Inequality - who is the onus on?

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@ olympiadis & skilpadde:

It might be nice if there were more compromise, but it's never going to happen.

Take a look at any other imbalance of power. Money, strength, intelligence, economics, politics etc.. "He who holds the gold makes the rules." There is a snowball's chance in Hell that NT's, the "winners," are going to accommodate the minority. It's simply not the way of the world. It's more of a "Might is Right," or "Survival of the Fittest," thing. Whoever has the power of whatever kind does things in the way they choose to, not in the way those they rule or dominate would like them to. That is why autistics must make the effort to adapt as best they can. Whether you like it or not, whether it's nice or not, I believe this is simply factual reality.

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No for supporting trump. Because doing so is deplorable.

My father used to be quite the idealistic, armchair socialist. "To each according to his need," he liked to say, "and from each according to his ability." He was frequently seen toking a jay with one hand and holding the Bible propped open with the other while issuing such maxims; one wonders if he was talking about some hoped-for Earthly society or the Kingdom of the Lord.

In that spirit, I voted that it ought to be both. To each according to his need-- certainly it is true of all humans, for reasons other than just autism, that some need more accommodation (and it varies by the season of our lives) than others. From each according to his ability-- certainly it is true that, just as some of us at some times must ask for more, some of us (again in some seasons) have more to give.

Give-and-take isn't fixed, and it isn't fifty-fifty. It changes and flows; if you have been fortunate in your life, all the gives and all the takes even out to something like a zero balance in the end (neither having generally taken advantage nor having been generally taken advantage of). It isn't black-and-white either; sometimes giving gives to the giver, and sometimes taking leaves the recipient drained.

I have believed for most of my adult life that it must always be me to make the accommodations, and that any failure must always be my fault. So I was taught through research and therapy: my disease, my defect, my problem, my fault. I have adhered to that. Doing so has not made me a greater or better or stronger or more loved (or more loving) person. Instead, it has left an exhausted, bitter, depressed, resentful, burned-out shell. What have I bought with my soul?? Certainly I have not made myself a better wife or friend, daughter or mother. I think I've bought us all a mouthful of ashes.

My ancestors came from Italy with the same mentality: assimilate or die trying. Looking at my grandmother now, her contempt for her roots and her life of bitter social climbing, her stories of being beaten for her own good if she spoke Italian in her home as a child ("English! English! Brutta! Idiota!"), I think they also bought a mouthful of ashes.

I wonder what the American Aboriginal would have to say about that.

I think the idea that it's all up to one side or the other smacks of dominionism and colonialism and of everything else that got society into the mess it's in today.

Of course, we are here, in the mess we're in today. And there are somewhere between 38 and 88 of them for every one of us (Are there? Really?? If ALL the oddballs, the ADHDers and ASDers and depressives and schizo-spectrumites and bipolars and every other non-neurotypical got together, would the tables-- or at least the numbers-- perhaps be turned??).

And so, regardless of what SHOULD be, we will have to be the ones to do the accommodating. That remains the essence of behavioral therapy, after all. To do all the accommodating, and to see such as only the way it should be.