message ever since you wrote it, as it is very troubling to me. I will take you at your word, but I do not see how you could not see this NT bashing here, as it is very noticeable--I would say a quite predominant aspect of the point of view of many though fortunately not all on this forum, and these kind of messages are all over the place and interwoven into all kinds of material here. I just do not see how anyone could miss seeing it.



I don't have much time to comment now, but to me this is a very problematic comment. In short, I know you care about people as do I...I can feel it...yet I am seeing this situation much differently, though maybe I am missing something (and I, too, have had all kinds of social problems). From my perspective in my own personal life and based on extensive experience and observation of both self and others, when I am trying to figure out how I am different from other people, to me that is self-centered thinking and takes the focus off the real solution, which for me is being conscious of other people, no matter who they are, listening deeply to them and trying to understand them, though admittedly I am not always that good at it. The view you are presenting, though I understand is meaningful to yourself, and you want autisitic people to be happy, is, in my opinion, basically without realizing it or intending to do so, promoting and perpetrating further unhappiness for autistic people.,.

I really don't agree that most people on the Spectrum, within this Forum, have much against NT's. There is some NT-bashing--but not much. People don't have much time for that; they have their own issues to content with.

What I believe people are irritated about is having to adjust to the NT WORLD--rather than vitriol against NT's [i]per se. It's a world beset with obstacles for many on the Spectrum. Many Spectrumites, however, do make the adjustment, and live reasonable lives despite the odds. However, we have our moments where we bemoan the effort that must be made to adjust.

I did not read this whole thread again, so maybe some other people said most people on the spectrum have this thing against nt's, but if you are referring to my previous message of today, I said "many." That is different in affect from the word "most."

I have seen a lot of it, and other people besides myself are noticing it which is presumably why they are making these threads about it and keep commenting on it when it comes up in so many threads..I acknowledge that for just about every nt bashing comment I see, there is someone here else here replying to that kind of comment and setting the person straight by giving a more balanced point of view.

Quote:

People don't have much time for that; they have their own issues to content with.

Imo you are just making this up. Quite a few people here seem to have plenty of time for it.

Also, in the quoted paragraph by you above, you made a typo, Obviously, (unless you did it deliberately to help me make this message, and, if so, pretty clever, and thanks), it could easily be looked at as a Freudian slip, I am not really into Freudian psychology, but in this instance it is probably worth noting. They (meaning some, and I think quite a few), are doing this nt bashing stuff because it makes them feel part of a group,so content. Being in this group that is coming together in bashing nt's can give an inner feeling of being connected and belonging by bonding together to fight someone else. Among other hormones, this activity releases oxytocin which is a powerful bonding agent that creates intense satisfaction. Of course there are situations where it would be very healthy for individuals to band together to fight someone, [i]but the dysfunctional part is doing it in order to try to fill a psychological hole in oneself by feeling connected with the group that is fighting someone else.

Your message aside, I was going to write about this next and have already written about it several times, not just in this context, but in the context of group organization in general--what one somewhat but not entirely whacko psychoanalyst, Bion, who studied group organization called the fight or flight mechanism, which is a way for people who could potentially come together to Work on themselves to instead avoid working on themselves, by, for example, fighting a group like Autism Speaks. Again, this is not to suggest people should not necessarily fight that group, but many people are doing it for the wrong reason and from the wrong perspective, and it could be any group--society, the United States, whatever. If a person is doing it to avoid facing himself and just to feel bonded with other people who are also doing it, then that is kind of corrupt---my opinion, anyway....:
..

Yep...it was a non-clever typo.

I still stand by what I said.

So it seems some on this thread are implying that Ezra, the op, a very bright young man, is just making this stuff up when he made this thread titled:

I'm really sick of attacks against NT's here

Some seem to be implying that, in short, it really is not happening that much and even hardly at all, but usually when someone says they are getting sick of something this means that by their perception it is happening quite a lot. And by my perception and the perception of several others, it IS happening quite a lot, though probably now, after people read this thread, it will be happening less, and that is good.