My starting point this time around has been YouTube. Web search is a crapshoot these days, so I was hoping to find videos that are neither infantilizing nor a bullet-point list of “you might be autistic if” (and I specified midlife diagnosis, yielding results about kids and teens), but sourced so I can do further reading.
First complaint: Cut the fucking new-age “soothing” music and talk to me like I’m a functioning adult, instead of using diagrams a competent 5-year-old can understand. The last thing I need is to be patronized while trying to expand my understanding.
Second complaint: Making things a circular package deal (if you do X, you must also do Y and Z [already false], which explains why you do X [that’s handled with RAA]).
Third complaint: Excessive use of domain-specific terminology (e.g., “stimming,” “soothing”) instead of plain English. That’s fine for a seminar, but all it does for me is hit me over the head that these are terms I should use and cherish. Fuck that.
Fourth complaint: Assuming I can’t possibly be anything other than a complete mess (basically a combo of the first and second) if multiple people (most recently this weekend) have independently told me I’m clearly on the spectrum (all in the burner scene/commune members, but at different times – apparently, neurodivergence is wildly overrepresented in the circles I now run in).
I don’t need to be told I’m not broken. I’ve been surviving for 47 years with minor excursions, I’ve been married twice and had a career for two decades, and I don’t have a particular issue making friends if someone specific seems interesting. Do I have a strong distrust for authority and systems I don’t have direct control over? Sure. But no small part of that is decades of life experience with systems and authority failing to uphold their end of the bargain (“work hard, and you’ll get ahead”) while I’m nonetheless expected to expend time and money for no discernible benefit.
What I’m looking for is an overview geared toward the curious, not some sort of cheerleader who thinks I can’t use my words.
Just to be abundantly clear, I’m soliciting links to resources that would avoid these issues.
My frustration is that this was the best I could find in about four hours. It’s all people who have ASD or are social workers, and the intent is not to inform, but rather to coddle. I get that’s necessary for many people, but having it to the exclusion of all else (save for a couple of lectures that do not provide overviews) served up by The Algorithm is doing a grave disservice to everyone else.
The basic feeling I get is “if you don’t like the terminology, something is wrong with you.” So the target demo performs neurodiversity correctly, whereas I emphatically do it wrong and don’t belong in the community.
There’s no situation in which that’s an encouraging starting point for better understanding.