Confrontations with NTs over violated unspoken rules?
A bit of a general thread, but wondering how my fellow ASD-ers have handled confrontations with NT folk (that THEY initiated, not you, obviously!) over violated unspoken rules? Did you really have to stick to your principles - and your line - that you honestly didn't know, before you both basically had to "agree to disagree" and part ways?
I'm sure you've followed a similar pattern that I have, whereby most social rule violations didn't go unpunished, albeit it was in a more passive-aggressive way (both individually, and collectively meted out) - it tended to be the exception, rather than the norm, that an NT might angrily confront you over it, ask rhetorically WTF is wrong with you, you're making other people feel uncomfortable, etc. etc..
Basically, they're conflating your character or personality with your neurology. Simply because they don't know any better. I think of Stephen Covey's famous statement, "We see the world not as it is, but as we are, or as we are conditioned to see it."
Yes, we are digital thinkers in an analog world, as the saying goes - picking up socio-emotional nuance and unspoken expectations can be very grey and contextual, not in our typical special interests that are mostly STEM-oriented.
While this tactic doesn't always work, I've tried answering their questions with further questions, or using the Socratic method... e.g. "Why do you think I would do that deliberately?", or "Well, what if some people's brains or mental models work differently than other people's?" or "You know me fairly well already, you know my personality type - if I was aware of that, do you really think I would have chosen to respond that way intentionally?"
Of course, there may be a few folks who will, again, conflate your behaviour with personality disorder or character flaws; they may label you as passive-aggressive, probably because this is the "normal" behavioural response for an NT. It's like they impose an NT template or lens on all interactions (going back to that Stephen Covey quote), and that you're an NT all along who's somehow paradoxically different (almost like a quantum reality, like Schrodinger's cat), I dunno, you see what I'm getting at.
Well, we can only hope that greater awareness and understanding of ASD will mitigate this sort of blow-up... then again, or at least I believe, NTs as a collective in most settings will ALWAYS prioritize their desire for social harmony over the desire to accommodate someone who's neurodivergent. Because the NTOS's primary directive is social harmony; for the "Aspie OS", it's objective truth and facts. So we might get greeted with an NT response of "We have to put the needs of the many before the needs of the few (or the one)." Yes, quoting Star Trek 2: the Wrath of Khan - and I've actually been subjected to this silly line a couple of times, almost as if they invoked a visceral stereotype that I'm a geek and all geeks love Star Trek (I don't), ergo he will relate to this line
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