Why the double standard?

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http://community.babycenter.com/post/a5 ... tic_people

The OP of that thread worked at a restaurant. Some guy mid-late 20s and started sexually harassing her, thus was kicked out. His mom later was at the front desk yelling "did you know he was autistic??! !" and they were the worst people in the world for "kicking out a mentally disabled person". The responses say that being autistic is not an excuse for harassing someone, which I agree with. But everyone was saying "his family should be supervising him" or "his sister should teach him better". If he was NT, people would not say that. Why? Why do people expect autistic adults not to know it's wrong to harass people? Lots of NT people harass people and they're expected to know it's wrong. I hang around 6 autistic people weekly at a group and I am neurodivergent myself. I was in special ed full time until 10th grade. We never harass anyone.

I don't think most people really know much about autism. Maybe they think that people on the spectrum don't have enough self awareness to ever know the difference between right and wrong and we that aren't capable of learning from our mistakes without someone always helping us. A lot of people seem to think that if someone has bad social skills it means that they will struggle with everything else too.

This is a really interesting point and I think it is one that autistics and NTs are going to have to face up to.

I have no doubt that autistics can harass people in a way that feels very uncomfortable. I think the waitress was genuinely worried and did the right thing. It is exactly the sort of thing that high functioning autistics are likely to do. If he knew he was making her feel uncomfortable, he would probably be horrified though. Then you have worried mother who has probably just been told the story by an upset child and reacts badly. Is any one at fault though?

In a perfect world he would have received appropriate social skills training at an early age and the waitress would have instantly recognise ASD and then explained in clear direct language that it was not appropriate. We have a long way to go before that though.

The NT board jumped to the defence of the innocent, harassed waitress, while we will jump to the defence of the poor misunderstood autistic. Arguably they are both right and wrong. The mother should probably have apologised and then they could have all had a long, informative discussion about the challenges faced by autistics and the restaurant staff could have strived to learn more about the condition.

But this is the real world, so what is realistic?

I think it's silly to assume that all autistic people are incapable of knowing what's socially appropriate and/or are unable to control themselves. It depends on that person's level of disability. I'd say most people on WP probably know that those types of actions are inappropriate.

My guess is that these people don't understand autism all that well and associate it only with the more severely affected autistic people, and those who are also intellectually disabled. They don't think of autism as being a disability where people can often be very intelligent and independent. So they assumed that this guy was unable to make proper decisions or look after himself, therefore it must be the responsibility of his family to look after him.

I don't know whether this person was intellectually disabled, or disabled by autism enough to truly know that what he was doing was inappropriate. We only have the mother's statement that he was autistic, implying that he couldn't be held responsible for his actions. Maybe he was only being enabled by his family, and knew perfectly well what he was doing was wrong. Or not.

Either way, I don't think it should be assumed that autism keeps people from being responsible for their actions. It really depends on the level of disability, and what the actions are. Even those people who are intellectually disabled often know what's right and wrong, at least on a basic level. The same is true for young children. They usually understand that things like hitting people are wrong.

If he was functioning well enough to be out on his own eating out, then he is responsible for how he treats people in public and dealing with the consequences of harassing people. I am aware some people on the spectrum are lower functioning and might need more direction or even supervision depending but it sounds to me like this guy was high functioning and his mom was attempting to convince people to excuse his behavior due to 'autism' which is BS to me.

I think this is one of the areas that high function autistics can really become unstuck without realising it.

Before I was diagnosed I worked with an autistic girl who took an interest in me. I have no doubt she thought she was just mildly flirting but it came across as quite threatening.

There are so many reasons why flirting is always going to be an explosive area for autistics. How can we deal with this though? Saying that everyone else has to understand ASD is neither reasonable or realistic but it is a real issue.

How is someone who's functional enough to flirt not know that being physically forceful is inappropriate? or remember that once they know? The article says the guy tried to force a kiss on her and when management showed up to kick him out he was stumbling over himself trying to force a hug on her. Unless he was intellectually disabled(which I doubt if the woman had the impression he was a drunk guy getting too flirty) there is no way it makes sense for him not to know he was being inappropriate.

Two points, he may well be functional enough to think he can try and flirt but this is very different from doing it successfully. Secondly, we have no idea but if he is 6'3 and 250 lbs he may well not realise quite how threatening he is or quite how much force he is using.

However, there is no point talking about a situation when we have no idea of exactly what happened only a bad one sided account. These are real factors that autistics have to deal with. So what should we do? I have no idea but found this whole area really difficult and it crops up often enough here.

Yeah, that's what it sounds like to me also. It's usually apparent after a few minutes when somebody has something like an intellectual disability, or is significantly impaired in some way. As unusual as I am, I can tell when other people are unusual. At least when they are more so than I am. And they'd have to be to think that that kind of behavior is appropriate.

I don't think being Autistic is an excuse for inappropriate touching.

There is a double standard because an NT knows better and if they do it it's because they are purposely breaking the rules or being inappropriate.
If a guy with autism does it , it may be that he didn't know it was wrong (on the far end of the scale) and once told he may never do it again.

He still should have been kicked out because he was doing something wrong, invading space etc.

So there shouldn't be a double standard (both should be kicked out) but the same behavior can be seen as an misunderstanding when someone with moderate to severe autism does it. The mother was wrong to complain about him being kicked out.

I see absolutely nothing wrong done at all. He was upsetting someone and was asked to leave. Big deal.

If he was NT he might have been accused of sexual harassment and or dunk and disorderly. Since he is autistic his behavior would have probably been excused. So I think that is the difference, if say the police had been called.

If an autistic kid in class acted that way in my special ed school, he would be taken out of the classroom. I think the situation was handled appropriately.

Neither do I to be honest.