Nat (she/they)

Now I’m unsure as to whether this study would accept trans women or not

A part of me dies when I say the lie

That’s the same with most disabilities. For instance, blindness does have some intrinsic hardship, but then it also has the hardships that come from a society that assumes you have vision and does not accommodate you.

How dare he expose our plan for world domination!

Giving honest answers to questions like “How are you doing?” at the beginnings of conversations.

Socially unacceptable ideas and self perception. Already have brought them back, been transitioning for 2 years now even.

I still feel a little bad negotiating for my own needs, but I force myself to do it.

I have public transit near me that’s “approximately every 15 minutes” but they just show up and leave whenever they like and I guess it averages to 15min(?). It’s awful.

Barber shop wanted my phone number. Took over a minute to convince them no.

I hate that there is no good way to tell someone they’re wrong. If you make it brief, they think you’re just there to attack them and the entirety of what they said even if it’s just a very specific issue/nitpick. If you make it verbose it’s a wall of text ten times longer that they half the time don’t believe and still think you’re attacking them!

High functioning is the autism version of “one of the good ones”

I’ve had to fluff up what I say to explicitly say “I don’t mean [x], I’m not implying [y]”, but I can’t cover everything and so I still get hostility, it’s very frustrating.

I’ve noticed that people (including me) try to build a mental model of your beliefs very quickly, so without much context to base it on they usually base it on stereotypes (e.g. nitpicking a science claim is the sort of thing a science denier would do, therefore you’re probably that even if you just noticed a tiny incorrect detail and that’s it). It doesn’t help that over text, if you wanted to get that context and not make assumptions about others, you’re going to have to spend a lot of time writing questions and waiting multiple back-and-forths for answers to inform your next questions.

Another thing I’ve noticed is that most disagreements online are arguments about something where facts are just pawns to be played to win. I’m sure most of us have seen this play out, and usually if someone gets obviously proven wrong they just pull out the next fact and move goalposts, because most people don’t like “losing”. So if you say something like “I think you’re wrong because [x]”, you look exactly like the people arguing who have an implicit agenda. And I can’t blame people for assuming that, because if you give everyone the benefit of the doubt you lose sooo much time to the ~80% of arguers with a hidden agenda.

I’m glad autism doesn’t have a “cure”, because I’m sure it would’ve been used to eugenics autism out of existence.

I love their strong stance!

Sometimes I hear/read the words and could tell you what the words were, but my brain lags on processing meaning. I’ve had to reread so many things because I forgot the part where I actually understand what I just read.

So basically eugenics. Ignoring autonomy has never gone wrong (/s)!

But he purrrsssss :3

Dude is gender neutral in the 2nd person but not in the 3rd person

You’re right that it’s your place to talk about your opinion, but you’re trying to deny them theirs, that’s the problem.

I find “powers” a strange word choice because of its connotation, but if you want to use it, whatever, language is a complex and subjective thing. Other than that, I didn’t see any generalization from the person you’re arguing with, so I don’t understand your response.

I think you might have misinterpreted their line about their giftedness, they said “I’m considered gifted” then explained that they don’t feel they have “powers”. This does not imply that’s the same for everyone considered gifted, so it is not a generalization.

I have some strategies I use for not getting into a situation like this. I try to assume the best from people, but when I think an uncharitable interpretation is likely I’ll ask clarifying questions like “are you saying that all gifted people are only good at IQ tests?”. Sometimes I focus on the wrong details, sometimes the other person says things in a weird way, clarification always helps.

Caveat: this can potentially be dangerous. I used to go outside a lot when I felt bad, but it mostly let me stew in my bad feelings with nothing to permanently distract me from them. Now I always bring headphones to listen to music, because that’s a lot better at distracting me from the bad feelings.