Oxford: Students who avoid eye contact could be racists!

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I read lips and find that eye contact is also considered aggressive.

I think it is better, to judge people, based on their altruism, or anti-social acts.

We worry about virtue signals, danger signals, but these are external. This is judging the book by it's cover, rather than judging a person by his substance.

Autistic people have never been on the receiving end of this harassment? Never been stared at aggressively nor shunned socially? We, of all people, should understand the use of gaze to intimidate or exclude.

Why do you need to coerce acceptance, from someone who is making funny faces at you.

Do they have anything you need, want, or deserve. Are they just extra fun, to be around.

It's patently obvious that a person intending to bully you doesn't require eye contact.

What are the consequences, which you are trying to avoid.

Or, what benefits are you trying to get from the bully -- someone looking at you funny.

A great many, serious people, on tv, make funny faces. There is no danger, and they will not help you, in any way. How are they entitled to an opinion.

I don't care whether they are racist.

I think it is kind of funny how Oxford says us RaCiSt AuTiStICS avoiding eye contact with POC could lead to POC having "ill mental health" when autistic people have been treated like s**t by literally everyone around us (including the perfect angels over at Oxford) because of the struggles we have with maintaining eye contact, but I don't see Oxford talking about how this affects OUR "ill mental health". Hmmm... these SJW over at Oxford wouldn't survive a day on the spectrum, honestly. Yes racism obviously still exists, I'm not denying that, but when your advocacy is at the expense of autistic people (an already marginalized group) then thats when I will draw the line and call you out on your BS.

P.S Oxford did release an apology but it was kind of weak... they basically acted their ignorance of neurodivergence was excusable because they had 'good intentions'. To be honest, my least favourite type of people are the social justice activists that think they can do no wrong or offensive things, because they "have good intentions'. SMH, I have lost my faith in humanity...

It may be true that POC and autistics face somewhat similar issues in society, but that does not make throwing all of autistics under the bus for racial advocacy okay. Yeah I am sure that there are racists out there that purposely avoid eye contact with POC just because they are racist, but for many of us we can not help it. It isn't very hard for a logical person to tell the difference between a person who is avoiding eye contact with you because you are a POC, and someone who is avoiding eye contact with you because they can not help it, but sadly not many people, even at schools like Oxford, are logical like this. They could scold you for being racist if they do not consider all of the reasons for eye contact avoidance. It seems that these Oxford cronies are not explaining the difference between the two types of eye contact avoidance, but instead lumping all eye contact avoiders as racists trying to oppress them. The truth is, unless you know your s**t about autism (which VERY FEW people outside the spectrum do), than you could easily misinterpret an autistic person's body language as racist, and lump them together with the bigots, which is problematic.

I think the point is that avoiding eye contact with a bully is mandatory to take the first step to diffuse their power. There is no confusion here with racism.

I think it's not necessary to paint groups with the same brush. Oxford were obliged to apologise, I think the institution is not able to control everything their researchers get published. Much of the responsibility should go to the editors of the journal who allowed the original manuscript to be published (they are not affiliated to Oxford)

I'm fairly sure the researchers simply overlooked that segments of the community (not just ASD) avoid eye contact. In retrospect it wasn't a very well thought out study but their focus was on micro-aggression in nuerotypical racists.

There is a saying about not feeding the trolls, and not feeding the meaner wolf, and not posting manifestos of criminals, and I would tend to agree, in real life. While we are not supposed to stick our heads in the sand, negative attention seeking behavior does oftentimes go away, when you don't give it an audience.


It doesn't call for inaction. It just means that you separate yourself from the conflict. I could agree to that.

Yes this is problematic as sometimes not taking action can also be a greenlight to keep bullying