Comic Discussion > QUESTIONABLE CONTENT

WCDT Strips 3941-3945 (18-22 February 2019)

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Is it cold in here?:
Neuroqueer theory

Hoodiecrow:
Hi everyone, newbie here (though I'm 53 years old, so I'm an OF at the same time). I actually don't know if I will become a regular, but I often have feels because of QC so who knows.

Brun's ASD reveal struck me like either lightning or a dagger in my heart, I don't know which yet.

Back when I got my diagnosis, autism was still fairly unknown and people had unfortunate preconceptions. My wife couldn't deal with it and eventually asked me for a divorce. My parents cried and tried to assure me that I couldn't possibly be so broken. The clinic that treated my depression just dropped me, telling me that Asperger's isn't an illness (true, but you still need some help learning how to deal with it painlessly), and the Social Insurance Agency told me that I was no longer eligible for any help to get back to work.

Stopped liking doctors? Well, yes, sort of. Felt I was the bogeyman? Absolutely. I hope it's better nowadays for people getting their diagnosis.

I realized today how uncomfortable I still am with this, because I've mostly blanked out the tells in Brun's behavior up to now. I haven't been liking her very much, perhaps that will change now. (And again, Jeph has told her story well.)

And of course the AI is better at empathy than many humans in the real world. :)

Scarlet Manuka:
Graphs are indeed cool.

That is all.

BenRG:
This is a 'hug Brun' moment, in my view. For Clinton, the situation is more complex, of course, because he is actually there and it's always more awkward and difficult to judge appropriate expressions of comfort and support in that context. The sort of saddest part of it is the fact that Brun immediately switches back to business; it seems to me that she doesn't even expect to receive empathy or comfort.

Something else that's awkward, as Kevin the Tellerbot has found out, is dealing with two perfect strangers having a real cathartic moment in front of you. Poor guy; working customer-facing jobs is never as easy as they tell you!

With regard to insulting uses of the word 'autistic' on the Internet, I, also, have only started seeing in the last few years but it isn't used that frequently. It's usually used to signify someone who, in the poster's perspective, is demonstrating a highly dogmatic and disproportionately emotional rejection of another's opinion. However, it is also (as with almost every other slur) is a synonym for "I say you're wrong and I say you're dumb".

In Brun's case, I suspect that it was probably used either by a peer or one of their parents in a "Hey! Look at the weird kid!" sort of way when she was still in grade school; in this case, it was a synonym for "Not Like Us".

alanari:

--- Quote from: Hoodiecrow on 21 Feb 2019, 22:58 ---
Back when I got my diagnosis, autism was still fairly unknown and people had unfortunate preconceptions. My wife couldn't deal with it and eventually asked me for a divorce. My parents cried and tried to assure me that I couldn't possibly be so broken. The clinic that treated my depression just dropped me, telling me that Asperger's isn't an illness (true, but you still need some help learning how to deal with it painlessly), and the Social Insurance Agency told me that I was no longer eligible for any help to get back to work.

Stopped liking doctors? Well, yes, sort of. Felt I was the bogeyman? Absolutely. I hope it's better nowadays for people getting their diagnosis.


--- End quote ---

Can't speak for anyone but myself. I'm in my thirties, I got my diagnosis a few years back. For my parents, nothing changed, really. They still saw me as me, they didn't care about a label. I have friends who told me that I couldn't be autistic, not because it would mean me being broken but because they didn't consider me weird enough.

Therapy is a problem. Most therapists won't take me in. Not because it's not a reason for treatment but because they don't think they can deal with me. I've found a therapist who can work with me, but my insurance doesn't cover it. I've got to pay that myself, which is unusual in my country. I can afford it though.

I've met my share of people who look down on me or stop talking to me when they learn about my diagnosis. And I've met a lot of people who helped me find a place for me in this world, who were understanding or patient when I couldn't do something. So, yes. It's getting better. But there's still work to do.


--- Quote ---The sort of saddest part of it is the fact that Brun immediately switches back to business; it seems to me that she doesn't even expect to receive empathy or comfort.

--- End quote ---
That's something I do, too. Not expect any comfort after having told a sad story. Telling a sad story doesn't mean I'm sad. Even if it happened to me, it's a story, not something I'm experiencing right now. And if I wanted comfort, I'd ask for it, not wait for it. I'm more like the narrator in a book in moments like this. I'm stating what happened as a fact. You don't console a narrator for the story he's telling.

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