Autism and prejudice

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I always hear this stereotype of autism that autistic people are more unprejudiced than nonautistic people.

But not only does this not seem to be true. But also it seems like when autistic people have various prejudices, we're more likely to be blunt and obnoxious about them than nonautistic people are. Because they mostly seem to know when and where to hide prejudices, while we just blurt out our prejudiced opinions anytime and anywhere. Additionally, when we have some area of privilege (male privilege, white privilege, etc.) that colors our reactions in situations like this (even, perhaps especially, when it's not the kind of thing that would be obvious to the person with that kind of privilege as blatant prejudice), all the effects of that privilege seem to be amplified in some way as well, probably also due to our tendency to be straightforward and blunt.

Note that all examples in this post, when they're about people within a specific category of people (such as white people, men, etc.) are not meant as generalizations about that kind of person so please don't flame me at times when I point out that I see more autistic people in that category, than nonautistic people in that category, doing certain problematic things openly.

Note also that I am not saying that autistic people seem more likely to show prejudice, I'm not saying we're more prejudiced, I'm saying that other people seem to hide it better than we do.

For instance, as an example of the "privilege" thing, I know a lot more autistic men who blatantly have the attitude that the world owes them a girlfriend in some way, than nonautistic men, although I'm pretty sure just as many nonautistic men have this attitude yet know how to hide it better.

As said in the bolded part of my post, this is not a slam on all men or all autistic men, it's just an example of the sense of entitlement that can come with various forms of privilege. Not all men are like this, not all autistic men are like this, but society often gives men the choice of acting like this towards women, without punishing them overmuch for it, which is sort of the definition of privilege. I'm not going to give this kind of disclaimer every time I write about privilege, I'm just giving it this once so you understand that I mean it all times I'm describing the icky behavior that privilege can bring about. This sort of thing is more subtle (to men, anyway, and even to many women) than a man coming out and saying outright that "Women are inferior" or somesuch, which is why I consider it more an expression of privilege than the more blatant sort of prejudice I've also described.

As for the more blatant-to-nearly-everyone forms of prejudice... it's like name the kind of prejudice and I've seen more obvious forms of it among autistic people than among nonautistic people. (I imagine it's there in the same number of nonautistic people, they just know how to hide it better.) This goes whether it's racism, classism, ableism, sexism, ageism, fatphobia, transphobia, homophobia -- whatever it is, autistic people are less likely to hide it. And then when they defend it... well defending these things is so common that someone created http://www.derailingfordummies.com/ entirely to deal with the different ways that it happens. But I think autistic people tend to pick certain particular ways to defend it more often -- more likely to claim that whatever their prejudice is, it's "scientific", or some other "but it's factual" (or even "but it's factual, and it's an NT thing to pussyfoot around the issue and deny how factual it is!") or "but it's for their own good that I'm pointing this out," or "but it's from my actual experience of These People, sort of thing, I've noticed. So more likely to try to defend whatever prejudice we're spewing by trying to "prove" that it's "real" in some way, whether scientifically, through experience, etc. Rather than a lot of the other defenses that they go through on that site.

As an example of that, I once saw an autistic person say horrible things about Asian and black people. And then when other people called her on it, she basically said, "But it's not prejudice if it's based on my experience!" and was adamant she wasn't racist even when she was calling people the n-word. (To her, using that word only on black people who "deserved it" made her not racist.) That's just one example of the "But I'm talking about real facts" that we seem to prefer when defending our prejudices.

(I say "our" for a reason. I'm not leaving myself out of the possibility that I have prejudices that are blatantly obvious to people who are not me and that I defend this way. Because contrary to popular belief, being prejudiced about things like this doesn't have to mean hating people, and most people have prejudices they're totally unaware of.)

Anyway, I just wanted to know if anyone else has seen this tendency to be much more obvious and open about our prejudices or the unpleasant effects of our privilege than nonautistic people are. I see a lot more of this than I see of that mythical unprejudiced nature we're stereotyped as having.

Thought provoking.


I've noticed it a little. My experience with autistic people is limited, but I have noticed a level of intensity in such things that I rarely see among NTs. A combination of black and white thinking and impulse control?

That may be so.

I have a strong prejudice against creationists (christian or muslim) and others sort of low brow demagogues who deny reality to make themselves feel better. I think they cause a lot of problems in the world with their magical thinking. But really that extends to stupid people in general. Sloppy thinking drives me nuts.

Oh, yes, absolutely. I don't know if autistic people are more likely to be prejudiced than others but when they are, they are monsters. Often, their thinking is so rigid that there isn't any point in even trying to counter it (contrary to the myth that autistic people are more "rational").

I admit where I'm prejudice when I recognize it. Like, I will admit that I don't like Christians (especially Catholics) b/c I think they're following a hypocritical religion where many of its practitioners do stupid s**t that is against their faith. But I will still be friends (and am friends) w/ [plenty of Christian people. I just separate the person from their faith mentally. I also make fun of and imply that Twitards are stupid all the time .

"Prejudice" is a tricky concept.

I'd suggest that the real problem here is the autistic person's tendency to act/think as if their experience of reality is definitive.

I understand what you are saying about privelege. I get that. But understanding which ways you have such privelege is very important, but also understanding the ways that you do not have privelege is. It is often very complicated. For example, I have privelege of education, but I also am queer, have come from an abusive family, etc.

Privelege is hard to grasp as a concept, because you do have to grasp the concept as a whole, but most NT don't think about it, because they are well...priveleged. Privelege usually appears when one is confronted with the fact they don't have it.

We have less of a filter with regards to our opinions. I don't see this as a bad thing. Because in a certian context we do have our own issues we have more of a chance to confront the ideas of privelege and prejudice that most NT do not even think of. So I am not sure it is necessarily amplified as much as it is unfiltered.

The way it is I rather take a rude and honest New Yorker over a Southerner any day of the week. New Yorkers don't hold back thier opinions under the veneer of "being nice". They are open about things and they expect you to call them on thier BS. While Southerners are "nice" yet often very prejudiced underneath because they hide thier prejudice in niceness. I like to think people on the spectrum are kind of like New Yorkers. There is less of a filter, so its easier to call people on thier attitudes.

This is basically what I was thinking. Dealing with prejudice in any form is not pleasant, but I cannot stand when someone is pleasant and nice to someone to their face and then say nasty things behind their back. I've seen white people (NTs, as I don't really know any other autistics offline) act like a particular black person is their best friend and then when that person is not there say all sorts of horrible racist things. To me, that's infuriating. At least if someone is unfiltered, you know what you're dealing with. That doesn't excuse it, of course. I probably have prejudices as well that I don't realize, and I would hope that someone would call me out on it if I do.

Privilege really is a difficult concept, and people will always argue that they don't have it when they do. I am a minority in many ways, but being male alone gives me that privilege and makes me unable to empathize with the female experience (even if I do sympathize). I've had plenty of arguments online about this, because people with privilege will brush off the complaints of people who don't have it as irrelevant. Of course it's irrelevant to them.

Edit: Sorry if I've wandered away from the point of your post.

There are many,many privilege groups. For every privilege group, there are people outside the group. I think most people (NT and AS alike) belong inside at least one privilege group and outside at least one other privilege group. Neurology doesn't trump money, gender, sexual orientation, race, citizinship of a particular country, class etc. asa privilege group. I am inside multiple privilege groups and also outside others. So are we all. It's a rare person (if they even exist) who is inside every privilege group.

I think people (NT and AS alike) think about privilege groups a lot. It's just that the privilege groups they think about are the ones they aren't in, rather than the ones they are. The ones they aren't in are glaringly obvious and they think about them a lot. The ones they are in are invisible (from the inside) and thus not thought about.


Using myself as an example, I don't use a wheelchair. (I bring this up because anbuend does and she started the thread.) I never have to think about my non-wheelchair privilege. I don't have to worry about whether the elevator is working or if the building has been modernized to have a ramp or if the snowbank had a passageway wide enough carved out of it or if the wheelchair breaks what will I do or how to negotiate uneven terrain or a million other things I don't think about because I am not confronted with being outside the mobility privilege group.* On the other hand, we share the privilege group of living in a functional industrialized society. I don't need to move to the Sudan** to know we'd both be worse off there.

My point? It's so easy to point to a group of people inside a privilege group you are not in and say, "those people are all so privileged and they take it for granted and don't even think about it" and it's true, but only about that one privielege group. Simultaneously, they are pointing to you and saying the exact same thing because you belong to a privielege group they are shut out of. And that's just as true.

*And there's one of my prejudices. No matter how many times anbuend and Callista say that people who become disabled adjust to it and aren't unhappy with their "new normal" I just can't envision myself being so sanguine. I hope it doesn't happen, even though I know if I live long enough it inevitably will. But it's not something I look forward to.

** And there's another prejudice. I see functional industrialized civilization as the ideal. I'm neither an anarchist nor a Luddite. But there may well be people (in the Sudan?) who feel sorry for me and others similar because this way of life means being cut off from nature.

Last edited by Janissy on 09 Mar 2011, 1:09 pm, edited 1 time in total.

The glaring one of course is probably class. Probably above all others. But that is the one most people really don't want to properly recognize either. Here in the US we think there is class mobility, but the truth is that thought is more of an illusion. There is not much class mobility.
Gender privelege itself is a double edge sword, both men and women have certian degrees of privelege that they have. Gender privelege is a complicated topic because it has to be examined in a cultural-historic context. But privelege based on height/weight/looks is one that is more difficult. Education is another privelege though.

I mean I know I have privelege because of my race, education and class. But I lack privelege because of my sexual orientation, medical and neurological conditions (having both an intersex syndrome and being on the autism spectrum), etc. My experiences as a person made me aware of both the lack of privelege I have, but also the privelege that makes me more likely to succeed despite my lack of privelege in those areas.

I know I'm strongly prejudiced about people who act as if I'm lesser than them (doesn't matter their reasoning). I am equal to everybody and I know that I'm prejudiced because I catogrise anyone who views another person or me as lesser than them. I view the people that view others as lesser as lesser than myself and/or others that they view as lesser.

Am I correct about myself here? I know it's not quite fitting on this thread because it's about prejudice and privilege and not just prejudice.

That's quite a Mobius strip but I see what you mean. Intolerant of intolerance. But if you think about it too hard it leads to infinite regress.

Last edited by Janissy on 09 Mar 2011, 1:44 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I agree. Class is a huge one and its' invisibility leads to a lot of prejudice. Non-Americans call us out on it a lot because they make no claims of living in a classless society and so can easily recognize fixed class divisions.

Privilege is a large part of one of my interests (which also includes gender, as I mentioned in another thread). I don't think autistic people are any more likely to be aware of privilege as a concept or deconstruct it than anyone else. In my experience, most people just don't want to know and want to see the way things are as the way of things. Or necessarily any worse - just more blunt about it.

I can't say that I'm immune to my privilege, but I do try my best to be responsible for it.

I've seen a couple transgender-related threads in this forum that have had a lot of prejudice in them. People stating things as facts while ignoring the fact that transgender people exist and have these medical needs despite whatever their chromosomes are assumed to be or what was written on their birth certificate when they were born. To me, the important empirical data is not data that insists all transgender people are lying, but the data that explains why they choose to do what they do, and that data typically comes from transgender people, just as the accurate data about what it's really like to be autistic (in the many ways it's possible to be autistic) comes from autistic people, and not so much from research about autistic people.

I've also read several threads about the change in diagnostic terminology from Asperger's Syndrome/PDD-NOS/Childhood Disintegrative Disorder/Autism to "autistic spectrum disorder" in which people have complained that Asperger's is really truly separate from the autistic spectrum, that they don't want to be labeled as autistic because the prejudices against the label are too deep, that they're not like autistic people because they don't fit the stereotypes of autistic people.

I have probably seen others, but these are the two varieties that really stood out to me.

Class is the elephant in the room, even among many who participate in civil rights activism. It's always a factor, as prejudice against anyone also translates into class as well. Income, housing, and health care are important for quality of life, and yet these things are seen in the US as something you are supposed to earn, and people who lack them (or receive them from the state) are seen as failures because they do not "contribute" enough.

That this lack intersects with race, being transgender, being disabled, and so on is not frequently acknowledged as relevant.

But I would argue many people don't want to properly recognize any of these things. Racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, fatphobia, ableism, and so on are barely recognized, and generally only when the examples are so blatant that they're hard to explicitly deny.

We are all products of our environment. IMHO prejudice is a taught perspective, based on antiquated conveniences for quickly assessing the safety or value of another person. As members of the ASD community have issues with social bonding, it seems apparent that the degree to which they share another's opinion rests on whether the ASD individual can escape the 'event horizon' or not.