I have spent my adult life stressing the need for autistics not to block out allistics from our life - promoting the idea that we don't need to live a life apart - that this world, with everyone in it, has what to offer for us.
I have a personal policy against allowing allists to get as close as autistic friends. I don't reject allists for being allistic, but I don't seek out new allist friends. Those I already have are welcome to stay, but they're not getting masked me ever again, and they can't be AS CLOSE as autistic friends.
Sorry but... not having this policy caused me a lot of pain and suffering I just didn't need to endure.
That said - if someone thinks they might be autistic, gets close, and later finds out they are not autistic - no fowl. If you came off autistic enough to get that close, and were seeking the company of whom you thought were similar neurotype, you're an honorary member and welcome to remain that close to me.
If you don't stand out to me as NT, then you haven't been doing the hurtful and exhausting shit that drove me to keep them back a bit.
I have a close allistic friend, that friendship got built before I knew about me. But... their behavior and statements and refusal (stated refusal) to understand sorted themself out of my closest. They're still close, but nowhere near as close as my autistic besties. It's just not possible.
I can share my innermost thoughts and views with someone who says my sensory issues are "the power of suggestion from hearing that autistic people have sensory issues".
Or that NT brains can't understand that when big ideas with big emotions hit, I may spew them out - and they may be bad, impractical as stated, or sometimes wrong - but that once out there, it's to be refined. You can't take the blurt out as the end all be all of that idea.
This difference... It's just not possible to be as close to allists.
Or like... close allist loves physical contact.
I do too, but I can only handle it in certain doses, and if other things have worn me out or overwhelned me, I can't handle it. ...they takes it personally. It doesn't matter how many times I've explained.
This friendship, while good and bebeficial, costs energy because of these things.
On the reverse - I have 2 autistic friends I get to see in person.
They get it. They take no offense if I can't hug, or I can't go somewhere bright and loud on a certain day. In fact, I don't even have to say it, they just pick up on it. I don't have to reexplain anything. I don't have to justify my need to be away from the light.
These friendships don't cost. One costs so little it doesn't even register, the other is actually a recharging presence!
@theautisticcoach @actuallyautistic
Yes! I actually have a friend who RECHARGES my social energy! (as long as I had at least a little before she got here) Like, TF? I didn't know that was possible!
She used to be my roommate. That was amazing to have right here in my home! 🥰
...I get why she left (it had nothing to do with me, thank god), but I wish she'd move back.
When fascism encroaches, anyone outside the lowest common denominator is unsafe.
The LCD is not much safer, having only the relative safety of numbers.
@theautisticcoach@actuallyautistic I'm willing to exist on earth with allistics, if the allistics were willing to dismiss the myths they believe about autistics.
Them allistics seem too stuck on their own ideas, and their egos get in the way of dismissing whatever nonsense they believe. Some get it, most do not, as far as I seen.
Too easy to dismiss us, ignore us, shun us... too complicated to acknowledge we have our own strengths, while they are so focused on the almighty dollar.
@theautisticcoach@actuallyautistic
things change, evolution. You’re right about it one decade, or one generation, wrong the next.
.
People supposedly “believe in evolution,” but they don’t believe humans adapt to their own shitty environments. Particularly the Allist is changing fast, in something like a positive feedback loop.
"acceptable" parameters shift from year to year, more rules created, few rules removed, narrowing the pathway to acceptable. The mold the allistics fit into, smaller and smaller, squeezing some of us to death, or we pop right out unable to fit into that hole we were never meant for.
Worrying the future might turn into legalized eugenics, scary thought, the shift in behaviors that maybe unable to cope with whatever may show up in the future.
@GreenRoc@theautisticcoach@actuallyautistic
I was trying to craft something like that yesterday morning and never did, about how the lawmakers - a whole job title just to make more, constantly - keep adding environmental hazards, how every law is another environmental hazard for people.
@punishmenthurts@theautisticcoach@actuallyautistic More and more policies and rules added, so few laws and rules culled. Narrowing the lane of traveling, narrowing the field of view, narrowing the potential of human creativity...
Less and less of us able to thrive, with only few fitting into that small mold, a space of specific, more refined preferences, a path that keeps getting smaller with every passing year, more of us cannot fit.
I feel a catastrophe coming, where something will snap.
@theautisticcoach@actuallyautistic And if you consider the number of my close friends who aren’t either Autistic or ADH or both, it becomes vanishingly small.
Instead of moving away from labeling things according to their proximity to a supposed “normal”, societies are going hard on polarizing more and more every day.
I think part of it is the neurotypical brain’s uncanny ability to desensitize to anything while craving emotions. When most people crave sensation but their brains are numb to their current existence, they start inventing outrage or seeking more and more extreme stimuli, which I think what makes humans so warlike and aggressive.