Has the social climate gotten worse for us over the past decade?

[The Chaos Sphinx]

This is my question; has anyone else felt like there's been a deleterious shift in the society's general attitude toward people like us over the past decade or so? Here's a bit of my story - forgive me if it's a little inchoate or disjointed, I'm terribly depressed:

It seems like it used to be (as in, up until 2004 or so) that if people mistreated me because I was different, it would be called bullying and I'd get support; somewhere along the way, however, it was like the bullies got cleverer, and started saying *I* was the one being bad, and autism "was no excuse" (this was something I heard from someone who claimed she herself had Asperger's Syndrome - the context was my college gaming club, where I thought surely I'd be welcomed, but I wasn't). I hadn't changed, but the way I was treated was.

I've seen this elsewhere since then; like a Cracked.com article from a few years ago "joking" about "Internet Asperger's Syndrome" as a way of describing online bullying. I posted a protest comment, saying we're not bullies, we GET bullied. A response I got to that, however was "Your Indigo Child Complex is showing, bully. We Aspies can be high-class bullies something something something about feminist theory Aspies are gatekeepers to the patriarchy and can get away with crimes more easily the honeymoon is over!"

What was the deal with these people? Has anyone else encountered "brainwashed" Aspies like that? Is brainwashing what it is? Could there be regional/cultural variation on how we're treated (I grew up in halcyon-era Silicon Valley, but my family moved to rural New Mexico in 2002, where we're still stuck)? I've seen other examples, too - there seems to have been a move away from acceptance and toward prejudice and intolerance (or "You're not a bad person, you just need to learn how to be like everyone else") - a devious sort of prejudice and intolerance, too, where we're suddenly cast in the opposite role even though we haven't changed. It used to be you could be proud of being autistic - now? It seems like there's some very pervasive backlash.

Does anyone else understand what I'm talking about? Part of why this is so incoherent is because I myself and disoriented and confused about what's happened. It and other things have destroyed my life. I feel like I spent 18 years building myself into someone I liked, but then it was all taken away from me (I should note that I have other problems too, including severe OCD/depression/some things we're still trying to identify - I had a psychotic break in 2004 the morning after Election Day, and my life has gone from semi-charmed to living-my-own-worst-nightmare).

 

[biblophile]

I think society is becoming more intolerant of people who are different. I worked in retail for a while and I was always being harassed because I did not smile enough or because I seemed disinterested in my work. eventually I would lose my job because I had a '' negative attitude''. Society only wants a sort of standardized good mixer, who is always happy, smiling and up-beat. If you do not fit into that narrow box you are singled out for abuse.

 

[The Chaos Sphinx]

When did you notice it starting to get worse? Do you actually think it used to be better?

Anyone else have anything to say?

 

[biblophile]

Very good point

 

[Crossbreed]

I am saying this as a person with Aspergers. Both the Aspie bullies and the Aspie bullied have a poor concept of Theory of Mind. This can manifest in two different ways.

1. Some of our number are so convinced about the superiority of their own perspective, that they spend their whole lives trying to aggressively convert others to their point-of-view on how the world should work. It is a crusade of sorts. That registers to others as bullying. (This is not the same thing as asserting an opinion, for consideration.)
2. Even the most passive of us will hold to ideals that will not work in the real world (either naturally or socially). When that world collides with our internal understanding of it, it feels like an affront. The nearest person may appear to be a bully, when, in actuality, they were just a messenger. It can be a wake-up call (and they often seem to be very rude, at the time).

That isn't to say that there aren't real bullies, such as the narcissistic and the psychotic.* It IS to say that our typically poor TOM can complicate conflicts even further, if we let it. Sometimes we just have to agree to disagree.

On the plus side, our internal POV helps us to be very innovative when it comes to engineering (and other problem-solving) and we should definitely advance it wherever we have an appropriate authority to do so.

*Even the natural inclinations of true bullies can be an affront to those who would like to believe "that people are basically good." It evokes a cognitive dissonance.

 

[WereBear]

Society only wants a sort of standardized good mixer, who is always happy, smiling and up-beat. If you do not fit into that narrow box you are singled out for abuse.

It used to be called "well rounded," a concept I find horrifying. A little bit good at everything, real good at nothing.

I also wonder if your situation is from becoming an adult? Were things policed better in school than out in the real world?

Also, I do think a subset of society is prone to more bullying over the last decade: in short, the US elected a black President. Since I don't hang with racists, I was shocked at how many there still were. And these are people with plenty of time and opportunity to wake up and grow up. Now, they are angry and whiny and looking for new targets.

 

[biblophile]

school was much worse, more openly cruel, it is a microcosm of the world. Everything is in more of a intense and concentrated form. I find adult society is much more subtle and polite in its bulling.

 

[The Chaos Sphinx]

I am saying this as a person with Aspergers. Both the Aspie bullies and the Aspie bullied have a poor concept of Theory of Mind. This can manifest in two different ways.

1. Some of our number are so convinced about the superiority of their own perspective, that they spend their whole lives trying to aggressively convert others to their point-of-view on how the world should work. It is a crusade of sorts. That registers to others as bullying. (This is not the same thing as asserting an opinion, for consideration.)
2. Even the most passive of us will hold to ideals that will not work in the real world (either naturally or socially). When that world collides with our internal understanding of it, it feels like an affront. The nearest person may appear to be a bully, when, in actuality, they were just a messenger. It can be a wake-up call (and they often seem to be very rude, at the time).

That isn't to say that there aren't real bullies, such as the narcissistic and the psychotic.* It IS to say that our typically poor TOM can complicate conflicts even further, if we let it. Sometimes we just have to agree to disagree.

On the plus side, our internal POV helps us to be very innovative when it comes to engineering (and other problem-solving) and we should definitely advance it wherever we have an appropriate authority to do so.

I see no evidence of Aspie bullies - given my understanding of autism, it sounds like an impossibility. It feels like somebody's "flipped the script:" After a brief period of autistic advancement in the 1990s and early '000s (pronounced "ooze" - like it? Good term for that decade), the bullies have reoriented themselves, and now it's the same people as before losing, the same people as before prevailing, and only the language/superficial rationale has changed. It does stand to reason that there'd be backlash, sadly - the truth we represent poses a far more profound threat to the status quo than the fabricated challenges of race/sex/gender/religion/nationality/class.

It also sounds like you're suggesting we're inferior to neurotypicals (except in our own cute, harmless, useful little ways). What if I think the opposite is true; that there's something wrong with them, and they should learn to change? Einstein and Gandhi (among others) both talked about the need for Humanity to remake itself, and the travesties of the 21st Century to date are providing us with a gratuitous glut of reminders why. Whatever happened to being the next stage in human evolution? This is what I'm talking about; we don't get to be proud of what we are anymore.

*Even the natural inclinations of true bullies can be an affront to those who would like to believe "that people are basically good." It evokes a cognitive dissonance.

Not necessarily. What blanket statements like that miss is that people are different - and highly malleable in their formative years. If you raise them right, however, they are indeed basically good. The warp and weave of the world as it is doesn't make sense under the Hobbesian model, but Rousseau checks out. The real problem is that, even if most people are good and reasonably intelligent, most people are also cowardly, sloppy with the truth, and care more about feelings than facts. THAT is what really needs to change (and why I'm so happy to see Dr. Philip Zimbardo's http://heroicimagination.org/).

 

[umbrellabeach]

school was much worse, more openly cruel, it is a microcosm of the world. Everything is in more of a intense and concentrated form. I find adult society is much more subtle and polite in its bulling.

Agreed. People don't grow up and stop bullying. They do the same as they did when they were kids, only when they're adults they try to hide it to seem more socially acceptable.

Also, I currently work retail and face harassment like what you described. I've changed my hair to a more common style in my area (as I've noticed since changing) and started wearing dark makeup to try to seem less approachable. It's reduced the frequency of incidents but they still happen once in a while.

 

[Crossbreed]

I see no evidence of Aspie bullies - given my understanding of autism, it sounds like an impossibility.

You, yourself, said,

...the bullies got cleverer, and started saying *I* was the one being bad, and autism "was no excuse" (this was something I heard from someone who claimed she herself had Asperger's Syndrome...)

edited to add: A lot of Christian Aspies have fled from Wrong Planet due to its intolerant atheism. In practice, it was almost indistinguishable from NT bullying. (It is one example of the type one Aspie mentioned in my previous post.)

It also sounds like you're suggesting we're inferior to neurotypicals (except in our own cute, harmless, useful little ways).

No, I prefer being Aspie. Poor TOM is just one of its trade-offs. (My engineering side just manages to compensate for it.)

 

[The Chaos Sphinx]

You, yourself, said....

You think that girl who said that to me was herself bullying me? I actually don't think so. The circumstances were more like she was covering for/justifying other people's bullying (and is it "bullying" when all they do is exclude you? Mistreatment, certainly, but does that count as bullying? What about when a guy took me aside and openly told me "I don't care for you, [my name]?"). She'd been appointed by the college gaming club this was at to be my personal "wrangler," because they all viewed me as a problem just for being myself (and I wasn't confrontational or anything like that, I thought I was among peers and was just trying to participate and enjoy myself). It was like she sincerely believed what she was telling me - my first encounter with the seemingly "brainwashed Aspies" I mentioned in post #1.

Changing the subject a little bit (without wanting to actually change the primary trajectory of the thread), since you talk about an Aspie need to change other people's minds that may seem like bullying (and it may not be, it may be better identified as "badgering"), does anyone else have a problem I've developed, where I've somehow lost my understanding of how "disagreeing" works, and if someone else puts forward a concept that gets under my skin somehow, it burrows into my brain and forces me to change my mind if I can't come up with a winning counterargument? It's like I disagree, but I can't articulate a persuasive reason for disagreeing, so I'm forced to change my mind, even if it's something that I know, on some level, that I shouldn't need to change my mind about? It's very much like I've lost the boundaries between my mind and others', and my mind feels like a poorly-kept public restroom as a result (anyone familiar with the computer game parody Pyst? That's an even better analogy).
I'm no longer able to be creative because whenever I have an authentically "me" thought, it gets shot down by this internal parasitic...thing. I don't believe in things like demonic possession (or its adaptation for the 20th Century, "The Government put a chip in my brain"), but horror of horrors, I totally understand why people less educated than I would believe in that. Please understand: I DON'T "hear voices" (at least I don't think I do - I know it's a voice in my head); I've just been trapped in endless unwinnable arguments with shadows of hostile/distressing/embarrassing encounters I've had in real life, or even just people I've read about (like James Dobson and his pro-child abuse agenda). It's like the Spanish Inquisition (definitely not the funny Mel Brooks/Monty Python kind), imprisoning me and taking everything away from me until I break and "convert."

 

[Southern Discomfort]

Well you see Asperger's and autism is becoming more widely known and more people are being recognised as having it. Awareness, not acception. It's hard to go through a comment thread without someone saying saying someone is autistic, with their pseudo knowledge of autism. I can't say with experience that it's got worse because I didn't know what autism was until two years ago, but it's easy to see that with awareness going up with a condition people will misused it more and more because they simply don't understand. Heaven forbid the general public actually learns what psychosis is too!