I met a fan artist from the Hobbit fandom who’s 40+ years old, who sent me a postcard a couple of years back for Christmas with her art on the card.
When I was about 14, I once befriended, and lost contact with, a 40 year old woman with a full head of gray, curly hair, who was one of the best known Good Omens fan artists of the community. She had apparently been in and out of asylums for years, and I worried for the longest time. I even sent her an email when I was around 18, asking after her well-being. But then she resurfaced when I was 21, here on tumblr. It was one of the greatest and most memorable fandom experiences I’ve ever had.
When I was 15 and using slurs I didn’t know were slurs, 30+ year old LGBTQ+ comics fans on scans_daily patiently but firmly corrected me. I felt mortified, but they never attacked me or treated me as anything other than a dumb kid who made a mistake.
I have a long time friend of close to a decade, who was late twenties when I met her in the comics fandom, and I was a teen.
OLDER FANS ARE CRUCIAL TO THE SURVIVAL OF FANDOMS. Not ONLY because they’re literally the ones keeping fandom afloat (AO3 wasn’t created or maintained by kids, let’s just say), but because older fans generally don’t attack or bully or fuck up a fandom by being aggressive or volatile or overzealous, destroying any enjoyment of a medium.
Single women, married women, LGBTQ+ fans, all in the range of 30-60 years old. I’ve met all sorts of older fans, from when I was 12 on deviantart to now, in my mid-twenties, and not a single one of them has ever hurt me or treated me like dirt. I’ve always felt safer with older fans than with younger ones, because of the people I’ve seen harass, accuse, doxx, bully, and generally engage in harmful behaviour in this fandom, they’ve largely been in the 13-21 age bracket.
Obviously most young fans aren’t like that, but the toxicity is palpable regardless.
@younger fans, if somebody older in a fandom acts in a creepy way, then feel free to avoid them, block them, report them.
But this apparent DELUSION that younger fans have that older fans are “creepy” just for existing needs to be eradicated. Just. Stop. You do not deserve the fandoms they built, they maintained, they keep alive in themselves and all the younger fans they took care of, if you cannot RESPECT THEM.
//Y’all, this is so important. Don’t make us feel like weirdos just for loving this hobby that we’ve had- likely- since before a lot of people on this platform were born. I have a degree in creative writing! I have 11 years (and counting) of college under my belt. I have life advice for you if you want it! I have 15 years of cosplay experience if you need tips. I have money to spend on your art sometimes! Olds are veritable wells of experience and enthusiasm and positivity. Utilize, don’t demonize.
I chalk this up to the gross cult of “maturity” that exists in the Western world, and with extra toxicity in the US. There’s this social pressure to become basically a boring, house obsessed, workaholic nothing once you hit the age of 30 (and much younger for women). No more fandoms, no more comic books, no more entertainment in the form of animation, and on and on. A lot of us over 30 hide our fandom interests from our RL family. We put up a facade of bloodless, beige adulthood. I see this in my own family every single day.
I can’t hold a conversation with my own parents because NOTHING interests them. They don’t read, they don’t have any creative hobbies at all. They watch the news, bitch about the spotty patches on their lawn, and tell me the same 15 stories from 20 years ago over and over again. This is the cult of maturity, which is intrinsically linked to the 20th century obsession with youth. It was a sneaky mechanism by which older people were forced out of the spotlight to make room for the young. “You go over there and be boring and die while we have all the fun you were having ten minutes ago, because if you don’t we’ll accuse you of being creepy and trying to interfere in things that are too young for you.”
Yup. US culture sells you the idea that speculative fiction is for nerdy kids, and that you will grow out of it. Suddenly, business meetings, taxes, and laundry will glow with a grand Responsibility Aura and you will not have time to like things, or miss having said time.
Fandom is what happened when a bunch of nerdy kids grew up and didn’t grow out of it, and realized that taxes and laundry are part of life, but they’re *still* not much fun.
We belong here too.
I’ll go one further and say that it’s not just that there is an age thing, it’s that N. American cultures tend toward categorizing fandoms/interests by demographic. Only certain types of people are supposed to like certain things.
I mean one of the easiest is the trope of “only girls like dolls” and the “girls MUST like dolls”.
We’re now just on to the whole “if you have an interest it must be gendered, aged, orientationed, etc, etc, etc” thing going.
Where was I recently where I was reading, I think it was a CS Lewis, of all things, quote. But it was a writer about “when I was a child I hid the things that were of childhood, as an adult I now love them openly”. I’m wiiiildly paraphrasing here but. Point stands.
Basically when people now start making fun of or noises about things I like my response is : I went through that crap ages ago. I’m not embarrassed. I’m disappointed in them for the noises, but I’m sure as hell over defending what I like to someone outside of my own head.
You’ll find examples of nonbinary and GNC people being accepted all over the ancient and non-western world. It’s almost like sex and gender are actually spectrums and heteropatriarchy isn’t normal.
They were not, and are not, nonbinary. If you’re going to put violent and Colonial language on precolonial people’s and their identities, do it off of my dash.
Using Western terminology to understand other cultures’ gender variance might only result in perpetuating that harm and erasure.
I wouldn’t necessarily even call it “gender variance”, within a gender system where it’s…just how some people are. As a part of that gender system.
Varying from commonly imposed Western systems and allowable genders, sure. That’s not the same thing, though.
Natalie Portman being confused by the fact that you have to say “hi” to someone before starting a conversation in France got me like ?????
“I feel there’s a lot of rules of politeness and codes of behavior there you have to follow. […] A friend of mine taught me that when you go in some place you have to say “bonjour” before you say anything else, then you have to wait two seconds before you say something else. So if you go into a store you can’t be like “do you have this in another size,” or they’ll think you’re super rude and then they’ll be rude to you.” [X]
So that’s it guys. French are not rude, we just don’t like it when people don’t say “Hello” or “Hi” when they start a conversation.
Don’t everyone say “Hi” before they ask something to someone? What’s next? Saying please is also a french thing or others countries does that too?
Canada is similar. We say sorry and please. The Hello thing seems strange, but it actually makes sense.
Bro, this threw me for a loop when I moved up north. Like in the southern United States you say “Hi, how are you?” And then make a few seconds of small talk before you ask your question or order your food and when I went to Connecticut they were like “What do you want?” Without any hello or anything. In other places they just STARE at you waiting on you to place your order and gtfo.
I laid my hand over my chest the first time, and the only way to describe my look was “aghast” before I said “Good lord!” My husband said it’s the most southern thing he’s seen me do. He thought it was hilarious. But…. Like??? That’s rude as fuck??????? Don’t y’all say say “Hello” before throwing your demands at someone??
maybe this is why everyone thinks new yorkers are rude
this is absolutely why ppl think new englanders r rude. no one has any fucking manners
african culture, at least in ghana, demands you greet a person before you ask them something. if youre in an open market they may even ignore you if you dont.
We do this in Australia as well. If you just started straight off saying “yeah I want XXXX” we’d think you’re rude as all fuck. You say hi, then make your request. It’s basic acknowledgement of the other person as a person rather than some random request-filling machine.
Huh. Speaking as a New Englander, I usually go with “Excuse me,” but sometimes “hi” or “hey,” but with no pause – it’ll be, “Excuse me, hi, I was looking for X?” From my POV, it seems rude to get too chatty and waste some stranger’s time; I assume they have better things to do than make small talk with me, so I just get my request out there so they can answer me and get back to whatever needs doing. I always thank folks for their help afterwards, if that helps?
(The rules of etiquette are strange. People say New Englanders are rude and cold, but once during an unexpected snowstorm here in Seattle, my car got stuck and I was standing by the side of the road at a busy intersection in the snow for half an hour waiting for my housemate to come pick me up, and not a single person stopped. Back in Massachusetts, every other car on the road would’ve been pulling up to check to see if I was okay, if my phone was working, did I need a lift, etc.)
No but this was the first thing my cousin told me in France? you never ever ever start a conversation with anyone, not even like “Nice weather today, huh?” without saying Bonjour first. You HAVE to greet them or, just like Ghana, they’ll ignore the shit out of you, you rude little fucker
(And “excuse me” or “pardon me” doesn’t cut it. you still have to open with bonjour)
[and I can’t speak for New England but coming from Chicago and then moving Out West where the culture is VERY influenced by the South and DETERMINED to think of themselves as small town folk… I HATE when I have to make small talk before ordering food??? Like, if it’s a coffee shop that’s pretty much empty I’ll chit chat for a few seconds, but I’m still not going to make inane conversation about the weather unless the weather is extreme.
In a big city it is rude as fuck to waste my time making small talk with me when we are not even friends or neighbors??? I am here to get shit done. There are four other people in line behind me, and I don’t want to waste their time. I am here, I HAVE MY ORDER ALREADY DECIDED BY THE TIME I GET TO THE FRONT BECAUSE I AM NOT A CAVE WOMAN, and I am being polite by saying both Please and Thank You and not wasting other people’s daylight.]
I live in a small northern city, and I feel it would be rude to engage someone in more than maaaaaybe a sentence of small talk before placing my order. In addition to feeling I was wasting their time, I’d feel like I was demanding emotional labour (small-talk is emotional labour for *me*) that they weren’t being paid to give.
so bizarre. New Yorker here. Saying hi, how are you, etc before these kinds of commercial interactions is what’s rude to me – because ffs, there are people in line behind you, we have lives, move it along. It’s really just a dramatic cultural difference – but borne of a real practical necessity.
Oh my god saying ‘hi’ takes less than A SINGLE SECOND YOU ARE NOT WASTING ANYBODY’S TIME
In Spain you have to say hello to people before you talk to them even people who work in retail deserve that bare minimum courtesy hello??
Transplanted New Yorker here, and the feeling here is: people who work in retail deserve the bare minimum courtesy you would afford anyone else, which is to not waste their time. You maybe say a half-second “hi” and/or possibly “excuse me” to be sure you have their attention, then you get to the point as quickly and concisely as possible. You don’t wait to get a “hi” back, you probably don’t ask “how are you”, you definitely don’t talk about the weather. You smile and keep your tone of voice courteous-to-friendly, you say please, you thank them when you’re done, and you do. not. waste. their. time.
Except ”time” is really only shorthand for the concept: you don’t intrude on their lives more than you have to. NY is a very very crowded city which allows for very little personal space, so New Yorkers have developed a form of courtesy that involves minimizing our unavoidable intrusions on each other. Which is why we hold doors without making eye contact, and why we tend to feel that in any interaction with a stranger, it’s actively rude to do anything but get to the point immediately.
Interesting discussion of regional differences in conversational convention. But the amount of “my way is the right way; everyone else is super rude and also wrong” going on in this post is giving me hives.
Hey. Listen. "Polite” and “rude” are relative concepts. Something you were taught was rude may not be seen as rude elsewhere, and might even be the polite thing to do. Conversely, something you might have been taught was polite might be seen as rude elsewhere. Saying “no one has any manners” about a group of people whose culture and, by extension, whose conversational expectations work differently than yours is really arrogant.
In the US the thumbs up means good job or great. In France and Germany it means one, they start counting with the thumb instead of the index finger. In Greece it’s an obscene sexual gesture.
This guy I knew in college worked with the campus d/Deaf/HoH group and told a story about the dinner they had to welcome everyone in. They were trying to tell this little old lady what one of the dishes was, something casserole I forget what kind, and she was getting really flustered. Finally they figured out they were speaking to her in ASL and she was from South Africa. The ASL sign for whatever it was (spinach maybe?) in South African Sign means sex. They were offering this little old lady a sex casserole.
There’s an Italian toast ‘chin chin’, mimicking the sound of the glasses clinking together. It becomes hilarious when Japanese folks are around since in Japanese chin means penis.
As for the South, I will bet you anything that how we have conversations at the register stemmed from the homestead days when a farmer would come in to town maybe once a month and this would be the only time they’d get to talk to someone they didn’t live with. I like talking with customers! If I can get them to smile then it’s a victory and I have a better day for it. It only becomes emotional labor if they’re an outright ass or are sexually harassing me. But in the big crammed city of New York it makes sense to take the get your shit and get out approach, people have a subway to catch. Out here I had to drive myself anyway since it’s fifteen minutes to the edge of town from where I live, so what does it matter if I spend an extra minute at the register?
It’s important to be aware of the differences and ultimately there’s a degree of ‘when in Rome’ that has to happen. Someone who moves from Greece to the US is going to be startled by the amount of thumbs up but ultimately they’re going to have to adjust. Someone from the US is probably going to be shocked that telling someone they did a good job was taken as an insult and they similarly are going to have to adjust. Mom’s a damn Yankee transplant and said it was weird moving to the South and having cashiers younger than her daughter call her dear, but that’s just what we do. Sweetheart, darling, honey, sugar, they don’t have overtly romantic/sexual connotations here. As long as there’s not a leer attached to it if a guy calls me ‘sugar’ when I’m at work it doesn’t parse as a flirt because it’s not one, it parses the same as if he called me ‘miss’. But when a busload of Californians came through it took me three people to realize that ‘baby’ was not flirting, it was just California.
NOTHING is universal.
This is the biggest place I’ve ever worked so it took some getting used to, like any skill, but even being socially awkward it’s easy to tell what scripts to follow. Test the waters, if they don’t respond then okay this is a move them through kind of person, be quick and efficient and to the point, feel good when they smile at ‘last question I promise, do you want your receipt’. If they do then pull out the five small talk scripts, get a smile, feel good when they laugh at the cat small talk script.
It’s also important to note that claiming your culture’s way of doing polite right is a fantastic way to fall into some really bigoted nonsense. In Puerto Rico the personal bubble is much smaller than in the US proper, like RIGHT at your elbow close. I had a cashier who was super uncomfortable because our steward was getting in her personal space constantly and he was pissed off because he was trying to HELP her with moving orders why is she mad at him? Once I sat them down and explained the difference they both had this aw shit moment because from their own standpoints they were being polite and from the others’ standpoints they were being rude. After that they were fine, when he got a little too close she’d say ‘whoa man my bubble’ and he’d laugh and shake is head and step back.
Lots of non-white cultures have things like that, particularly since white America has serious problems with sexualizing ANY physical contact to the point we’re all touch starved. The normal speaking voice is at a higher volume or it’s more acceptable to show your emotions or gesture when you speak. None of this is WRONG, but when people star getting into ‘my culture is the only right culture’ then guess who comes out on top? It ain’t the little guy.
One of my labmates was from Poland, and she had a tendency to come off as kind of abrupt and brusk, verging on mean. In particular, when she was providing feedback on a presentation or paper she could come across as SUPER cutting. Which was not her intention! From the way she would explain it, we had a running joke in the lab, “it sounds nicer in Polish.”
And this is actually true; there are scientific articles comparing the cultural contexts for communication! It’s really neat.
So in (most parts of) America, we equate indirectness with politeness. “Excuse me, would it be possible for you to perhaps pass me that salt, if you don’t mind?” The more roundabout you are, the more we consider that a signal of social courtesy.
In Poland, not only is indirectness viewed as rudely wasting the listener’s time, but directness is viewed as communicating intimacy and friendliness. “Give me the salt.”
…It sounds nicer in Polish. 🙂
Omg I love this
The Effects of Capital, Labor, and Class on Local Etiquette Across International Boundaries
Breaking News: Husbands dying on wives makes them happier
This is so fucking funny to read shshshhss
‘older genarations married people they didn’t actually love or get along with, find relief and new life after their partners die’ could also be put there.
Also, “felt like they needed to stay in marriages that were causing misery” 😐
Great way to live, for everyone involved. And such great social expectations leading to situations like this.
When the society became known as the ‘Kingdom of Women’, tourists began to flock to the area. The Mosuo responded to these visitors by building hotels and other attractions to bring more visitors. Many Mosuo women make a living managing these hotels.
The idea of ‘walking marriages’ has convinced many visitors that the Mosuo lead a salacious sexual life. It is common for visitors to flirt with the local Mosuo women in an effort to seduce them.
Reminded by my tag commentary here, the Roanoke and New River Valleys did/probably still do have bigger queer communities than some people might expect.
Not so much on the party side–at least before I left–but pretty good areas to live and work if you are interested in going about your business without a lot of shitty interference. (In general, but also enough to get specifically mentioned as an oddity. Nope, not just imagining some differences there.)
And I can’t help but miss that sometimes, tbqh. Really was not well prepared for living somewhere that the general approach is…really not like that. At all. When a lot of people would just assume it would go the other way.
Perhaps the most immediately recognizable trait that most autistic people have is difficulty with eye contact. It’s one of the first signs doctors use to look for autism in young children, before language skills would be expected to develop, and it lasts throughout our lives.
Like all of these traits, it’s important to understand this issue from the point of view of your autistic character. (And also like every trait, it’s important to remember that everyone is different, and there are autistic people out there who naturally make eye contact in the typical way and for whom the info in this post does not apply.)
Many autistic people have difficulty explaining why they have a problem with eye contact. First and foremost, it does not come naturally. There is no instinct to look someone in the eye while engaging them in conversation.
Mod Cat says:
“I don’t actually know how to make eye contact. I can’t look at both eyes at the same time. Which eye am I supposed to look at? How do I choose? Do I change periodically? The funny thing is, I didn’t even notice this difficulty before I was about 17, which says a lot about how often I do make eye contact.”
There are autistic adults who seem to make eye contact normally (or almost normally), but this is something learned and trained through repetition. Also, for many of us, most of the time it’s faked.
Faked? Fake eye contact? Yes, you read that correctly. Making real eye contact is actually not nearly as necessary as you might think. There is an area around your eyes we can use as a fakeout zone. If someone is looking within this area, it will look to you like they’re looking you in the eye.
Mod Aira says:
“I had exactly the same issue as Cat regarding eye contact. People were always telling me to ‘look them in the eye’ while I was talking to them, but that was an illogical statement. Which eye? I can’t look in both! No one ever explained it, and I couldn’t figure out how to ask. Whenever I tried, I was accused of being sarcastic and rude, which confused me a great deal. Finally, when I was in my twenties, one person recognized that I was autistic and took the time to explain to me how typical eye contact works. She told me you pick one eye and look at that, then switch now and then. When I found that this made me incredibly uncomfortable and was even painful, she instead taught me how to fake it.”
Try it sometime. Sit with a friend (as many of us have done during our lives) and test out different areas. Have the friend raise their hand when they think you’re looking them in the eye. You might be surprised just how far away your eyeline can be before it becomes noticeable.
This is how Mod Aira personally manages eye contact. “As an accommodation to those around me who are not autistic, I do my best to give the illusion of eye contact whenever possible. I know that a lack of eye contact is uncomfortable for them.” This is something else to note for your characters: autistic people generally spend a lot of time thinking about how they affect those around them, out of necessity as well as empathy.
So there you have the how of eye contact – what about the why? What is it that makes eye contact so difficult for autistic people, to the point where we have to fake it? There are a few reasons and, as with everything else, each person has a different combination of these.
It’s scary. When we look in someone’s eyes, we are overwhelmed. It can feel like their eyes are about to suck you in. It can also feel like they are staring directly into your soul. Since so many of us are incredibly sensitive and hyper-empathetic, we feel an intense discomfort from knowing that someone is looking directly into our eyes. We can be afraid of what they see there. We can get an overwhelming feeling that they will find something wrong, some mistake, some secret. It feels like a massive invasion of privacy, like they’re staring at you naked.
It’s painful. As a part of physical hypersensitivity, there is an incredible amount of information to be found in someone’s eyes. All those little details can hurt to look at, as our brains struggle to keep up with the constant flow of tiny changes. The pain can be physical, like a piercing feeling behind the eyes, a headache, or a feeling like there’s electricity zapping you from inside your head. It’s awful.
It’s distracting. Processing information can be difficult and take a lot of time, and it takes energy to process visual or auditory information. Since conversations are difficult for us in many ways, we really need to focus all our energy on listening to and understanding what the other person is saying. If we’re focusing on remembering to make eye contact (which, remember, doesn’t come naturally), it means we’re paying less attention to what the person is actually saying. Processing both the visual and auditory information takes so long that we can’t keep up with the conversation. Very often, we have to choose between listening and appearing to be listening. Interestingly, some of us find that it’s more effective socially to focus on eye contact while pretending to listen.
Mod Aira says:
“I have to choose between listening and appearing to be listening. I would prefer to actually listen, but processing speech is incredibly difficult for me. To really listen and understand, I have to either close my eyes and focus all my energy on listening, or look at your mouth and watch your lips move, which helps me understand the words you’re saying. I’m a primarily visual thinker, so looking at someone’s lips really helps a lot. But I’ve found that allistic people don’t like this. Even if I assure them that I’m paying attention, they think I’m being rude or not listening. Often they will simply stop talking, convinced I’m not listening anyway. On the other hand, if I focus on eye contact, I can only really process the tone of what you’re saying, and some of the words. But when I do this, look between someone’s eyes and nod when they do, laugh when they do, respond to their tone as well as I can, I find that people accept this positively. Even if I don’t remember anything they said, they still think I was paying attention. It’s very frustrating.”
An autistic person might try to explain this to close friends and family in the hopes that they can ignore eye contact without accusations of “not paying attention.” Sometimes this works, and when it does, it’s a massive relief. To be able to carry on a conversation without worrying about eye contact at all lifts a huge burden. Sometimes, however, it doesn’t work. Many people demand that the autistic person “put in the effort” to appear normal and accommodate those around them, or accuse them of using their autism as an “excuse” to be “lazy” and “rude”. There will be more on reactions like this in another post.
On the other hand, not everyone has the luxury of even trying to explain themselves in this way. They might not know they are autistic (in which case they’re probably constantly confused by social interactions and why people seem to get upset for no reason). They might know they’re autistic but not have an official diagnosis, and be afraid of being told they’re a hypochondriac, lying, or making it up for attention (something that happens a lot). They might simply be afraid of how people will treat them if they find out they’re autistic, and often, there is good reason to fear. In circumstances like these, the person is probably trying their best to succeed at social interactions, but frequently getting bad reactions from people who think they’re rude, selfish, aloof, not paying attention, etc.
When you write your autistic character(s), you have the freedom to mix and match from this list. Maybe they are afraid of eye contact but don’t know why. Or maybe it hurts, and they know exactly why. Or maybe they have no trouble with eye contact. Maybe they fake it, maybe they endure and do it for real, or maybe they rebel against society’s expectations and don’t bother at all. You have a lot of freedom here.
Happy writing!
I find this really interesting because I’ve always had an issue with eye contact making me feel uncomfortable. To me it feels aggressive and very disconcerting to have prolonged eye contact, even with close family. I too watch lips, because I have a hard time hearing people if there’s a lot of background noise. The only times I recall making prolonged eye contact was when I was super pissed off and both times resulted in the other person crying and leaving. I don’t have a formal diagnosis but this reinforces some other things that make me think I should see if I can get a evaluated.
I actually wouldn’t say that there’s anybody who “naturally make[s] eye contact in the typical way”, as much as expectations of how that’s even supposed to work can vary. There are definitely people who have more or less difficulty with meeting the expectations placed on them.
I mean, I’m coming from a culture where the type of sustained eye contact some other people consider “natural” does come across as aggressive. Some very different expected patterns there, so that mine never even really stood out as particularly odd. I had no idea what was going on at first when I got hold of teachers who turned just plain abusive about the issue. (While no doubt wondering wtf was wrong with me that I just kept defying them…)
The big thing there for me is that I am also totally shit at that kind of code switching, even after finding out what the problem was even supposed to be. I’m one of the people who does find some other expectations there near impossible to manage, between the personal discomfort and sustained eye contact continuing to feel very aggressive in most situations because early cultural training. Probably most nonautistic people would have less trouble there, but it’s been a bad combo for me. Especially now, living somewhere that expectations around a lot of things are very different.
Pointing out this other set of factors mostly because so many actual professionals (much less teachers and other people in positions of power) really don’t get it. And often don’t even try before making some really unflattering judgy assumptions, regardless of the reason(s) kids in particular aren’t showing exactly the body language and other behavior they expect.
That’s another story, but unfortunately relevant to so many things. There is no “natural” there, which can make the potential for misunderstandings extra frustrating. It’s also something good to remember when writing, especially involving characters from sufficiently different backgrounds.
I can’t count the amount of people who have said some variation of “I don’t think of you that way” when it comes up that I’m disabled.
Disability (n.):
a physical or mental condition that limits a person’s movements, senses, or activities.
I have permanent paralysis in my shoulder, arm, and hand from an injury to my brachial plexus. My range of motion in that arm is about 40% of what a typical, uninjured arm would be, not to mention my underdeveloped strength, dislocated shoulder, and the resulting scoliosis. I could go on. Based on the simplest, literal definition, I am definitely disabled, because at the very least, compared with a typical body, my movements are limited.*
So, why am I always hearing “I don’t think of you that way”?
Often a person says it to relieve their own social discomfort or cognitive dissonance, either because I’ve self-identified as disabled or because they’ve said something disparaging about disabled people. Examples:
My boyfriend’s mom says she has “crippling self-doubt.” My boyfriend says, “bad word choice,” gesturing to me. She does a double take, looks my way, and says “Oh, I’m sorry, it didn’t occur to me because I don’t see you that way.”
My college roommate and I are chatting and I mention, in a neutral tone, that I am disabled. In the voice of someone finally expressing something that’s been bothering her, she says “I don’t know why you think of yourself that way. I don’t think of you that way.”
In the first example, my boyfriend’s mom uses “crippling,” (cripple (n.): a person who is partially or totally unable to use one or more limbs) as shorthand to say that her self-doubt prevents her from normal activities, or at least from the activities she’d prefer to take part in. When my boyfriend points out that this metaphor implies physical disability (such as mine) necessarily means abnormal, negative, or useless, she experiences discomfort. She relieves it by saying, “I don’t think of you that way,” preserving the abnormal, negative, or useless associations in her head with physical disability. Because she sees me as normal, useful, productive, I must not be disabled. The definition of disability shifts from a value-neutral description of physical or mental difference to a negative social role, in order to exclude me.
In the second example, my roommate does something similar. Although I don’t express sadness or anger when calling myself disabled, it makes her upset, and she pushes back. That’s because, rather than seeing disability as a value-neutral physical or mental difference, she sees it as a negative social role. In her mind, by self-identifying this way, I’m insulting myself.
The problem with both these lines of logic is twofold:
The definition of disability shifts at will in order to protect the nondisabled person’s perception of disability as a negative attribute.
Inclusion and exclusion into this social role shifts at will in order to protect the nondisabled person’s perception of disability as a negative attribute and attitude toward disabled people that they do “think of that way.”
If I’m not disabled, then I have no way to explain why I was told not to become a lifeguard, or why men routinely refuse to date me because my “arm is just too weird,” or why strangers approach me to tell me how great it is that I’m out living life. I lose out on putting a name to these negative experiences (which is a necessary part of healing from them and fighting back) in order to protect nondisabled people’s shifting definition of disability.
Worse still, if I’m not disabled, then disabled people are just the faceless, abnormal, negative, useless Other. If, as soon as a person because a valued figure in your life, they’re excluded from that group, it is far too easy to dehumanize, objectify, and disenfranchise that group.
*I wouldn’t trade that limitation of movement for the world, as it’s caused me to develop an interesting set of physical skills that nondisabled people lack along with character traits that are integral to my personality. But that’s for a different post.
“If, as soon as a person becomes a valued figure in your life, they’re excluded from that group, it is far too easy to dehumanize, objectify, and disenfranchise that group.”
Wow. Thank you for putting this into words so well. I’m going to use this.
Good description. “I don’t think of you as X” seems to function similarly in so many contexts, and it’s depressing.
And it occurs to me again that similar attitudes may well help explain the otherwise baffling figure that “nearly half (43%) of the British public say they do not know anyone who is disabled”. When it’s hard to see how that could even be possible, in reality.
There is also possibly the question of how closely do you need to know someone before even counting them when asked about it.
But, that kind of response (not to mention “just a third (33%)…said that they would feel comfortable talking to disabled
people”) would make a lot more sense if actual disabled people existing in front of them were getting excluded from this very negative stereotyped mental image of The Disabled.
If a neurotypical asks you, “What game are you playing?” they’re not asking you to describe the game.
They’re asking you if they can play too.
If a neurotypical asks you, “What are you watching?” they’re not asking you to explain the plot of the movie/tv show to them.
They’re asking if they can watch it with you.
.
When neurotypicals ask you “What are you doing?”
What you think they’re asking: “Please explain to me what you are doing.”
What they’re actually asking: “Can I join you?”
Now here’s the really fucked up part. If you start explaining to them what you’re doing? They will interpret that as a rejection.
What you think you’re saying: [the answer to their question]
What they think you’re saying: This is an elite and exclusive activity for a level 5 friend and you are a level 1 acquaintance. You are not qualified to join me because you don’t know all this stuff. Go away.
.
This is why neurotypicals think you’re being cold and antisocial.
IT’S ALL A HORRIBLE MISCOMMUNICATION.
I didn’t realize, even thought it took me almost three decades to learn this, that this was such a paradigm changing realization until we had our conversation today.
But it really really is. One of the most bewildering realizations I’ve had is most people don’t talk to learn things unless its related to work or directly towards their own hobbies, all the words and questions are bonding questions if done socially. They are “lets make friends” questions.
So if I answer their question without an opportunity for the person asking the question to give a response or to join in somehow, the asker feels alienated and starts shutting down.
Example: what are you reading?
True answer but not what they’re looking for: Title of book
Best answer for social scenarios where I want to retain/create friendship: This book is about x and y but it has z that i know u have an interest in too.
Example: what are you doing?
True answer but not: drawing
Best answer for friends: I’m drawing but would u like company while I’m working?
And sometimes frankly I’m not in a headspace where I can process people so the answer is something like, “I would like to do something in a day or later, do you want to plan something?”
Tldr: communication is wierd
HOLY
SHIT
that explains so fucking much thank you
(why the fuck do neurotypicals never just day what they mean ie hey this show looks cool mind if I join you)
Further annoying?
They don’t realize that’s what they’re asking and they just feel rejected and go away. So you can’t even ask them what you did wrong because they can’t even put a finger on why they feel the way they do they just know you made them feel bad for some undefined reason.
I think it has to do, at least partially, with this.
There’s a whole lot of Guess Culture, at least in the US where I live, so that’s what I’m going to talk about. What these people are doing is testing to see if you will offer them an invitation by expressing their interest in a roundabout way, because to their perception, just ASKING to join you is rude and invasive. The math goes like this:
– If I ask you if I can join you to watch this TV show, and you don’t want me to, and you say “No, I don’t want you to join me”, then you look like an unfriendly ass.
– If you don’t want to look like an ass, because courtesy is so often performative, you would instead grit your teeth and say “Sure, of course I don’t mind” even though you do. Now I’ve got what I want – I’m watching the show – but you’re not happy because your private enjoyment has been infringed upon.
– I have now placed social pressure on you to do what I want you to do. You couldn’t REALLY say no because that would have resulted in social consequences.
– Therefore, instead of asking, I will merely express interest and gauge your response. This saves us both some embarrassment because you can show me you’re not interested without directly rejecting me as a person, and I can salve my pride a little by attributing your rejection to other things – maybe you were just tired, or cranky, or distracted. I’m still disappointed, but this hasn’t become a confrontation.
That’s basically how this social junk works out, and it’s why a whole lot of people don’t just say what they mean, or ask for what they need – they perceive that doing so is a form of social coercion. In other words, they’re trying to be nice and respect your boundaries, but because you didn’t set those boundaries to begin with, the two of you are just missing each other entirely in this conversation.
Exactly. It has little to do with neurotypical or neurodivergent, and everything to do with culture clash.
If it were ok to say No, then Asking Culture would be more prevalent.
Since it largely isn’t without “looking like an ass,” and being treated accordingly, then a lot of people conform to Guess Culture. Especially here in the United States.
It’s just that Guess Culture is more socially taxing and subtle, and neurodivergents have a more difficult time with it. Surprise! It’s almost like complex social structures are their Achilles Heel.
My family comes from Asking Culture, and it took me forever to conform to Guess Culture. It’s not cuz I’m “autistic,” thanks. I could go more into why I believe, personally, that Guess Culture needs dismantling, but that’s a soap box for another time.
This makes quite a bit of sense. Personally, I haven’t experienced this much although it might just be because I’m from Australia and not the US and Guess Culture might not be as prevalent here. That or my tendency to take things literally means I never pick up on it in the first place. I find that it’s less of a social error (with my neurotypical friends anyway) to say “hey mind if I join you?” if I want to do something with the other person. On the other hand though I was taught that it was impolite to invite yourself to join someone’s activity or to invite yourself over to their house so yeah basically communication is just really weird.
If a neurotypical asks you, “What game are you playing?” they’re not asking you to describe the game.
They’re asking you if they can play too.
If a neurotypical asks you, “What are you watching?” they’re not asking you to explain the plot of the movie/tv show to them.
They’re asking if they can watch it with you.
.
When neurotypicals ask you “What are you doing?”
What you think they’re asking: “Please explain to me what you are doing.”
What they’re actually asking: “Can I join you?”
Now here’s the really fucked up part. If you start explaining to them what you’re doing? They will interpret that as a rejection.
What you think you’re saying: [the answer to their question]
What they think you’re saying: This is an elite and exclusive activity for a level 5 friend and you are a level 1 acquaintance. You are not qualified to join me because you don’t know all this stuff. Go away.
.
This is why neurotypicals think you’re being cold and antisocial.
IT’S ALL A HORRIBLE MISCOMMUNICATION.
I didn’t realize, even thought it took me almost three decades to learn this, that this was such a paradigm changing realization until we had our conversation today.
But it really really is. One of the most bewildering realizations I’ve had is most people don’t talk to learn things unless its related to work or directly towards their own hobbies, all the words and questions are bonding questions if done socially. They are “lets make friends” questions.
So if I answer their question without an opportunity for the person asking the question to give a response or to join in somehow, the asker feels alienated and starts shutting down.
Example: what are you reading?
True answer but not what they’re looking for: Title of book
Best answer for social scenarios where I want to retain/create friendship: This book is about x and y but it has z that i know u have an interest in too.
Example: what are you doing?
True answer but not: drawing
Best answer for friends: I’m drawing but would u like company while I’m working?
And sometimes frankly I’m not in a headspace where I can process people so the answer is something like, “I would like to do something in a day or later, do you want to plan something?”
Tldr: communication is wierd
HOLY
SHIT
that explains so fucking much thank you
(why the fuck do neurotypicals never just day what they mean ie hey this show looks cool mind if I join you)
Further annoying?
They don’t realize that’s what they’re asking and they just feel rejected and go away. So you can’t even ask them what you did wrong because they can’t even put a finger on why they feel the way they do they just know you made them feel bad for some undefined reason.
That is way more of being an imposing burden then just…. you know…asking if you can join.
Well sure, I’m not justifying the response by any means. But it is a reason some people have (especially those dealing with social anxiety or who have had trauma from being excluded).
But the one sure-fire way to be rejected is to never ask though…
I’ll contribute as someone who does have this level of social anxiety on occasion and who sometimes does what y’all are complaining about.
I have been told, many many times, that the sheer act of asking is a burden. Mostly it’s because I’m an Obvious Minority and thus My Existence Is A Burden (yaaaaay childhood racism -_-;;), but the sheer fact that I might want to join in on things is shock! horror! UNTHINKABLE
Also there’s the whole Ask Culture vs Guess Culture thing, which is basically at the heart of this post. I grew up in hardcore Guess Culture – you try to avoid asking anything outright, you have to infer and read between the lines a lot. Which is extremely frustrating even without the added complication of “and people who are obnoxious like you just by virtue of existing should never even ask at all”. If at any point you may be an imposition, you try to avoid it wherever possible – you wait for an invitation, rather than ask for one.
Between the Guess Culture thing and the whole “don’t even bother asking nobody likes you” thing, even asking for things like “can I join you” is anxiety-inducing. With indirect ways at least it’s a save. No invite? Oh well.
Again, I’m not saying any one approach is better than the other – what I’m saying is that there’s layers to these things, whether because of culture or because of anxiety issues or whatever, and people aren’t necessarily trying to be obtuse on purpose. It’s just an issue of cross-purposes and clashing communication styles.
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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