Society & autistics in reality TV; bittersweet.
I'm sure this comes up for others as well, but autistics, we seem to have a radar of sorts to be able to spot fellow autistics about a mile away. It's fascinating and yet baffling when so many are slipped through the cracks because they're not seen by the quote unquote experts. But let's get into this a little bit more deeply
Tara
@EnigmasNextDoor · 1:20
It's this one hits home. I remember having thoughts like, have I traveled too much to ever be understood? You know, are there too many other explanations at this point? Have I had too many careers too young? Am I too multicultural? Et cetera? And yeah, that's what happens when we investigate things based on misunderstandings and differences rather than coming from a perspective of understanding our individual needs and what feels good for us
And if we aren't acknowledging that and acknowledging that the environment, the society that we've created, then it's only going to get worse. And we're going to continue to say people are, quote unquote, mentally ill or need medication or whatever the other explanation is, instead of recognizing, no, we're doing something wrong here, right?
Tara
@EnigmasNextDoor · 0:41
It's absolutely. I'm just asking how many people are you going to make an exception? And this actually goes back to the conversation about neurodiversity versus all these specific labels. So I sometimes see it used as another form of divide and conquer, of we're going to put the autistics over here and the ADHD year. And rather than figuring out, okay, let's collect a list of all the ways that something isn't working for people and build something better
Joshua Tito
@ozzymendez · 5:00
They should script and be robotic and simply do as they're told because they're basically stupid or something like that. That's what they believe. And I know because usually when the communication issues come up and they do come up with neurotypical people, like when I'm asked a question and I answer it, it's either I give a very stilted answer that does not really address what I'm talking about, or I give an authentic answer and confuse them somewhat. It's very frustrating
Joshua Tito
@ozzymendez · 5:00
Have sort of a reality show where there's a number of autistic people and they talk with sort of random, random people. Yeah, they come into the studio. It's not scripted, there's no whatevers. And the psychologists tell the audience essentially, when the autistic person is being grossly misunderstood or even slightly misunderstood, probably, and why, most importantly, they explain why that is the public education component, or that will be the public education component, because there's some people who are
Like let's drop the idea of agency and instead try to communicate with one another, meeting each other where we're at, of a blending of less subtext or more subtext, depending if we can, instead of putting the entire burden on or expectation on rather an autistic person to meet a neurotypical. So there's this example from a book I've been reading
So the book is the outsider's guide to humans, I believe. And her last name is Peng, P-E-N-G-I can't remember her first name at the moment, but there's this quote in there that I think is so. Such a great example of the differences in communication. Speaking of the show that you mentioned that you'd like to do so, this screenshot shows you the sentence and where her mom asks her to go to the store and her mom says, can you get five apples?
