About eye contact...

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Does anyone else think it's just really selfish/ableist of NTs to tell you to make eye contact (i.e. "Look at me. Look at me.")?
I'm trying to get better at doing this myself, but it's just really selfish to demand this of someone that has real discomfort with it just to make themselves feel more at ease.

In general - no.

We are the minority and eye contact is such a major part of how NT's interact, we would be selfish expecting all NT's to allow us to go without eye contact with us for our sake - it causes us discomfort to make eye contact, it causes them discomfort in a way not to have eye contact with the person/people they are communicating with.

However in certain situations allowances should be made. For example at work it is not an unreasonable request that staff don't force you to make eye contact as it's not a requirement in most day-to-day activities, at home it's unreasonable for friends and family to force eye contact knowing you're difficulties or discomfort with eye contact.

I think more NT's should be made aware of not only our discomfort with eye contact, but also made aware just how important eye contact is to them - NT's use eye contact without any thought, they don't realise how important it is or how big a social tool it is and so how much effort it can take for us to make eye contact not only in general but to attempt to understand how to make eye contact correctly.

It's not just that lack of eye contact can be seen as disrespectful, not listening or dishonesty by NT's, but that even a split second too long in making eye contact or not long enough can change a persons whole perception of you, so just that one split second can have a HUGE effect on social interaction with another person.

I don't think NT's have any idea of this, maybe if they did they'd not give us such a hard time about it...it's not just as simple as looking someone in the eye, there is a lot of social etiquette involved in a single glance too.

My best chance at eye contact happens when I forget to take the spoon out of my coffee cup.

On a more serious note, I think it depends on the situation. If the person is using it as a way of controlling the situation, yes, it is entirely selfish and can even be a form of bullying. But in many situations eye contact is apparently pretty important. It also depends a lot on the level of familiarity between the people involved. It's not unreasonable to expect others to learn that your lack of eye contact is not a sign of disinterest or disrespect, especially if you do make efforts to make eye contact. It should go both ways.

In people without ASD (they don't need to be necessary NT) it seems that eye contact is something spontaneous and involontary. I asked to my mom(NT) about that, how she learned to make eye contact. Her answer has been 'I did it naturally, is not something that someone can teach you!' and i asked 'And if you just listen, what happens?' and her answer has been 'I don't understand the concept about listening without looking at something. I fell discomfort if i can't look the face of the people that i'm listening!'
And i 'You don't fell pain?' and her answer 'No'

To school i had a classmate with Down's that when she talked with me, she always wanted my eye contact. I tried to explain her that i could not do that, and she didn't believed me.
About other people my dad tried to teach me how to make eye contact when i was little, and my teachers wanted my eye contact. I don't remember if my mum asked for that too.

All very valid points.
I guess I just get really frustrated by this at times.
It's not as if I have a moral issue with eye contact itself, it's the almost absolute expectation of it (at least in most of the English-speaking world) by NT-privileged people that grinds my gears.

Eye contact is unfortunately a part of Western culture. Did you know that in Japan, it is considered rude or stand-offish to give sustained eye contact? I think that my poor eye contact is usually the main reason people know I am autistic. My mum tried to teach me to look at the person's nose or lips when they are talking to me but I even find this really uncomfortable. A NV autistic girl called Carly Fleishman described it well saying that our heads take millions of photos of a person and because the face is always moving it makes it very distracting. That's how I feel as well. People don't seem to understand that I can see them just as well from the corner of my eye! (They think this is rude though!)

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I have HFA, ADHD, OCD & Tourette syndrome. I love animals, especially my bunnies and hamster. I skate in a roller derby team (but I'll try not to bite )

This always reminds me of being a kid... you know how mothers in stores are always saying 'Look with your eyes, not your hands."? Well, following that very NT logic would it also stand to reason that we "Listen with our ears, not our eyes"? Wonder how many Aspie kids have gotten timeout's over that one...

I often tell people I'm listening, even if I'm not looking at them.

A whole lot of communication is through the eyes, they're almost if not the most important body part when it comes to interaction for most people. So I don't think it's unreasonable for an NT to expect eye contact, I do find it very uncomfortable though (unless I'm looking at my siblings or if I'm looking at my boyfriend or best friend, they are my only exceptions.)

Okay, you've found one of my favorite subjects.

Eye communication is a fine art, and the only way you can learn it is to practice it literally all the time. I know it sounds crazy, but NTs actually communicate huge amounts of information simply by the movement of their eyeballs. The crazy thing is that they are really and truly not even aware of it! They just react to the position that your eyeballs are in without even understanding why! The NT just says "I get a feeling about that guy" or "why are you angry at me?" without even stopping to consider how they KNOW this information. No thought, no contemplation, just straight through to the reaction.

Something that is common is off-setting their gaze a little bit to the left when they are taking in information. Seriously, if you are uncomfortable with maintaining steady eye contact, setting your gaze off just a tad to your left, if you do it just right, will encourage the NT you're talking with to just ramble on, and you don't have to say or do anything! The person your with will just hold up the whole entire conversation and leave thinking you're a genius even though you didn't utter more than a monosyllabic grunt here and there.

There are queues you have to keep in mind for making brief eye contact. For example, when the NT speaker uses transitional words such as "anyway" or "however" or a stressed "but" followed by a pause, you're supposed to look that person in the eye, nod, and then go back to your rested, "listening" state. Remember, if the speaker says "right?" or any word or phrase that is said in the same context with the same intonation, always nod and say, "yes," or if it's something that you're really supposed to know and you didn't quite get it, say "try to clarify."

And the thing is, if you practice enough, you can actually get better at this game than they are! Unlike the NT, you have the advantage of knowing in your intellect what is actually going on. If you give autists the right training, they can game people to no end! The NT is capable of getting this edge, but they are just extremely unlikely to be in a position where they are actually forced to analyze it that deeply.

Anyhow, good luck! Remember, if the NT keeps rambling on to you and divulging his/her darkest and most embarrassing secrets, you're racking up points! Pretend you're playing Doom, only you're a spy and doing some high-class espionage.

I remember a teacher shouting at me for looking out of the window while he was talking. I was actually listening very intently to what he was saying and I'm still offended (more than 20 years later) that he assumed I wasn't listening just because I wasn't looking at him.

I've been paying close attention to my own and other people's eye contact recently. I am constantly assessing myself and it's always on my mind when I'm speaking to someone. Sometimes I get confused about what I was talking about as the constant self-assessment occupies so much of my thoughts. So I stutter a bit, but I suppose my eye contact is probably just about right. I really should try to forget about it. But, I've also noticed that other people who are definitely NT also make little eye contact.

After such thorough analysis, hard job to write.

In my family we seldom keep eye contact. It has a meaning though, if we do it to a greater extent, it emphasizes the spoken words and the underlying intentions. Last time when I did it to my mother I was definitely displeased with her about a rather delicate subject I don't describe here. Few minutes without raising my voice, and I went away full of tension.

I've noticed that if I look down to the ground at English classes (as foreign language), I understand the speech more (and I don't write about eye contact here). Same goes for movies with the original English soundtrack.

So, when I'm with closer friends, I try to make eye contact here and there, but not much altogether. At my workplace, I try to give more eye contact. I'm curious about the above suggestions, I'm going to try out them.

I find it selfish when eye contact is forced and whoever is forcing it won't respect the AS persons troubles with it or their inability to master it. When I was a litttle kid, I found looking in other's eyes scary and found that when people forced me into it it made my anxiety worse. Knowing how this was for me, if I notice someone with AS is having trouble with eye contact, I'll look towards them rather than right in their eyes.