Why are Many with AS so passive and unwilling to fight back?

Post Reply New Topic

It seems they want to be trapped in the victim status. There are three important lessons to learn in life; to be a good fighter, to be melodramatic at the right times, and to be a good liar. These techniques are only to be used if talking will clearly not work.
If someone starts mouthing off towards you, do whatever you can get away with against the perp. If you can get away with physical aggression, do as much damage as possible. The best way to fight would be to go for the vulnerable areas of the body. To be a great fighter you must have wit, strength and stamina. Always stand your ground. If you can get away with, you can"lose" some of the objects he holds dear. If this doesn't go as planned you can report the person to any superiors; exaggerate any complaints you have and produce your own "proof".If you record events in a journal they will automatically take action. Remember, the more innocent you look the more help you will get. Learn how to cry or break down at all of the right moments (ie when it will gain you sympathy) and you will be set for life. Portray him as one of the most vile monsters to walk the earth. The law is not our friend; the law only helps NTs who wish to bully us. It is time to fight the injustice.

I'm not coordinated enough to fight back.

Or strong enough.

Besides, to fight back, I have to get angry. And that takes a lot.

And from what I've seen of the results of when I've been angry, I'd rather never be like that again. I'm lucky I've never been charged with anything.

There are other ways to fight back besides violence, exaggeration, and lying.

For instance, a couple years ago the Housing Authority in our area did construction in my building without proper venting. When this had been done before, one tenant who had emphysema but was in no way ready to die, was killed by it. A lot of us had made a fuss, but the only two of us who stuck it out after the Housing Authority started making threats, were, unsurprisingly, two autistic people (me included).

We did not ever have to use violence. What we did was, at one point both of us had to move outside or die basically, and the Housing Authority was refusing to relocate us for the duration of dust in the air, only doing so for the duration of construction on our particular two rooms. So instead of just picking a random location on the streets, we picked living in front of City Hall, and we had signs left over from peaceful protests we'd done in front of our building, so we dragged them along with us (which is hard, we're both physically disabled and were in a lot of pain).

None of this was easy. As I said, we're both physically disabled. My friend can't sleep lying down without a machine. And she can't sit upright all the time or her legs swell up and ulcerate. She had to choose between the two and chose sitting up, hoping we would be done before anything happened. We got a lot of attention to this over the weekend. We got in the newspaper. We got a lot of curious questions by people walking by. We also got laughed at and accused of all manner of crap we weren't doing.

Our signs were about the Housing Authority, but curiously a lot of people talked to us all about the guy who runs it, about how horrible it is that we would ever say anything bad about him, etc. etc. We didn't even say his name. We also got approached by a perv who apparently tells homeless women (and while we weren't technically homeless, our homes weren't livable to people with asthma, there was concrete dust and wallboard dust everywhere) that he can give them a place to stay, and then takes them home and rapes them (we heard this from a formerly-homeless woman who stopped to talk). And of course lots of people involved with us were threatened with eviction, and they came and harassed us too some of them, and then badmouthed us in the newspaper for fear of their own safety. And the mayor just yelled at us the day he came to work and refused to listen to a word we said. Later on, my friend got libeled by some of the people who'd brought her into this to begin with (they suddenly claimed to have nothing to do with it and that she brought them into it, when I saw exactly the opposite -- turned out they were taking advantage of her, something I've seen happen many times before, where people take advantage of the fact that she knows how to do things and then blame her entirely for what they asked her to do, and she always does it anyway because it seems like the right thing).

But, we got enough attention that they suddenly relocated us and then did air quality tests. The air quality tests were of course weeks notified in advance, so they passed, but it also meant they had to do the things to pass, which meant the air quality was better enough to breathe in there. We stayed relocated until they were done with our floor and cleaned up, and the air was in fact truly clean by the time we got there. So we got done most of what we needed done, just by telling the truth and persisting while other people around us were the ones lying, being violent, and being jerks.

Don't give in to provocations. It's exactly what they want you to do.

I'm a pacifist. I know this is a very extreme view, but no matter how much someone hurt me I would not view it as being right to fight back, (at least not physically). I have been hit and not hit back.

I LOVE what anbuend says he did in his post though.

It's a learned characteristic. People with AS tend to be social outcasts, and when fighting back against someone who is not, it never turns out good.

I've always been strong & able to win most fights physically. However, even if you do win, it doesn't make anyone like you better. It just draws attention to you. This leads to more fights until someone eventually beats you & now you've got a whole bunch of people who didn't know who you were before giving you crap like the first person you beat up did.

That was my experience through middle school, and it conditioned me to back down whenever possible. I believe people with AS don't fight back not because they're scared, weak, or wrong, but because it's almost impossible for us to win the battle socially.