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You don't want to be on the progressive stack. Being on the stack means being treated like a child, it means that your wins can always be questioned, and it means the worst representatives of your "group" become the loudest and most influential.
You want to pick yourself up by your own bootstraps and fix whatever is making you miserable as long as you have consciousness and basic analytic abilities. I think this starts by learning what is actually abnormal. To some extent, "stimming" and "masking" are things everyone does. Everyone "learns" social cues, some just are naturally better at it. Everyone acts differently among different people and everyone has certain aspects of themselves that they hide from others. It's just a matter of degree for these things, even if the degree can be quite high and even though a lot of this stuff starts with outside factors that we don't control.
But I think the dislike "NTs" have towards autistic people is very similar to the dislike towards depressives, because I think (I suppose controversially) that people with both conditions can work on themselves to basically be normal, but both people of both groups often resent the idea that they can. For autistic people, I think they should just record themselves on their phone, and just try to analyze how they are talking and how others are talking in conversation. They should find NTs they trust and ask them to itemize everything they do differently than they are supposed to.
What will the result be? Probably shame. Being told how you are wrong or different naturally results in a lot of shame. And this is where I think a lot of the pushback comes from autists, from depressives, from minority groups, etc. But that is the point where you can say, I'm a grownup, I can deal with shame and move forward.
They don't pick it.
They 're born with it and stuck with it. That's why it works.
That's the beauty of it. Leninism stopped working around the time working class men saw they could get a decent lifestyle under capitalism.
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I disagree. Quite strongly infact. For the most part autistic people are largely treated like children due to misconceptions about what it actually is, unless they mask to a near perfect neurotypical standard. When you mention to people that you are autistic, people automatically assume that you are some screaming, severely obese manchild who punches himself in the head and rubs his own shit on the walls, and whatever wins they make are done under fake self. Getting onto the stack can only an upgrade at this point.
Masking actively hurts autistic people. It is not the case that you learn to mask enough and you manage to permanently graduate into being an NT, with all the privileges that come thereof. It is an exhausting, miserable slog where you are constantly watching everything you say and do, where you are perfectly aware that no one around you likes you for who you are and if you make one misstep all your signifiers of success will desert you. What is the point of enduring a ceaseless uphill struggle for such people? I have only ever felt happy and liked around my autist friends.
The "best version of yourself" seems to be what is of most utility and least discomfort to neurotypicals, not what would allow someone like me to live a happy, fulfilling life.
Let's say there are three ways people can generally react to you: Disgust, pity, and respect. I believe that there is a world where as a group autistic people are generally treated with respect. Going on the stack means trading that for pity. Either is better than disgust. But I think the respect is worth aiming for, and I think it's where we are trending anyway. I certainly don't think of autistic people the way you describe, and don't know anyone that openly does. I work with autistic and non-autistic people and everyone is respectful to everyone, no one is making fun of anyone behind their back etc. I think things like this would be way worse like 20 years ago.
But looking at that study, which was a survey, it basically confirms my beliefs. You have this broadly shared set of behaviors in regards to masking across autistic and non-autistic, with some extras only exhibited by autistic. But then you have the shame response coming from the autistic group that hates it, that feels suicidal etc. What I believe, and I accept you may disagree, is that there is a shame element here, that is making the masking feel worse than it really is.
Lastly I'd just say that the fact that you have been able to find people you are happy and liked around is a profoundly good thing, and should be enough once you've found it in a stable place. At that point, you can weather the storms, because you have your people. And you can still fight for social change and respect etc. but you don't need the sham that is the progressive stack to do what it does, which I think is vampiric and ultimately soul-destroying, but that's just my personal opinion. Cheers.
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This has the vibe of “women and non-Asian minorities have always been the primary victims of identity politics that transfer income and opportunities to them from white and Asian men.”
I'd more than happily be treated as a child, have my wins questioned behind closed doors by wrong-thinkers, and have the "worst" representatives of my group being the loudest and most influential (as their loudness and influence only result in more benefits for me) if it means I, my relatives, my descendants get to enjoy preferences to the tune of +280 or +230 points on the SAT or the equivalent in education, employment, promotions.
I mean it's a sham, and it's leading to a less liberal society, and if you embrace it you're part of why it's worse. If you don't believe in personal responsibility or you get brainwashed, or don't think to much then you can live with that comfortably. If you're striving to be the best version of yourself, it's a hindrance. And I think the material benefits in return are ultimately not that consequential.
From the perspective of some, in both Blue and Red Tribes, plenty of powerful people seem to have abdicated personal responsibility and pawned off consequences onto others. Autists bootstrapping themselves, by themselves, probably aren't going to produce more apologetic politicians or CEOs who slash their own pay when times get tough.
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The majority of autists who are high enough functioning to (successfully) do what you’re suggesting already do so. That’s what “masking” is.
The ones who don’t mask are typically the ones who are more autistic. They’re both worse at understanding what’s wrong with how they act and care far less on an emotional level what others think of them in the first place.
The primary reason autists complain about masking (be it the ones who mask 24/7 or those who refuse to) isn’t shame; it’s that it’s a massive pain in the arse. This is to be expected; everyone bitches and moans about the annoyances in their life. The only difference is most people don’t empathise with their complaints because they find unmasked autists annoying.
Well to be frank, I've met plenty of high functioning autistic people who I think could do a way better job at masking, and I doubt many people are really doing all the things I suggest, I think most people just find a rut they're comfortable in and see how far it takes them. If autistic people want to show the receipts, and really lay down a whole list of things they do every day on the normie grind to impress me, I'm all ears, but it better be significantly more onerous than what say, a NP person with some social anxiety has to do.
But that said the question of how much sympathy people get for how much trouble they go through is basically a worthless train of thought. Most of the sympathy going around is false, virtue signalling, or confused. Each human being is lucky if they find a few who really understand them, are there for them, and able to listen reciprocally. If you haven't found that person, you're no different than an able white guy with no friends. You're two sad sacks looking for people who understand them. There is literally no difference in that respect, because for each person there are other people who understand, or who are willing to listen, and you only need a few. If that isn't filling then something deeper is wrong.
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"Never be on the stack, unless you can be a rep" sounds like a lucrative if somewhat spiritually impoverishing position.
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