I found this post several months ago while searching for other Aspies' views on gossip as a baseless and unwelcome expression of NT opinion (which many of us dislike as being non-factual). I really did want to tell my story here and planned to come back to this post sooner, but 60 years of abuse is way too much to describe in a single sitting. Malicious gossip has always been the bane of my existence, but the details are too extensive to describe here.
What really surprised me was that so many others experienced the same gossip that they were gay. In addition to being an Aspie, I actually am gay, although nobody would ever have any reason to think so since I have done nothing sexual at all in over 15 years. The entire world, gay and straight has always rejected me while talking amongst themselves about how desirable they think I am. You would think that they would have enough common sense to speak to me directly rather than to gossip among themselves about me, but NTs sometimes use so little common sense and can never be direct. They follow the rule of the jungle behaving like lower forms of animals always seeking a conquest. Personally, I have always sought an equal but few are to be found in a world ruled by jungle law. When I do not compete with them, they don't know how to deal with it. I had always believed that the gossip that I am gay was due to the fact that I AM gay and that hetero NTs had something similar to gay radar (and I hate the term gaydar with a passion... like fingernails on a chalk board... it is so cheesy). Once I awakened to the fact that I am Aspie three years ago, I began to realize that the source of this gossip was not that I am gay but rather something entirely different. NTs often presume that Aspies are gay and label us as such because we are so different from them and because they think of themselves as the epitome of hetero behavior. Therefore anything remotely different must necessarily be gay. It is very ego and conceit driven and can never be overcome without the NT awakening to their own faulty, self-centered logic. Homophobia is such a popular form of hate that NTs use it as a point of conformity in trying to keep up with the Joneses. It is also possible that they may also be using it (and all of us Aspies) as pawns to try to impress their potential mates with their phony sense of hetero prowess.
The speculative gossip I have always experienced gets to be highly sexual and detailed in nature almost as if they think they have a God-given right to know the most intimate details about my sex life when they lack the common decency to even speak to me. In addition to the presumption that I am gay, I also experience non-stop gossip regarding my state of sexual need, usually laced with a healthy dose of lies and insults to suit their own convenience. It is very invasive of my privacy and I often believe that people would set up bleachers in my apartment to watch if they could. It really is none of their business to begin with. Honestly, these people spend more time thinking about my sex life than I do and probably more time than they spend thinking about their own mates. It is a sign of feelings of inadequacy on their part. If I want peace and quiet, then all hell breaks loose outside, but if they want peace and quiet, it gets silent as a morgue out there. This is more predictable than the rising sun each day. I now run a white noise machine all evening long in order to partially mask out the sounds of their gossip floating in my window as well as the sounds of their occasional silence. There seem to be two types of bullies. Some will oppose me openly so as to interfere with my life and display that they are different from me (and thus not gay) while others will mock me in a competitive way, putting on a phony show in order to upstage me and demonstrate their superiority as a result. I'm not sure which of the two is worse.
There is a paragraph in Tom Wolfe's book "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" during the party at Ken Kesey's place in which some guy was the target of homophobia (regardless of whether he was gay or not). That expression of hate offended one very hetero member of of the Hells Angels (who was sitting there quietly) so much that he said he would be more than willing to go to bed with the guy being targeted simply to express his displeasure at the unreasonable degree of hate being directed towards him. I myself have experienced similar situations, such as one time overseas in the early 1980s when a very hetero (and very big) biker from Columbus, GA named Animal told me that if anybody ever did give me a rough time, I should tell him about it (I never did so) and he would personally see to it that they never bothered me again. He had observed the hate being directed towards me many times and found it to be highly offensive to any sense of courage, justice and equality.
Tim_Tex wrote:
No, but I had been cheated out of potential friends based on slanderous remarks made about me.
You sure did hit that nail right on the head! I have only had something like ten friends in all of 62 years of life, typically for only about a year at a time before life's changes led them (or me) to move on. All but one of them were very hetero (such as one ex-Marine I worked with who hated the gossip even more than I did and who absolutely forbade his wife to ever take part in it). Most were so NT as to not really understand my own inner thought processes while still accepting me as I am. Perhaps four or five times in my life, I have been in the situation of having met someone who was so similar to myself (not necessarily gay, but usually withdrawn as I am) that it offered me a very real opportunity to finally have a real friend and equal for the first time in my life. Each and every time this has happened, people have seen the friendship developing and have intentionally interfered so as to not allow me to have the same opportunity that they themselves have so freely with so many friends. They create such a fuss and controversy over me, including all the speculation and gossip that I am gay, that it always drives the other person away from me. In all cases it also causes the hopeful friend to join in with the fray and gossip so as to not be associated with me as a person who is presumed to be gay... according to the gossip. This has happened repeatedly every single time that I have ever tried to reach out to someone as a simple friend. Along the way I must tolerate some really aggressive behavior towards me such as one neighbor who followed my footsteps around the floor whacking on the walls below wherever I stood or another neighbor who made snide remarks at me through the bathroom wall whenever I went in there to shower. It really is enough to piss off the pope.
NTs (and especially the alphas) are driven by ego, selfishness and the notion that they and anything they do is infallible. It is a totally self centered way of thinking. As I wrote in another recent post here, "The NT personality is turned outward (extroverted) but they are focused inwards (ego). The Aspie personality is turned inward (introverted) but they are focused outwards (perceptive)". In connection with this focus on their ego, NTs play all kinds of power, domination and control games (I will just call this PD&C for short) with other people in everything that they say and do in order to reinforce that notion of self-superiority (even in small inconsequential ways). Often they probably do not even realize that they are doing this, but few things escape an Aspie's eye. This is the same factor that drives homophobia, racism, gender bias and all forms of intolerance... the notion that one's self or one's own group is superior to another person or group. It is the same thing that kindergarten kids learn to do when playing "King of the Hill" (I could not understand that game at all when I was a kid). When the PD&C games become overt, they become the same tactic that schoolyard bullies (and political tyrants) everywhere use to pump up their own ego at the expense of others. NTs are competitive while Aspies are task driven and perceptive. Typically if somebody confronts me (i.e. a challenge to compete), I will just walk away. If forced to play tug of war, I will let go of the rope, leaving the NT flat on his back in the mud. There is no way to deal with the gossip that such bullies use against us, because our actions will always be interpreted in the manner most supportive of the bully's initial presumption. It is an attitude of, "my mind is made up, don't confuse me with the facts". There is no way to turn to anybody for help because the NT bullies always have the advantage of numbers of people who will corroborate what they do and say... we never have any proof of what is being done to us. Furthermore if we seek help from the NT world, they will often criticize us for being ourselves and point to their own behavior as the solution (thus patting themselves on the back and pumping up their own ego once again at our expense). The only way to overcome this is to live a better life than the NT bully and to leave them in our wake for belittling us to begin with. This is far easier said than done for an Aspie since we have so much difficulty in finding friends to begin with.
My life has always been an ongoing story of abuse in which people drive away potential friends, gossip about me endlessly and slander me for presumably doing the exact same things that they are actually doing for real, all while rubbing my nose in their own exploits. Just as soon as I get rid of one bully, the next one takes his place, so this is likely to continue for the rest of my life... unless I should somehow manage to find a friend for a change. An interesting thing I have observed is that if I am talking to someone on the phone, the bullies will ALWAYS keep their mouth shut so as to not get caught (or upstaged), but as soon as I go silent, the gossip quickly resumes. Bullies are always cowards acting in groups and pick on those who are alone.
On the island where I lived for many years I once knew a cook about my age named Trevor. One time he explained it all to me with words that I will never forget because they sum up the entire gossip and power mentality so simply and yet so beautifully. He was one of the local people whom I admired for their simple ways and the fact that they were generally less aggressive than the other Americans I knew. However once they became Americanized, they began to learn those same aggressive habits. After 150 years of subjugation by the British, whom they hated with a passion, these people had developed an inferiority complex in which they considered themselves to be "number two" while the British and Americans were "number one". Trevor was a half friend but could be a back-stabber at times and was never one to be trusted completely. One night I asked him, "why do people treat me in the nasty way that they always do"? Trevor replied, 'it's because what you've got, they can't get" (envy). Then he went on to say to me, "I am number two. If number two can put down number one, then number two becomes number one" (PD&C). Then I said to him, "but Trevor, you know I don't believe in that nonsense, so why do people still treat me that way"? Trevor replied, "that's just the way it is". People should not try to manipulate other people in the way that they do. It amounts to an act of verbal rape and it is neither fair nor just. But that is the way that NTs have always treated me.
Oddly enough the only person in my apartment building who has never violated my trust or respect is the 30 something year old girl who lives across the hall. She is the only person here whom I have told I am an Aspie. She is not one of the gossips and may dislike it as much as I do because she is rarely seen unless she needs to shop for food. She will go for three and four days at a time without ever setting foot outside of her door (she even told me this one time). I don't think it is the case but her behavior sometimes seems to be even more Aspie-like than mine is. She is not part of the mob.
Sometimes I wonder if I should not just follow my own Aspie instincts and give up on people entirely, but that is a self-defeating solution in a world consisting of people. I can only keep trying from time to time and hope that someday before I die I just might happen to find somebody who will listen and help without knocking me down yet another step further. The odds really don't look good at all in a world ruled by NT hate.
09 Sep 2009, 3:47 am
