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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • avalokitesha@discuss.tchncs.detoAutism@lemmy.worldSpeaking both languages
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    2 years ago

    TL,DR: I don’t see this as glorifying, but as a nuanced point of view. Autism is neither a fantastical thing nor is it necessarily the end of the world. It all depends on a lot of external factors, and the people around you (autistic or not) are a huge part of that.

    For me this has nothing to do with supremacy and is just an explanation. Granted, I may be missing context, since I never heard anything about the account posting it, but on its own with no explanation I don’t see it.

    Supremacy would be if they said “NTs are so dumb for just speaking one language”.

    What I see there is NTs having the privilege that everyone around them understands them - similar to people in a rural area before the internet or mass media. They dont need to worry about being understood or think about how people could have other languages without necessarily being dumb - this is the difference between being smart and being educated.

    Being educated is book knowledge that you have to acquire or be taught, but even without that you can be smart. And in my eyes it’s a fact that neurotypicals are not well educated about autism, because a lot of the current knowledge is quite recent.

    Also, this statement is solely about the social aspect, not talking about sensory issues. There’s studies showing that autistic people among themselves communicate just as well as neurotypical people among themselves and issues show up when the neurotypes are mixed. I’m trying to remember names associated with it, but my memory fails me - I think it was a british study.

    This study matches my personal experience though. And it’s the reason why I disclose at work (thankfully my country has good protections in place).

    With other autistic/often also adhd people, communication is pretty smooth. With NTs, there’s hiccups, but they understand why and are patient because of that.

    All this does not mean autism is a superpower or anything. Since I’m privileged enough to work in my special interest field, my hyperfocus kicks in quite a bit, so I can take advantage of that.

    The sensory issues, on the other hand, can be quite debilitating at times, and I need accommodation for that. It’s not all rainbows and sunshine even if you take the social issues out (or manage to alleviate them as in my case). Autism is still a disability after all, but posts like this are still a good thing because it’s also not always doom and gloom. If you get the right environment, it can be manageable enough to have a decent life.


  • I’m insulted how little effort the author put into supporting his thesis.

    “Streber” in German is a common insult if you’re good in school, and it often meant social death in class. Sure, geek and nerd have become commonplace and are used as German words now, but that’s also because if you are one your English is good enough and it’s just easier to use the short word from another language that pretty much all geeks and nerds use than to use the German one.

    It has actually not really the negative connotation that the English word has, it feels more like a name for a subculture, like goth.



  • Dude, have you any idea how many doctors told me (professionally diagnosed) that I can’t be autistic, sure, this is a bit weird, but it’s probably just X, that weird thing is probably just Y and so on, telling me I have like ten other things when all these ten things are all explained by autism?

    All because drumroll I can hold eye contact. Yes, I’ve been pressured into masking hard. It makes me suffer, and now you use it to deny me support?

    Most doctors have not kept up with the development on diagnosing atypical autism and the ones that do you have almost no chance of scoring an appointment with.

    And I am in a coultry where we at least do consider autism for females. There’s still lots of countries where high-functioning autists don’t get diagnosed.

    Let people “self-diagnose” if it means they findcoping mechanisms and things that explain thwir behaviors. Allow them to say “fuck you” when someone tells them they’re not trying hard enough because they are just lazy, when in reality they are so overwhelmed they can barely function.

    Don’t actively make people miserable, because they for whatever reason do not have a formal diagnosis. I encourage most peoble to get one, but I also heard of places that use an official diagnosis against them. I think I read someone from the UK claiming they had custody of their kids challenged because of a diagnosis.

    Let people find their coping mechanisms. Even if in the end they don’t have autism, how does this affect you or me or any other autistic person?



  • That’s the official version, but at least when I talk about some average dude it’s way too long and artificial, I don’t think the name Mustermann actually exists.

    When I think of the most common name to use in casual conversation, I’d probably go for Müller (maybe Peter? Though the first name is probably heavily generation-dependent).

    In older publication you may alse find references to “der deutsche Michel” (the german Michel, short for Michael) as a somewhat condescending reference to the average citizen who is very hesitant to adopt new concepts and tech and not always able or willing to understand complex concepts. Often used to remark that a product/idea will not have a chance on the market because “der deutsche Michel” doesn’t see the pointor would never pick it up.

    Haven’t seen that in a while though, I guess Germans have become more open to new stuff :)