Special interest in unwritten rules (of etiquette)?

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Have you adopted a "special interest" in rules of social etiquette? Like to study it and what the origins of it were, examples, etc.?

Thinking of the quote by the late Asperger activist Marc Segar, "Autistic people have to learn scientifically what neuro-typical people know intuitively."

I myself had a brief but intense interest in such conventions... researching them and watching videos and whatnot... since I was fed up with people rebuking me over some unintended transgression, or telling me that I'm 'X' years old, ergo I should know this "by now" and I'm so smart why can't I bla bla blah...



But I digress a little. The point is, I never actually had contempt for social rules (as much as several ignorant NTs will promote the untruth that I did) - I just didn't have the integrated brain circuitry to realize them "in the moment" and react on cue. However, I feel and fear that many of us did develop some sort of contempt for "the rules" as it got viscerally tied to foul treatment, bullying, ridicule, stigmatization, ostracizing, etc. When you feel that sort of emotional pain, one may feel that the rules are inextricably tied to suffering, but I realized at a young age that wasn't the case and that learning "the rules" was still in my greater interest as it would help me get anywhere on Maslow's Pyramid, and I think you know what I'm talking about when it feels like the 3rd and 1st layers are virtually inverted for us Aspies

I used to be social until I realized I was the genius who screwed it up.
Social etiquette is interesting if you study it like physics and astronomy.

I've certainly been interested in courtesy for a very long time, though as a child I was very hostile to it, and felt the whole thing to be stupid. Why make me behave differently if I wasn't doing any obvious harm? But I mellowed a bit eventually, though I often still find myself wanting to rebel against rules when I don't see the point. Sometimes I give way, other times I don't. Depends on how awkward it is for me to comply with whatever it is.

One of the hardest things for me comes from the fact that different cultural groups have different ideas of what's good behaviour and what isn't. But in a way that's become a good thing now that those different groups are mixing more, because it makes it harder for anybody to lay down hard and fast rules, and the silliest rules tend to go extinct, and things are more relaxed than they used to be.

Generally speaking I tend to stick with the kinds of courtesy I can understand. So I try to avoid making people feel threatened, insecure, or small. I try to keep promises and to build people's self-confidence. Rather than pandering to the sillier rules, I'm usually more interested in "universal" ones like that, and I stick to considering the individual I'm with, pretty much regardless of their cultural baggage. I think it's good to sometimes just refuse to obey some expectations, and take an attitude of "I'm not hurting you, so if you don't like it then maybe you're the one who needs to change." As a rule I much prefer people who don't get uptight if I do something that "isn't done," people who feel as I do that if we're going to expect things of each other, they need to be based on rational thinking and not on subservience to traditions.

But it's an immense subject.

I used to resent the dishonesty sometimes needed to be polite, but eventually realized that I might be dealing with people having a really hard day, and manners were like traffic regulations to avoid accidents.
However, there is a much larger field of unwritten rules that I'm trying to codify. I spent decades working for women's equality before I realized that the women I knew couldn't even imagine treating me equally.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prese ... ryday_Life

^There is one of the best books I have ever read. Maybe I will read it again after I am done with my reread of Forrest Gump (another good one).

I am neurotypical, but I will be the first to admit that I'm an odd duck. I am sensitive and it is easy for me to interact with people, but it can also be stressful because I am aware of too much.

I think it is a good idea to read up on the actual, correct rules of conversation and etiquette. You come to realize that you are not the only one breaking them. Sometimes people are punishing you not because YOU did something wrong, but because THEY did. They may be trying to "save face" or make themselves look better. Neurotypicals make social mistakes as well.

By the time people reach their middle to elderly years, I think it is possible that neurotypicals make more social mistakes than autistic people. By this time, autists have built their own systems for dealing with others. Their natural rigidity does not let them stray from their systems. Neurotypicals, however, become more like a person who has come home and unbuttoned their pants. They're tired and they don't feel like putting in the work. They become rude or lazy and are less likely to take responsibility for their social actions (or non-action).

And take this for what you will. Personally, I enjoy most kinds of people. I find rude people interesting and polite people refreshing.

^
Somebody gave me a copy of that book in 1989 - don't know why they did. I've still got it, but have never read it. Possibly I found the writing style hard to take in and abandoned it. But I did get something from the title - the idea that people do present themselves a lot rather than just being themselves.

I'm sure I do, but it's always something I've felt uncomfortable about. I've known some people who don't seem to bother with it at all, and I've admired them for that. It's probably my Aspie love of honesty that makes me dislike facades. But I suspect the presentation thing rather depends on the culture and social class. People in rural Arkansas for example don't seem to have much of a facade, and the urban working class of England don't always do such a lot of presentation.

I grew up in a relatively affluent family in the deep south (U.S.), and down here we have a class called Cotillion which is essentially a monthly etiquette class and dance for 7th/8th graders. It's targeted more towards traditional and upper-class Christians (where I'm from, that's mostly Catholics). It was an interesting thing to have those rules taught explicitly, but many of them feel...Victorian. It is nice to have that kind of training if you're trying to court a southern belle, but those same social rules are completely worthless if you're working as a line cook or trying to pick up a woman who wears dresses that expose her ankles.

We'd have dinners where we were taught to sit down properly ("one bun first" as you slide into the chair, actual quote), where forks and knives get laid out, to cut with a knife in your dominant hand, place the knife down, then switch to a fork. We were taught to open doors for ladies, I was told that something I did at dinner was a "social gaffe".

This may sound like torture, and to most people whose parents signed them up, it was, but I enjoyed it most of the time. As pathetic as this sounds, having a script I could use to meet women was incredibly helpful. I got to make connections and practice eye contact and touch with women.

I would probably be really good at passing as neurotypical if the year was 1910.