Why is it okay to dislike and alienate autistics?

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I think it's okay to do it to anyone. If someone isn't friendly or nice, we don't have to be around them and it does't matter if they are normal or autistic or have hearing loss or blindness or have a speech impediment, etc.

Okay I don't think this is what you are really saying. I think you mean why is it okay to do this to us for no reason. I don't think it's done intentionally because autism is a invisible disability and because lot of us look normal, people assume we are normal. We can choose to disclose it to be more accepted but I also think people are not obligated to be our friend or hang out with us. If we don't have anything in common or if we have philosophy they don't like, I think that is fine to not be interested in us and that is for everyone.

I think if someone was obviously autistic, people would not approve if someone made fun of them. The irony thing I have seen is online I see lot of comments by people who are disgusted by how ASD people are treated, HFA, aspies, but I often wonder how many of them would judge someone with it if they didn't know they had it. It is a invisible condition so they wouldn't know someone has it but yet they will be disgusted when they hear how badly someone with ASD is treated. Lot of people are not going to assume "Oh this rude/jerk/as*hole/oblivious person could have an ASD so I will give them the benefit of the doubt about their behavior." Instead they will just think, "what an as*hole." "This person is an idiot." "This person just likes to make others feel bad and he doesn't care who he hurts." "This person is a bully so I am just going to stay away from them."

I also think ASD people do this to other ASD people because we're human and I had learned the hard way that just because someone shares the same diagnoses as me doesn't mean they will understand me and think wrong of me. I have even seen some posts here admitting this. Aspies here posting how annoyed they feel by someone else on the spectrum, saying how they will dump anyone if they did this or that to them. So it doesn't matter who the person is or if they are aspie and if they were not trying to be hurtful. Even one here has written how she needs emotional support and told me how real friends support each other and she expected me to know the right things to say to her when she needed it so that was like a slap in the face because that is like telling someone who can't play basketball "real friends play basketball together and are good at it and can shoot baskets and make scores" how unfair is that to someone who isn't good at it? But we me and that person don't talk anymore and are no longer friends. I say me and her were not compatible. Sometimes people are just not compatible for others due to personalities and differences and even autism can get in the way.


I hear these two contradicting phrases, "Before you think you have social issues, make sure you are not surrounded by a bunch of as*holes" and "if everyone is an as*hole, you're the as*hole." So which is it?

The first one

Why is it okay to dislike and alienate autistics? I think it's a mixture of conformism and greed. That's why it's so "profitable" for us to do our best to fit in and treat others as inhuman objects. After all, imo, that's the way our whole culture works. People who won't or can't conform to whatever norms and who can't or won't perform and submit to greed-driven behaviors are ostracized as punishment. I would guess because nonconformity is a challenge to those principles. My 2 cents.

There are other possibilities which may theoretically explain commonplace neurotypical attitudes. Suppose for a moment that: the characteristics of neurotypicality may be (could be? are?) as genetically determined as autism is, including things like conformity, preference for received wisdom over creativity, liking of hierarchy and so on, in fact any characteristic that the group as a whole tends to share. (New Paragraph disallowed by the foul Captcha AGAIN) A very prevalent underlying and largely unspoken assumption (another example of dichotomous assumption) which seems to be held widely by both NTs (and sadly also large numbers of the neurodiverse it seems) is this:

that autism is an inherited fault, whereas NT-ness results from the learning process of socialisation because the neural hardware with which the NTs arrived was not 'damaged', (in their view); this influences their less-than attitude to autists, because basically autists are viewed born as 'failed' neurotypicals and always judged from the perspective of NT ideas and standards, where NT-ness is right and everything else is automatically wrong or defective. It is a very arrogant assumption, though a commonplace one, and it seems that many clinicians who work in autism diagnosis et al are full of it.. (NP:) I also think NTs very much over-believe in self-determination - if they are born with an outstanding talent, they are more likely to present it as personal accomplishment and in terms of deserved reward for hard work; autists who are born with an outstanding talent tend to see it as innate, conferred by the genetic lottery, and something to be grateful for.

Whether or not those speculations above are true or not, I am far more certain that neurotypical individuals often assume that their experience of the world is the only correct one, that their perceptions are the only really valid ones. (The history of the world strongly suggests to me that they are sadly misguided). There are always exceptions though, and I have met some enlightened NTs who see far beyond the myths of their herd..

To androbot: I agree that as popular knowledge of AS grows, people wil become more tolerant or even learn to value our strengths. I disagree that you are incapable of acting appropriately. In the situation you are in right now, you feel excluded and shut out because of your AS symptoms, but those people are not the totality of humanity. I hope you soon find yourself in situation where you are exposed to more accepting people.

It is ok to dislike anyone one feels dislike towards for any reason.
These are just feelings that people have towards other people.
It is not ok to harm people one dislikes, like bullying them.

It's OK because we are broken creatures masquarading as humans and we shouldn't exist. It's my brutally honest opinion.

Arkatron: "I agree that the belief that autistic people are "failed" NTs is arrogant and unfounded. That NT belief implies autists are of lower worth"

That NT belief makes as little sense to me as to regard golfers as failed tennis players, instead of another-but-different-variety of sportspeople. I extend my surmises to add that possibly, the practice of "othering" could be a heritable NT trait, hardwired perhaps into their neurological pattern, just as the dislike of hierarchy for example appears to widely wired into the neurology of our tribe.

Another observation which I think is interesting is the fact that in our natural world, you have two kinds of mammals: the herd/group animals (lions for example, type 1) and the solitaries (tigers for example, type 2). Conformity and grading in superior/inferior rank is far more important in the social world of the type 1 mammals. Type 2 mammals are adapted to independence and self-sufficiency; compared to type 1 mammals, mammals of type 2 would appear to need far greater intelligence resources and sensory perception as individuals to ensure their survival - there is no back up herd to bail you out of trouble and protect your back.

Think on about the implications of that?