People who think they know jack about autism insulting you

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Insulting you brazenly. To your face. Perhaps not knowing what they're saying is offensive.

It's one thing for an ignorant NT to tease you for social ineptitude when they aren't informed, but there is a whole other level of obnoxiousness when an NT who is misinformed about autism gets cocky and starts making assumptions. This has happened to me thrice.

There was this boy who read The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time who sincerely believed I have no emotions, hit my mother when she tries to hug me, and want to destroy the human race.

When I told my aunt, she said, "Your mother never told me you were slow!"

This girl with an autistic sister (and a fervent devotion to the thimerosol theory) asked me how I felt about being "brain-damaged".

People are idiots!

Tell them you love being brain damaged. And go "Duh!"

humor has been my only saving grace

it ALONE has kept me from being in insufferablely prig of a victim of all the inequalities of the world.


Merle

Yup people are ignorant about a lot of things.

Humor is definitely a good counter. Whether in a confrontation, or just in looking at life. Some say life is a comedy for those who think, and a tragedy for those who feel.

MissPickwickian: Well, we seem to know the same people....sigh. Yes, sense of humor. Or voodoo doll. The misinterpretation does effect one cumulatively though. Good that I am a logical being, but I still feel the pain. But my brain is my identity and this is my incentive. I am synonymous with science/math.

I've noticed those who are 'professionals,' yes, those in the mental health profession, can be RAGING STUPID.

i actually met someone the other day who didn't know what autism was (as in never heard of it before)

Usually when I tell a good friend that I have it, they base their knowledge of Autism off of:
-misinformative sources in general
-the curius incident of the dog in the night time
-when worst comes to worst, Rainman

Typically people I've met who are misinformed about Autism act like it makes you ret*d, so I usually use this analogy to help them understand:
"Autism is a spectrum, there are many different forms of it. It's like saying all vehicles are the same. Is a truck the same as an airplane? Is a sports car the same as a boat?"

The woman I saw for my intake interview with Vocational Rehabilitation treated me like a complete degenerate. After she criticized me for not having a career in mind (I've just started university again after recovering from a nervous breakdown), she said, "Now, I know this is a lot of words, but maybe you can think about it later and try to understand." When I said I preferred e-mail to telephone contact, she said, "Yeah, I know most people with Asperger's never return phone calls!" This poor woman seemed to be living under the delusion that she was extraordinarily well-informed about AS. I felt kind of bad for her.

nomad21: I like that analogy

Wait, wanting to destroy the human race is a bad thing?

I get good responses, when I tell people about my AS they say "Well, maybe there's more to it than the bad parts."

I remember one Christmas, when I was telling my Nana how conservative I was, for a fifteen year old, when she told me how conservative English people are. Nana said, "That's different. You're just a little bit slow. You're on a different wavelength than everybody else." I didn't want to visit my grandparents for a very long time, after that. It got to the point, that I would have rather have went to church with some loser who gave up on me, in the end, than go to see my grandparents, on my Nana's Birthday. I went, anyways. There was one day that the power went out, in my High School and I didn't want to go. I've stayed in bed and played hookie, all day. My mum noticed that I haven't been myself lately, and she asked me what happened. I've asked her, if she remembered me complaining of headaches and stomach aches, after we had Christmas dinner. I've preceded to tell her that I was having them, because Nana told me that I was a little bit "Slow", before that dinner. My mum told me that Nana doesn't know autism like the rest of the family does, and that I didn't come close to being slow. She told me that she worked with a woman at McDonald's who was a little bit slow, and that the woman kept getting the wrong things out of the freezer, at her work. I was more willing to visit my grandparents, after my mum had that little talk with me, and I didn't try to escape to another room, when I was at their house, anymore.

I once had a man ask me what it was like to have a "mentally challenged son".

I said, "I wouldn't know -- his IQ is 125. Ask your mom."

Happened to me a bit but I'm socially accepted a lot more now than before.