sometimes, people don’t understand that we are hated for being autistic. “But I don’t hate autistic people!”.
That’s right! Because you don’t know how autistic people are.
You know, people never bullied me for being autistic. Because neither me nor they had the terminology. Nah, they punished me for being weird. And what made me weird to their eyes? I spoke weird and often stumbled, and I spoke like a grownup anyway, and I wouldn’t shut up about Ancient Greece. I moved weird too, because I was (am) really clumsy, and I didn’t have any friends. I was boring and didn’t catch jokes (made at my expense) and I didn’t look them in the eye, and so on and on.
If you asked any of the people who bullied me for years whether they hate autistic people, they’d say “no!”. Because they don’t hate autistic people, but oh boy do they hate weird people. Perhaps they don’t hate autistic people, but surely they hated me for being obviously autistic.
I’ve been trying to explain this concept to a lot of people. You did a really good job summing it up.
