Dealing with flippant or cynical remarks re: AS

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It might well be something to do with the Aspergers/autism taboo, but in the past the majority of the responses I've received, based on admitting my AS to people, have been either flippant and/or cynical.

Responses like "yeah, everyone's got something", or "well, it's because you overthink things", or "ahh, well, these days, they're diagnosing everyone and their cousin with the latest fad disorder"...I actually got that last one from a co-worker in his 50s, about 20 years older than me, at a job a few years ago when I confided in him the basis for my odd behaviour - he even did it with the hand sweep downwards-to-the-side to accentuate the flippant and cynical attitude.

It may very well have been a defence mechanism on his part, b/c to acknowledge anything more significant than that, might have put him in a compromising place to be my "counsellor" at work. Because he's showing concern and taking me seriously, might make him feel obliged, might conjure up images of us going out for a drink after work to discuss my disorder, etc, etc. I mean it's like telling your co-worker that you're a recovering drug addict or a porn addict who feels the compulsion to go to an xxx-rated site at work, maybe not quite as taboo as that, but such comments would also likely invite such a brush-off attitude that, read between the lines, says "I'm not a therapist, deal with this on your own time and don't bring it to work".

You gotta love the ones who seek out evidence to "prove you wrong". Like they'll bring up one or two isolated incidents in which you had the right intuitive response in a situation and say "well I saw that you did appropriate action A in situation B, so why couldn't you / didn't you do action X in situation Y?? I think sometimes you're just f****ng with me, you know?!" Yeah, not much of an incentive to improve, now is it??! Or it's a situation like Mr. Spock from Wrath of Khan, where you exaggerated but didn't outright lie and they say you should be able to tell white lies.

Yeah, well, those are the cynical ones. They'd rather try to prove that some mental aberration doesn't exist, because of society's stigma against mental aberrations, then acknowledge the simple truth that these intuitive faculties don't come naturally to you; sometimes you're lucky and give the right response, other times you're not so quick to process the stimuli and respond accordingly. Having such a mental aberration is not all-or-nothing, since even NTs once in a blue moon make these errors / misinterpret stimuli and do a faux pas. That's why they call it a SPECTRUM, and in a sense, everyone except politicians, senior execs and media personalities are on that spectrum. So, who's really the black-and-white thinker in this case??

As a 50 something myself bitching, about younger people, about how society is going downhill is what most of us do. People fear difference and are insecure about changes they do not understand so it is easy to dismiss these changes as wrong or a sign everybody is growing weak. Our parents said similar things about us in the 1970's and we swore when we got older we would never have that attitude and once we go older we are just as bad if not worse. Yes there are a lot more diagnosis now, but there were labels for these things then. Those labels were based on lack of knowledge and thus the assumption if you were not "normal" (married, job) and you were not obviously "crazy" your lack of success was do to character flaws. Today's diagnostic labels are seen as 1. Excuses for bad behavior. 2. A way for the people creating the diagnosis to make a profit.