River

just saw this reply, so ignore the stuff i said about masking. i also apologize for the potentially aggressive tone i used, so ill try to explain my feelings more impartially.

to me, personally, this read as a 'beginner's guide', which is not inherently bad, but also isn't. particularly helpful. a lot of autistics who have these societal complaints already do these things, and so hearing 'how to mask' is not any more helpful to me than it would be if i, someone who is not schizophrenic, gave you, someone who has lived with it their entire life, advice on how to cope with delusions. it also doesn't get at the core of several things that we cannot change about ourselves. yes, it's great for overall masking, but what happens in a specific situation that doesn't follow the binaries you described? what if the other person lies when you ask about their life and you can't tell because your brain is programmed to register different signals than they are? what if they're subtle about their feelings and even if you explicitly ask 'how are you really' they just push you away and get angry from seemingly nowhere?

you are telling us how to do surface level socialization and masking as someone who doesn't understand that often times there are situations where people will not tell you how they're feeling even if you explain to them that you need them to explicitly tell you. you are giving advice that many have already heard and already apply and still struggle.

autism is a disability, like you said. but you shouldn't tell someone with autism how to mask anymore than i should walk up to someone in a wheelchair and tell them if they were just better at it maybe they could use the stairs.

It is political, it's a heavily politicized part of both of our lives, it impacts how people think, feel, act, and view us at a broader scale. To say what you have said instils a politic around how autistic people specifically should be carrying themselves. You said you were tired of critique without a constructive element so I am telling you: this is not the way. There can be social education for all parties, but advocating for rules and barriers is not the same as advocating for open communication and compassion.

Also, it's not a contest. We both suffer for our own discrete reasons. You don't know me.

also; none of these get at the invisible rules i actually have questions about, because ill do all these things and then suddenly theyll break and tell me they secretly hated x thing i couldve stopped if they just told me, or that i wasnt allowed to do what they do for reasons they never bothered to explain, or the absolute nightmare that is job applications where you're supposed to downplay your own skills but if you do it too much they consider you a bad worker by default regardless of your actual talents. youre giving us instructions on how to do things that masking already covers instead of like.... any of the actual quote-unquote 'survival skills' we need.

We already know them

Let me ask you an honest question: Do you really think I would have sat down and written this entire thing out if I hadn't had dozens of people who did not, in fact, already know them? Just because you know them doesn't mean that everyone who shares your condition does, and not knowing has ruined so many social encounters and chances at connection for them. For my part of course I tell the allistic person in question "It's not personal, they're autistic, they're not trying to aggravate you," but there's only so much I can do on that end.

The part that really gets me peeved is hearing "apologize and ask questions" like it isn't literally an autistic meme about allistics flipping out when they can't reason around why they're pissed off with autistics. It's pretty useless advice, in some situations it even gets you hit over the head. Rancid.

They get the short end of the stick because the world is made for cis het white able-bodied able-minded allistic people, that's just a fact. I'd love to be able to change that for neurodivergence, but other than "hey take it easy, I've/They've got a condition," I wouldn't have even the faintest clue how to accomplish it.

ok, thats good. masking advice is useful for surface-level interaction, but its. really hard to have proper friendships with allistics even when following this advice because fundamentally most autistic people are unable to maintain that level of masking for longer than a day let alone while also juggling the usual stressors that managing friendships pose to all people regardless of brain chemistry