Once AS becomes "woke"

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First, I do want to acknowledge that there are many legitimate human rights activists doing good work, and I want to be careful not to diminish their achievements. I understand that accusations of virtue signaling are often overused by people trying to undermine the efforts of such activists.

That said, I'm of the opinion that virtue signaling is a very real phenomenon. For those who are unfamiliar with the term, it refers to the actions of individuals seeking to be seen by the public championing a cause that they otherwise don't care to make any earnest effort towards. As a general rule, a good way to tell a virtue signaler from a genuine human rights activist is that they will often seem passionate about whatever social cause already has a lot of popularity behind it while dismissing the plights of marginalized groups who remain largely unacknowledged in the greater public discourse, such as people who suffer from invisible disabilities like AS. For example, back in the early 2000s same-sex marriages were still outlawed in most states in the US. During this time, Hillary Clinton made a speech in which she passionately defended the notion that marriage is a sacred institution between a man and a woman. But during her presidential campaign in 2016 she suddenly decided that she's pro-LGBTQ now.

It still remains commonplace, even among the vocal feminists and SJWs of the Far Left, to diminish, belittle, and even vilify adults with AS, often calling us incels, losers, and other slurs. When I suffered an emotional breakdown following two and a half years of psychological abuse at the hands of my ex-fiancé, nearly everybody from the Libral Arts college I attended decided that since I'm the man in the situation that by default I must be the bad guy and treated me accordingly. And though these events took place in 2009, I was still being dogpiled and bullied over it by a bunch of feminists on FB as recently as 2017. And even after I thoroughly explained that I suffer from autism spectrum disorder, major depression, and generalized anxiety disorder; and that I was unemployed at homeless as a result, they persisted in their bullying, saying that because I'm a privileged white male its my own fault and that I don't want to hold a job because I'm lazy.

I don't know what the future will bring, but I think its possible that in the next 10 years we're going to see growing public support for adults with AS and other invisible disabilities. If that happens, what I predict is that we'll see many of these same woke hypocrites who are treating us like we're the scum of the earth now trying to jump on the AS bandwagon and use our cause as another platform for their virtue signaling, and in the process will likely actively attempt to drown out our own voices and replace them with theirs. We'll see thousands of NT led and controlled speeches, events, and parades in which we'll be reduced to set pieces. Suddenly, all the corporations that refused to hire us for being "weird" will jumping at the chance to get their own token aspie to parade in front of the masses.

That's my prediction. Time will tell if I'm right.

Last edited by dorkseid on 18 Jan 2021, 1:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.

It's a problem with rad fems more than with lib fems imo.

Lib fems understand intersectionality even when it comes to men. So for eg it isn't progressive to talk over a homeless man about his experiences with class just because you're a middle class woman. Same goes for an NT woman speaking over an autistic man about his experiences with being autistic in an NT society.

With rad fems they're honestly some really genuinely misandrist women who hate trans people and can't understand that people who aren't women have issues. They see autism as a 'male disorder' so they hate us because of that.

Rad fems = second wave so no, it's not 'more morden' than lib fems who are third wave and fourth wave. It's a 1970s extreme mindset, probably coming out of women who had to endure growing up in the 1950s as cis girls, seen as less than their brothers.

My experiences with them were on the 'gender critical' reddit site which has since been banned for hate speech.

Most of the time I agree with either the positions labelled 'woke' or people irl who are labelled 'woke'. Online can be different - online in general is very cancel culture, hive mind nonsense & the woke culture is full of that. Makes me feel like a bigot for making honest mistakes.

Stupidity, abuse, and ignorance are found in all places along the political and ideological spectrum. You could say it is a spectrum disorder and its presentations manifest in many ways.

Hopefully, and history does show this is not true, societies become more compassionate over time.

I think you will be right because I feel it is already starting. The issue is I don't think it will manifest in a fully helpful way. For example awhile ago this self diagnosed possibly autistic person made a video of them stimming and then diagnosed autistic people hopped on the trend to show their stims to get rid of stigma. However stimming isn't "normal" and so when people found out the first person was self dignosed they started ripping everyone who did it to shreds and then some diagnosed autistic people made it worse by mocking the stimming and basically insinuating big stims like flapping hands were fake because they didn't do it even though thats pretty textbook stuff. Anyway, what I'm seeing now is people kind of mocking autistic things and then saying "Well actually I'm mocking the people who fake it" and that is how it is manifesting so far. They're being neurotyoical saviours. Hopefully it ends up in a better place eventually though.

I see your point. But if and when they appear to "support" us we need to call them out.

I do hope that we are entering an era where this "stupidity, abuse, and ignorance" will be seen as defects to be cured.

Same here Fnord.

It has come to a point where people just assume you are an attention seeking whore when you have your diagnoses listed in your bio like on Tumblr or Twitter. They assume you are self diagnosed. Look at illnessfakers subreddit or illnessfakersinthewild.

What I was talking about was on tik tok but unfortunately it is on other websites. It makes me really mad and it just seems like they want to be ableist but in a way they can feel good about. What makes me the most annoyed is people who are neurodiverse etc who go along with it.

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictio ... signalling





https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/30/opin ... aling.html

I think it sucks what you have gone through but unfortunately these are the facts of life. Being "uber" NT overrides any sense of being left or right wing.

While I am more sympathetic to left wing social values it does not mean I engage with left wing groups. Being part of a "woke" community whether it be feminists at a liberal arts college or students involved in environmental activism or vegans involved in animal rights etc. requires some demonstration of commitment/sacrifice to the cause. A lack of commitment or lukewarm interest is not good enough.

So I would advise don't "throw the baby with the bath water", there are good people out there, you need to keep searching like the rest of us. Don't associate "wokeness" with the issues, NT people tend to be cliquey and this is a problem with groups whether they be SJWs, christians, MAGAs or any other groups.

One thing in favour of "woke" people...

I went on holiday at an artistic retreat with some.

They were all artists obviously.

But also so many autistic people! Especially LGBT people and autistic women!

The mindset was "harm none, live and let live, everyone should be treated with respect and those who are 'weird' whether because they're LGBT or because they're autistic or whatever shouldn't be shunned but should be welcomed".

Nicest place I've been as an autistic person tbh.

Contrast that with working in right wing villages where anyone "weird" was outcast. Or even just normal society where it's seen as "mean" to pick on people who are different if they "can't help it" but it still happens anyway and there's social hierarchy.

Which is precisely why I told the OP to keep an open mind and keep searching. There are good people out there.

I occasionally play the ASD card as it is, when it is to my advantage. If ASD and neurodiversity becomes "woke", I'll simply milk that for all it's worth. Why not, since women and minorities can use that part of their identity to get ahead in some cases? Things are moving in a direction where people of certain groups are elevated anyways. Nothing I can say or do about it is going to change that, so I may as well just enjoy the perks of that.

I don't think it's necessary to milk it though. For example Greta Thunberg does not use her ASD to promote climate change activism. I admire her tenacity (despite her tender age and despite people ridiculing her).

In terms of practical things they were better than regular people too.

I went to a regular artistic retreat & it was all about fancy food and everyone cooking. I received ableism against my dyspraxia, whispering in corners about my dyspraxia and because I'm taste sensitive I couldn't eat the food. They had 2 foods available: vegetarian mush and meaty mush.

When I went there, I could basically specify the foods and they had trained staff make it. If someone wanted to help the staff, that was up to them but there was no obligation. I had 2 days eating my own 'special' (plain) food and one day eating something which was my suggestion but so exciting they made it for everyone (a Sunday dinner).

I will say that if they were aiming at being leftists rather than liberal they would be hypocrites. Unless you were on benefit, everything cost a lot of money, they only really subsidised some of the places. But I don't think they were claiming to be a socialist utopia - just a socially liberal place.

Online - people are idiots. Not everyone but enough people where I don't like being part of any political group online. Maybe less so on a moderated site like this, but it is easy to demonise one's opponents on a big place like Twitter & lack empathy for them. It is hard to see the difference online between someone who is trying and made a mistake and someone who is provoking for the sake of being a troll. That's why I think it's a good idea to focus more on people irl.