Autism doesn’t mean you can behave however you want

Autism doesn’t mean you can behave however you want

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  • Post category:Casual / Psychology / Rants
  • Reading time:16 mins read
  • Post last modified:August 18, 2022

2022-08-19 Edit: I couldn’t stand swearing in my title anymore.

Introduction

This is an opinion post; I hate disclaimers, I acknowledge their necessity, but I don’t want to condescend to any readers by assuming they’re too stupid to think for themselves. And yes, this is part of the rant.

Ironic, but here's a disclaimer about being against disclaimers
Again, I acknowledge the necessity, and have seen far too many cases where the lack of disclaimers resulted in significant misinterpretations, misunderstandings, and ignorance, but I don’t like the way it bloats the text, and have seen numerous examples where the disclaimers were written in precisely the condescending tone I am so against (as if the writer was the only enlightened person in the room teaching a herd of unthinking sheep how to form basic thoughts).

Although, with reference to my other posts, one may argue that I already give far more than necessary disclaimers, just embedded within the text instead of before. I have no comment.
As you may know from one of my previous posts, I have been diagnosed with Level 1 ASD.

Whether I am qualified to talk about autism, given that I am “only” on the mild side of the spectrum, is up to you.

Ranting about self-diagnoses
Yes, this is an actual diagnosis from a legitimate mental health institution; I’m not “self-diagnosed“, where the risk of various biases like confirmation bias or general ignorance of the condition comes into play.

The best one can do, without an objective and thorough examination by a qualified third party, is strongly suspect, but never conclude, that they have the condition. Given the sheer amount of confounding explanations (why does it have to be autism?) and cognitive “blind spots” among other limitations, one cannot possibly objectively evaluate themselves. Even a diagnosis may be within the range of “strongly suspect”, depending on how it was done, mine included, especially for similarly mild cases.

That is not to say that those who strongly suspect they have the condition are always wrong, nor is it to say that the sense of belonging in a community—this applies to neurotypicals too—cannot be useful or helpful for those who don’t meet the “entry requirements”.

As most communities are formed around a shared common interest or understanding, it would not do to exclude anyone who can find common ground with the rest, and provide them with the equal opportunity for mutual support. While there are communities for autism that do require a formal diagnosis, many public ones on the internet do not. Keeping in mind that not everybody has access to the services required to get a formal diagnosis, whether due to unavailability or finances, the support from these communities can prove invaluable.

That said—and here is where the angry rant begins—at the risk of sounding like an elitist, which I don’t believe I am any more than a pedant, those without an objective evaluation by a professional should be a lot more careful when referring to themselves as having autism, as it’s as if they’re so grandiosely confident in their ability to see themselves objectively and evaluate themselves as such that they see no need to even add the qualifier that they have never been formally diagnosed.

I have strongly suspected that I’ve had autism among others for over 8 years before the diagnosis, but not once did I ever become pompous enough to believe I knew for sure that I had this condition—or any other condition for that matter. This was around the time I first bought my copy of the DSM-5, and one of the first things I learned about was the medical students’ disease, and the dangers of self-diagnosing. I believe even the DSM-5 begins with similar disclaimer, though not excessively repeated throughout the book for practical reasons.

Finding that you meet the diagnostic criteria can be a good indicator that you have the condition, but without a formal diagnosis, bloody hell, don’t conclude anything. These online communities don’t literally exclude people for not having a diagnosis; I’ve seen many posts in various forums from people who have never had a formal diagnosis yet were taken seriously anyway, as they should be—not on the grounds of having autism, but on the grounds of being another human being.

This is not against those who always add the qualifier that they are self-diagnosed. I know that many people do describe themselves like this, and I have nothing against them, especially if they are aware of the implications, and even more if they do want a formal diagnosis before making any conclusive statements (it doesn’t have to be autism).

I’m criticising those who claim that they have the condition without any qualifiers unless excessively pressed for more details. I can grant that it’s not always practical to add that qualifier, given that it is more than twice the amount of words, but intention—even if not always visible—is what matters the most here.

Even if you want to make the argument that the traits overlap so much (based on some arbitrary threshold) it might as well be autism (in itself somewhat contentious as the implications are far-reaching), there is little downside to adding the qualifier unless you’re worried about being called out and pummeled into the ground. If this is a community that makes you feel that way, get out while you can.

I know that this is a contentious post, and perhaps it may be necessary to say that I’m not an autism advocate. I have no intention of following their rules, adhering to their lists of banned words, or otherwise restricting my speech in order to appease them. If you’re one of them and are about to gather an angry mob with torches and pitchforks, please also bring a fire extinguisher and some first aid kits.
Safety first.

Why can’t they be assholes?

I’m dissatisfied with our inability to criticise someone with autism for acting like an asshole. I apologise for the swearing in this post, there will be a lot of it. And yes, I sometimes write from an outsider’s point of view, if only because I don’t want to feel like I’m associated with them.

We tell ourselves that we have to understand them, that they have a condition that prevents them from acting like us, but under no circumstances, no matter how frustrated we may become, do we ever feel it is justified to say that they are acting the way they do because they simply are an asshole.

Why can’t they be? Is having autism some special condition that immunises one from having a cantankerous, selfish, and narcissistic personality? Does everyone with autism just naturally have good personalities—are they all simply misunderstood angels that have descended from heaven?

Of course not. There is nothing about autism that says they have to have a particular personality (even if relatively limited), let alone that they are only ever capable of having good personalities. Not even neurotypical people all have the same personalities—let alone all good, so why are we exempt?

There’s a common thought-terminating cliche that goes: “If you’ve seen one autistic person, you’ve seen one autistic person.”

It sounds profound, as with most thought-terminating cliches, but on further inspection, if we just remove the word “autistic”, we get: “If you’ve seen one person, you’ve seen one person.” Not very profound, is it?

It’s strange, the number of things some people with autism think apply only to themselves when they’re the same for everyone else on this planet. It hurts rather than helps the common understanding of the condition, muddying the real differences by putting up arbitrary, disconnected fences on the other side for no justifiable reason other than to perhaps confuse, setting the foundation for further unfalsifiable claims (which in itself isn’t justifiable anyway).

In other words, autism is a condition separate from having an insufferable personality, and it is not disability discrimination to discriminate against those with that kind of personality, unless you believe that being selfish, greedy, and narcissistic is a disability in itself.

This is obviously not to say that it is fair to discriminate against behaviours most definitely caused by autism (though some cases are more borderline), such as not speaking using telepathy in social interactions, having idiosyncratic motor movements or control difficulties, speech difficulties, etc. the list goes on for far too long.

Perhaps it is precisely because the list extends so far that people rather err on the side of not seeming like a bigot than accidentally criticising the wrong thing. As much as the intention is appreciated, it can have the effect of giving far too much leeway to certain individuals, which I will elaborate a bit more on later.

The leniency we provide to people with autism is based on the virtue that they have no ill intentions—just often misunderstood, which we try to take into consideration before judging them too harshly. To believe that none of them have ill or openly selfish intentions, especially for the higher-functioning ones who have strong verbal skills and can communicate well, is fundamentally misled, and may even be borderline offensive, as it means their mistakes aren’t even worth correcting.

A personal example

Several months ago, before I knew I had autism, I met someone via an online game, who told me he had been diagnosed with ASD and ADHD. He lamanted about how it was difficult to make friends on Discord no matter how many servers he joined, as others always end up telling him to leave.

Curious, I asked him more about it, wondering why others would treat him so badly. It is Discord after all, I suspect anyone who’s used it for a while has had at least one bad server experience.

He cared far more about social norms and social interactions than I did, which I thought was atypical for someone with autism, though I may be mistaken, perhaps some people with autism are just really obsessed with social interactions? Then again, this is my perspective, and perhaps my standards are actually really low in reality.

But what about not being able to make friends? It turns out, the answer, after talking to him for some time and based on my humble opinion… is that he’s a self-centred asshole.

He would shout and swear at everybody in public chat channels because they weren’t exclusively talking about him or his conditions. Every one of his complaints was about how people weren’t talking about him, how he deserved all the attention because he was having a rough day and that he was more important than the game (that the server was based on) others were talking about. He hated it when people talked about anything other than him.

I’m not surprised they eventually told him to leave, which he did, but not before yelling “I F***ING HATE YOU ALL” (without censoring) to everyone in the chat. Serves them right for not giving him the attention he deserves.

As time went on, he continued acting obscenely in other servers (mine included), speaking in a very self-centred manner, in addition to sending several obscene images in chat, which some of us politely acknowledged but did not further comment on. He was extremely sensitive and would react strongly to any perceived slight, so nobody would dare to criticise him, and always had the excuse of “I have autism” in case any one actually did, conveniently playing the victim card.

Back then, I did not dare to punish him for breaking the rules out of fear of sounding like I was discriminating against his disability. Perhaps my recent diagnosis has given me the courage to finally stand up against this bullshit; you can’t give someone a free pass for literally everything just because they have a condition—if someone with ADHD is assaulting people I’m not going to argue for their innocence because “they needed an outlet” and that we have to be “more understanding of their disability”.

If anything, I expected someone with ASD to actually read the server rules. I can understand that someone with ASD might interpret rules like “be nice to others” differently, and I have unintentionally slighted people in the past due to this, but for someone with his verbal skills, capable of forming grammatically-correct and meaningful complete sentences, I cannot see how his behaviour could be treated as “oh it’s ASD, we have to be more understanding”, or even “oh it’s ASD, he doesn’t mean it that way”.

They are separate conditions

Cases like these are why I believe having autism and being an asshole are separate conditions. I’ve used this example due to my personal involvement, but this isn’t the only time I’ve seen this kind of person, especially in other online settings.

ASD has to be separated from people like these who give it a bad reputation. This isn’t to say that these people don’t deserve support or should rightfully be ostracised from society, but that we shouldn’t consider selfish, narcissistic behaviours like these part of ASD, and that their undesirable personality traits should be addressed in their own right, even if ASD can affect the manifestation of these behaviours.

While ASD in itself has no cure, I believe people can still be convinced that their narcissistic way of thinking is unreasonable and unfair to others. Or, in other words, autism isn’t a disorder that makes one incapable of comprehending concepts such as fairness, or reasonableness. Perhaps significant cognitive impairment can result in this, but as this weakens my overall argument due to certain potential (but maybe minor) implications, I will not elaborate further on this.

To restate an earlier point for emphasis before finally closing this post, we give leeway to people with autism when interacting with them because we assume they have good intentions that they are simply struggling to convey, or at the very least have no bad intentions.

If they do not have said good intentions, are only acting for their own benefit, or wish to do us harm (again, the “A” in ASD doesn’t stand for “Angel”), that privilege should be situationally revoked. I believe most people have no difficulty agreeing with this. The problem, then, is identifying their intentions, which is precisely the challenge when dealing with ASD.

Closing

How do we tell the difference between someone who’s appearing rude to us because they don’t conform to social norms and someone who’s swearing at us, making unreasonable demands, and playing the victim card whenever make even the slightest remark against them?

There is some (likely legitimate) concern about the slippery slope, where if we allow even a small concession and admit that certain people with autism deserve the criticism that toxic neurotypical people receive (not that they care), then people will slowly try and find more and more reasons to discriminate against those with ASD as they try to force even more concessions.

If it’s possible for someone with autism to also be toxic, and if we can’t always differentiate anyway, then why bother trying? If someone seems rude to me, then they’re rude. I don’t need to spend any more effort than necessary thinking about it.

Extreme positions are much easier to hold—it’s easier to exempt every autistic person for their slights (or vice versa, by not doing so) than to try and carefully discern which ones are genuinely trying to be nice and which ones are just selfish individuals who only happen to have autism. Which, again, is possible because people with autism are still people—people are unique.

Perhaps the most cognitively-straightforward and effective solution really is to give special consideration to everyone with this condition, even if it means disproportionately benefitting the minority who abuse their condition to manipulate others.

As much I despise people who use this condition as a free “I can be an asshole and you can’t criticise me for it” pass, these people are a minority, it is likely the benefits really do outweigh the downsides, and that if we had to err on one side of the cognitive extremes, this is overall the better side.

Although, as a side effect, I’ve developed a fear of telling others about my diagnosis because I’m afraid they will start treading cautiously around me and avoiding any disagreements, essentially hiding a part of themselves for fear of saying the wrong thing. I sometimes test this by saying something unquestionably absurd, only to see the other party agreeing anyway, as if avoiding conflict is their only goal in talking to someone like me.

And I try my best to be friendly too… oh well!

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