Being gay vs autistic!

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I was at an autism meet up group in 2019 and this homesxual man on the spectrum said "Being gay is more acceptable in society than having autism"

Would you say that is true?

I tend to see more autistic people marginalized in the current day versus LGBT folk, but that's just a view from the outside of being a cis-het dude or whatever.

So I am sure there may be some LGBT people who might be more aware of any discrimination that may occur and how that may compare to other marginalized demographics.

Just my two cents....

In the 21st century society nobody should be marganilized

Unfortunately, though what you say is in theory, an ideal, things play out very differently, often, in reality.

For discussions like this, are we distinguishing between discrimination and marginalization?

They can be equally harmful, but they are not the same. It would determine whether or not I agree with the original statement.

In a perfect world nobody would be marginalized but it's not a perfect world.

It's the bad people that live in that is the problem

Not a fan of the word "homosexual" unless it's used in a scientific way, many right-wing so-called Christians used the word in a derogatory sense.

I have autism and I am gay, the gay part is less of a problem these days than my autism. Both for me are on a need-to-know basis, however. Most people don't know I'm gay but even those who don't really know what ASD is, know something is off about me.

Depends on location, but where I live, yes, that's true. I've received very little homophobia throughout my life, but "odd," or "inappropriate," behaviours have cost me jobs, opportunities, potential friends etc etc and so on. There are thousands of little things, little moments that are "wrong," in autistic behaviour that annoy people or upset them or offend them etc so they just don't accept or tolerate the unacceptable.

Whereas sexual orientation isn't something that's even very apparent to people around you unless you tell them. (although some gay guys are very flamboyantly gay and it's obvious.. I'm not one of them.) Society is also much more accepting of LGBT people, too. It's not perfect for everyone all the time, but it's much more accepting Here. Not so much in places where they have the death penalty for being gay, though. So it might be more acceptable to be on the autism spectrum than to be gay in places like that.

But overall, in my experience, being gay is much more acceptable than pissing people off with social functions of my brain not functioning properly. I also grew up in a family that's not homophobic - so someone else here who was kicked out of their home for being gay might have a different opinion than mine.

People should be educated more and tolerate our behaviour

Disagree. There are reasons that various behaviours are considered unacceptable. It’s not everyone else’s fault that we don’t intuitively know how to behave and it’s not up to everyone else on the planet to learn about countless ASD traits and symptoms.

It’s up to us to learn to be better, to treat and manage our symptoms etc. We can only work on changing ourselves, not everyone else.

Changing ourselves can lead to burnout though

So?

We are still the only people we can affect change upon, not literally everyone else on the planet. It’s up to us to make whatever effort we can to improve our behaviour and interactions with others.

As for burnout, it’s been ages since I recall feeling any true ASD related burnout. But that’s largely because I’ve been treating my symptoms via diet and natural medicine means for the last ~11 years or so so I don’t have extreme symptoms.

I am not homosexual myself but I would guess that in most situations it's a lot easier and less exhausting to "mask" and pass as a heterosexual than as a neurotypical. That would give homosexual people a choice to be open about it or not. As an autistic you really don't have that choice. You will appear a little bit weird whether you try to hide it or not.

I am starting to think life is not worth living if you are autistic

Where I live, people who are LGBTQ+ experience a lot more discrimination and marginalization than people who are autistic.

I prefer being around people who are on the fringes in some way. Even if they aren’t autistic, they get what it’s like to be different.