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- Growing up with autism is a never-ending series of lessons in how people without autism expect the rest of the world to relate to them. This goes double for those who — like me — went undiagnosed until adulthood: the instructions are far less explicit and the standards are higher. “Stop drumming your pencil, don’t you know you’re distracting people?” “Don’t be so direct, don’t you know you’re being insulting?” “Put yourself in her shoes — when are you going to develop a sense of empathy?” Invariably, the autistic behaviour is marked as less-than, called out as needing to change. So we adapt; we learn to keep our “abnormal” attitudes and behaviours to ourselves in the hope of blending in, and when we discover communities where, by chance, we fit in a little better without having to try so hard, we cling to those safe spaces like a drowning man clings to a lifebuoy.
Really interesting to hear the perspective of an autistic woman on tech culture.