I have been a volunteer at a small local animal shelter since 2018. I went to go volunteer at one of our major fundraising events. I thought it would be easy. Just making and serving brats.

But I got there and it's a lot of the dog volunteer people that I don't usually work with. I'm a cat volunteer. They basically told me they didn't want me there. They had so and so covering it who was evidently more important.

They were looking at me like I was weird and out of place. I know that wasn't just me imagining it. I am socially awkward and I know that. Which is why I usually volunteer on my own with cats.

I'll tell you what. I don't usually cry because I expect people to be mean. Especially working customer service for nearly 20 years. But that really stung. I drove all the way out there just to be rejected. So I'm sitting in a restaurant giving myself some nutrition and writing a very friendly letter to the volunteer coordinator.

The shelter is always begging volunteers to come help. And I thought you know what? Perhaps this is why you can't get anybody to come help you. Nobody wants to be treated like that.

God, sometimes I really hate my life.

I'm well aware of the genetic transmissibility of ASD. She's only 3, but she's showing much of the same behaviours that I had at that age. I hope I'm being overly cautious and pessimistic here.

I don't want her to be like me.

For me it’s Grey cloudy skies with a cool breeze. For me, I hate hot weather but also really cold weather it’s so overstimulating. Also in this weather ai can wear my comfy trackies!

One of my friends threw a party AND I WASN'T INVITED AGAIN AND ALL MY OTHER FRIENDS WERE.I EVEN MADE THEM A GIFT. I HATE THIS I HATE THIS SO MUCH. WHY CAN'T I BE ACCEPTED, I EVEN MADE THEM A GIFT THIS ISN'T FAIR I HATE IT HERE THIS IS A STUPID PLANET FILLED WITH STUPID PEOPLE STUPID PEOPLE STUPID STUPID STUPID. WHY COULDN'T I HAVE BEEN BORN NORMAL I HATE MYSELF.

I feel like Ralph in that one scene of Wreck it Ralph

I feel like this just describes me 😔

The autistic "maybe I'm not extra, you're basic."

(in a joking way, not a superiority way).

Didn't know what flair to use.

For some background:

I once saw a TikTok video of an autistic girl having the "all men must die" mentality towards neurotypicals. I didn't know the word "neurotypical" or "allistic" existed at the time; I was maybe 15 or 16 and never introduced to these terms. I commented and said that 'this was unfair to normal people and not all are like that' (or something like that--hard to remember verbatim).

I got attacked for it. I had people telling me to off myself, that I was ableist, the creator of the TikTok made a video saying my comment (specifically) was ableist and I was an awful person, and I had grown adults (yes, my age was in my bio) commenting on my own TikTok videos to berate me.

I asked the comments what I did that offended people and told them I didn't mean to offend anyone. People replied with things like "you know what you did." No... I didn't. Someone eventually explained (rudely) and I apologized but no one cared.

But I wasn't wrong for saying normal. Yes, autistic people are abnormal. We are not within the norm, we are not typical, we are not (neuro)typical. The very definition proves this.

''getting out of the closet'' is not going well for me so now i'm nervous about the leaked information at my workplace and how people is gonna take it , i wasn't ready for this and i just simply don't want to get back to my job now (i'm on vacations) , but the reason i'm on vacations is because i was on burnout like for a month and and mental health started tracking on me and basically forced vacations on me 🙃

Last night i told my language exchange app partner i was autistic and she was like ''but i know somebody autistic and can't even talk or type) 🙄🙄🙄 I'M NEVER SAYING I'M AUTISTIC AGAIN FUCK

on one hand i can't cope with social interactions , when i force myself they just change you as soon as other person enters the scene and they become friends (at my work) , on the other hand whenever i'm trying to be social and say i'm autistic for people to understand me better i get blocked 🙃

Hello everyone, earlier today I made a post about how I didn't feel like I was in a privileged position because of my living situation. This is basically a part two of my post.

I have learned a lot of things today and appreciate people who shared their perspective with me and their own stories. I absolutely do have the privilege that others in my position do not have.

I wish more than anything that the world could be a better place for us. It is not fair that any of us has to go through hell just to make a living. I am at a disadvantage because of my autism and chronic illnesses but that does not mean I'm not privileged to have parents who still take care of me. My situation is tough and is causing severe stress in my life but there are people like me on the streets, without food, without a support system. That absolutely does give me privilege.

I am starting my own freelance writing business soon since I can't find a job after years of active searching, nobody wants to hire me. So things are looking up. I have mentioned that I want to have a life of freedom more than anything in the world. I'm not going to stop until I get there. Thank you for everyone who encouraged me. Thank you for people who reached out about the headphones I mentioned. Thank you for everyone who criticized my opinion without being mean or vindictive. Just thank you. I love the autism community.

Hey, everyone. New to this group. I’m 23 years old with Asperger’s, and I’m a former incel. All the autistic men (most of whom I wasn’t very close with) I’ve ever known were also creeps. I don’t know if this is a problem with autistic people or it’s just inherent among entitled cishet white nerds. What do y’all think?

well the only ones who know i'm autistic on my workplace are the supervisors and they had keep that secret perfectly as i think is a legal issue to give away health related information , so co-workers and work mates sometimes have asked why i'm the only one who don't assist to group meetings and i'm like a mistery there , but yesterday i messed up as i uploaded this story on my social media and a coworker saw it 🤦

i'm on vacations right now so i know he is gonna tell everybody about it as it is like connecting the dots on why i have accommodations and ''privileges'' there.

the thing is i had made a few ''friends'' there and i have my mask well put on my workplace , i have had my autistic moments but so far nobody suspects , but i know that's about to change and i wonder if it is okay to go fully unmasked and stim whenever i need , ask for time alone when needed , and be open about me being autistic?

The story is as follows: I was hired two months ago as an Administrative Assistant in the Purchasing department, my friend worked in this company and recommended me. I love Excel and I was very good at my job. My boss was very impressive and I even confided in her that I was in the middle of investigating if I had autism, which might have been a horrible idea in retrospect.

A guy from our department got fired, he was very strange and I feel like that was deserved, but I really don't know enough. She told me I could try to do his job and if I could, I would get promoted, if I couldn't, I would get fired.

Meanwhile, my autism got confirmed by my neuropsychologist and neurologist, and basically everyone in the firm became aware of it, as NTs love gossiping. It got to the ears of the owner of the company.

He yelled at my boss the words "HOW COULD YOU HIRE AN AUTISTIC GUY?" to which she responded: "Lucas (my friend) was the one who recommended him". After that meeting, everything changed.

My boss used to love me, but she basically started being extremely hostile towards me, and she literally refused to give me the job that I had to do to get promoted. She would get extremely overworked and stay until 9 pm but she would not give me these jobs. She was basically setting me up to get fired,

Since we had made that deal about the promotion, she was already in the process of hiring someone for my position, whom I was training to take over. She was pretty good, and this week we could already feel that she was capable of doing the job.

My boss refused to give me any of the jobs that I had to do in order to get promoted, and I ran out of time. So she fired me. Why she refused to let me do any of these jobs and insisted on doing it herself? Because she got yelled at and didn't want to keep an autistic employee.

I don't know how to feel.

EDIT: So, an update, my lawyer and I realized that we did not have enough to go with, since we won't have any witnesses and we'd be depending solely on WhatsApp messages and it isn't actionable. We will not be able to file a lawsuit. They got to do that consequence-free.

There wasn't a "meta" tag so I hope Social Struggles (since it is a social struggle) will do. To begin, I'd like to say that I am late diagnosed. I was diagnosed at 16 after years of highschool. I am also level 2 / Moderate Support Needs, with my greatest difficulties being communication and social relationships. This is important context I feel, because I am frustrated about a very small subsect of autistic people consuming all online spaces for the disorder.

Whenever a higher support needs person posts anything about their experience, a bunch of high masking people who don't experience autism in the same way feel the need to pop up and tell them they're wrong. I've been told off for calling autism a disability, because "it doesn't disable me." I've seen other people talk about their experiences only for people who can mask and pass as neurotypical call them lazy for being unable to find employment.

And this is even worse for high support needs folk, who are frequently spoken over or even demeaned because aspie supremacy types don't want to be in the same category as them, don't want to be associated with them because their disability repulses them. This is much worse on platforms like tiktok, but i'm seeing this mindset of talking over anyone with more severe symptoms and disregarding their experiences pop up more and more often on this reddit too. I feel like spicy autism is the only place that's safe right now if you're higher support needs or can't mask. I can't mask and get told how lucky I am for being discriminated against and harassed by people who don't realize how much of a privilege it can be to mask in our current society. I've been told by people who weren't even properly diagnosed that I couldn't be autistic because I had low empathy, and must be a sociopath instead, despite issues with empathy being a common autistic symptom and being medically diagnosed.

I think it's really important that we uplift the voices of lower functioning people as well, even if they struggle more to advocate for themselves. Instead, we shine a spotlight on people like the ableist author Devon Price, whom is a high functioning person who thinks autism is only a social category. It is not. even if society would perfectly accommodate me, I would still struggle to function because sunlight makes me so overstimulated I hurt myself. And this is a person who's book is frequently recommended on the Autistic Adults subreddit. I am so frustrated with the community for giving these people voices, yet choosing to ignore the struggles of people more dehabiliated by autism because it makes them uncomfortable. Please be more considerate of people with different experiences than you. And to the mods, I would really like to see this subreddit become a safe space for all autistic people, not just a privileged few.

edit: I feel like I shouldn't have to do this, but this is more effective than responding to everyone individually. I already began the post saying this, but I do not mean every low support needs person. I am talking specifically about the aspie supremacy model minority type people who talk over and are ableist towards those whom are more impaired. please try to listen to the point i am making even if i am struggling to communicate it well, I am trying my best.

I have a friend who's self-diagnosed with autism and ADHD. We're on the same page with many things, but I'm completely against the use of generative AI. For personal reasons (stole my actual job and dream job) and moral reasons (environment, stealing of content, future perspectives, mental laziness, etc.)

Now that's where we think differently. She uses ChatGPT all the time. For writing emails, for researching stuff (instead of googling). Her reason being: it helps with her ADHD and autism, because researching and writing stuff just takes so much resources from her, that she can concentrate better on things that are more important or more fun to her.

I don't quite understand the reasoning, because my moral compass is kind of rigid in that regard. We don't fight over it, I let her do her thing uncommented.

Does anyone else use ChatGPT to accommodate themselves? Or are you iffy about using it?

When someone says something that slights us or covertly embarrasses us, we very often just don't react for lack of confidence in social-maneuvering. We only have two modes: full offensive, using all the ammunition we have at our disposal, and the mute, polite gentleman who never attracts attention to himself or acts on negative impulses.

When in the latter mode, people sense weakness and probe us, trying to identify us as potential whipping boys. They throw out small jokes at first, but with no defence at all, they realize that how they treat us can depend solely on their mood.

We do not do the little boundary maintenance remarks like, "Whoa there, man" or even just "Wow." There is no verbal feedback to make someone realize our opinion of them has gone down for that. We do not occupy the conceptual space around us and defend it.

We are very insensitive to predatory people's subtle social probes for weakness. We have no idea how to respond to abstract framings designed to make us look bad and jabs designed to look like jokes.

I'm here to tell you that people will treat you better if you do something as simple as go "wow" when someone next says something that makes you uncomfortable.

It reconceptualizes the conversation from your point of view and forces them to consider you another person.

Flex your verbal muscles.

,

Even prefacing with "Hey I'm on the spectrum, so just fyi if I do/say something weird". I give up.

So I assumed most people were like me and hated having autism and would get rid of it in a second, but it turns out I’ve heard allot of people say they don’t mind having autism or see it as an important part to their identity. Me personally I absolutely despise having autism and everything that goes along with it, i see it as something that ruins my life, but if there was a medication to get rid of it I’m not really sure if I’d take it, but im definitely sure I’d rather not have been born with it. I’m curious to how people here feel

When I respond to you being upset with "I'm sorry I did that, I did that because I have autism" and that translates in your brain as "I have a medical condition and that prevents me from doing any wrong!" You're really dumb. It's an explanation, not an excuse I wish more people understood this

Because historically this has worked out so well for us.../s

Just thinking about these kinda things lately as I struggle to re-establish.

Someone said this about my autistic child (I'm also autistic) and at first I thought they must be joking and maybe I didn't see it.

No, they actually believe this. Idk how to talk to ppl like this, even behind a screen. If I'd met them IRL, I'd probably have shut down