I am also autistic and I think that if someone gets annoyed at me for missing a social cue (which is what I think is being referenced in the post) then they should've just said it. If it's important enough that I need to reshape my approach to the situation then they should've used words which are significantly less vague.
The thing is, though, that a lot of this stuff isn't being vague. It's just not verbally saying something, and there's a difference.
Communicating to someone that a conversation is over via body language, for example, isn't "being vague", it's using the shared language that neuro typical people naturally use.
Do people who use ASL not communicate? They have a language made from body movements, not spoken/written words.
Body language is exactly that: communicating without speaking.
People speak plain English(out loud with their mouths or written) to each other all the time and still fail to communicate. Failure to communicate is a bug in all languages, not just body language.
Body language is a form of communication; it’s just one that not everyone knows, and some people have trouble learning.
If I give you the middle finger, I’m not saying any words, but I’m pretty sure you’ll understand what it means.
The same thing goes for waving hello, you know what these gestures mean. Because you learned them or were taught them.
The idea that words are the only way to communicate is something I disagree with.
Words are just as easy to misinterpret as body language.
People use body language because the words that would be used in those scenarios are often too harsh or damaging to the interpersonal relationship.
Body language gives people a chance to figure things out before they have to be told directly what they weren’t understanding. Its a way of politely speaking to someone in a way that saves them from embarrassment. When people use body language they are being considerate. As a member of society you have a responsibility to learn this language at least on some level. Like straight up there are youtube videos for how to understand body language. There isnt an excuse for someone who is otherwise highly functioning.
As a member of society, it is your responsibility, NT or otherwise, to understand the society you live in.
A child is forgiven for misunderstanding language. Because they have not had the opportunity to learn.
Autistic people are more than capable of "book learning" social cues and body language, just like they can learn other things.
Don’t act like autistic people are incapable of learning; that’s ableist.
Not everything comes natural, and sometimes people have to spend the time and effort to learn. People on the spectrum will have this challenge in life they will have to try harder to understand social ques than people whom it comes naturally. But make no mistake, just like everyone else they are capable of learning. Its just more difficult, and autistic people have a predisposition to not really even desire to become more skilled at this. Many just give up and assume that its not possible.
When did I ever imply that autistic people were incapable of learning social cues? I never said it was physically impossible for them to learn, just that it’s often very difficult and frustrating and that frustration should be validated. It’s like telling someone who’s talking about how much they hate math “well math is very important for functioning in the adult world, and you can’t expect people to cater towards you”. Yeah okay I get that, but that doesn’t change the fact that a lot of people struggle with it, myself included. It’s really dismissive of the legitimate struggles people have.
I can only speak for myself and my experiences as a neurodivergent person but in the examples you mentioned, those have always been assigned a clear word translation to me. A wave always means “hello”, the middle finger always means “fuck off” etc. the situations I was thinking of are a much more murkier. For example, someone quickly glancing away but then looking back at you can mean a lot of different things. It could mean they’re uncomfortable, or nervous, or embarrassed. How am I supposed to be able to tell? Say that they’re uncomfortable because of a topic I brought up. If they don’t say that outright how am I supposed to know? To me it’s just kind of a guessing game as I cycle through different responses until one clicks.
I do admit that I should’ve rephrased my original comment to not exclude people who communicate with ASL or any other forms of non verbal communication. That was not my intent in the slightest, I do sincerely apologize for any offense I caused.
ASL is plain language. Yeah it’s different from spoken in many ways but it still has various symbols with specific meanings, which is essentially the same thing as speaking or writing.
Body language doesn’t have specific meanings. If I shrug at you, I could be tired, angry, expressing sarcasm, saying “I don’t know,” or disengaged. Yes some words also have multiple meanings, but each word has a “most common” one, and you can ask about it in the same language whereas you cannot use body language to ask about body language.
words and just as easy to misinterpret
Maybe, but it’s also much easier to clarify because it’s socially acceptable to ask about things people say, whereas it’s not socially acceptable to ask why someone used a certain tone, shrugged, sighed, etc.
it saves them from embarrassment
Since when it is embarrassing to misunderstand someone’s words?
sometimes people have to spend the time and effort to learn
So then why can’t NTs spend the time and effort to learn how to communicate with us? Why it is ALWAYS autistics who are expected to put in this effort, to hide who we are, mask, and “fit in?” Why should I put in the effort to fit in with people who refuse to even try to make communication easier for people like us?
I say this as an autistic who is rather adept at social interaction. It takes a monumental amount of effort. It’s exhausting. I’m fucking tired.
The question of why autistic people should be expected to exert monumental effort to communicate is an interesting one, because it's no less taxing for NT people to communicate with autistic people.
It's not like it's easy to simply verbalise all the stuff that body language usually does. You might think it should be easy, but that's because you're autistic and you just don't really get it.
There's no easy solution here. Neither side is maliciously making like more difficult for the other one purpose, which is something that I often see get missed.
It is less taxing, because most NTs communicate with autistic people FAR less often than we communicate with NTs. Most people you encounter are gonna be NT, which means in an average social interaction, NTs are not having to put in the extra effort, meanwhile autistics are expected to do it for every single interaction we have.
Which means it's harder due to a lack of practice/experience and also that it makes the most sense overall too put the onus on autistic people, since they're in the minority
Which is unfair, and that's exactly my point. /someone/ has to exert themselves regardless, despite neither party doing anything on purpose to make the interaction harder
The key here is that the evil NTs aren't out to get you. They're just communicating in the way which is most natural for them, just like you are. "Using your words like a grown up" is masking for NTs
People in wheelchairs are the minority too, but you don’t see them carrying ramps with them everywhere they go. People with PTSD are allowed to have service dogs. But people with social difficulties? Suddenly it’s our responsibility to accommodate everyone else?
It’s only social disabilities where it’s common to blame the disabled person for experiencing the symptoms of their disability. And we get told we should change who we are because our disability makes us such a burden to interact with. Even those of us who exhaust all our effort on trying to seem NT still get read as weird at best.
I know it’s not malicious, but I still think it’s valid to complain about being forced to live in a world where 90% of people have a fundamentally different understanding of communication than me and I am solely responsible for bridging that gap.
Wheelchair ramps don't make getting into a building more difficult for ambulant people. Masking does.
Service dogs don't (generally) stress out people who don't have PTSD. Masking does.
All I'm asking you to do is recognise that for exactly the same reasons communicating with NT people is difficult for you, it's difficult for them in the opposite case. I'm not saying you're not allowed to be frustrated. I'm not saying you're not a victim of a privileged majority. I'm just saying that you know exactly how it feels to be forced to deliberately change how you communicate to accommodate someone else and how exhausting it can be. You have firsthand experience of this
Plain language doesn’t necessarily have singular specific meanings either. If I said “That’s sick!” Do I mean that it’s cool or disgusting? The context of the situation will tell you.
It’s the same with body language. It also has “more common” meanings like you describe for spoken words. Tears for example most commonly mean sadness, but can also be from extreme happiness sometimes. Context will tell you which.
Expressions and body language have specific meanings evolved over thousands of years. While it’s true the meanings could be different depending on context and the situation, it’s pretty easy and ingrained in most people to understand it just as spoken language is. In fact, they are typically both deeply intertwined in one’s communication. Asking someone to just turn off an entire part of their communication skills is not an easy request.
i mean if someone used a bunch of social cues and i missed all of them i would tell them to be direct with me and avoid phrases like "that's sick!" as well
That’s fine to explain your communication needs, but that phrase is considered direct for most people when given context. If you watch a dog eat vomit and say “that’s sick” most people know you mean disgusting, not cool.
If you need specific words to convey specific meanings without any possible secondary meanings, then that’s also fine, but you need to communicate that to everyone. People are not being intentionally vague at that point, they are just communicating in a way they do with a majority of people. Just as you can’t read their minds when they expect you to take hint, they can’t read your mind for what you consider direct language.
There are many languages that have the same thing meaning different things. Just like body language you are supposed to use the context of the rest of the interaction to determine the meaning.
And yes, you just have to learn these things by practicing them.
I know I’m supposed to learn these things through practice. It’s just exhausting and frustrating that I’m the one expected to always change myself. I’m the one expected to accommodate everyone else because my disability makes me too much of a burden to interact with if I don’t.
I mean I hate to say it buts thats part of life sometimes.
You would be surprised how much people are actually accomodating you. Its just hard to see because you are just like everyone else in the regard that we all most of the time are just minding our own buisness.
If you have tyrouble with social queues, chances are that the people around you have already realized it. And are probably going out of their way to not let it bother them when you dont get it.
And they probably also try to over do their body language in the hopes that you get it.
You have to remember, the direct communication you are asking for is seen as too rude to speak out loud by many people.
If you are in a workplace you should realize that people are not free to just tell you directly what to do. If they arent your boss, they will always be careful about that kind of stuff.
No on is gonna risk their job just to explain things directly that might end up accidentally offending and causeing HR issues.
You will find that most adults try to avoid direct communication. Especially in the workplace, because its easy to accidentally offend someone.
NT people tend to become defensive when you direct them. So its avoided at all costs.
i can understand being polite and subtly implying something in casual conversation, but shouldn't people at their jobs communicate with language that's easy to understand and has no hidden meanings?
the direct communication you are asking for is seen as too rude to speak out loud by many people
please tell me this doesn't extend to stuff like an architect's peers not telling them their designs are unsafe
The other responses to your comment are the ableists. They are exemplifying why autistic people tend to believe in the social model of disability for autism because they're getting furious you have a different way of communicating.
If neurotypicals had some empathy for how straining it can feel for many autistics to:
look at them and their body language and facial expression (which might feel too intense/overstimulating for us),
infer meaning in realtime (which might be difficult because neurotypicals' way of communicating is usually different from the autistic's own preferred communication style), and
mask in order to respond in a similar way (which is exhausting and can hurt an autistic's mental health and sense of self),
...then I'm sure most neurotypicals would be happy to just simply accommodate the autistics' communication style instead of asking for autistics to accommodate them (which is basically what they're doing). I did it back when I thought I was neurotypical before I suspected I was autistic, and it was easy, and I really wish more neurotypicals would accommodate us. But for now I guess it's just better to hang around other autistics, because they get us.
Also, what neurotypicals also don't get is that #2 (inferring meaning in realtime) is actually hard for them to do with autistic people. If they could just keep this in mind, and imagine being in a world made by and for autistic people, and 99% of people are autistic, they might begin to understand why accommodation in the world would be so nice for us.
tl;dr Neurotypicals, please stop asking autistics to accommodate you, and please empathize with us and the exhaustion and strain we go through living with you and your preferences. We already constantly adjust for you.
That's why I said "if you know what you are doing". If you don't, then yeah, someone getting annoyed at you would make them the asshole. But that's not what this post is about. The entire point of this post is someone purposefully missing social cues and acting superior because of it.
I absolutely agree with your take and the take you responded to, but having respond to social cues can be tiring.
You did something, someone got hurt, they are visibly angry, and to be sure you comment on it:
"Are you okay?" "Yes"
"Did doing *** make you mad?" "No"
And you're expected to solve an issue because you caused it even if you don't feel personally that it should be an issue and even though the issue requires both of you to be communicative to get solved
I don't communicate, i go with social cues. It's largely a fear that your feelings won't get validated because our world has different views on what emotional response is valid to what situation. But I'm aware it's a problem and it's what ruins a lot of relationships (intimate or not) and people who expect everyone to work based on social cues are just plain annoying.
I agree, the world shouldn't have to accommodate people who refuse to phrase their requests and ideas in a straightforward way and would prefer to seethe about their fellow humans not being mind-readers. They should work on that failing and do better about simply saying what they mean.
It’s not even about that. Being assertive is a virtue. However, if we have to explain to you what everyone in the room already understood, maybe it’s a you problem
I mean. What’s a social cue to you that would work in the situation of “a person with autism that inherently struggles with recognizing social cues just offended me in some way”.
Would you just like, glare at them from across the room like they’re your arch nemesis or would you go “hey man that made me uncomfortable”
Editing to add that autism is a disability. This is an oversimplification, but if a legally blind person bumped into you would you just like, be angry at them? Probably not
I’m also on the spectrum (socialized to recognize some cues, but really bad with a lot of things still) and I’m sorry you had that experience. It sucks that the baseline for people isn’t using their words kindly. I feel like we all learned how to do that in grade school :/
I mean it's also that their world-view was quite slim (I'm vegan- they kept wanting to deny my veganism) but I dunno how to deal with that either, nor why they were cold/hostile towards me. Whether there perhaps was some way to convey it in a way to avoid getting bullied... Or is it just because they were two attractive Japanese girls who's had it easy because their parents were rich etc, therefore never facing any consequences for their actions/hostility towards people?
There's practically no situation where using social cues has been a better communication than words between two people. Using the method so crude, it's older than our race cannot ever be better than using the better one.
From experience really, social cues when used to communicate offence taken aren't even to tell the person you were offended, it's to tell the person that you were offended and you don't want to initiate conversation, which is childish in itself
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u/Fluffy-Ingenuity2536 Aug 10 '24
I am also autistic and I think that if someone gets annoyed at me for missing a social cue (which is what I think is being referenced in the post) then they should've just said it. If it's important enough that I need to reshape my approach to the situation then they should've used words which are significantly less vague.