Neurodiversity and Communication Difficulties (Part 2)

Each society has some rules of conduct for how a person is supposed to behave in specific situations. In general, the existence of such (often unwritten) rules is beneficial—if gives people guidelines for how to behave and what to expect from others. The problem is that these rules are made by neurotypical people for neurotypical people. They are also consistent only within a specific culture or even a subculture. Thus people who are neurodivergent or simply travelers from another culture often face various problems with social interactions. [Read more…]

Neurotypical People Are Weird (Part 1)

(Note: The following text is a satire.)

Neurotypical people are weird. They do all kinds of silly things. They are emotion-obsessed, easily distracted by novel stimuli, and insist upon participating in silly social rituals that they consider mandatory. Their odd lifestyle choices and preferences in how they like to communicate would be their own problem and none of my business, but, alas, I routinely have no other choice but to communicate with a neurotypical person.

If neurotypicals only engaged in silly activities and left me alone to live as I prefer, then I wouldn’t care. After all, other people are free to live as they want. But instead they actually demand me to imitate their nonsensical behavior. Unfortunately for normal people like me, communication with neurotypicals is made harder by the fact that they mistakenly perceive themselves as “normal” and their own typical communication preferences as normative. In order words: They expect me to accommodate their preferences, and they tend to become offended whenever I don’t feel like wasting my time on elaborate linguistic constructions that are nothing but empty lies. Whenever I am reluctant to follow their silly norms, they will complain that I am being rude towards them. [Read more…]