#yourautisticlife — Public Fediverse posts

The Fediverse Is A Countercultural Garden

https://www.yourautisticlife.com/2026/07/26/the-fediverse-is-a-countercultural-garden/

Feeld: Still Not Great

https://www.yourautisticlife.com/2026/07/14/feeld-still-not-great/

Taimi: The Unserious Dating App for Unserious Folks

https://www.yourautisticlife.com/2026/03/18/taimi-the-unserious-dating-app-for-unserious-folks/

Five Years In Remission

I entered remission five years ago on February 11th 2021.

It’s been a wild ride, to say the least.

Ultimately, everybody’s journey through cancer is their own. If you’re a cancer survivor too, your journey is not my journey, and my journey is not your journey, no matter how similar they may be. Some people never make it through. A sobering thought.

A cancer diagnosis is often a gut punch, but my diagnosis came as a relief to me. Prior to it, I had been slowly dying for months, but I did not know why or have a plan to deal with this slow death. My PCNS lymphoma diagnosis not only told me why I was dying, but it provided me with a plan: first chemo and then a stem cell transplant.

So I underwent treatment. After two rounds of chemo, the tumor was gone from my brain. After five rounds, I was declared to be in remission. Its now been five years since I entered remission, and my latest MRI, done in January of this year, indicates that my brain is still free from cancer. If I had gotten this disease 35 years ago, I would not have been so lucky. I would have died, pure and simple. Medicine has advanced.

After the chemo, I had a stem cell transplant. They extracted stem cells from my body, kept them in storage, destroyed my immune system, and finally they reinjected my stem cells so that I could rebuild my immune system. My entire treatment happened at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, and yet, I never caught this disease.

It’s been a wild ride, I tell you!

My cancer was not the cause of my divorce, but it was a catalyst. My ex-wife and I had already been seeing a marriage counselor a good two years before my cancer showed up. After my treatment, I just did not see myself enduring through this marriage if nothing changed. I tried to change things, but it was in vain. So my ex-wife and I divorced. It is not what I would have wanted, but it was the way forward.

As we were discussing the divorce, I figured that there was no longer any reason for me to hide from the world the fact that I’m not straight, but pansexual. I knew since my teenage years that I wasn’t straight, and even told my wife before we got married that I was bisexual. That’s the only term that I knew at the time, but I prefer to call myself pansexual. Gender or its absence is just no obstacle when it comes to my desire to get intimate with someone else.

Besides being pansexual, I’m also polyamorous. Provided that I’m kept aware of my partners’ intimate encounters with other people, I don’t get jealous if they have those encounters. What gets to me is if I feel neglect. I suppose I might also get angry if a partner of mine hid their encounters with someone else, but this, to my knowledge, has not happened.

I also discovered BDSM, and that I am a Dom. I was always generous in bed, but BDSM allows me to optimize this generosity.

Then I realized that I’m autistic. The signs were present from infancy, but everybody treated me as neurotypical, so I thought that I was neurotypical. My ex-wife has ADHD, but we never discussed neurodivergence in our household. We both imagined that the other perceived the world in the same way we did. This is woefully incorrect, but we didn’t know any better.

I also realized that I’m nonbinary. The surest way to generate dysphoria in me is to insist that I should behave or not behave this or that way because I’m “a man.” At best, I’ll find the idea amusing. At worst, it will generate anger. At any rate, in retrospect, this is another element that caused friction between my ex-wife and me. She thought she had married “a man,” but she did not.

If my cancer had not happened, how much of this self-realization would have happened? I’m not sure. I was pretending to be a neurotypical man in a straight, monogamous, vanilla marriage. I think I could have gone on pretending for more years.

It’s been a wild ride, and I don’t think the ride is over just yet.

Taimi: An LGBTQ+ Dating and Chat App

Taimi became my go-to dating app, but it did not last.

All dating apps suck. All of them. Without exception. So, yes, Taimi sucks too. However, they don’t all suck to the same extent, and thus Taimi, for a brief period of time, became my preferred dating app, dethroning Feeld. Alas, this was not to last.

Let’s go over my demographics. They are relevant as they color my experience on the dating apps. I’m nonbinary, pansexual, polyamorous, autistic. I’m also into BDSM. Please do not make the mistake of thinking that any of these identities implies another. There are plenty of pansexual folks who are not also polyamorous, to take just one example.

In the Google Play Store, Taimi is labeled as a LGBTQ+ Dating and Chat app. True to this label, most of the people on the app are indeed queer. However, you can also find a few cishet folks on the app too. Contrarily to Feeld, Taimi is not specifically geared towards kinky folks. At the end of the day, the difference does not matter much. There are kinky people on Taimi, just not wall-to-wall like on Feeld.

Now, let’s get into the mess of an app that Taimi is.

How It Works… Haha! As If…

I’d like to explain how it works, but any explanation on my part would be pointless. See, the Taimi developers like to use their users as lab rats. Every week, some old features disappear, and some new features appear. Or perhaps I should call these features anti-features, because a lot of them stink badly.

Here’s an example of such an anti-feature. The app presents you with a set of potential connections. You decide which parameters the candidates for connection must have: gender, age, distance, etc. For months, when you ran out of new candidates in your set, the GUI would explicitly suggest that you alter your search parameters to get more matches.

Now, it “helpfully” changes those parameters for you. You don’t do long-distance relationships? Screw that. Now you do. You don’t want to date anyone older than a certain age, or younger than a certain age? Screw that. Now you do.

At first, the app would tell you that it changed the parameters. I complained about this, and now the app changes these parameters without telling you. This is proof positive that Taimi listens to their clients. (This last line was said sarcastically.)

Another anti-feature is that the app now, from time to time, presents you with a slate of people to act on. You can pass on them, or you can all like them at once. However, you cannot look at their profile. Do they live nearby? Are they kinky? Are they compatible with you? Screw you! You cannot know.

There are more anti-features I could talk about, but I do not wish to talk about more of these. I think the anti-features I listed above give you a taste.

Annoyances and Bugs

The bio

Taimi restricts your biography to 500 characters. That’s rather pitiful. Feeld allows 1500 characters, and I find Feeld’s limit rather restrictive. I am of the opinion that such length restrictions smack of ageism. Young folks don’t have much of a life history, but us older folks do. These restrictions stink. If someone wants to infodump about their own life, let them. Maybe someone else will like it.

In addition to the restricted bio size, Taimi deleted my bio twice without warning. This is quite annoying. I regularly run into people who have no bio, but if the app is the one deleting it, I cannot blame them.

Travel

Taimi updates your location when you travel, and does not have the notion of a “home base.” Therefore, it presents the same problem as Feeld. If someone is traveling, and there is no note in their profile about this, you can waste your time with them if one of you is not into long-distance relationships.

I’ve had this problem happen at least twice. One of the person with whom I had started an Instant Chat came back saying that they were just passing through. In another case, I had initiated an Instant Chat with someone. They looked at my message but did not reply, disconnect, or block me. I checked their profile back and found that they were now several states away from me.

Just like with the case of Feeld, from the perspective of the developer, there is no reason to fix this.

Admirers

Their “Admirers” tab is laughable. I found in there someone who had admired me four times, and yet had this in their profile:

I’m fun easy going […] No poly situation. No hookups. CIS gendered men and women only please. Straight men only.

Yeah, I bet that you are “fun” and “easy going.” This person is a good example of the problem with the “bisexual” label. They identified as bisexual, which for them excludes trans folks. I don’t want to keep explaining that my definition does not exclude any gender, so I call myself pansexual.

So, this person, who had admired me four times, would, according to their own profile, not want to be with me because:

• I’m polyamorous.
• I am trans because I transitioned from male to nonbinary.
• I’m not straight.

Then there was this woman around my age who had admired me three times. I read her profile, only to find that she’s not into kink or polyamory.

Similarly, a lesbian had looked at my profile four times, according to Taimi. I’m a male-presenting enby and thus am generally incompatible with lesbians. Finally, I did start an Instant Chat with someone who I might have been compatible with, and which Taimi claimed hat look at my profile three times. They rejected me as soon as they saw my message.

In conclusion, the “Admirers” tab is mostly useless. I’m not going to hazard a guess as to why exactly.

The Ability to Instant Chat

As I mentioned above, Taimi allows you to instantly chat with someone. They do not have to like you back to initiate the possibility of chatting. As soon as you send them a message with instant chat, they can reply.

Now, the ability to instant chat is a limited resource. When I started my trial, I did not pay for a while, but I still was getting once instant chat per week. Then I paid, and I was getting three instant chats per week, but I let my subscription lapse, and now I no longer have any instant chat.

As great as this ability would seem, I’ve had no response whatsoever to the instant chats I’ve sent. By this, I mean that my message was not even read. In one case, I got an instant block, but this is it. So the instant chat feature only seems to be designed to generate revenue for the dating app.

Conclusion

Taimi is a mess of a dating app. They keep changing the features of the app, no doubt in an attempt to maximize their revenue. However, I find this approach off-putting, and it does not make me want to spend any more money on the app.

#AutisticWriters #Dating #DatingApp #lgbtq #OnlineDating #queer #Taimi #YourAutisticLife

Why I Prefer Delta Chat To Signal

I find Delta Chat support for multiple profiles to be a killer feature.

I have Delta Chat and Signal installed on my phone and my laptop. I’ve used both platforms to talk to various people. They both work fine. However, I do prefer Delta Chat because I do find it more flexible than Signal. I’m going to give some details of my reasoning in this article.

What Is It?

Delta Chat is an encrypted chatting application. The messages you send to your contacts are encrypted end-to-end. Even Delta Chat servers are unable to read the contents of your messages. Only a bit of metadata is unencrypted. Its closest relative in the chatting application realm is Signal, which also does end-to-end encryption.

What I Like

Delta Chat does not tie your profile to a specific phone number. Signal does tie your profile to a phone number. However, Signal allows you to use a username rather than a phone number to make a connection, and thus hide your phone number from contacts. In addition, Delta Chat allows you to have multiple profiles. Signal, on the other hand, allows you only one profile. These two features of Delta Chat make a world of difference when you are chatting with people who might not take “no” for an answer.

Let’s take the example of online dating. If you know anything about it, it is that you are likely to run at times into scammers and flakes. Now, most of the people on the dating apps are decent and do not fall into these two categories. Still, scammers and flakes do exist. So how do you protect yourself from them?

Well, the first thing to do is to not share your phone number with someone you do not know yet. I’ll note here that your phone number can be used to find your street address. I’m not going to get into the details of how I know this.

Both Signal and Delta Chat got you covered on this front. With Signal, you can just give your username. This username is a relatively compact string, something like “autisticfun.99” With Delta Chat, you can provide a link or a QR code. The link does not really work like Signal’s username because it has annoying features:

1. It is too long to put in a dating profile. Signal’s username is small enough to be easily embedded in a dating profile.
2. Forget about sharing it by spelling it to someone else. Signal’s username may be annoying to spell out, but it is on par with spelling out email addresses.
3. It may scare people who do not know much about Delta Chat. You’re being asked to click on a link. Who knows what is at the other end of the link? The Signal username can be used only for one thing: you input it manually in Signal to connect with someone. End of story.

Okay, so you’ve connected with someone over Signal or Delta Chat. You chat pleasantly for a while, only to discover that you’re 100% incompatible with this individual. So incompatible that you just have to cut contact cold. This is not the option I prefer. I’ve sometimes had to learn that the person was not into me, or had to deliver to the other person that I was not into them, and yet been able to communicate peacefully about this. However, there are times when you just know the other person won’t be able to handle your news peacefully. What do you do?

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With Signal, you can just block them. Okay, what if they decide to come back at you? If they try to reach you from the same phone number, they won’t be able to: you’ve blocked them. However, they can easily get try from a different phone number. It is not that difficult or that expensive to have different phone numbers on a modern cell phone.

If they try this stratagem, then you have only one solution with Signal: you must change your username. However, changing it means that everyone who had your previous username but wasn’t already in contact with you won’t be able to reach you. If you had it in a social networking profile somewhere, you need to remember this and change it.

With Delta Chat, if you have a bit of foresight, you can avoid the need to remember where you used a username. Remember that Delta Chat supports multiple profiles. You create a new profile, only for your new connection. If you then discover that you need to cut things cold, you can just delete this profile. They won’t be able to reach you anymore, and any information you gave them to reach you with this profile won’t work anymore. There is no need to go change usernames anywhere.

This very scenario happened to me recently. I connected with an individual. The chat was pleasant, until I realized that we were not on the same page about something quite fundamental. I wished them good luck in their search, and deleted the profile I had created just for them. (I had to do this on all the devices on which the profile was present.) I also blocked them on the dating app. From this point on, it became impossible for them to reach me.

Note that Delta Chat allows you to reset your QR code and the link associated with it. If you do this, then your old QR code and old link won’t be able to be used to reach you anymore. If you do this, you also are in the same situation as when you change your username on Signal, what you may have shared in the past has to be updated if you want folks to still be able to find you. However, the need for this eventuality is lessened if you have the foresight to create a new profile for people you don’t really know.

The multiplicity of profiles supported by Delta Chat means that you can easily create a personal profile, one for work, specialized profiles for specific tasks, etc. One nice benefit of this support is that Delta Chat does not require all your profiles to be on all devices you use Delta Chat on. My phone currently has a couple of profiles on it, though this may change in the future.

Finally, the ability to have multiple profiles for multiple purposes means that you can put different things in the bios of your profiles. You can have a professional bio for the professional profile, and a personal bio for the personal profile. On Signal, you have one profile, with one bio. If you use Signal both for work and for personal purposes, what do you put in your bio?

A Few Cons

I would be remiss if I did not talk about the few cons I ran into. These are not dealbreakers for me, but they could be for someone else.

As I had implied above, it would be nice if Delta Chat had a username system similar to Signal’s. I don’t think it should be identical to Signal’s system, but the hyperlinks that can be linked to a specific profile are too unwieldy, and can appear suspicious in some contexts.

Both Signal and Delta Chat allow you to create group discussions. In Signal, there is the capability to limit who can add or remove people from a group. Delta Chat has no such capability. Anyone can add or remove people from any group created in Delta Chat. If someone added to a group goes rogue, good luck!

Delta Chat does not allow you to search for animated GIFs in an online database like Tenor. There is a good security reason for this. If you query a database, you are effectively leaking some information from your discussion. It is possible for users to work around this issue by saving ahead of time those GIFs they want to use to a directory which is synchronized between their various devices. Then, you can select images from this directory to add to your messages. (This is what I do.)

Delta Chat does not have a user-friendly system for supporting stickers. Yes, there is a bot. I tried it. It is far from being user-friendly to use.

Addendum: I Smelled Drama

The dreaded scenario happened. I matched with someone on a dating app. I offered my Delta Chat profile, but they preferred Signal. So I gave them my Signal username and the link. We chatted on Signal for three days, and this morning I realized I was smelling drama, and I don’t do drama. I wished them good luck in their search and blocked them on all the platforms we had connected on.

However, I’m sure that my old Signal username was still accessible to them. So I had to change it to make sure that drama would not follow me.

I’ll note that having to change my username could have been avoided, if I had given them the link to my Signal profile or the QR code. However, this strategy completely eliminates the advantages of having a username in the first place.

#AutisticWriters #DeltaChat #security #signal #YourAutisticLife

Snug Like A Bug In A… Hole

A short story in honor of those who cannot help digging.

Hello!

I can see by the look on your face that you’re confused. Look down.

Further down.

Hi! Yes, I’m the head that is protruding from a hole in the ground. As you can see by my waiving, I also have arms. I also have a body and legs, but a lot of it is not visible to you because, well, I’m in a hole.

Oh, don’t worry about me. In fact, this hole is exactly where I wanted to be. I ended up here while engaging in an argument with a friend. I was trying to score some points, but lo and behold, the ground started to cave, and slowly, but surely I ended up in this hole.

You know what? I feel rather comfortable in my hole. In fact, I’d like to enlarge it so that I can sink even deeper into it. Do you happen to have a shovel I could use for this task?

Oh, wow, what a stroke of luck! Thank you for the shovel. Now, if you don’t mind, I need to get on digging. Have a nice day!

I regularly run into people who like to dig themselves into a hole.

The latest one was someone who approached me for dating. I sensed drama in their profile. I said, “no, thanks,” and they immediately proceeded to prove me right by tossing drama at my head with their response.

#arguments #AutisticWriters #DiggingOneselfIntoAHole #holes #YourAutisticLife

I Still Cannot Recommend Feeld

Feeld used to be my go-to dating app, but no more. How the mighty have fallen!

I let my subscription to Feeld lapse in mid-July. In the year prior, I spent about $270 on this app, in subscription fees and individual pings. However, they raised their prices at the end of Spring or the start of Summer 2025. If I had the same usage for the coming year, my cost would be about $410!

I’ve written an article already about the problems I had with Feeld:

https://www.yourautisticlife.com/2024/05/13/i-no-longer-recommend-feeld/

True to my own advice in that article, I returned to OkCupid. However, this app sucks too. I just had forgotten how much it sucks. I can say that, by and large, there hasn’t been a migration of kinky people to OkCupid. I did find my boyfriend on OkCupid. However, OkCupid was just too irritating for me, and I deleted my account there.

In the article above, I mention how Feeld had a problem with pings not getting through. This was a very serious problem. I’d get a notification that someone pinged me, and I’d tap the notification, but they did now show up among the people who pinged me. This problem has now been fixed.

However, the distance problem I mentioned in the article above remains. This, coupled with the price increase, and a new round of bugs, still keeps me from recommending it. What bugs? Read on.

It has happened twice now that Feeld matched me with people I had not liked. Normally, for a match to occur, both parties have to like each other. It is not possible for someone to just show up as a match if you haven’t liked them.

This first time this happened… I was confused and thought that maybe I had made a mistake somewhere. However, the second time this happened, the individual that showed up was so incompatible with me that I’m 100% sure I did not make a mistake.

What happened?

Did Feeld misdirect one of our likes? Was I supposed to match with someone else and Feeld misdirect the match?

Was Feeld’s display when I was going through the stack of dating prospects messed up and showed me the profile of person A when it meant to show person B? And then when I liked person A, person B got the like?

Did something else happen?

I don’t know. I’ve complained to customer service, but I had no reply.

Then, one recent morning, I got a notification that I had a new connection. I tap the notification, Feeld loaded, and I got a message that it couldn’t load my conversation. When I was able to load my conversations, it told me that the person had left the chat.

Wow… that was fast. Could the person have changed their mind this fast? Yes, they could. However, this is the first time I saw the error message that Feeld gave me. Coincidence? Maybe, but maybe not. I’m betting on maybe not.

“Why are you assuming, without absolute proof, that it is Feeld’s fault?”

Because of my history with Feeld. If you go read my previous article, you’ll see there was a bug so fucking serious that it demonstratably made me miss some matches. Let me repeat this, some matches that should have happened did not happen because of that bug! This was a major problem, that plagued Feeld for months.

So yes, I am assuming that it is Feeld’s fault, even if I don’t have absolute proof. If my history with a platform shows that it operates erratically, then my future inferences are going to point to its behavior still being erratic.

Finally, they tried to entice me to resubscribe with a 15% off offer. I did not want to resubscribe, but I checked it out nonetheless. Well, I went up to the Google Play screen for renewing my subscription and found that 15% off to be absent. Way to go, Feeld!

Moreover, after my subscription ended, I’m getting a suspiciously high number of people who like me without a ping. Since I no longer pay, I cannot see their likes. Yes, I used to get likes from deadbeats who didn’t read my profile even when I was paying, but the quantity and frequency of these makes me wonder whether Feeld is paying for some dunces to like people who don’t pay so that these people will subscribe to see who liked them. This hypothetical stratagem won’t work on me.

I’d like to be able to recommend Feeld. I used to say that it was the least terrible app of a terrible bunch, because, yes, all the dating apps are terrible. However, I cannot in good conscience recommend it, to anyone, in any demographics.

What are the alternatives? I’m only going to talk about those platforms that I consider could be alternatives to Feeld. If I do not talk about some platform in this article, then I do not consider it to be a viable alternative.

Taimi

Taimi is a platform for LGBTQ+ dating. I plan to publish a more extensive review of it in the future. For now, suffice to say that Taimi has become my go-to dating app. It is not perfect, all the dating apps are terrible, but it is decent, and definitely better than Feeld. I’ve made some nice matches on this app.

Masked Kink

Masked Kink is a platform for people into kink or BDSM. It definitely is not great. The geographic search leaves me with no matches within 1000 miles of where I live. However, this app has several bugs, so I wouldn’t be surprised if the geographical search is buggy too. As a matter of fact, I’d be surprised if it weren’t buggy.

One of its bugs is extremely vexing. I managed to be liked by a scammer. I did a reverse image search on their dating profile picture, and found a hit on Threads. Then, I quickly discovered their YouTube channel and their OnlyFans page. I wanted to report this scammer, but try as I may, the UI would not let me submit my report. Tapping on the submit button did nothing.

I plan to let my subscription to Masked Kink lapse when it ends.

KinkD

KinkD was already rather inactive when I left it about a year ago. I came back to it for two or three weeks recently. It is now completely dead. I sent messages to easily eight people. Nothing whatsoever happened. They did not even log into the system to check their messages. KinkD was not worth my money when I first went there, now it is not worth my money and my time. I uninstalled.

KinkD is also a great example of how Google reviews are largely worthless on their face. It has a rating of 4.4 as we speak, and keeps getting glowing reviews. I’d bet a leg and an arm that these are fake.

#AutisticWriters #Dating #Feeld #KinkD #MaskedKink #OnlineDating #Taimi #YourAutisticLife

Dating: The Attitude Problem

To find a lasting relationship, you have to accept those relationships that won’t last.

I’m a strange creature. At 53, I have a fair amount of experience at living. However, when I joined the dating world just over three years ago, I had no experience to speak of regarding dating, and the minute experience I did have was from over 26 years earlier. There were no dating apps back then.

My inexperience led me early on to naively accept behaviors that I shouldn’t have accepted. There was the “polyamorous” woman who used me as a pawn to get her husband jealous. There was also the woman I went on a date with, but who seemed only interested in getting a free meal and promoting her business. They both displayed behavior that now would put me off from pursuing anything with them.

I’m a quick learner, however. My many adventures and misadventures quickly taught me what I call an aphorism of love:

To find a lasting relationship, you have to accept those relationships that won’t last.

I don’t see any way around this aphorism. For one thing, the statistics are operating against us. Still, I was in a relationship that lasted 26 years. We were married for 22 of those years. She was my first relationship. Wow! Lucky, right? I had beaten the odds! I thought I was lucky, until we started talking divorce. Absolutely nothing is guaranteed.

Now, I do run from time to time into those who will declare that the dating apps have always been or have become a large wasteland in which it is impossible to find anyone. I accept that this has been their experience, but such hasn’t been my experience.

I expect the vast majority of such individuals to be straight, monogamous, vanilla, and neurotypical. In all likelihood, they are also trapped by the dominant ideology of our times, capitalism. This entrapment has multiple manifestations. There’s the fact that wages have not risen at the same rate as inflation. This means that they have to work harder to keep their standard of living. This leaves less time and energy for forming connections of any kind, including romantic ones.

Another way in which this entrapment manifest itself is the desire for optimization. A lot of people these days get into debt while trying to impress the crowd. They buy expensive things that they cannot afford. People in this type of situation are likely to look for a specific type of mate. Someone who plays well the capitalist game.

Thus, these folks will compare their dates against an unrealistic ideal of what their mate should be. Thus, their experience on the dating apps will be molded by this attitude. They won’t connect, and when they connect, they will run at the first sign that their date does not hold up to their ideal.

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My own experience has been different. For a start, my demographics make me a minority. I’m pansexual, polyamorous, into BDSM, and neurodivergent. I do not hide these things from my dating profile. These characteristics make me unpalatable to a lot of people. In addition, I have my own dealbreakers which narrow the pool of candidates even further.

For instance, I do not date cops or the military. Yes, I know for a fact that this requirement of mine has cost me some potential matches. Someone I had contacted, who was polite about it, told me as much. In addition, I pass on all the straight folks. I just don’t think that the random straight individual has any idea of what being queer entails.

My demographics and my preferences make it extremely difficult to meet anybody by just going to social events. I do go to social events that have nothing to with dating. My chance of running there into someone who is looking for a mate and is going to be okay with me being pansexual, being polyamorous, being into BDSM, and being neurodivergent are extremely slim.

I also go to queer events, events for neurodivergent people, or events for people into BDSM. When I go to these events, there is a greater chance at compatibility. However, it is usually the case that the people I find there are going to be compatible with me in all respects, except one. This is highly frustrating. Do not make the mistake of thinking that one characteristic entails the other, especially if you are not part of these minorities. For instance, pansexual people are not all polyamorous.

So this leaves me with online dating. I’ll note here that all my relationships started online. Yes, even the one with my ex-wife, which started in 1996. It started through email. I did not start using the dating apps until after our divorce, in 2022, however. Truth be told, I’ve had my successes on these apps. I’ve heard from several people that they got absolutely nothing out of them.

So what counts as success? As far as I see it, a match is already success writ small. Then there’s having a nice date, which is a bigger success. Then there’s being intimate with your dating prospect, which is even better. Don’t get me wrong, some of these encounters were unmitigated disasters. The net balance, however, is a positive one overall. Ultimately, what I seek is a lasting relationship. However, I feel the need to point out that all relationships last, right up until the moment that they don’t. I do not possess the crystal ball to tell me which relationship will last, and which won’t. Moreover, remember my aphorism of love:

To find a lasting relationship, you have to accept those relationships that won’t last.

Because of this, I always approach relationships with an open mind, and assume that they will last. Yes, I’m most likely mistaken, but it does not matter. I let myself be pleasantly surprised by my partners, and I hope to pleasantly surprise them too. It has happened. And yes, opening yourself to pleasant surprises, means you can also get unpleasant surprises. I’ll say that almost every time a relationship has ended, it was an unpleasant surprise. And yet, these are inevitable.

Furthermore, I do not attempt to make my partners fit into some narrow confine of how my “ideal” partner should be. Now, I do have boundaries. Most of these revolve around money. However, if a partner does not respect those boundaries, the result is not typically a breakup.

Finally, I’ve rejected the ideals of capitalism. I do not aim to optimize my life, or my relationship, and I do not impose such optimizations on my partners. I aim to be present in my partner’s life, and so I do not favor living the rat race that capitalism likes to foist on us.

I am currently partnered with my boyfriend. We’re at the nine or ten months mark, right now. The longest relationship I’ve been in after my divorce. We found each other on OkCupid. Prior to this, I was in a seven-month relationship with a girl. We found each other on Feeld. Other than these two post-divorce relationships, I’ve had unplanned one-night stands, and some relationships that lasted one weekend, or a few days.

It may be a function of my demographics, but I’ve spent a fair amount of time thinking about how I present on the dating apps. I use all the space at my disposal to fill out a thorough profile. There is little I hate more than profiles that have pictures but are otherwise empty. It is pretty much guaranteed that you are going to get likes from misguided people who are trying to fit square peg into round holes, even with a filled profile. How much more of those are you going to get if your profile is empty, and how many of them will treat you as an object? You’ve given them no reason to do otherwise with your empty profile.

Moreover, I go to the apps with the attitude that nobody owes me anything. I’ve had matches, and sometimes short-lived relationships, where I was thanked for my understanding and kindness when things, for reasons that have nothing to do with me, unravelled and the relationship came to an end. I cannot, and do not want to force someone into a relationship with me if it is not in the cards.

I’ll conclude by saying that attitude is not the entire reason people do not find success on the dating apps, but it is a significant reason. The choice of the dating app, and even geography can affect someone’s experience significantly, and yet the effect of one’s attitude is non-negligible.

#attitude #AutisticWriters #capitalism #Dating #love #OnlineDating #relationships #YourAutisticLife

Yvonne Rorrer Declares Herself Ethically Non-Monogamous

Good for her, and for those of us who are also into ethical non-monogamy.

I have never heard of Yvonne Rorrer until Stephen Colbert talked about her on The Late Show last night. I know she is a Democrat, but I don’t know more about her political positions. At any rate, it is a good thing that she declared herself ethically non-monogamous in a statement. I’m not saying that she came out because I got from a Huffington Post article that she was already out.

Colbert talked about her as a swinger. Mainstream media often does such a piss-poor job at reporting about things they do not understand that I was wondering whether swinger was her expression, or whether the journalists jumped the gun, and assumed. The Huffington Post article I link to above confirms it is her expression.

Ethical non-monogamy is a large umbrella term. Swinging falls under this umbrella, and so does polyamory. (I am polyamorous.) In all cases, of ethical non-monogamy, the assumption is that everyone involved knows what is going on. Ethically non-monogamous people do not hide one relationship from another.

One thing irritated me in Colbert’s talk about Rorrer. It came across to me as mononormative. Colbert said,

She might be one of those people who thinks everybody wants to hear about their thing.

😩 Why did he need to go there? Why?

Colbert, like the majority of our population, monogamous, and straight. People will assume, correctly, those two characteristics about him. When people run into someone like me, or like Rorrer, they make the same assumptions, and they are wrong. We are both ethically non-monogamous. I am because I’m polyamorous. Rorrer is because she is a swinger. I’m moreover not straight, because I’m pansexual. I don’t know about Rorrer’s sexual orientation.

We do not talk about our ethical non-monogamy because we think that everybody wants to hear about it. We talk about it to normalize it, and because some people will benefit from it. In a world where monogamous people are in the majority, we who are ethically non-monogamous are assumed to be monogamous too. That is, until we tell people otherwise.

I’m open, too, about all kinds of things. I cannot count the number of times when, after being open about being pansexual, polyamorous, or autistic, I had a nice chat with someone else who was in a similar situation. This discussion would not have happened if I had not been open about my identity.

Please do not assume that when someone is in a minority group that, when they are being open about their identity, their intent is to shove their business into your face.

#AutisticWriters #EthicalNonMonogamy #polyamory #SexualMinorities #StephenColbert #swinging #TheLateShow #YourAutisticLife #YvonneRorrer

Why I Usually Don’t Get All Pissy When A Relationship Fails

I don’t like drama.

Finding a picture for this article was hard. That’s because a lot of the pictures I found imply feelings that I don’t have. (I’m not crushed, or angry, etc.) Or they imply the end of a long and intense relationship. It wasn’t the case here.

My latest date told me minutes ago that she was polysaturated, and that it would not be possible for us to have a relationship. I replied that I understood, and she thanked me for my understanding.

For those who may not know, the term “polysaturated” implies that we are polyamorous. I already have a boyfriend, and she already has a husband and another partner. I don’t wish to give a lecture here about polyamory. Suffice to say that our existing partners were duly informed about our date. Polyamorous people do not hide their new romantic liaisons from their existing partners.

The term “polysaturated” also indicates that someone has too many partners, and cannot conceivably add another partner to the mix. What this number is will vary from person to person, and from situation to situation. The person in question has four kids, besides her husband, and one other partner. I readily understand the issue.

The behavior I displayed is not unusual for me. This is actually how I want my relationship failures to happen. No drama. Just people who tell each other their truth. This time, she passed on me, but I’ve sometimes been the one passing on the other person. It is never fun, but not devastating. In the case at hand here, we did not have sex, but sometimes the failure happened after we did have sex. Some external factor caused our relationship to end prematurely. I still did not get pissy.

I’ve qualified my sentence with “usually” in my title because it is in fact possible for me to get pissy in these circumstances, but you have to have also betrayed me in some fashion for this to happen. This hasn’t happened often, and the mere fact that our relationship is not going to evolve is not in and of itself betrayal.

However, I’m the type of autistic person who likes, at times, to consider the path not taken. What if? What if I had become pissy and indignant? “How dare you pass on me? Don’t you realize what it is you have in me?” There are two likely outcomes to this hypothetical behavior.

She can respond in kind with her own indignation. In this case, I’ve made an enemy. Not that I think there’s a lot she could do to me, but I don’t want to make enemies unnecessarily.

Or she can change her mind to please me. In this case, I’ve won, right? Not at all. This putative “victory” is illusory. What good does it do me to be with someone who agrees to be with me only to pacify me? What kind of relationship would we then have? It would be a relationship based on fear, which is not what I want.

It is a shame that this relationship is not going to flourish, but I never pressure people into things they do not want or cannot handle. It is just not my style.

#autistic #AutisticWriters #Dating #polyamory #relationships #YourAutisticLife

A Senseless Breakup As a Zen Koan

She put me in an impossible situation, and gave me the gift of a koan.

I’m still reeling from the worst breakup of my life. Well, the worst breakup so far. There’s no telling if something even worse will come some day. It’s been almost two years, but last night a song came up and I cried anew. Sometimes, it is like it happened yesterday.

I don’t go into relationships reservedly. This is true with everyone. My current boyfriend. My ex-wife. And the girl who is the topic of this piece. So, without reservations, I gave her everything I could give her. Most of all, I gave her my ability to listen, and my patience. How were my ability to listen and my patience useful?

She engaged in self-harm. The scars were plainly visible during our first date. She answered truthfully when I asked about them.

She abused substances. She was truthful about this, too.

She did not follow her medication regimen. She told me so, truthfully.

She flat out told me, months before our breakup, that she did not see a future for us. This was her truth.

I listened patiently to all of this, without flying off the handle. I don’t know what anger would have given me, beyond an immediate and short-lived feeling of satisfaction. If anything, it would most likely have ruined our relationship sooner. It actually almost did. One day, we had an argument in which she denied the existence of racism. I could not tolerate this, and so I flew off the handle.

She saw me as her abusive mother, and I triggered her cPTSD. I did not physically harm her – I would never have done this – but my yelling was enough. She ran out of my apartment to cool down. I was so horrified at my reaction that I decided to break up with her. She came back saying that if we worked on our relationship, we could make things work. I accepted her offer and we came back together.

Her denial of racism punched me in the gut. I’m the type of enby who will readily cry if he sees black parents on the news talk about the senseless assassination of their child by cops. I live in a majority black neighborhood. Heck, my boyfriend is black. Denying obvious racism is an excellent way to get me to explode. I’m not proud of this, but it was the truth (and maybe still is the truth). This is the only time I displayed anger with her.

The life I had lived with my ex-wife prior to our divorce was extremely peaceful… and I daresay now too peaceful for growth. The partners I’ve had after my divorce have taught me so much. I am already enlightened. Anger is not generally a useful emotion. Anger is a choice that I am making. Etc. If the girl I’m talking about denied racism today, I’d hope that I wouldn’t fly off the handle. Still, I’m not sure that even today, I’d be able to handle it peacefully. It is such a gut punch.

Your Autistic Life is supported by readers like you. Use one of the links below to support my writing! Thank you.

Okay. So, I said that she gave me the gift of a koan. What is a koan? It is a device that Zen practitioners use. Some koans are textual. Here is an example of a textual koan:

What is the sound of one hand clapping?

In order to answer the question, a Zen student encountering this koan will typically try to think their way through it, and will fail miserably. It is possible to answer this koan, but not through discursive stratagems. There are many such textual koans in the Zen tradition. There is, however, another type of koan. I don’t think I’m being original here, but I’m going to call this a life koan. It is a situation that grips you deeply in your gut. It is unsatisfactory, and maybe unresolvable.

When this girl broke up with me, she did put me into an impossible situation. When our relationship was firing on all cylinders, it was pure magic. I had adored her, and given her everything I could give, and yet… this was not enough.

Why?

Oh, I can list dozens of reasons, but these reasons are all bullshit. She did give me reasons, but a few weeks after our breakup she revealed to me, from her own mouth, that her reasons were lies. How far had we fallen from her initial truthfulness?

Thus, it is, that almost two years after our breakup. I wrestle with this koan: why did she leave me? I don’t think this question has a satisfactory answer. This koan is a parting gift that she gave me, inadvertently. Still, it is a gift, and one that I will most likely animate my Zen practice to my death.

#anger #AutisticWriters #breakups #koan #listening #love #patience #relationships #YourAutisticLife #Zen #ZenBuddhism

Gift Giving: A Minefield

I’m both a bad giver and a bad receiver of gifts, according to society, at any rate.

Gift giving is a minefield for most autistic folks. It definitely is one for me. Since Valentine’s Day is upon us, here’s a reflection on why most options are terrible. In no specific order,

1. Money? I was taught that giving money is rather gauche. I have to agree. You can discharge yourself of a gift obligation by giving money to anyone. It does not show much thought about the recipient of the gift. I’d rather not give money.
2. Greeting cards? A lot of them talk about forever love, and I have trouble with the word forever. This was true even when I was with my ex-wife. I sometimes bought cards containing the word. I had to editorialize when I gave my card. However, I prefer to skip cards altogether.

   As you probably guessed, the cards’ declarations of forever love to my ex-wife did not pan out. We’re now divorced. *Cough*

3. Flowers? Yay, let’s kill plants for our pleasure!
4. Fashion (like jewelry, clothing, accessories, etc.)? I need to know what size the gift recipient wears, for one thing. Moreover, my sense of style isn’t great. So, no.
5. Gadgets? Oof! Welcome to landmine central. If you get me a gadget, chances are that you are going to miss. I am likely to know more than you about those gadgets that I’d like to own. Moreover, if you get me a gadget, I’m going to compare it to similar gadgets I already have, and to similar gadgets I might want to own. I’ll most likely find the gadget you got me to be lacking. This is a losing proposition for you.

   Conversely, imagine people I’d give a gadget to doing the same thing as I described above. They’ll find the gadget I got them to be lacking in some way. Note that it does not matter if they actually do this or not. I become an anxious mess. Did I pick up the optimal gift? Most likely not. This is a losing proposition for me.

   Of course, it is considered gauche to tell the person who wishes to give you a gift what exactly they should get. However, I’ve sometimes resorted to this stratagem.

6. Food? This is the best option of the bunch. Food is ephemeral. If the gift is lacking, the recipient at least won’t be stuck with it for long.

A great part of the problem with gift giving are all the societal expectations that shape the practice. If you do not conform to those societal expectations, well, good luck not getting flack.

My boyfriend and I are keeping it simple this year. I got him some chocolate. We’re going to a restaurant. I know he has something for me, but he does not have it in hand yet. No biggie. I know society would look disapprovingly upon his tardiness, but society can take a hike.

#ActuallyAutistic #autism #autistic #AutisticWriters #GiftGiving #gifts #YourAutisticLife

Is Meditation More Pleasurable Than Sex?

What being neurodivergent and queer has taught me about this question.

There is frank talk about sex in what follows here, including masochism. In my view, it is light talk, but reader beware.

From time to time I see claims that meditation is indeed more pleasurable than sex.

Wow!

Let’s reach for the meditation cushion to have a cosmic orgasm, right?

Hold off for a second.

It is possible that, for some people, meditation is more pleasurable than sex. It does not follow from this that meditation is more pleasurable than sex, for everyone, generally speaking. I’m going to explain why I don’t believe that this claim applies in the general sense.

I have good reasons for saying this, I’ve practiced Zen meditation for over 28 years now. I’ve never had a “cosmic orgasm,” or any “out of this world” experience in meditation. Have I grown in my meditation practice? Yes, I have. However, I do not cultivate any extraordinary experiences in meditation. My practice is all about unlearning.

https://www.yourautisticlife.com/2024/11/05/on-zen-practice/

Now, I also enjoy sex. Guess what? I do hold that sex is more pleasurable than meditation. Am I contradicting those who hold that meditation is more pleasurable than sex? Not necessarily. If they hold that everyone performing meditation will find it more pleasurable than sex, then yes, I’m contradicting them. However, if the claim is that they find meditation more pleasurable than sex, then their claim is compatible with my experience.

So, how does being neurodivergent and queer allow me to harmonize my claim with theirs? We neurodivergent people are well aware that people do not all perceive the world in the same way. Our experiences may seem to entail contradictory claims, and still not actually be contradictory. My experience with famotidine is a case in point. It made me depressed, which is an extremely rare side effect. The fact that a lot of people take the medicine without experiencing this does not negate my own experience.

https://www.yourautisticlife.com/2023/12/05/when-famotidine-messes-with-your-head/

Add to this the fact that people’s experience of sex can differ wildly. I’m sex-positive. Some people are sex-neutral or sex-negative. For someone who is grossed out by sex, I’ll bet that a lot of things are better than sex, including, maybe, meditation. However, their experience with meditation does not negate my own.

Even more confounding. Some people are masochists. Some masochists can reach orgasm from pain alone. Again, this is their experience, and their experience does not negate that of the majority of the population, including my own. I definitely do not get orgasms from pain. I hate pain. I don’t want it.

Let me ask you this. Is it better to find meditation more pleasurable than sex and pursue meditation because of this? Or is it better to find sex more pleasurable than meditation and yet persist in one’s meditation practice? Which of the two is likely to be a crass pursuit of pleasure for pleasure’s sake?

In my book, meditation is not more pleasurable than sex. If my meditation turned out to be more pleasurable than sex, then my technique would be one that promotes extraordinary experiences, and my meditation would not be meditation, but something akin to the practice of tennis.

#AutisticWriters #meditation #pain #pleasure #sex #YourAutisticLife #ZenMeditation

Getting Rid of Old Shit

I’m lightening the load.

Don’t think for one second that getting rid of old shit is easy for me. I do find all kinds of reasons to keep stuff around, but life events sometimes insist on your making the decision to get rid of shit.

My divorce was such an event. I had to part with a lot of things I had accumulated over the years. It made no sense to try to stuff them into an apartment. That huge rolling toolbox that I had bought and was sitting in my garage? Gone. That hydraulic jack I used to jack our vehicles and was also sitting in my garage. Gone, too. I just did not have the space for this stuff.

“You could have put them into storage!”

Let me tell you about storage. I have put things in storage for a limited time when I lived with my ex-wife, and a few times before that. However, this is not a long term solution.

Why?

You pay for the space that you use, even if the items you put there are not being used. This cost can accumulate to a point where you’re paying more in storage fees than what the items are worth.

You also need to think about depreciation and deterioration of the items you put in storage. Not all storage spaces are climate-controlled. A storage facility can suffer damage from the weather, just as a home can. At any rate, even if no environmental disaster happens, the things that are in storage are likely to depreciate over time.

Finally, if you need to move around, the items you have in storage also need to be moved. I’ve moved twice since my divorce. I’m likely to move again. How many times do you want to pay for movers to move that antique chair that you are not using before you decide that you’ve paid enough?

Let’s go over the other options.

Keep It Or Toss It

You can decide to keep things. I’m probably still keeping more than I should, but I’m doing much better than I used to about getting rid of things.

I have two computers that came with me in the divorce. At the time, I was not in a mindset to evaluate whether to take them with me or not, so with me, they came. However, they were built by myself in 2015. That’s rather old, and they no longer serve any real purpose. One was a home server. It has been replaced by smaller computers. The other one was a gaming desktop, and I no longer game. Out they go.

This is a good illustration that changing circumstances can render desirable belongings, undesirable. Getting those computers made eminent sense at the time. Now, they just use up space, and they would use up effort or money when I move again. Better get rid of them.

As I’m going through my stuff, I find things that are technically still functional. I used to be of the opinion that I should keep all things that are still functional, but my opinion has evolved. I know have a test: if I ever need this item, am I going to know where to look to retrieve it? For instance, a pencil. I rarely use pencils these days, but if I do need one, will I remember to go look into this specific box to find it? If the answer is no, then I get rid of it.

I’m getting rid of a lot of things with this simple test. There’s no point to keep something just in case if I’m not going to remember where it is when I need it.

Sell Or Give It

There are things that I have that I am going to try to sell, but, truth be told, I’m not really fond of being a seller. I don’t like haggling. In some cases, I’d be at a loss to figure out shipping. I reserve selling for big ticket items. I do have a few.

The other option is to give items away to someone who wants them. I have a few items I’m offering for free.

Recycle It Or Trash it

If I want to get rid of it, but all other options fail, then I am left with recycling it, or trashing it. I have a few items lined up for recycling. Unfortunately, I also have some items that are going to be trashed. There are some items I’ve been advertising some items for months with no takers. I am patient, but my patience is not infinite.

So there you have it. That’s how I get rid of old shit.

#AutisticWriters #items #moving #objects #OldStuff #YourAutisticLife

On Zen Practice

The revolutionary art of unlearning.

I don’t think that what follows is especially original. It was probably communicated to me at the beginning of my practice, but I was too bewildered and stupid to understand it. It is only now, after years of practice, that I finally understand what was communicated.

When I talk about Zen practice, I talk about both the formal aspect embodied in Zen meditation, and the informal aspect when someone who has engaged in meditation takes Zen into their daily life.

Zen practice is an activity that frustrates the capitalist impulse.

Why?

Because Zen practice has no immediate benefit. My own practice did not bring me riches. The benefits of practice regarding my health have been very mixed. It did not protect me from a heart attack, but maybe that’s because I was too green back then. However, it did not protect me, many years later, from cancer either. Still, there are a few health benefits: my breathing capacity is high, and my heart rate is low, and both are due to my Zen practice.

Zen practice, moreover, did not give me partners. My ex-wife is someone who practices roughly to the same intensity I do, but everyone after her has been on the fence about Zen practice, or decided to simply not practice at all.

Zen practice hasn’t made me superhuman. This is in part why I call Zen practice revolutionary. It goes against capitalism, against the grain, and against social conventions about what people should do with their time.

I’ve practiced Zen meditation for over 28 years. Giving an exact figure is difficult. I did not mark on my calendar the day I became invested in Zen practice, or the first day on which I decided to go to the Montréal Zen Center to sit in meditation.

I’ve practiced meditation for over 28 years, but these were definitely not years of utmost dedication. I’ve been to seven-day retreats, yes. However, I’ve had periods during which no meditation whatsoever happened. These days, I don’t meditate every day. Such is life. However, Zen practice is ever present, even when I do not sit in meditation.

More recently, I’ve taken my practice into the relationships that I’ve established with my partners after my divorce. Seen from the point of view of the ego, a lot of these relationships are failures, because they did not last. However, seen from the point of view of Zen practice, they are successes because the trials that my exes have put me through have revealed so much to me.

“What have you gained over all these years of practice?”

Nothing.

“Lol wut?”

Alright. I’ve gained everything.

“Now you’re contradicting yourself.”

When we sit in meditation, we are not replacing one way of thinking with another. What we are doing is unlearning our habits. As we unlearn our habit, we are not replacing these habits with other habits. We just unlearn them.

This is very much unlike any other endeavor of ours. Usually when we undertake something, it is to gain something concrete. So we replace one way of thinking with another, or one behavior with another. Not so for Zen meditation.

This is the “nothing” that I have gained. I’ve given up old habits.

However, what you gain in this giving up is an openness. Whatever life throws at you. You let it come. This is everything. This is what I mentioned above when I talked about my relationships with my partners. One thing for sure, I’ve not gained access to any state of bliss, or anything extraordinary. Quite the contrary, what I have experienced in meditation is extra ordinary. (In the sense of very ordinary.)

I’ve mentioned above that even when I’m not sitting, Zen practice is a constant. I practice whenever people come to me expressing difficult issues in their life. It would be so easy to respond to them with my own opinions, and tell them to do this or that. However, I do not do this. I let them express themselves fully. Then, yes, maybe I’ll have something fruitful to say, but not until they’ve revealed themselves. If I start with my own opinion, my words will most likely be colored by prejudice and be fruitless.

I call this non-obstruction. What we learn in meditation is how to not be obstructive when the myriad things or the myriad folks manifest themselves to us. We listen, and wisdom illuminates what is fruitful to do, and what isn’t.

#AutisticWriters #capitalism #NonObstruction #unlearning #YourAutisticLife #Zen #ZenBuddhism #ZenMeditation #ZenPractice

https://www.yourautisticlife.com/2024/11/05/on-zen-practice/

Why Are Autistic Folks Generally Tolerant?

I do have a simple theory.

My theory is that it is because we don’t generally believe in arbitrary social conventions. Those very same conventions usually do not serve us, autistic folks, well. Once the social conventions that oppress us daily are seen as arbitrary, it does not take much to realize that most other social conventions are arbitrary too.

Here are some of the quirks that cause friction between me and society. On any ordinary day, I need two naps per day to function. Their timing is not stable. I do not know of any office that would tolerate this.

How about my dislike of phone calls? It is not that I cannot make a phone call, but I will do everything to avoid making a call. I’ll send emails. I’ll text, but I won’t call if I can help it.

How about stimming? I’m lucky that most of my stims can be explained away. However, some of us are more effusive with our stims. Neurotypicals tend to find these more effusive stims annoying.

How about the verbal shutdowns, the meltdowns, the burnouts that we experience? “Why don’t you answer me when I talk to you!” That’s because I cannot!

There are tons of social conventions that do not serve us, autistic folks, well. To us, these conventions seem to be completely arbitrary. Why should I not be able to take a nap? Or email? Or stim? Or experience a verbal shutdown? Why? We don’t choose our limitations, but society berates us for them.

An autistic individual will soon see that those social conventions are arbitrary. If these conventions are arbitrary, then what about that convention held by some folks that a couple has to be heterosexual, or that monogamy is the only model, or that a woman’s place is in the kitchen, or that there are only two genders, fixed at birth, and so on.

These will also look arbitrary. In addition to the characteristics I mentioned above about myself, I’m also queer, polyamorous, nonbinary, etc. I don’t generally get into trouble with autistic folks about these differences from the norm.

Thus, autistic people tend to be welcoming of difference. They do not give grief to queer folks, polyamorous folks, people who don’t follow the gender norms that others want to impose, and so on. Society called you a girl when you were born, but you feel like a man? Who are we to tell you that you are wrong?

I’ll note here that some of us are capable of falling prey to those social conventions that the majority of autistic folks see as arbitrary. These individuals will espouse some social conventions extremely, most likely to be able to fit with the group that promotes those conventions. They want to impose the conventions they’ve adopted for themselves on everyone. This does happen, but it is not the majority.

The majority of autistic folks are tolerant. Even when they do adopt some social conventions for themselves, they do not impose those conventions on others. This is the crucial distinction.

#ActuallyAutistic #autism #autistic #AutisticWriters #SocialConventions #society #tolerance #YourAutisticLife

https://www.yourautisticlife.com/2024/10/31/why-are-autistic-folks-generally-tolerant/

UnitedHealth’s Stupidity Is Suffocating

What kind of idiots run this company??????????

UnitedHealth was hit in a data breach. They did exactly what you should not do. For fuck’s sake! You do not need to be a genius to fucking know what I’m going to fucking tell you here. If you guessed that I am mad, well, bingo! You win a prize, the prize of self-satisfaction.

Let me repeat what I’ve said before. It never pays to play the game of scammers. Where have I said it? In multiple places on this site, including the “Services That Ensure That All Your Private Data Has Been Deleted” section of this story:

https://www.yourautisticlife.com/2024/01/05/youtube-channels-peddling-nonsense/

I’ve also talked about it in this story:

https://www.yourautisticlife.com/2024/09/19/the-ill-expose-your-behavior-scam/

What did UnitedHealth do? Well, they did this:

UnitedHealth reportedly paid the ransomware hacker group $22 million in a desperate bid to recover the stolen data and halt further exposure.

If the data had been removed from UnitedHealth servers, I can see the appeal of recovering the data. If it wasn’t, then there is nothing to recover, and there is no appeal whatsoever to cooperating with the scammers. However,

But in a bold move, the hackers reneged on the deal, pocketing the payout while keeping the data — leaving tens of millions of Americans’ information dangling on the dark web.

Yep, what I said might happen, did happen. Give me a crystal ball, will ya? An excellent use of capital. UnitedHealth got both diddly and squat for their effort.

Do note that you cannot ever know whether someone will actually delete the data that they promise they will delete. Furthermore, the risk of further exposure cannot be eliminated because you cannot ensure the deletion of the stolen data. Ensuring that the data has been deleted is as impossible to do as creating a perpetual motion machine!!!

Brilliant!

Just… brilliant!

#AutisticWriters #Scammers #stupidity #UnitedHealth #YourAutisticLife

https://www.yourautisticlife.com/2024/10/30/unitedhealths-stupidity-is-suffocating/

The “I’ll Expose Your Behavior” Scam

Don’t send them any money. Nothing bad will happen to you.

How do I know? Well, for one thing, I’ve received several of these emails throughout the years. I’ve never sent any money. Nothing bad happened. For good measure, two scammers tried this tactic with me on the dating apps. When they revealed themselves, I just blocked them. Again, nothing bad happened.

As reported here, the latest iteration of this scam will use your name, and attach photos of your house to give an air of believability to the threat. After all, if they know where you live, what else might they know about you? Right?

The emails also contain nice touches, like the claim that they’ve hacked your operating system, or your hardware, to spy on you. They’ll also claim that they’ve recorded you pleasuring yourself to porn and will release that information to your contact list.

OMG! You must send them money now! Right?

Wrong.

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The only real thing in all this is that they have your name, your email address, and a picture of your house. This is public information. Everything else is bluff. The email is written in a way that makes it easily reusable. They just need to change the email address, the name, and the picture, and the same email is ready to be sent to someone else.

If they had truly hacked your computer in the way they said they did, it would be trivial to add a file to your file system that says that you’ve been hacked. However, this never happens. There’s no actual proof that you’ve been hacked, just a claim that you were. Also, if they have a recording of you pleasuring yourself to porn, why are they not attaching proof? That’s because it is all hot air.

What happens if you comply? Well, the first effect is that you lose money. I also have this unproven theory that this marks you as someone to continue scamming. Why should they stop milking you when you’ve already proved to be a compliant victim?

What happens if you do not comply?

Nothing.

Nothing at all.

Scammers are after the low-hanging fruit. By not complying, you’ve put yourself out of reach of them. In fact, you were not hacked, and they do not have your list of contacts. Even if they did have it, writing the email would take time, and they would most likely have to create out of thin air some compromising picture of you. (I don’t think AI is a game changer in this regard.)

They’d also most likely be burning the account they are using to send the email. No matter how convincing the email may be, people would be reporting them as a spammer. Creating another account is not overly difficult, but it does have a cost of time, if not money.

When you do not comply, every action they might take to make true on their threat is more work for them. It is a cost, without a benefit. If they were ever to put their threat to execution, you wouldn’t come back to hand them the money, would you? The damage is already done! The conclusion is that it is much better for them to move on to the next potential victim.

The article I linked above says:

Many homeowners are unaware they have the option to opt out of having this information displayed publicly.

However, the article does not explain how this information can be removed. I am skeptical of this claim. Maybe some information can be removed. However, as far as I know, because I’ve been a homeowner, public information laws are such that some of this information cannot be scrubbed from the internet. This is the world we live in.

Just don’t send money to them, okay?

#AutisticWriters #money #Scammers #threats #YourAutisticLife

https://www.yourautisticlife.com/2024/09/19/the-ill-expose-your-behavior-scam/

The Examined Life

The discovery of my neurodivergence has been a blessing in disguise, for, together with other crises, it forced me to examine my life.

I know for a fact that some people won’t accept that neurodivergence is a blessing at all. These folks sometimes wish that they would be able to do away with their own neurodivergence, and be neurotypical, because it would make things easier. They are most likely correct. Some things would be easier. It is easier to live your life if you do not spend most of it strategizing to avoid shutdowns, meltdowns, and burnouts. This much is true.

Truth be told, sometimes, too, I have fleeting thoughts about how easier my own life would be if I weren’t neurodivergent. I wouldn’t have to wear noise-cancelling headphones, and look out of place, when I go to those events where they blast music. I wouldn’t have to deal with social anxiety, insomnia, reflux, shutdowns, etc. The list goes on and on.

However, I am quite certain that, without me being autistic, my own life wouldn’t be better, overall. It would, in fact, be a much poorer life. I bet the same is true for other people, though I cannot be absolutely certain of this. Perhaps the realization that neurodivergence is a blessing requires the perspective of age. I discovered my own neurodivergence at 50. Therefore, I never had to think about it as a young person.

At any rate, neurodivergence, for all its ills, provided me a great boon: it forced me to examine my own life. Socrates said it best:

“The unexamined life is not worth living.”

According to Plato, these words were uttered by Socrates at his trial, when he chose death over exile. The authorities had accused him of corrupting Athens’ youth. Yep, the “for the children” moral panic goes at least as far back as the time of Socrates. There is also a flip side to this saying. It is this:

“The examined life is worth living.”

Perhaps a better wording for both sayings would be that the unexamined life is a wasted life, and thus, the examined life, is a fruitful, not wasted life. There is a danger here. It is to think that what I’m arguing for is that those who cannot examine their own lives should be treated with less respect than those who can. This is not what I am arguing. Treat everyone with respect, and try to create the conditions through which everyone who wishes to do so can examine their own lives.

Now, if there is one thing at which capitalism excels, it is at pushing the citizens who happen to live under its edicts to live an unexamined life. In order to be a good capitalist citizen, all other considerations have to be subjugated to the pursuit of capital.

This is perhaps the most evident for those people who have a hard time making ends meet. They must work long hours, and maybe multiple jobs, in order to survive. In this survival mode, there is precious little time to examine their own lives. When you come back from work dead tired, you do not have the inclination to spend time reflecting upon your own life. You go to bed, and the cycle restarts the next day.

This may be less evident, but this pursuit of capital also impedes the ability of the ruling class to examine their own lives. In the capitalistic mind, it is not possible to own enough. One has to continue working to amass more and more property ad nauseam. The rat race never ends, and the rat race leaves no time to examine one’s life.

There is one type of event that is likely to cause us to examine our life: a life crisis. These crises can take many forms. In my own life, I’ve gone through multiple crises: a heart attack at the age of 24, a cancer at the age of 48 (and the disability it entailed), a divorce at the age of 50, the discovery of my own neurodivergence at the age of 50, and there may be other crises that don’t look like crises to me right now but are crises nonetheless.

I expect that a crisis which is apt at causing us to examine our lives has to have certain characteristics. I haven’t cataloged those characteristics yet, but I still can venture some informed guesses. The crises that would prompt self-examination have to be forceful while at the same time not being crushing. My cancer almost killed me. If I had died, it wouldn’t have spurred any examination of my life. At the same time, it wasn’t a walk in the park.

Furthermore, these crises cannot be perpetual. The person who needs to work two jobs to make ends meet lives in a perpetual crisis, a crisis that leaves no time for reflection. True, the fact that I’m neurodivergent is perpetual, but it is the initial discovery that is the crisis. I’ve learned how to deal with my autism. I still continue to learn, but my learning is not as intense as it initially was.

You may be surprised to see in my list the discovery of one’s own neurodivergence as a crisis. I do think, no matter how it happens, that dealing with one’s own neurodivergence is a crisis, and one that especially lends itself to favoring living an examined life. From what I gather through talking with other neurodivergent folks, the discovery of our own neurodivergence causes us to examine very carefully, at the very least, which activities we can take on, and which we should avoid. I know I did this.

It is perhaps ironic that, in the case of neurodivergence, this self-examination is spurred by the very capitalist society in which we live. This is because its edicts are so often at odds with our own needs for self-care. What society considers to be acceptable behavior and acceptable demands is so often to us, neurodivergent people, unacceptable.

Now, I’m not saying that all neurodivergent people are experts at examining their own life. However, this examination is so crucial for providing for our own care, that most of us are forced to perform it. Thus it is that we avoid living the unexamined life, and that our lives become in fact fruitful.

Your own life is fruitful, when you examine it. May your own neurodivergence spur you to examine it. May we also work to push past capitalism so that all of us who wish to do so can engage in examining our own lives, for they become richer from it.

#ActuallyAutistic #autism #AutisticWriters #capitalism #crisis #LifeCrisis #neurodivergence #Socrates #TheExaminedLife #TheUnexaminedLife #YourAutisticLife

https://www.yourautisticlife.com/2024/09/02/the-examined-life/

Walmart Is Ableist

If you are neurodivergent and prefer to use self-checkout, well, screw you!

See, Walmart has been implementing policies about the use of self-checkout. These policies have come to the Walmart where I shop. The self-checkout lanes are now 15 items or less, or they are Scan & Go.

Judging from the articles I’ve found by searching the Internet, I know they are pissing off a lot of people. Do you know who they will piss off the most with this policy change? Neurodivergent people. As such, this change is ableist bullshit peddled by Walmart. Checkout lanes is something that we, neurodivergent folks, discuss amongst ourselves from time to time. Overwhelmingly, neurodivergent folks prefer the self-checkout lanes because it helps us avoid being in a social relation (writ small) with some random cashier.

It is true that some of us do prefer the staffed checkout lanes, but this is a minority of neurodivergent folks. This minority is not directly impacted by the changes I’m detailing here. It may be indirectly impacted by longer waits at the staffed checkout lanes, however.

I discovered the new policy when I went to my local Walmart two weekends ago. I was scanning and bagging my items when I heard an clerk tell another customer that they needed 15 items or less to be able to use the self-checkout line. I was lucky. I think I may have had 14 items in my cart. I looked around and, sure enough, there were signs saying “Scan & Go” and “15 items or less.”

I had used Scan & Go before, but I did not like it. I did not remember why exactly, but this lapse in memory would soon be fixed. The next weekend, I did use the Scan & Go, and I remembered immediately the issues I had with it.

Here is the way I use the Walmart app to shop at Walmart:

1. I fill my electronic cart at home. I’m going to call this cart the regular cart, by opposition to the Scan & Go cart that I’m going to discuss below.
2. When I’m at the store, I remove the items from my regular cart as I walk down the aisles.

Scan & Go messes this up completely. To use Scan & Go, you need to open up the app and then select Scan & Go mode. When you are in this mode, the items you scan go into a Scan & Go cart that is separate from the regular cart that you can access at home. The items that you put in this cart are not automatically removed from the regular cart, either. You can fix this by manually flipping between the Scan & Go cart and the regular cart, but the app does not make this a seamless operation. You have to go through a bunch of screens to do it.

During my last shopping trip, I had to buy bananas. These need to be weighed. There was a scale near the bananas that, in theory, I could have used, but it did not seem to work. Truth be told, I’m not sure that I wasn’t the problem here. At any rate, I told the app that I’d weigh the bananas later.

I got to the self-checkout and tried weighing my bananas. When prompted, I scanned the self-checkout QR code with my phone, but my phone kept rejecting it. I asked for help, but the clerk was as puzzled as I was. I said that I would just pay for what I had in the Scan & Go cart, and then start a different order for the bananas. Just before trying this, however, I tried one last thing: I told the app that I was ready to pay. It then said that I’d have to weigh my bananas. It presented me with the option to do it at checkout. From this point on, everything worked as expected, but getting there was highly unintuitive.

From what I can tell, the app was confused earlier. It was expecting the QR code of a scale, but I gave it the QR code of a self-checkout machine. It is only after I told it that I wanted to pay now that it gave me the option to weigh at checkout, and that I was finally able to scan the QR code of the self-checkout machine.

Okay, so Scan & Go sucks, but it allowed me to avoid the restriction that Walmart imposed on the self-checkout lanes. It is not ableist, then, right? As if. It is still ableist. You can use Scan & Go only if you pay extra for Walmart+. I pay for it for reasons that I shall not detail in this article. Do you know who has a hard time making ends meet? Neurodivergent people.

I’ve heard about Walmart setting up sensory friendly hours in their stores. I’ve personally never experienced these hours. Still, at the end of the day, these hours mean little if they also force neurodivergent folks to use the staffed checkout lanes.

This is bullshit! Ableist bullshit.

Do note that comments merely telling me to not shop at Walmart will be flagged as spam. Read this piece if needed.

#ableism #AutisticWriters #bullshit #checkout #SelfCheckout #Walmart #YourAutisticLife

https://www.yourautisticlife.com/2024/08/14/walmart-is-ableist/

What Is Stimming?

Stimming is a way to bring order to our nervous system.

The explanation I’m going to give you here is that of a layman trying to understand himself. I am not a psychologist, or a psychiatrist. I don’t know that this is a generalizable explanation even. Maybe it holds only for some neurodivergent folks but not others? I have no idea.

Neurodivergent folks talk about being emotionally dysregulated. This dysregulation can manifest in multiple ways. The dysregulated individual may experience intense negative emotions, mood swings, or even difficulty identifying emotions, etc. However, what happens in the brain of a dysregulated person is not entirely clear to me.

What if what happens internally in the brain is some sort of electrical mess? I won’t call it an electrical storm. I don’t think it is as bad as a storm. The electrical storm phenomenon is associated with epilepsy and seizures. So it is not a storm, but it is, for a lack of a more descriptive word, an electrical mess. This mess prevents the electrical currents from going where they should go in an ordered manner.

One of the ways a neurodivergent person can handle emotional dysregulation is to stim. A stim is some sort of stimulation of the nervous system. Flapping your hands can be stimming. Petting an animal can be stimming. Even merely listening to music can be stimming too. Now, stims usually have a rhythm to them. To take the examples already given, flapping your hands has a rhythm. Petting an animal has a rhythm. Listening to music definitely has a rhythm too.

I think the rhythm of the stim acts as some sort of force that regiments the electrical mess that is happening in the brain. I don’t think this is a perfect analogy, but the mess is akin to a non-Newtonian fluid flowing aimlessly. Then the rhythm of the stim are like vibrations that regiment the fluid into some sort of functional pattern.

I can’t find a better explanation for my fondness for music. I have it playing any chance I get. When I was younger, I studied with music playing on my boombox, and I tapped the desk to its rhythm. Nowadays, I have music playing all day long in my apartment. I even have it playing when I go on my solitary walks, or when I drive. It keeps the electrical currents in my brain functional.

As I said, the analogy is not perfect. The non-Newtonian fluid typically has no function. If you need to see a non-Newtonian fluid in action, you should watch the following video. (Regular readers will recognize it from my article about the self.)

https://youtu.be/WaYvYysQvBU?si=ZVQnuKRhIQjabbFD

#AutisticWriters #EmotionalDysregulation #stimming #YourAutisticLife

https://www.yourautisticlife.com/2024/08/13/what-is-stimming/

Cheaters Gotta Cheat

Someone just asked me to cheat on a tutoring platform. I’ve reported them.

Yep, cheaters gotta cheat. Don’t you know? Here’s what happened. Someone posted a job offer for tutoring. I responded to the offer. A few hours later, I got a message that said:

• I’d just get the problems, and I’d just have to give the answers.
• There’s a 2-hour limit.
• There are 25 problems.
• A time at which we’d do this deed.

😩

How is this tutoring? This is not teaching someone how to solve math problems. This is asking me to answer exam questions for some kid. This is not what I do. I’m not a cheater! Note that this request was made in contravention of the stated academic honesty policy of the platform. The gall!

I guess they looked at my profile, saw that I was green on this platform, and decided that I’d easily play into their games. Haha. As if. I may be green on the platform, but I’m not green at life. I did have a teaching stint in a college some years back, and I reported two cheaters in my classes then. I can do it again.

I really don’t see what’s in it for me. If I were to accept this charade, I’d be getting two hours of pay, and maybe some repeat business, in two hour chunks or so. However, when I teach someone how to solve problems, I do spend more than two hours per exam with them. So, right off the bat, this is a shitty proposition.

In addition, and more importantly, if someone has no qualms asking a tutor to cheat in this way, they’ve proved themselves to be a dirtbag. Do I want to do business with dirtbags? Nope. Getting them to pay for my services might be hard. They might also leave me a shitty review for reasons that have nothing to do with tutoring. In my experience, dirtbags are unstable.

Finally, taking timed tests is not what I want to do with my time. Yes, I can do it, no, I do not want to do it.

I reported them to the tutoring platform. The platform responded that they are taking care of it.

#AcademicHonesty #AutisticWriters #cheating #tutoring #YourAutisticLife

https://www.yourautisticlife.com/2024/08/01/cheaters-gotta-cheat/

A Small Reorganization

I’m splitting my YouTube channels, and I’m no longer announcing my activity to those channels here.

I used to post here whenever I made a new clip in @YourAutisticLife. Going forward, I’m no longer doing this. I will probably delete the old posts at some point.

I’ve also split off the music playlists that were in @YourAutisticLife. They are now in their own channel: @StimmingIsLife. (For now, the playlists that were already on the old channel are still there.)

The upshot for you:

• If you want to know when I release a new piece of nonsense, subscribe to @YourAutisticLife.
• If you want to know when I release a new playlist, subscribe to @StimmingIsLife.

#comedy #music #SiteHousekeeping #StimmingIsLife #YourAutisticLife

https://www.yourautisticlife.com/2024/07/24/a-small-reorganization/

Why Do Autistic People “Make A Scene?”

Because you don’t bloody listen.

Going to events can be challenging when you are autistic. It is definitely challenging for me. I have noise sensitivity and social anxiety. I’ve recently learned that I’m liable to crash if I’m overstimulated during a social event. Fun!

I’m going to talk about a specific event here. It is a brunch that happens monthly and is for bisexual people. They actually don’t card for sexual orientation, but if you’re not an ally, you’re not going to enjoy yourself. This event used to happen in a locale that I would be able to tolerate. I’ll note that there is no social situation that is absolutely without risk for me, but some places are definitely worse than other places.

I’ve actually talked about this event in a prior article:

https://www.yourautisticlife.com/2024/06/09/when-being-social-destroys-you

After I wrote that article, I went into the Discord server to tell folks about what happened to me the day before, and I referred to the article I linked to above.

Even before that event happened, I had suggested another location to the people in the Discord server. I was told that my suggestion would be forwarded to the person responsible, but this did not happen. Generally, speaking, I think it is fallacious to insist that unless you can come up with a solution, then you mustn’t complain. However, I do prefer to present a solution when I can, and this time I could. I had been to this other place before and did not recall much trouble there.

Note that I’m not the only member of the group who is not fond of the new location for the brunches. Other members have perhaps not crashed like I did, but they have complained about the noise, or the subpar food offerings. Some of them complained before in the event chat on Meetup, but they weren’t heard either.

So, today, I went into the chat for the Meetup event and copied and pasted what I had put into the Discord server, minus the references to my article. It was a relatively restrained message. I laid the facts, and said that I had suggested another location, and that as far as I could tell nothing happened with my suggestion.

As far as I am concerned, I did not make a scene, but I’m half-expecting some ableist idiot to come over and accuse me of such a thing. I really thought about making a scene, however.

Why would I make a scene?

Because, so far, nobody who can make a change has listened to my complaints and the complaints of other members. This is why. We autistic people are always in the minority, and we end up being overlooked. Our needs are ignored, until, one day, we figure that we’re only going to be heard if we make a scene.

I thought about it, but I did not. I don’t know about next time.

#autism #autistic #AutisticWriters #MakingAScene #overstimulation #socialization #YourAutisticLife

https://www.yourautisticlife.com/2024/07/12/why-do-autistic-people-make-a-scene/

Listening Without Judgment

It is because we can listen without judgment, that we are all special.

While I was taking my daily walk one morning, a thought occurred to me. All of us humans have a special capability that no other entity on Earth possesses. We have the ability to listen without judgment. How wonderful!

When someone expresses suffering, they are free to express this suffering to inanimate objects. These objects will listen to the best of their abilities. The rock listens as a rock. The wall listens as a wall. Etc. However, as far as I know, one of these entities is capable of judgment. However, we humans are able to judge. This makes us special. What a great gift it is to have the ability to judge, but not use it, when listening to someone’s suffering!

Judgment is what casts us into hell. Here’s a story. I’ve heard multiple versions of it. A samurai comes to a Zen master asking whether heaven and hell are real. The Zen master insults the samurai. The samurai draws his sword, ready to kill the Zen master. The master says, “this is hell.” The samurai has a realization and sheathes his sword back. The master says, “this is heaven.” The samurai wasn’t listening without judgment, and thus he created hell.

“Very clever. So you are beyond judgment, then?”

Haha, as if. I know hell very well, for I dwell in it, just like Jijang Bosal.

“Who?”

Jijang Bosal is the Bodhisattva who helps the deceased who are in hell, but more broadly he is the Bodhisattva of transitions. He is the Bodhisattva with whom I have the greatest affinity. In Japan, he is known as Jizo Bosatsu, and in India, as Kshitigarbha Bodhisattva.

I’ve experienced a whole slew of transitions in my life. Between life and death. Between passing as straight, and expressing my pansexuality, and polyamorous nature. Between passing as neurotypical, and being autistic. Between being a man, but discovering that I’m nonbinary. Being single, then married, then divorced. It is no accident that Jijang is the Bodhisattva who I feel guides my steps through life.

And now he guides me as I abide in hell, and listen to those who confide in me without judgment. I can do this even when the person talking to me is someone I adore, but is telling me hurtful things. This is both surprising, and amazing! I did not know I could do this, but my ex-partners have revealed this aspect of my being.

And thus now, Jijang Bosal asks me to use my personal suffering to help all those I encounter. I help them not with big flashy acts, but with small acts of kindness, and listening, without judgment.

I’m not a saint, but I try.

#AutisticWriters #Bodhisattva #heaven #hell #JijangBosal #listening #ListeningWithoutJudgment #suffering #transitions #YourAutisticLife

https://www.yourautisticlife.com/2024/07/09/listening-without-judgment/

How Does One Feel One’s Gender?

I don’t know what it means to feel “masculine.”

Ever since I discovered that I’m nonbinary, I’ve been reflecting on what gender is supposed to be, and I’m just ending up confused. Some people talk about feeling “masculine” or “feminine” but I don’t really know what it means, other than acting in accordance with the way that society decides that “men” and “women” should act.

People are born with a certain set of genitals, on the basis of this, society says “male” or “female.” This is already problematic. If you think that the biological sex binary is a given, I invite you to listen to this TED talk:

https://youtu.be/stUl_OapUso?si=DizHKNWPUynGjMZ_

I already knew that the biological basis for the binary is on shaky ground. However, there is nothing like someone speaking from actual lived experience to sharpen your understanding.

I’ve mentioned above that on top of biological sex, society imposes a series of behavioral conventions that define what men and women are. Men should act this way. Women should act that way. This is the gender binary. When a man acts in the way a woman should, it is deemed unnatural. Same when a woman acts in the way a man should.

I used to think that if I declared myself nonbinary, it was from an ideological standpoint more than anything else, but I don’t think this is the case. I’m just puzzled when people talk about feeling their gender, because this is something I don’t experience, or that I experience only faintly.

The gender binary is a complete fabrication from society. It is mere convention. It is not nature itself that compels those we call men to be competitive, or to be the provider in a couple, but society. It used to be that women couldn’t get credit without their husband’s approval. It is not nature that dictated this, but society. This restriction disappeared, not because of any change in nature, but because of changes in how society sees the gender binary.

Thus, it is that when I talk about my nonbinary nature, I talk about behavior. This is only because society itself distinguishes one side of the binary from the other in terms of behavior. It happens from time to time that someone interjects that gender identity is not the same as gender expression. Yes, this is true, but it has no bearing on what I am saying.

Let me make this clear. I’m not the gender police. You absolutely can be a feminine man, or a masculine woman, or any other variation. I won’t get on your case for it, and may even give you romantic love. However, as far as I am concerned, when it comes to evaluating whether I am man, woman, or nonbinary, my behavior is a critical component of the analysis.

So society, just like it has made me think that I was neurotypical by treating me like a neurotypical person, has also made me think that I am a man by treating me like a man. This is where gender dysphoria sets in. Yes, I am well versed in looking the part. Yes, I’ve been encultured in manhood, and, usually, I role-play a man. However, there are some behaviors that are required of me, as a man, that I don’t want to engage in. Hence, the gender dysphoria that occurs when I’m pushed to engage in those behaviors.

Still, I don’t feel the male gender in my life. I don’t feel special enjoyment when I do manly things. The notion of whether an act is manly or not does not figure in my decisions. For instance, my relationship with sports has been quite tepid. I used to watch racing, and that was it, as far as sports were concerned. I don’t anymore. I don’t think I’m missing anything important. I’m not pining after sports. It is not somehow missing from my life as a man.

It is only because society insisted that I am a man, and I believed society, that I thought that I was a man. Since I do not feel my gender, where does this lead me, but to the conclusion that I am in fact nonbinary?

#AutisticWriters #behavior #enby #gender #GenderBinary #GenderDysphoria #GenderExpression #GenderIdentity #nonbinary #SocialConvention #YourAutisticLife

https://www.yourautisticlife.com/2024/07/08/how-does-one-feel-ones-gender/

The Conservatives Justices Part of SCOTUS are Sophomoric Idiots

Yep, we’re fucked.

I chose my words carefully with that title. Their “reasoning” for the decision granting absolute powers to presidents is equivalent to the work of a confused college sophomore. I knew right away that this decision couldn’t be good for us, but I decided to hold my tongue for a while.

I have now listened to the Serious Trouble podcast, by defense attorney Ken White:

https://www.serioustrouble.show/p/donald-trump-wins-the-immunity-idol

And to LegalEagle’s take on the matter:

https://youtu.be/MXQ43yyJvgs?si=5UFYjvQlvXlPnHwt

We’re fucked indeed.

I invite you to listen to both. I knew the decision was a bad one, but I had no grasped just how sophomoric it is. So sophomoric that I now have no qualms saying that the conservative majority is in the pocket of the GOP and Trump. There is no other plausible explanation for such a turd of an opinion.

Your Autistic Life is supported by readers like you. Use one of the links below to support my writing! Thank you.

These so-called “textualists” are in fact cherry-pickers. They assert that the Constitution does not say anything about presidential immunity. This is true, on its face, but also misleading. The framers of the constitutions did bestow immunity explicitly elsewhere in the Speech or Debate Clause of the constitution. If they remained silent about the president, that’s because they did not want to give the president immunity.

This is textual analysis 101. To insist otherwise is to ignore the very text of the Constitution and intellectually dishonest. I’ve done textual analysis as part of my master’s and my Ph.D. This type of shitty logic would not be tolerated there, but it is tolerated among the conservative justices, because it is a means to an end.

The court’s decision is utterly vague about how the lower courts should interpret any of it. If I were a lower court judge, I’d play dumb with the lack of guidelines that SCOTUS has provided, and give a ruling that will most likely be appealed to SCOTUS. Let them deal with the bloody mess they created.

This is sophomoric.

#AutisticWriters #CherryPicking #idiots #SCOTUS #sophomoric #textualism #USLaw #YourAutisticLife

https://www.yourautisticlife.com/2024/07/05/the-conservatives-justices-part-of-scotus-are-sophomoric-idiots/

My Take On The Buddhist Virtue of Right Speech

The neurotypical take on Right Speech is a confused mess.

I’ve never encountered anyone who will explain Right Speech the way I’m going to explain it. Let’s start with the typical neurotypical explanations. They run like as follows.

Right Speech involves four things you should not do:

1. Don’t tell lies.
2. Don’t cause disunity through language.
3. Don’t use language to produce harm.
4. Don’t engage in idle talk, or gossip.

Conversely, there are four things that you should do:

1. Tell the truth.
2. Use language that favors unity.
3. Use language that makes people feel good.
4. Use purposeful language.

I called this the neurotypical explanation due to the simple fact that neurotypical individuals rule the world. Thus, the explanations we are likely to get are going to be informed by neurotypical views.

If you are autistic, you are probably already be uncomfortable with this list. For one thing, what is this “idle gossip?” Is this not what 90% of neurotypical talk consist of? A bunch of empty vocal rituals. “It’s hot today.” What purpose is there to saying this? The person you are telling this to, assuming they are standing next to you, knows exactly how hot or cold it is. They don’t need your assertion. Is stating that it is hot today really the speech that should be disfavored for being idle talk?

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Then, how do you reconcile “use language that makes people feel good” with “tell the truth?” There are times when the task of making people feel good will require you to lie. A friend asks, “Do I look okay in this?” but they look awful. Do you lie to them, and make them feel good, or do you say it as you see it, and make them feel bad?

Some people will also make a big deal of the fact that sometimes we don’t know the truth. Yes, this is true. (Har har!) We don’t always know what is true. However, I think this rule is easily followed if we simply say what we consider to be true in our mind. We may be wrong, but if we are honest that what we are saying is what we think is true, then there is no issue.

Note that this is not absolution of those people who like to hate, for they often ignore what is patently true. They self-lobotomize in order to be able to utter their harmful rhetoric. When presented with evidence, they merely wish it away.

At any rate, my neurodivergent explanation is that these rules should be implemented in the context of Buddhist practice. Yes, telling the truth is admirable, but consider what happens when you tell lies to people. Any significant lie will come at a mental cost. Once you start lying, you have to maintain your lie. Then you start being fearful that your lie is going to be uncovered. When this happens, your mind becomes preoccupied with the lie even during meditation practice.

The same thing happens if you use language to cause disunity, or to harm other people. You become wrapped in a scenario that has already happened, or that you wish to happen. So it is too with the idle speech. It can become the cause of much rumination during meditation.

I think it is thus that these rules should be examined. Not as moral edicts, but as tools to help the practitioner meditate.

#AutisticWriters #Buddhism #harm #meditation #neurodivergent #neurotypical #RightSpeech #speech #truth #YourAutisticLife

https://www.yourautisticlife.com/2024/06/26/my-take-on-the-buddhist-virtue-of-right-speech/

Stimming Is Life 015

Yes music!

In need to talk about the Route 66 song. Unfortunately, the electroswing mix that I picked does not exist on Spotify. I had to replace it with Nat King Cole’s version, which I love.

This song is a good illustration of the fact that I think ads can be cute, even if I hate most ads. No, the song is not an actual ad, but I think the eletroswing version that I picked distill it into a nice little jingle:

If you ever plan to motor west
Travel my way, take the highway that’s the best
Get your kicks on Route 66

This little ditty tells you everything you need to know about the “product,” Route 66. You don’t need to say anything more than the above. The remix that I picked is perfectly embodying this.

I actually miss jingles. I think they were a nice art form.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZu8lf-W92LPSIAFm3EaOTScC4IYHhWM2

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4b0CsLyHqGVeF3SVrp8khz?si=c4c0329b029a48b9

#AutisticWriters #music #MusicVideo #stimming #StimmingIsLife #YourAutisticLife

https://www.yourautisticlife.com/2024/06/17/stimming-is-life-015/

When Being Social Destroys You

This is the story of how a recent social event destroyed me.

I think my own unmasking as a voluntary aspect, and an involuntary one. For instance, I voluntarily stim in public, or leave events when I’ve had enough. However, I used to sleep full nights without any issue. I used to be reflux free. Yet, my sleep got progressively worse over the years, and I started getting reflux too. This involuntary unmasking started even before my cancer.

“Oh, but you don’t look autistic!”

If you are autistic, you know how much we love people to tell us that we don’t look the part of the autistic individual. No, we don’t have autistic tattooed on our forehead. Autism is mainly an internal condition that sometimes has an external manifestation. The fact that folks don’t see our internal condition does not make our autism any less troublesome.

Yesterday, I went to a monthly bi brunch. The place we usually went to is unavailable. So this event was held in a location I’m not very fond of. It is essentially a sports bar. As a sports bar, it is most likely a decent location, but I’m not into sports, so I don’t generally go to sports bars.

I had been there once before, for the same event. When I was there, one part of the bar was unusable due to ceiling issues. We ate in a part of the bar that is particularly awful for acoustics. Everything echoed pretty badly. There was also rather loud music playing. I had a hard time engaging in conversations. I vowed never to return, if I could help it.

Last month, the organizers decided to go to the same place. At that time, true to my vow, I decided to skip. I explained my reasoning to other people, but I did not come up with an alternate location. Being autistic, it is not like I tend to go out a lot. Oh, I do go out, but I tend to go to places that I already know.

Your Autistic Life is supported by readers like you. Use one of the links below to support my writing! Thank you.

This month, I decided to go against my vow and to go again. I do like to see people, so I figured I’d grin and bear it. This time, the area of the bar that had been closed previously was actually opened, and we did eat there. Acoustically, this was a better deal than the other half of the bar. This aspect of the event was better than I had anticipated.

However, the food was still not what I was really looking for. Don’t get me wrong, the food I ordered tasted fine, but this food is fine for a sports bar. Sports bar food is not what I am after. The food, however, is not the only problem I experienced.

During the event, I felt totally fine. One of the organizers kept checking on me from time to time, and every time I answered truthfully that I was doing fine. The event coincided with the local pride parade, so people were asking me if I’d walk in the parade or watch it. I answered no to both questions, while still leaving open the idea that I’d watch it.

In retrospect, I’m bloody glad I did not walk, or even watch the parade. See, I was not fine, but I wouldn’t discover this until after I came back home. I was able to take the subway, and to drive myself from the subway station to my apartment. However, as soon as I entered my apartment, I crashed, hard. I spent the rest of the day fuzzy-headed. I took a 30-minute nap. It was helpful, but not enough.

Now, the day after, I’m trying to figure out what hammered me so much. I was at the brunch for maybe one hour 30 minutes. I’ve been to longer events before. Heck, the same group holds monthly bi board games, and I don’t typically come back hammered from those events. They easily last twice or three times as long as the time I spent at the bi brunch.

My top theory right now is that it is the combination of location, and having to socialize with an entire slew of newcomers that did me in. Some of them had been to the event before, but I had not met them. At any rate, this amounted to the same for me, since they were new to me. We were around 30 folks, if my math is accurate. There were a lot of conversations occurring all around me. My hearing ability is such that I easily get confused when there are too many conversations going all at once.

At first, I thought it was just the sheer number of people that did me in, but I don’t think so. I used to be able to go to conferences with many more people without any trouble. I’ve more recently been at events of easily over 100 people, without crashing afterwards. I think the difference is that at the conferences, and the recent events, I did not have to socialize. So it is having to socialize with so many people in a subpar location that is the problem.

I’ve crashed before like this, but I’ve never previously done a postmortem that takes my autism into account. This is the first time that I link the two. As I mentioned above, there is an involuntary aspect to my unmasking, and perhaps the fact that I have a harder time with social events is part of this involuntary unmasking.

What should I have done differently to avoid crashing? Maybe I shouldn’t have gone at all. For sure, if I had not gone, I wouldn’t have crashed. Still, I like to see people. So what should I have done at the event to avoid crashing. Maybe I should have taken one of the small booths to avoid the crowd. Also, at some point, there was a little voice in my head asking whether I should go back home early. I decided to ignore it, but maybe I should have listened to it.

I felt fine during the event, and I’m sure I appeared mostly fine to other people. This is the irony, if you will, of autism. You appear fine, but your nervous system is in overdrive, trying to process everything happening around you. It is later that you have to pay for the time that your nervous system was in overdrive.

Don’t get me wrong. I was glad to be there, but I’m trying to figure out how to have my fun without paying for it dearly afterwards. Being exhausted like I was after one hour and thirty minutes of socializing is not normal. How can I avoid this cost? That’s what I’m trying to figure out. I know that some of it is on me and my ability to listen to my own needs.

Now, I know that some of my neurodivergent siblings have an even harder time than I do with socializing. When you design events without taking our needs into account, you are effectively excluding us. I know that you are not deciding that autistic people are not welcome. However, through self-selection, autistic people decide to not go, and your community is the poorer for it.

I have an event today too. This one is for autistic people, and it is held in a conference room in a library. It will easily last twice as long as the event yesterday, but I expect to come out of it without crashing.

#autism #autistic #AutisticWriters #bisexual #crashing #inclusivity #pansexual #SocialEvents #socializing #unmasking #YourAutisticLife

https://www.yourautisticlife.com/2024/06/09/when-being-social-destroys-you/

When Being Polite Is Merely Superficial

Sometimes being polite to someone is actually just a way to get them off your back.

People are strange. Neurotypical people are the strangest. Neurodivergent people who are consciously or not propagating neurotypical habits are also among the strangest. Internalized ableism is a thing.

Not so long ago, I sent a message to someone who had given a class on a topic that shall not be discussed here. I mentioned a problem that people who are new to the topic are likely to make. I pointed out how I made that mistake myself early on and was surprised at the result. My work looked correct, but it wasn’t, and the end result was that someone could have been hurt. I suggested pointing the problem out explicitly in the class.

I’ll note here that this class was given to people of a variety of skill ranges. There were experienced folks, and utter newbies. I know, because being relatively new, I asked beforehand.

This person replied that they had discussed a different issue used in a more specialized context, which implied the thing that I wanted to make explicit. This is entirely true.

I was contemplating a response pointing out that the specialized context that they were thinking about is one that I never had to be in, and most likely the other participant would not be called to be in that context any time soon. Moreover, the link between what I was talking about and what this context was would not be evident in the mind of newcomers. Yes, once he said it, I could see the link, but prior to that I did not see it.

Your Autistic Life is supported by readers like you. Use one of the links below to support my writing! Thank you.

In my view, rejecting my suggestion amounted to letting newcomers perhaps go back home with a lack of knowledge that could in some case prove dangerous. They could hurt someone.

I thought about my reply… and then I decided to reply with “Thank you.” I was polite. I seemed to accept the entirety of this person’s reasoning.

Alas… that’s just an illusion. I figured that if I pushed, I’d probably regret it. Their initial reply was defensive. Why would they switch gears and accept my point of view if I decided to stick to my guns? I essentially decided that this person was too stubborn to be talked to. Yes. I was polite, but this was only to acknowledge their answer and not further fan the flames. My thanks were an insult of sorts. Conversely, I expect that this person saw my initial message to them as being insulting. I did not use insulting language, but that does not matter one bit.

This is far from the first time that this happens. I recall, not so fondly I might add, one person who reviews some work of mine when I was working on my master’s degree. She was a language lawyer, and did not miss a chance to harp on the language that the Chicago Manual of Style said was to be privileged. None of her comments were about the substance of my work. They were all about the aesthetics of it.

She got a polite reply. I thanked her, all the while thinking that the entire enterprise had been a complete waste of time. I ignored most of her recommendations. I despise people who review other people’s works only to completely squash their authorial voice, like she did. So much so that when I have to review someone else’s work, I specify that they can ignore everything I have to say. Ultimately, their work is theirs. I also do not harp on matters of style just for the lulz.

Conversely, if I bother to point out problems in something that you did, chances are that I think you are a person who can take my advice, and I want our relationship to continue. Alas, I’ve sometimes been disappointed. I thought that someone was able to take my feedback, only to find that they couldn’t. They cast my feedback as impoliteness. I did point out to them that I could have just thanked them, all the while thinking them too immature or weak to take my advice, and that this would have been fake politeness, but this usually does not work.

There you have it. Sometimes the polite demeanor that someone shows you means that they consider you too immature to handle what they really think. Yes, they are polite, but just on the surface.

#AutisticWriters #neurodivergence #neurotypical #politeness #superficial #YourAutisticLife

https://www.yourautisticlife.com/2024/06/06/when-being-polite-is-merely-superficial/

Stimming Is Life 14

More music to stim to.

Things of note…

I believe this is a first in our series. The songwriter of Your Woman, Jyoti Mishra (@Jyoti) is in the fediverse! Do say hi, especially if you like the song!

Danger Mouse is very present in this playlist. He’s a member Gnarls Barkley and Broken Bells. No, I don’t mean the cartoon character, but this guy:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danger_Mouse_(musician)

My ex-wife was enamored with Lovefool by The Cardigans. My relationship to it was more muted. I loved the musicality of it, but I hated the notion that a woman was asking someone to pretend to love her.

#AutisticWriters #music #MusicVideo #stimming #StimmingIsLife #YourAutisticLife

https://www.yourautisticlife.com/2024/06/05/stimming-is-life-14/

If I Were A Billionaire

I’d be helping my fellow human beings here and now.

A billion dollars does isolate you from having to worry about your future, right? I sure hope so. At least that’s how I imagine it. If I’m wrong about this, you can try to convince me, but you’re going to have to bring up your A game. I don’t tolerate fools lightly.

So if I had a billion dollars, I’d be helping my fellow human beings. No, I’m not talking about those highfaluting philanthropic projects. Well, maybe I’d participate in those too, but my first impulse is not to engage in those abstract goals, but rather to help my fellow human beings here, and now.

How might I do this? Do you know anyone struggling with medical debt? How about I wave my magic wand to make that debt disappear? How about I provide an endowment? I’m going to pay for all the care that you provide, but in return you cannot charge a patient, ever?

Wow! This would be great, wouldn’t it? This would provide immeasurable relief to my fellow human beings. Their medical debt would disappear, and those people who die now because they cannot afford care would get to live. Amazing!

“UNpossible!” says the billionaire.

Why? Have you tried to do this with your billions? No. How about you shut the fuck up.

“What about people who will try to game the system?” says another one.

The system is already being gamed to line the pockets of the rich.

“What about…”

Maybe the same drive that would push me to help my fellow human beings is why I am not a billionaire. Maybe what allows someone to become a billionaire in the first place, also kills any inner incentive to help your fellow human beings, other than by issuing splashy press releases announcing an investment of money into some abstract benefit for the human race, but at the expense of helping here and now.

Maybe…

I’m already helping my fellow human beings here and now, with the means that I have at my disposal, which are very modest indeed.

If you are a billionaire, what are you waiting for?

#AutisticWriters #billionaire #healthcare #MedicalDebt #money #YourAutisticLife

https://www.yourautisticlife.com/2024/05/21/if-i-were-a-billionaire/

Trans Kids Shouldn’t Have To Hide Who They Are From Their Parents

I’m sorry to report that most parents fail horribly in this matter.

Recently, a trans kid was asking how to buy binders without their parents knowing about it. This request saddened me. No, not because the kid is trans. I am saddened because, as is usually the case with trans kids, the parents are not on board with their kid being trans.

Before we go any further, I’m pansexual, yes, but I’m not trans. My relationship with trans people is that of a friend, and, at times, a romantic partner. I’m sorry if I step on some toes in the trans community with this article. This is definitely not my aim. I’m just terribly angry at what I’m observing.

For those who don’t know, the binders I mentioned above are not those you put sheets of paper into. These binders are those you use when you want to flatten a chest. To speak more precisely, they are chest binders, but people say binders for short.

That a child would want to hide who they truly are from their parents boggles my mind. How can the very people who are supposed to love you unconditionally decide that revealing the fact that you are trans is one step too far? It is not a reflection of your parenting if your kid is trans. You did not fail. There is nothing you should reasonably have done differently to change the fact that your kid is trans.

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There is one thing that I can somewhat understand. Good parents want the best for their children. The revelation that your kid is trans will, no doubt, generate anxiety. How will the rest of the world relate to them? How will the rest of the world accept their existence? What medical procedures will your child have to undergo before they can live happily? I can see parents finding it initially difficult to compose with this, especially if they know next to nothing about being trans.

If you love your child unconditionally, however, you get over this initial anxiety quickly.

Alas, a lot of parents do not get over this initial anxiety quickly, if at all. I’m unhappy to report that most of my trans friends and lovers report having shitty parents. This is almost universal. I’ll admit, however, that I am perhaps suffering from observational bias. After all, when one has good parents, one does not feel the need to vent to friends. Still, what I am observing is truly alarming and disheartening.

What I’ve heard again and again from trans folks is that being trans is not a whim, or a phase. It is who they are. Yes, some people regret the fact that they took hormones or underwent surgery. Still, these are a minority, which does not reflect on the rest of the group.

Unfortunately, one day, the child who had to hide who they truly are from their parents will have to reveal to these same parents who they truly are. If the child feel the need now to hide their identity, you can bet those parents won’t be too thrilled at the news. For their part, the parents will have revealed that their love is far from being unconditional. This lack of support takes a toll on the mental health of the child.

Thus, the parents who think that being unsupportive will magically make their kid not trans are in fact making things much worse for their kid.

This lack of support is deadly.

#AutisticWriters #lgbtqia #MentalHealth #parenting #queer #trans #transgender #TransRightsAreHumanRights #YourAutisticLife

https://www.yourautisticlife.com/2024/04/09/trans-kids-shouldnt-have-to-hide-who-they-are-from-their-parents/

Am I The Asshole?

This is a question that I ask myself often, probably because of the trauma I suffered.

I believe this concern about whether I am an asshole comes from innumerable times when I was unjustly labeled an asshole. Over time, I internalized the accuser’s voices, and now I ask myself whether I am, in fact, an asshole.

Let me tell you a little story. About two weeks and a half ago, I had a great date with a submissive girl. She was about all I wanted in a partner. She was autistic, like I am. Her autistic traits were different from my own. We had a wonderful weekend together. When I asked her how she felt, she said that she felt content. These were her words.

At the end of our date, a crisis happened in her family. Her family is not anywhere nearby. Still, it was a serious situation. The last I heard from her was that she had arrived home safely. Then, she went silent. I have not heard from her since our date. Is she okay? Is the crisis over? Did she travel several states away to be with her family? I have no idea.

When things like this happen, my mind goes into high gear. She was content. I gave her my all. I was kind. Still… did I… did I manage to put her off somehow? Did I do something that I did not notice? Am I the asshole?

Lest you think that I’m being dramatic with the worry about doing things that I did not notice, I’ll remind you that I’m now divorced, due, mostly, to my ex-wife not being able to handle my autistic traits. If she was annoyed with me, she’d glare. I would not be able to read her glares. Then she’d accuse me of deliberately ignoring her glares. Conversely, I accuse her of imagining that she glared. Yes, I’m quite capable of unwittingly putting off people, even ND people. My ex-wife has ADHD.

I’d like to think that I would act superbly in all possible situation. Alas, I know that’s not the case. I have sometimes not acted superbly. I was not acting like a monster, but I still managed to hurt people around me, sometimes the very people that I adored. I’ve sometimes managed to be the asshole.

I think as a response to the trauma that I suffered, and the fact that I don’t always act superbly, my brain likes to compare my actual behavior to that of complete shitbags. I can’t help it. That’s how my brain works.

Let me give you an example. During the date with the girl above, we went to have coffee. We sat at a table, and we chatted for a bit and drank. She pulled out her phone, and started reading a manga. I’ve been in the NT world long enough to know that if she had been on a date with an NT individual, that person would have interpreted it as her not being interested in the date. For my part, I did not make a fuss. I just continued talking to her, and enjoying her company.

Something similar happened later when I proposed to watch a movie. She said she was reading. I thought she meant that she did not want to watch the movie. No biggie. A bit later, I suggested putting on a TV show, because I had figured that perhaps the specific movie I had picked was not titillating her. She said she was still reading but that I could put it on and that she had the ability to watch TV and read at the same time.

Fair enough, I don’t have this multitasking capability. Let’s go back to the episode at the coffee shop. Would it have served me anything to get angry? No. Both episodes, however, would have been likely to cause ire in an NT person. Yes, I compare my behavior to those of NT folks. Again, I can’t help it. I don’t decide to do this. It just happens. What I do decide to do is to not engage in those destructive behaviors.

I sometimes wonder if I am going to be the asshole, even in situations that haven’t happened yet. I’m pansexual, but I’ve been with exactly one man. He is trans too. We had a nice couple of days together, but prior to this happening, I was wondering… Would I say or do something to turn him off. I had never been in that situation before. So I was comparing myself, again, to dirtbags. Was I going to be the asshole when we’d be together?

I was once explaining to a group of people that someone had ghosted me after one night of sex, but that I had decided not to go after her. Those people took me to task immediately. Why would I even decide not to go after her, unless I were some sort of monster who does actually stalk people. Hmm… let provide an explanation. First, as I said above, I cannot help compare myself to dirtbags. I don’t decide this. Second, I’m a software engineer. I’ve actually done things that would allow me to stalk someone if I wanted to. Doing those things does not require mental effort. I’ve not stalked anyone, but I could super easily do it if I wanted to.

I have an expression for what those people did to me: karmic shaming. People think of karma as this special force, but it is really just the conditioning that we receive as we grow up. I have the karma of someone who compares himself to shitbags. I also have the karma of a software engineer. This is my conditioning. I cannot help it. Shaming me about having this karma is not helpful.

I’m usually not the asshole, but I keep asking myself, even in situations where I shouldn’t: am I, in fact, the asshole? Did I do something I did not notice?

#ActuallyAutistic #AmITheAsshole #autism #autistic #AutisticWriters #Dating #KarmicShaming #trauma #YourAutisticLife

https://www.yourautisticlife.com/2024/03/26/am-i-the-asshole/

When Your Sex Bites You In Your Autistic Ass

I’m a cis male, but my autistic traits correlate with those of cis female individuals.

The study of autism is plagued with sexism, even to this day. There is definitely more awareness of the problem nowadays, but the prevalent view of how autism presents in people is largely based on antiquated stereotypes. If you are white, male, and you annoy your parents, you are more likely to get diagnosed by the professionals, than if you are not white, not male, and manage to mask your autism.

(A quick note on my terminological choices. I have no idea how being trans or nonbinary may affect autistic presentation. I don’t mean to exclude, but I also don’t want to speak about things that I’m not familiar with. I’m sorry about this.)

I believe now that my own deceased mother was autistic too, but went undiagnosed because of this sexism. She was bipolar, and alcoholic. These are often the conditions that women who are not diagnosed experience. She was treated for both conditions, but no treatment took. These treatments did not take, because they were dealing with the symptoms of autism, without dealing with the autism itself.

Early on in my research about autism, I came upon this site:

https://embrace-autism.com/

I’ve taken many of the self-assessment tests there, and I always end up neurotypical or borderline autistic. The DSM-5 is not helpful either. Actually, I think it is a step back from the online self-assessment tests. No psychiatrist of mine has ever suggested autism as an explanation for my mental troubles. I’ll remind you that I’m self-diagnosed.

Fediverse user @ImmedicableME recently posted a link to this page:

https://the-art-of-autism.com/females-and-aspergers-a-checklist/

I’ve gone through all the traits there, and I do find a substantial amount of these traits apply to me.

Join Us

Bonfire Merch

It is not the first time I find that the female presentation of autism is more reflective of how I present, too. In the book Unmasking Autism by Devon Price, the author talks of a period of time during which doctors talked about male and female autism. When I was reading this book, I could easily see my traits listed among those that doctors assigned to females.

In fiction, too, I find myself closer to the female autistic characters than the male ones. I am nothing like Rain Man, or Sheldon Cooper. I’m not rude, nor do I have an obsession with trains. The character I compare myself readily to is Quinni from Heartbreak High, an autistic girl.

For the record, I do not think that it is scientifically valid, or useful to talk about “male” and “female” autism anymore. I do not have a problem with the page I linked to above, which gives a list of traits generally linked with being female. It is important to raise the awareness that autism in females may present differently than the stereotypes.

However, once the awareness has been raised, it is better to drop the labels male and female. I am a cis male who presents mostly like a female. I think, just like my mother was undiagnosed because she did not present the male stereotype, so am I have been undiagnosed by the professionals because I do not present as the male stereotype either. Still, again, once I’ve given this explanation, I no longer want to use the binary to explain autism.

Now, I don’t have a great explanation for why I present the way I do. I suspect the pressure of living with a narcissistic father are partially to blame. I sometimes say that I don’t experience meltdowns, but this is not correct. I do experience them, but very rarely. My father, however, is an expert at triggering meltdowns in me. He knows exactly what buttons to push. Therefore, to avoid presenting too big an opportunity to him to press my buttons, I’ve learned to camouflage my autism.

My mother’s and my case are direct examples of how sexism hinders our access to medical care. We’ve both been bitten in the ass because of our manifestation of symptoms did not conform to the stereotype.

#ActuallyAutistic #autism #autistic #AutisticWriters #sexism #stereotypes #YourAutisticLife

https://www.yourautisticlife.com/2024/03/18/when-your-sex-bites-you-in-your-autistic-ass/

Autistic Joy: How I Did NOT Celebrate Valentine’s Day With My Boyfriend

We are on the same page, he and I, Valentine’s Day is not something to celebrate.

I’ve always had a difficult relationship with Valentine’s Day. I went through the motions, for the benefit of my ex-wife. It was very important for her to mark the day, somehow.

As far as I see it, Valentine’s Day is a moment designed to compel affection. This does not sit well with me. I can show affection. I can give gifts. However, as usual, it is all situational with me. If you require me to be affectionate at some arbitrary date, I may oblige you, but the act will feel forced to me. I’m not some machine on which you can press a button and get the goods.

I did wish a Happy Valentine’s Day to my boyfriend, and I quickly followed by making a mention that it is a moment for socially-mandated affection. He immediately replied that he hates the day. Well, he won’t get any flack from me about that. We’re on the same page.

I told you my affection is situational. We’re planning an outing to a maple syrup event. I effectively grew up with the substance. I’ve had the chance in my childhood to see many demonstrations about how the syrup is produced. He hasn’t. So I’m showing my affection by offering him to see how it is made.

Now, there are things going on in his life that may prevent this outing from happening. However, I’m not pushy. This is also affection. Mind you, if it does not happen, I’m going to be disappointed, but it won’t be the end of the world.

Two neurodivergent men, agreeing that Valentine’s Day sucks. That’s autistic joy!

#ActuallyAutistic #affection #autism #AutisticJoy #AutisticWriters #MapleSyrup #neurodivergence #ValentinesDay #YourAutisticLife

https://www.yourautisticlife.com/2024/02/15/autistic-joy-how-i-did-not-celebrate-valentines-day-with-my-boyfriend/

Willow

https://www.yourautisticlife.com/2024/02/05/willow/

A note for my followers and people reading #YourAutisticLife, my abandon of Ko-Fi allows me to be more flexible with the subscription to my blog.

In particular, I can have multiple types of subscription, and multiple types of restricted content.

With this in mind, I will soon start publishing content that I deem to be "NSFW." Specifically, articles about my view of BDSM, techniques, etc. These articles will be restricted to the subscribers of my blog. Moreover, my subscribers will have to ASK me to be gain this membership level. This is so that people who do not want to be exposed to this content can easily avoid it, even if they are subscribers to my blog.

This being said, these articles will still be publicized by email and to the fediverse. What I aim to do is this:

1. For fediverse posts, use the #NSFW tag. Filter out NSFW posts if you must, and you will not see my NSFW content.

2. For emails, I have a separate mailing list for people who want to get notified about NSFW articles. People who want such notification will have to subscribe to this list.

3. On my site, the NSFW stuff will be kept from the regular articles. (However, a search might reveal article titles, and excerpts. There's no way around this.)

Thanks!

Snowflakes In The Storm

We are so many snowflakes in the storm. Such is our lives.

As I write these lines, it is snowing softly outside my apartment. However, I do not wish to talk about the present, but about the past. I want to talk about one night, back when I was in my early twenties. At that time, I still lived in Montréal, in an apartment, with a roommate. I had not yet met the woman who would become my wife, and then my ex-wife. I was still a master’s student in computer engineering, and an extremely naive beginner in Zen.

Little did I know about the life that awaited me. I did not know that I would have a heart attack. Furthermore, I did not know about that soon thereafter I’d be moving to the USA, because I fell in love with the woman who would become my wife. I did not know that much later, I’d get cancer, that I would survive it, and what silver linings it would bring. What an eventful life it would prove to be!

One night, the snow was falling in earnest outside the apartment in which I lived then. I looked outside. There was a streetlight not far from my window. This streetlight illuminated the snow falling under it. As I looked at the snowflakes falling and dancing in the wind, I realized that this is what our lives are made of.

As is often the case, I don’t think I’m particularly original in this realization. Masters of old, and those that were forged yesterday, have often said that we are like so many leaves flowing down the stream. They were pointing to the same thing I am. However, for me, perhaps because I’m from the north, the analogy of a snowstorm feels more apt than the other analogies. In the final analysis, this is merely preference on my part. There is no substantial difference between the analogies of the Masters, and my analogy.

We are the snowflakes falling and dancing in the wind. Most of the things that happen in our lives are outside our control. We are moved by the air currents that surround us. We collide haphazardly into this and that other snowflake. Sometimes we clump. Sometimes the clump is destroyed. All our machinations, in the final analysis, amount to nothing, nothing at all.

“Pfft! The self-made man in a thing, you know.”

The self-made man is but an illusion. Chance made him clump with a clump of snow. The safe-made man is not able to control the wind. Circumstances made him what he is, and circumstances will be his undoing.

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Given that our machinations are futile, then what remains? Kindness is what remains. Mind you, I’m no saint, and I do find it difficult to extend kindness to everyone. However, I have become kinder in time. Kindness definitely drives most of my life, starting with my romantic partners. I never coerce them, or use them to my benefit. So much so that when an ex-partner told me she wasn’t into polyamory, there was no begging and no fight. We simply parted ways.

“But you’re a Dom! Surely you use them to your benefit!”

In a sense, yes. However, when this happens, it is to our mutual benefit that I use my partners. It is not a one way street where I get the riches and they get nothing. If you come to me wanting to be used, and my partners do come to me like this, then I will use you.

Some Masters will tell you that there is no separation between spiritual practice and the rest of our lives, outside of practice. I fully believe this. The kindness that I’ve been able to show to my partners has deepened my spiritual practice.

“You seem to contradict yourself. You talk about becoming kinder, but you say that we don’t control our lives. What gives?”

It is true that we do not control our lives. It is definitely possible to become kinder, however. See, we cannot become kinder just by wishing it one day. We don’t go from being a jackass, to being a kind individual. This does not happen. This is what I mean by the notion that we do not control our lives. However, we can inflect the trajectory of our lives, softly and gently. We can aim this trajectory towards greater kindness. This, we can do.

Let’s go back to the analogy. If we are snowflakes, then eventually we will melt, and become fluid water. The snowflake will be no more. Then this water will freeze again. A new snowflake. I think this is a more apt analogy for rebirth than the popular one. Sorry, but the notion “I was once a cow, and I am now human,” is bunk. Given the impermanence of the self, there is no cow that is now human.

“But the teachings…”

Yes, some Buddhist teachings do hold that a cow became human. However, other teachings contradict these teachings. Ultimately, the contradiction does not matter, but when it comes to our understanding of the world, we have to pick one or the other. Lightning can be, poetically speaking, the anger of the gods, and electricity. However, for the task of protecting myself, I consider lightning to be electricity. I might seek shelter when a thunderstorm comes, rather than pray to the gods to leave me alone.

Enough verbiage! Now, as I watch the snow falling this morning, I am reminded of this time, back in Montréal, when I realized this simple truth.

We are but snowflakes in the storm.

#AutisticWriters #Buddhism #kindness #rebirth #snowflakes #snowstorm #YourAutisticLife #Zen #ZenBuddhism

https://www.yourautisticlife.com/2024/01/19/snowflakes-in-the-storm/

The Discovery Of My Aromantic Nature

I wish I had known earlier. It would have saved me some suffering.

I’ve discovered recently that I’m aromantic. Much like the discovery of my autism, it has been a tremendous relief. I’m not broken. I’m just different. Let me explain.

I now describe myself in the following fashion. I’m aromantic. However, I can definitely love, and I can be affectionate, besides just being sexual, towards someone. However, I’m baffled by the “romantic gestures.” Here is a non-comprehensive list of such gestures:

• Giving flowers.
• Giving jewelry.
• Socially mandated gift giving.
• General gift giving, like getting knickknacks at the store when I’m shopping for food.
• Leaving notes telling you I love you here and there.
• Greeting cards.
• Proposing. The proposal to my ex-wife was me turning my head towards her on the couch and saying, “Let’s get married.”
• Marriage. The marriage to my ex-wife was not an elaborate affair.
• Etc.

Now, I can do some of the above, sometimes. I did leave a voice mail to my ex-wife singing I Just Called To Say I Love You by Stevie Wonder. However, this happened only once. I can also give gifts. However, my gift-giving is more contextual than what social niceties require. I see a need and I fulfill it. For instance, I’ve freely given sex toys to my partners.

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Now, I don’t see the gestures above as a sign of love. Actually, a lot of those actions leave me cold, if I’m being honest with you. Even the proposal and the marriage. Yes, love is a prerequisite for proposal and marriage, in my book. However, they are not proof of love. I should also point out that I included them above mostly as a record of what has happened in the past. I’m not looking for proposal and marriage now.

Moreover, I’d say that the gestures above are what Hollywood thinks romance has to be. Hollywood corrupts everything it touches. Autistic representation in Hollywood is abysmal, with few exceptions. Hollywood also distorts technology. I can tell because I’m a computer engineer. It moreover distorts the law. I can tell due to my interest in the law. I can tell you that trial by ambush is not a thing, in the USA at least.

This is where things can get very askew. If you have one partner who is like I am, and another partner who sees these gestures as required to show that you love them, you start running into problems. This was the situation between me and my ex-wife. She wanted me to perform those gestures. However, I had a hard time performing them. Our common assessment was that I was “broken” and needed to change my behavior.

Haha. You might as well try to extract water from a rock.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I think it is possible to change. However, some changes are impossible. I cannot see a glare. End of story. There is no amount of training that will make me see a glare. If you hope that, someday, I’m going to realize that you are glaring at me, you’re in for disappointment. In the same way, I am aromantic in the way that I’ve described above. If you hope that, someday, I’ll become full on romantic, you’re in for disappointment.

This is why the discovery that I’m aromantic, much like the discovery that I’m autistic, is such a relief. It is the discovery that there is nothing to fix, and that there is nothing to change. I’m wired the way I am wired. I don’t have to blame myself anymore for not fitting into the notion of romance peddled by Hollywood. No, what I am is wonderfully quirky! Teehee!

Consequently, I now put a shorter explanation of what I mentioned above in my dating profile. My latest boyfriend has seen this in my profile. He accepts it. How wonderful!

#ActuallyAutistic #aromantic #autism #autistic #AutisticWriters #broken #change #Hollywood #NotBroken #NothingToFix #quirky #romance #YourAutisticLife

https://www.yourautisticlife.com/2024/01/17/the-discovery-of-my-aromantic-nature/

Flipboard: An Ableist Platform

I don’t recommend it for anyone, and especially not for people with mental health issues.

I don’t watch the news on the television anymore. Rather than do this, I used to use Google News. I did this for a long time. It was my main source of news. I tried using the fediverse for this, but I do need curation, so this did not work well for me. Flipboard seemed like the natural alternative.

I did not realize that the platform is ableist. I suspect the people who suggested it to me are all exemplars of mental health, and do not belong to minorities.

Keep in mind that I’m not going to go over all features of Flipboard. For one thing, I’m using it as a consumer, not a producer. I also have no inclination to explore its every nook and cranny. What you are getting here is the impression of someone who has used it for a few weeks.

One thing going for the platform is that you can select the topics that interest you. For instance, I picked autism, LGBTQ+ rights, racism as some of the topics that I want to see. This is great, and definitely better than Google News.

I have to say that I’ve received help when I had question about the platform. I got answers from Flipboard Community Support, which, as far as I can tell, is as official as it gets. Other users have also been helpful. This is good. Too many companies try to operate without giving any customer support. Flipboard seems to be different in this respect. This is quite welcome.

Where Flipboard fails is in giving you the ability to easily filter out the information that you do not want. Let me explain the types of sources that I’ve seen on Flipboard. A story can have one or more of these sources:

1. News outlets: CNN, NBC, The New York Times, etc.
2. Magazines. I think these are created by users, who may then flip a story into it.
3. Users. You will see them with magazines.

So you could see a story from CNN because it was flipped by Alice into her magazine Daily Living. So far, so good.

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The first area where there is a filtering problem is The Daily Edition. This is a page curated by Flipboard, yes, but it is curated in such a way that you cannot ban the sources you encounter there, nor can you remove an entire section. I was not able to get that page off of my menu bar at the top, even if I unfollowed The Features Desk, which I suppose is responsible for this page.

I wouldn’t be complaining if not for the fact that shitty sources do sometimes appear on this page, like Fox. This news outlet has been taken to court over the lies that it peddled. It settled, and page a huge sum, which in my book means that it lost. However, Flipboard editors sometimes decide that Fox is a news source that is worthy of being featured in The Daily Edition. Who in their right mind would think that this is fine?

In all places other than The Daily Edition, I block every damn Fox source that is presented to me. I did this on Google News too. In fact, I left Google News when what appears to be a bug started letting Fox articles on my page. I did not like it then. I don’t like it now. Yes, I can ban Fox everywhere, except on The Daily Editions page. There’s no technical reason banning couldn’t be implemented there, too. Absolutely NONE! So right now I just don’t read The Daily Edition.

However, the ableism does not stop there. There is simply no way to ban a magazine. So if NBC puts out general news items but also has a magazine attached to it for sports, there’s no way to just ban the sports magazine. Or what if a user has a magazine for autism and another one about spelunking. Why can’t I just ban the spelunking magazine? I’ve been in situations where I have no reason to ban the user or the news outlet, but I want to ban the magazine. Can’t do it.

Now if you want to ban a user you can do it. However, the web interface does not support it. WHY? Again, I cannot conceive of a technical reason this is not implemented. I can think of other reasons, however, like the desire to funnel users to the app, or get more ad impressions in the app.

Flipboard is the type of platform where I find the app occasionally useful, but I primarily access it using the web. Oh, and I’ve just remembered why I tried Flipboard way back when, but decided to toss it into the garbage bin: it used to be app only. There was no web interface. Now, what am I supposed to do when I run into a user I don’t like. Am I to grab my phone, try to find the user there, and ban them when a simple click in the web interface ought to suffice? Hell no!

Note that what I’m talking about here is not a hypothetical. I ran into a Nazi who ran a magazine with Nazi content. I wanted to ban the magazine and the user, but couldn’t. At the time, I did not know that I could have banned them in the app, but ultimately it makes no difference to have the functionality there but not on the web.

When I was in the midst of my cancer, I had to ask my ex-wife to stop watching televised news. They hammered me too much, and it was impossible to skip over things that I found objectionable. This called self-care. Any platform that arbitrarily prevent you from easily filtering out the information you do not want to see is ableist.

Once more, those of us with mental conditions bear the brunt of the decisions that ableists made. I know that the people who decided that Flipboard did not decide to throw those people with mental conditions under the bus. We merely did not figure in their calculations.

However, at the end of the day, this is still ableist. It does not matter if it was done deliberately or not. I guess, I’ll continue to use it until I find something better, or they provide fixes to deal with my grievances.

#ActuallyAutistic #anxiety #AutisticWriters #depression #Flipboard #GoogleNews #MentalHealth #YourAutisticLife

https://www.yourautisticlife.com/2024/01/12/flipboard-an-ableist-platform/

Declaring One’s Autism Won’t Do Anything To Combat Police Ineptitude

I don’t think that declaring that one is autistic will change anything.

I’ve seen lately a bunch of news articles talking about new rules whereby people who have behavioral disabilities, autism in particular, will be allowed to declare their disability so that the police can handle them properly. Before we go any further, let me point out that I’m using their language here. I don’t think autism is a behavioral disability in and of itself. However, autism can be linked with conditions that can be disabling in some contexts.

I also think that in some jurisdictions, the declaration of disability is not merely allowed, but mandated by the jurisdiction. I cannot go over all cases in this article. There’s already a problem in those places where they merely allow it, mandating it will only make things worse.

I don’t think this is going to fix anything, overall. Yes, maybe in some encounters with the police, a declaration of behavioral disability will change the outcome. However, generally speaking, this won’t change the outcome of a police encounter. Oh, do note that I’m talking about the policing system in the USA. This might not apply where you live.

The problem in the USA is that the police is trained to escalate. I don’t care how many supposed deescalation classes they are supposedly taking at the academy. At the end of the day, these classes don’t make any difference, generally speaking. What we see in the news is that the police will escalate encounters, and harm people who are themselves harmless. Those who bear the brunt of this attitude are the minorities. These may be racial minorities, sexual minorities, medical minorities, or any other minority that will appear different from the norm.

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It is my opinion that rather than trying to carve out exceptions for the minorities, the police should take deescalation to heart, for everyone, instead of paying lip service to it. See, I don’t think that someone who is foundationally trained to escalate encounters will magically turn on a switch to deescalate when faced with those people that a cop should handle differently. This is just not going to happen.

There’s also the issue that some people, for whatever private reason they have, do not want to advertise their behavioral disability, or their autism. Some people can face stigmatization if they slap a label on their car or their house saying they are autistic. What will happen if the police screws up handling an autistic person who decided not to declare it? Will the cops be excused then, as they are so often excused now due to qualified immunity?

Moreover, assuming the system were to give some advantage to disabled people in their encounters with the police, I’m wondering if some miscreants will fake disability. “I’m sorry. I did not mean to take this chocolate bar without paying. I have OCD.” This is a long shot, but it is possible.

Oh, and what about those self-diagnosed autistic people? The autistic community overwhelmingly recognizes us as autistic. (I say us because I’m self-diagnosed.) Will the police require that someone who says they are autistic have a formal diagnosis from somewhere? Will the police disbelieve someone who does not appear autistic enough and ignore the need to handle them differently. Will they insist that the only real autistic people are those who look like Rain Main or Sheldon Cooper?

Unfortunately, my advice to people with behavioral disabilities is still to keep their distances from the cops. I moreover don’t see any advantage in pre-declaring your disability. I don’t think a sticker will help you. Now, when you are faced with a cop, then maybe you want to say that you have sensory sensitivities, for instance, and ask for the cop to turn off his siren. Wait until you’re faced with a cop.

If you need help with someone who has a behavioral disability, and is in a crisis, and you think they need help in the moment, consider these options, in order:

1. Offer to take them to an appropriate mental health facility. You’d be surprised how often they will accept the help.
2. Call the local Mobile Crisis Team.
3. Call 911, but ask to be put into contact with the Crisis Intervention Team. Make sure no cops are involved.

This varies by jurisdiction, the important thing is to avoid calling in the cops. Only if these methods fail, should you consider involving the cops. Do also note that the keyword in the above is crisis, don’t do any of this unless you are faced with a crisis. A kid having a meltdown is not generally speaking a crisis. It may be annoying. Deal with it.

The above advice is what I remember from a class given by the National Alliance on Mental Illness. These people are experts at dealing with crises. I took the class to help an ex of mine who had schizophrenia.

Ultimately, I think the notion that we should self-declare our behavioral disabilities is well-meant but ignores the reality that we face in day to day life, and ignores the very problems that are at the root of policing in the USA.

Train the police to handle people with more humanity, and this will also take care of those with behavioral disabilities.

#ActuallyAutistic #autism #autistic #AutisticWriters #BehavioralDisability #deescalation #disability #escalation #police #PoliceIneptitude #YourAutisticLife

https://www.yourautisticlife.com/2024/01/04/declaring-ones-autism-wont-do-anything-to-combat-police-ineptitude/

An article for my paying subscribers on Ko-Fi:

https://ko-fi.com/post/Eye-Compresses-Are-Not-All-The-Same-J3J7SSIHI

#YourAutisticLife #AutisticWriters #EyeCompress #ProductReview

A Vale Of Tears, In Musical Form

https://www.yourautisticlife.com/2023/12/31/a-vale-of-tear-in-musical-form/

If You Can’t Muster Empathy, Shut Up!

I’ve recently gotten a very shitty response to a vent of mine.

I decided to vent into the fediverse with this message:

So I’m supposed to go on a lunch date with a guy this week. He hasn’t talked since Saturday.

I’m supposed to go on a date with a girl next weekend. She hasn’t talked since Sunday.

I matched with another girl today, but she hasn’t talked yet.

Wow, all those people, not talking to me. I feel so special!

This was just a vent. I’m mildly annoyed, but not angry. I did not berate them for their silence. I’m just venting in the fediverse. This is it.

I’ve been on the dating apps for more than a year and a half. I’ve run into a lot of deadbeats, scammers, you name it. I won’t talk about the scammers here. However, the deadbeats have been many. Some people matched with me, never to talk. Some people matched with me, and immediately unmatched. Did they make a mistake? In some case, I had a pleasant chat with someone who liked me, but they decided to unmatch without warning. This is not the odd occurrence.

I have no reason to believe that the people I’m talking about are scammers or deadbeats, except for the last person. She looks real enough, so not a scammer, but she still hasn’t talked. Her profile mentions two jobs. I get that time is tight, but a little message saying that she won’t be available for a while would be nice. I’m fairly sure she’s not a scammer, but she might be a deadbeat. Time will tell.

I got one nice response to my vent above, but then I got this piece of shit advice, no doubt written by a neurotypical person:

It’s Christmas/New Years. Maybe just stop expecting so much right now.

Oh, wow! Thank you for pointing out the obvious, asshole! I do know that we are in the holiday period. I do know that people are busy. I know this because the media makes sure to bleat that information any chance it gets, but also because I’m frigging alone in my apartment with my cat while the rest of the world has the company of others. I do know that it is the bloody holiday right now!

Moreover, I don’t think I’m, in fact, expecting much. With the two first people I mention above, we were messaging each other at a significant pace, and then… complete radio silence… This is already alarming, that is, if you do care about the well-being of the people you’re chatting with. However, what’s more alarming is the timeline I had established with them.

The guy and I were planning a date for this week! We’re now about half-way through this week and I haven’t heard anything. His last message was that he had to check with other people about his availability. Oh, and I do have a life of my own. My aunt and uncle want to talk to me through video chat. So I have to find time for them, and for my date. I tried to please everyone, but I don’t think I can. I’ve set up a time with my aunt and uncle that may very well conflict with this guy’s desire.

We autistic people want to please everyone, but sometimes circumstances work against us. However, we don’t get to escape the anxiety this causes.

The situation with the first girl I mention above is similar. We were talking about a date this coming weekend, but there’s now only two days between now and the weekend. She wants me to bed her. Consequently, we have things to discuss before the date happens, like STI status, and the scene I have in mind for her. Again, I’m autistic. I’m not super fond of surprises, especially in the bedroom, and with someone I’m bedding for the first time. There are things I won’t do with a partner on a first encounter.

It is not asking much for people to tell me clearly what is going on that may be preventing them from communicating with me. I’ll note here that I do the same for them. If I’m going to be unavailable, I tell them. I’ve done this before when I had doctors’ appointments, or when I was tutoring.

Again, I was just venting. I was not planning to have to explain that my vent was borne out of actual life-experience with dating, and caring for my prospects. Still, that’s often how it happens with neurotypical people. You say something, and then they imagine some solution that completely misses the mark.

How about you just listen?

If you don’t want to listen, ignore my vent.

If my vent stinks, mute me, or block me.

I don’t need shitty advice that shows no empathy whatsoever.

#ActuallyAutistic #advice #autism #autistic #AutisticWriters #Dating #deadbeats #empathy #vent #YourAutisticLife

https://www.yourautisticlife.com/2023/12/27/if-you-cant-muster-empathy-shut-up/

The USA Is Great At Stunt Medicine, Crap At Caring: Living Proof

I’m the living proof that the USA is great at stunt medicine, but absolute and utter crap at caring.

#YourAutisticLife #AutisticWriters #USHealthcare #StuntMedicine #caring #JohnsHopkins #famotidine #ADABe #cancer #ER #misdiagnosis #PhysicalHealth #MentalHealth

https://open.substack.com/pub/yourautisticlife/p/the-usa-is-great-at-stunt-medicine?r=2hhuwi&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcome=true

Reminder for those interested. I offer meditation for neurodivergent people. Saturday and Sunday from 9am to 10am Eastern Time (US).

More information here:

https://www.yourautisticlife.com/virtual-meditation/

Please forward the information to people who might be interested.

#YourAutisticLife #ActuallyAutistic #meditation #neurodivergent

Feeld's Moderation Wasn't Great, But It Is Now Nonexistent

A bug in the new release tells me there's no longer any moderation on this platform.

Feeld’s moderation was never great, but it is now nonexistent. I’ll explain how I came to this conclusion in this article.

#YourAutisticLife #AutisticWriters #Feeld #moderation #GenderAndSexualMinorities #scams #scammers

https://open.substack.com/pub/yourautisticlife/p/feelds-moderation-wasnt-great-but?r=2hhuwi&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcome=true

Does Laziness Exist?

I used to say "yes," but I'm now willing to say that, in a lot of cases, it does not.

I’m not yet ready to declare that laziness does not exist. However, a case can be made for the position that the word is being used in cases where there is in fact no laziness. Moreover...

#YourAutisticLife #AutisticWriters #laziness #lazy #intention #goals #SelfMadeIndividual

https://open.substack.com/pub/yourautisticlife/p/does-laziness-exist?r=2hhuwi&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

I've updated my article about what I do for sleep.

It is for paying subscribers.

(Though you've probably heard most of it in my posts here.)

It is also on Medium. I'm progressively copying my catalog to Medium.

#YourAutisticLife #insomnia #sleep #AutisticWriters

https://medium.com/@yourautisticlife/my-sleep-ritual-8e2e07a95b08

https://open.substack.com/pub/yourautisticlife/p/my-sleep-ritual?r=2hhuwi&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

Famotidine Was Making Me Depressed And Caused Fatigue

More reflections on my experience with famotidine.

The second and last article about my misadventure with famotidine. This article was salvaged from another account. It is a good example of the unusual reactions to medicines we may get as autistic folks.

(Reminder: I did not know I was autistic way back when.)

#YourAutisticLife #ActuallyAutistic #AutisticWriters #autistic #autism #famotidine #depression #reflux #insomnia

https://open.substack.com/pub/yourautisticlife/p/famotidine-was-making-me-depressed?r=2hhuwi&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

I thought I'd also give you a shot of the other shirt I have in my store. I received this sample over the weekend.

I realize this one is a bit more personal. I mishear the lyrics of Cracker Island by Gorillaz as:

They told themselves to be a cow.

The real lyrics are:

They taught themselves to be occult.

Available here:

https://www.bonfire.com/cracker-island/

(I'll remind you that I'm partially deaf.)

#YourAutisticLife #ActuallyAutistic #music #Gorillaz #CrackerIsland #PartiallyDeaf