@actuallyautistic#actualyautistic How do y’all deal with people who say that autism doesn’t even exist, and that it “suddenly” cropped up over the past few generations because people have been “mentally coddled”? Somewhat in the same vein as “there is a diagnosis epidemic” but much more extreme.
I haven’t bumped into it myself, but it would depend on the person. I might tell them that in the past most were misdiagnosed, or simply written off as weird, or institutionalised, orctolerated as that weird uncle or aunty, or burnt as witches, or became mystics or artists & were tolerated as such… Or I might not bother.
@chevalier26@actuallyautistic This is a MAJOR peeve of mine, and a serious rant trigger (I'll try to contain myself 😬)
I've had this said to me, and every time, they regretted it! It's willful ignorance. They're denying the existance of medical advancement. There never used to be cancer, heart attacks, stroke, germs etc, but we were dying from them, all the same. Just because we haven't identified a condition, doesn't mean it hasn't always been present.
"There were no autistic kids in my school"... OF COURSE THERE BLOODY WERE!!! The quiet ones, the "weird" ones. The ones that used to chew things, or was obsessed with trains/stats/whatever. We were ALWAYS there, you just didn't have a name for us. You DID know we were different, so you attacked us. Now you feel guilty for attacking a "disabled" person, so you deny our condition.
@MuppetRat@actuallyautistic YES! You put it into words perfectly. Just because we (or a few dense individuals 😂) don’t understand something doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Like you said, pathogens, cancer, brain tumors, strokes, etc. didn’t have a medical definition until fairly recently but people still died from them in the past.
My question now is why it bothers people SO MUCH when you tell them about autism. Is it insecurity?
@chevalier26@actuallyautistic I belive it's pack mentality. Anything percieved as different aka "not normal" is a threat to them. Now, they're being told we're all around them, and they can't easily identify us. Their world view is crumbling, and their primitive brain is having a meltdown lol
@MuppetRat@chevalier26@actuallyautistic may I cite this in a video?
(Idek what the topic will be anymore, besides a braindump of unpolished ideas that hopefully bear some relation to each other and reality) nw if not
@MuppetRat@chevalier26@actuallyautistic They didn't like that we're not like them, but the fact that we don't want to be like them is what's really terrifying to them.
@chevalier26@actuallyautistic
Beyond pointing out the absurdity of that, because autism is primarily genetic, and genetics don't work that way. Probably the best thing you can do is nothing. If they are capable of believing something so stupid, there's little hope for them and nothing to suggest that wasting your valuable time and effort trying to prove otherwise will be even remotely worth it.
@chevalier26@actuallyautistic
I actually haven't heard that exact position from anyone before. But I've heard more general statements along the lines of "people are too concerned about their mental health nowadays and every little emotional injury is turned into a mental condition".
Honestly, I haven't had many of those discussions but one thing I learned from a physiotherapist: People used to not go see doctors when they had physical pain in the past. They were very good at suppressing
(1/2)
@chevalier26@actuallyautistic
(2/2) ... pain. One cod say "they weren't coddled and didn't interpret any discomfort as a slipped disc". But those people had to feel the consequences later. A slipped disc is there, diagnosed or not. Delayed treatment could never achieve what early diagnosis and treatment can.
Same goes for high temperatures, long-lasting infections and so on. People who live "the old way" die earlier and suffer more.
@manu@chevalier26@actuallyautistic My grandfathers were both grumpy old bastards. In one case in and out of surgery while they fished shrapnel out, but the other one was blue collar and worked until he couldn't. I'm certain that a lot of his grumpy came from never-ending pain.
Being made deaf by his job did not help, hearing aids were unavailable and sign language wasn't taught to used up grunts, so he just got left to deal with it as best he could.
@chevalier26@actuallyautistic
I realoze this gets dangerously close to positioning autism as an illness and I don't feel very cpmfortable woth that. I'll probably think this through a little more.
But talking to someone who thinks like that I'm also willing to live with it for the moment. If I feel that they are open for arguments, I'll go on and clarify next.
@manu@actuallyautistic I think I understand what you mean. It’s like how a lot of older individuals will say “well back in my day I ate dirt and drove without a seatbelt” and it’s like yeah…and people your age also had a higher chance of deadly illnesses and traumatic injuries from doing those things.
@chevalier26@actuallyautistic
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I would beat them into submission with a long infodump proving to them the truth of the matter, that Allism is the new thing in the world, the epidemic, and what is destroying the world.
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In fact I'm always doing that and I'm doing it now. 😈
@chevalier26@actuallyautistic
explain to them that because they are limited in their Neurotype's abilities, they think everything is "coddled," until it's been tortured to death 🤮
@punishmenthurts@chevalier26@actuallyautistic
I usually just tell them to screw off.
Those sorts of people aren't looking to be more knowledgable anyway. My philosophy professor warned us about arguing with brick walls.
@TanekRune@chevalier26@actuallyautistic
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Hmmm, let's see . . .
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I couldn't say where she's comin' from but I just met a lady named Tylenol Mom 😀
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She strolled on over, said, Look here, Son, I got a forty dollar bill says you ain't been here long.
It's a thing we all intuit. 😈
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Now, it irked me a bit that she called me "son," but I knew right away she was sure I was gonna run.
Instead I got down to it.
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I talked and talked till my tongue got numb but I still didn't reach no Tylenol Mom.
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Tylenol Mom, Tylenol Mom, where is this mother comin' from?
I done spent three hours and I ain't got got a crumb from this Tylenol, Tylenol, Tylenol, from this Tylenol Mom. 😘