no u

granted, I live in a rural area where outside cats typically become part of the ecosystem and indoor cats will only breed if you're stupid enough (like you) to bring male/female pairings inside

I forget most of you are suburbanite and urbanite scum where this becomes a problem

#Staatsräson, live und in Farbe.

@hahauenstein

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"But I learned I could compensate for my oddness by racking up achievements. If I worked hard, I’d get to be gifted rather than just freakish. At no point did I think anyone else, disabled or otherwise, was worthless if they weren’t accomplished, just that I wasn’t like other people."

Uff, Laury telling the story of my life just there...

The social norm could just as easily be to accept and value autistic traits.

That's up to us as adults.

We gotta do it, then teach children to do it, once they learn to notice differences.

This article hits hard, and I’m in the “least likely to get hit hard” category — same as Aaron, white and male and (while growing up) in a financially stable family.

A while back I meme-ified a mid-2010s study (so, at a time when autism diagnoses were even more heavily male-dominated) and it highlighted just *how general and pervasive* disliking autistic people at very first sight was.

It was even worse in the 1970s/1980s when I was a kid/teen, and I can only imagine how bad it must have been for Black/female/less financially comfortable autistic kids at a similar time.

because children model their families' ideologies and cultural norms, and when other children dont fit those norms, whatever they may be, they tribe up and mock.

The 'diagnosis' becomes weirder and weirder the more you realize family cultural/ideological traits, such as anti-patriarchy, openness to LGBTQ gender and sexuality, and even anti capitalism can manifest in very young children in a way that sets them apart, clashes them against other family cultures.

"The stereotypical autistic person is still a white man who solves crimes with science. Even today, autistic men are more likely to grow up understanding they have a problem, whereas autistic women and non-binary people learn we are a problem."

Well that was a punch in the solar plexus

> "Human beings reinforce social norms by hurting people who break them."

I rather strongly dislike the implication this is inherent (that may be awkward phrasing), rather than a consequence of society tolerating it.

"Behavioral" disorders are an especially convenient means of reinforcing societal bounds, because it's always possible to say "why don't you just act normally?", i.e. cast all atypical behavior as deliberately chosen.

Then punishment can be pursued without feelings of guilt. "You must not respect us enough to act normally", etc.

The fact that it requires a **functioning theory of mind** to grasp that someone is not just choosing to be "difficult" is just icing on the irony cake.

I'm not autistic but I've been deaf and disabled since birth.

I remember all the boys in infant school refusing to talk to me cos crip cooties (they'd play with my female friends sometimes). I was lucky to have one pre-school friend who while shy had been bought up Quaker and had a blind Dad. She refused to be friends with anyone who wouldn't talk to me which got me a small social group.

We can teach children not to reject difference & not copy adult prejudices.

"What do we know about autism? We know it’s a form of cognitive difference that is also a disability – and how disabling it is depends as much on your social circumstances as it does on your symptoms. "

Excellent article.

I love how this captures that acceptance and appropriate environment can make a huge difference in the level of disability experienced.