Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
To off-WELL reader sunfell:

Awesome post. LOVED IT. Nothing I can add to it, you described our
genderlessness as well or better than anything I’ve heard. I LOVED
Bowie as a kid for his androgyny as much as his music, first record I
bought was Space Oddity. Comfort is key, but the funny thing is I now
like dressing in ‘drag’—I call myself a ‘female impersonator
impersonator’ as I now find frocks more comfortable than jeans, and
love funky shoes, but that’s because I get carted around in cars and am
no longer hiking everywhere or taking muni. But they have to be
comfortable frocks. The wigs I wear during performances give me a
persona that is one part Phyllis Diller, one part Lily Savage, one part
Julie Andrews in Victor/Victoria with a smattering of an older
alcoholic relative I have. It’s not me at all. Offstage I’m starting to
dress like Kate Hepburn. No more trips to American eagle for me.
  

    
Sunfell; I am intrigued by this:
"Learn how to read people. It's not hard to do. Look for patterns.
Listen for tones." 
Are you an aspie? Learning social stuff is so hard, and reading people
is the most difficult. Did you have a resource or method for that? I'm
46 and that is the hardest part of Aspergers for me. I do not read
people, men or women. I get their 'gestalt' but not the stuff that is
useful in polite, day to day conversation.
  

    
>polite, day to day conversation

This is where I still have huge problems.  I can remember sitting
around the family table at dinnertime, listening to the ebb and flow of
the conversation, and the wonderful feeling I'd have when it finally
moved to something I could make a comment about, and watching and
waiting for my moment to say what I was preparing to say, and then the
frustration and betrayal I'd feel when it suddenly was turned to
something else, and my contribution was no longer needed.  

I've gotten better at it, but still find the very idea of a dinner
party to be frightening, though I love one-on-one visits and
conversations.  One of the things I love best about being a doctor is
that my day with patients is full of one-on-one conversations, where I
have a defined role that I am good at, and I don't have to deal with
nearly as many group dynamics all the time--because even after decades
of practice, I still suck at that.
  

    
debunix - i relate! And as a doctor, I appreciate you expressing your
own vulnerability. 
  

    
Totally.

Rudy, a big question. Obviously, men and women are socialized in distinct
ways according to their gender roles.  What are some things you've noticed
about the ways that men and women are socialized that influences how they
carry their autistic identity, and how it's perceived by others?
  

    
Rudy, sunfell replies to your questions:

Hi, Rudy:

I have not been diagnosed with Aspergers- I am 50. To be honest, I am not
certain that a formal diagnosis would be a good thing at this late-ish
date. That said...

People look alike to me. Happily, they don't sound or move alike- my
hearing is much better than my vision in that regard. Instead of
recognizing faces, I look at shapes, gaits, listen to voices, look for
'strong' features. I am probably better at recognizing people from behind
than from in front, because hair tends to have patterns. And I have no
problems identifying people I've met through their voices or their
handwriting.

Your use of the word 'gestalt' is the key- if you can't read the 'center'
(which is what most 'normal' people read and process) learn to read the
edges. For me, it's word use, tonal pattern, shifts in the body- and oddly
enough- microexpressions. They're so fleeting that most people cannot see
them, but they register as a 'state change' in my mind, and punch through
the 'noise'. I sometimes feel like my inner clock- my mental process
timing- is a lot faster than most- this registers with me when I watch a
screen that has a poor refresh rate, or see flickers in florescent and now
LED lights, or strobing at the edges of poorly timed projectors. If the
gate is off a bit, I can't watch the movie. Digital projectors are a lot
easier on me- but when they're out of alignment, I see rainbows at the
screen edges.

But because I do see things at this different pace, things that most
people miss- like sub-tones and micro-expressions are like a big billboard
that shouts "HE'S LYING!" They might as well have subtitles like that old
Isuzu commercial.

I made it a point to read psychological texts and books about social
interaction and body language. I learned about neuro-linguistic
programming, and techniques people use to persuade others. (Did you know
that certain radio personalities use microphones that 'punch' the lower
frequencies of their voices to give them more perceived authority? They
do! They sound totally different in person!) Some of this was for
education- if I was on the 'wrong planet', I wanted to learn as much about
the 'natives' as possible. And it was really helpful when I sold computers
for a living.  Yes, that probably sounds insane- someone like me selling
computers- but I was in my native element- the computer department was
'my' territory, and most people didn't know beans about them. They were
(and still are) one of my special subjects. I often felt like I was
introducing two different species of people to each other- humans, and
computers. I knew how the computers worked, so the advantage was mine. I
just had to match the right one with the right customer, get them
comfortable (which was easy, because I was fluent with computers), and let
them buy it. I made buckets of money before our commissions were retired
and we were put on minimum wage.

Of course, it still didn't help when it came to what 'the natives' felt
was normal- I am much more comfortable looking at their hair or their
shoulders or someplace else than their faces. When I was on the sales
floor, I looked at the computers. But I can deal with people lot more
easily now- even though it's still difficult- and I am now old enough to
be able to excuse myself when the polite noises have been made.

"Scripts" help, too. I have a bunch of nice little scripts I use to
interact with people- along with polite nods, hand-waves, and the 'I'm
busy' stride. That last one gets me out of a lot of pickles.

I hope this helped answer your question!
  

    
Yes. It really is possible to learn this stuff as a series of rules
and guidelines. There's several safe topics to start out with: what do
you, and the other person, do for a living; has anything unusual
happened with the weather lately; how do you come to be here at this
event ('are you a friend of the bride or the groom?'); how is the local
sports team doing, etc. 

Also look for clues from the other person about things they seem
interested in talking about, or if they're wearing, say, a button with
a saying, or they're carrying a book, or whatever. People who are
interested in talking will drop little hints or clues into their
conversation. You're talking about the weather, and they say, yeah,
it's really messed up my golf game. and from there you can go, "oh, you
play golf?" Or they're reading a particular book,and you can ask what
they thought about it and if you've heard anything about it, you can
mention that even if you've not read it yourself.

I still have problems with the "how are you" thing. I hate it. If a
stranger asks me 'how are you,' they don't really want to know how I
really am. and it drives me crazy when I say 'okay' and then people go,
'only okay?' But it's a ritual, more than an actual question, so I've
quit fighting it and respond with the accepted 'fine, how are you' and
complete the ritual. 

I read several books on body language, both to identify it in other
people and to use it myself and realize what sort of signals I was
sending out. Also NLP, as Steve mentioned. 
  

    
Sometimes I just say, "I'm  here," in place of "I'm fine".  I've
trained most of my coworkers to recognize that means I'm going to be
cranky and they better not ask any more questions but just get to the
point, and we'll get along fine.

It's just so hard to say "I'm fine," when I'm not.  
  

    
You guys are referring to NLP as if it were legit?

But anyway, I learned a while back that when people say "How are you?" 
the best answer is "Fine, thanks!" delivered with a smile.
  

    
I have much in common with Julie (julieswn), though anatomically a
male (sounds awkward) and straight. I have had some messed up sex life
in my youth (I am 77),but no stable relationship. I understood very
lately that if I could have some success in that field it was because I
was very attractive. Also sweet, though my sweetness derived from my
fear and lack of aggressiveness. I was shy. I was also literate, so for
some kind of females, I had many qualities that might make me
mistakenly  desirable for women. This brings me to the core of the
point I want to make. You may know a language (say Finnish) enough to
talk to a Finn, but if for this you have to keep in your bag a
dictionary (or to search in your mind for the right word), if you are
not fluent in reading in others' mind you only are brought to fake some
competence you don't possess. You become an actor, you cannot really
be sincere. I would say that in the field of attractiveness, the
problem is _how to manage_ your attractiveness. At that far away times
I didn't even know about such built in deficiencies as may exist for
the miswiring of your mind, and I read tons of psychoanalytic
literature (garbage!) that might only mislead me and has mislead
millions around the world. Bettelheim (which I read and studied) is
still reprinted twice a year in my country. Not to talk of Freud and
his epigones.
  

    
Steve “men and women are socialized in distinct ways according to
their gender roles.  What are some things you've noticed about the ways
that men and women are socialized that influences how they carry their
autistic identity, and how it's perceived by others?”

Good question Steve. People on the autism spectrum don't have a real
strong sense of gender, or see the necessity of gender roles. We think
of ourselves as people first. However, society does differentiate;
there are different expectations and perceptions of females. We have
more demands to be social, nurturing, and therefore are more motivated
to learn social mores. As a result we may become so good at mimicking
even our closest family and friends may not realize we're autistic. Our
stims (soothing behaviors) are often considered normal for girls,
rocking, twirling, singing, playing alone, tidying, straightening and
arranging, watching our favorite programs over and over...it's just a
little girl being a little girl, albeit a slightly unusual one. Our
early savant skills and special interests also fall under the heading
of normal for girls: reading, music, art, culture and animals. (What
parents don't realize is that when little Hannah is in her bedroom
she's not reading 30 books a week, she's reading the same book 30
times.) While some of us make forays into science or even
"trainspotting": constellations, rocks, bugs, tag collections, our
interests are as narrow and deep as our male counterparts, but often
not as ostensibly weird. Sensory issues are put down to being fussy,
over-sensitive, spoiled, while gifts such as hyperlexia (self-taught
reader, precocious way of speaking when quite young) and a higher level
of fluid intelligence mask our deficits, though we may often hear
"she's too smart for her own good." That's the crux--we are seen as
independent thinkers, and are expected to thrive in life so we may not
get the support we need. I have also interviewed many females who were
diagnosed as classic autistic when young. These girls have the opposite
problem--emphasis is placed on deficits without acknowledgment of the
myriad gifts of AS.
The differences in perception are many. When was the last time you
heard the phrase ‘lone wolf’ applied to a female. She’s a cat lady
instead. Or “still waters run deep” applied to a woman? We’re shy,
awkward, creepy. Women are supposed to be social, nurturing creatures,
not Spock-like thinking machines. My parenting skills were often
criticized, but if I had done the exact same things as a man I would
have praised or at least excused. I could go on and on about this. 

Pseudonanthropos
“You may know a language (say Finnish) enough to talk to a Finn,
but…you have to keep in your bag a dictionary.”
I use the foreign language analogy a lot. If you studied high school
French you could get around Paris, find the patisserie and the post
office, but you can’t converse in depth. That is the extent of our
innate social understanding of the neurotypical world. 
Also, your description of your attractiveness and sweetness is exactly
why some women fall in love with AS men who are not necessarily in
love back, but their guilelessness and innocence make us think that
they are. It is a very awful thing for a woman to realize a
relationship is one-sided. That is why I wrote “22 Things”

Debunix and Sharon
“Sometimes I just say, "I'm  here," in place of "I'm fine"” and 
“I still have problems with the "how are you" thing.”

Yes, we prefer to say what we are doing, rather than how, which is
vague and/or more personal than most people care to get into. I still
tend to give away too much information with that question. Although the
point about scripts that Sharon makes is an excellent one. They are
very freeing in a way, they take the pressure off. It is faking it, but
in some cases, it works by getting the niceties out of the way and
leaves the floor open to some more interesting conversation.
I think we aspies tend to treat everyone equally, but finally as I get
older, I don’t divide the world into ‘rich/poor’ ‘young/old’
‘successful/unsuccessful’ ‘cool/uncool’ as I did when young, but now,
“sincere/insincere” and simply cannot abide the latter.


Sunwell
“I have not been diagnosed with Aspergers” and 
“But because I do see things at this different pace, things that most
people miss- like sub-tones and micro-expressions are like a big
billboard”

I absolutely love and relate to your descriptions of the way you
observe and  process things. Of course, not every Aspie is the same, as
Stephen Shore said, “if you’ve met one Aspie you’ve met one Aspie” but
I think most on the spectrum would relate to what you are saying. You
are a classic case of someone who might have a hard time being
diagnosed by a physician because you are 50, and they would first
wonder how you got along in life so well, you’d have to educate them as
to why you think you are on the spectrum, which can make a doctor
defensive. You’d have to find someone who KNOWS adult female AS.
  

    
"But anyway, I learned a while back that when people say "How are
you?" the best answer is "Fine, thanks!" delivered with a smile."

This is fascinating to me, because despite trying for my whole life, I
have never been able to "train myself" to answer that question with a
simple "I'm Fine". That question triggers an entire train of thought
and a search for an honest answer about how I honestly feel at that
moment.

    Welcome to being "in the spectrum"!
  

    
Yes, I agree that is difficult. By the way, i did forget to wish
everyone a Happy Halloween. This is one holiday I don't mind so much. I
took the opportunity of going out on the street with my boyfriend,
both of us dressed as nuns, carrying rulers. I enjoyed some witty (and
inane) banter with strangers and loved their open manner. I adore
seeing people in costume. Much like when I do my comedy/jazz stuff and
I am both in costume and character, I can relate to people at this time
like I cannot in ordinary everyday life. Anyhow, hope you all are
enjoying it!!
  

    
It doesn't hurt that it's the most beautiful Halloween day EVER in San 
Francisco!  Rudy, do you know about Belvedere Street on Halloween?  
Tonight in our neighborhood -- around Belvedere and Parnassus -- thousands 
of kids go trick or treating with their kids.  Alas it could be a prime 
opportunity for overstimulation, but it's also really fun and touching.

Thanks, everyone, for your amazing contributions here.
  

    
Speaking of stimulation. My
boyfriend-who-identifies-as-Aspie-though-he's-not-diagnosed (and I
continue to refer to him that way so that people can keep track of whom
I'm talking about) has two stimmie things. One is that he sort of
twitches his hands, and he specifically calls that self stimulating.
The other is that he *really* likes having his back scratched, much
more than people typically do.

I've got a couple of ...things... that I don't know whether they would
fall into that category or not. One is that I have long hair and I run
my fingers through the hair and work out whatever snarls are there.
Similarly, I sometimes unconsciously feel my skin and look for
imperfections, little scabs, etc, to knock off. (Menopause, and growing
bristly hairs on my chin, etc., has been driving me crazy.) Is that
the sort of thing that's a self stimulation, or is that something
different?
  

    
Not sure whether the picking at skin is self-stimulation, or textural
phobia?

And I do it too.
  

    
(just want to say that the post <abloner> is referring to, in #60, was
written by sunfell@comcast.net, not me. I just posted it because the
poster is off-WELL.) 
  

    
  >This is fascinating to me, because despite trying for my whole life, I
   have never been able to "train myself" to answer that question with a
   simple "I'm Fine". That question triggers an entire train of thought
   and a search for an honest answer about how I honestly feel at that
   moment.
 
I always had trouble with "I'm fine." But for some reason, "Fine, thanks!" 
is a whole different thing. The "thanks!" part tags it as customary social 
sound-making rather than an attempt to answer the supposed question.

Anyway, the problem for me with "I'm fine" is that then I would feel like 
I had to say "how are YOU?" and that just prolongs the exchange in an 
awkward way; whereas "Fine, thanks!" shuts it down immediately and 
politely.

(I'm not Aspergers but I have some of the characteristics and can relate 
to the overall feeling of it, or at least I think I can.)
  

    
Well, I think that one does need to say "And how are you?" to complete
the ritual code phrase. 
  

    
The short version is "Fine, thanks, and you?"  The well-socialized
respondent is then obligated to respond "Fine," in kind.  (I worked for
a guy once who always answered "Lousy!"  He made the nervousness that
elicited work for him, though, as a high-level administrator.)  Think
of the exchange as the verbal equivalent of a handshake: "Everything's
fine between us, no knives at the ready."
  

    
Disagree with both of those -- "Fine, thanks!" delivered with a smile 
finishes the transaction nicely, in my experience.
  

    
"I get their 'gestalt' but not the stuff that is useful in polite, day
to day conversation."

Yep.  I suck at small talk.  You ask me how I am and within two
minutes, if you are willing, we will be talking about quantum
mechanics, the minute details of some experience I had 25 years ago, or
I will be inquiring about your job with a level of knowledge and
detail that will take you by surprise and may even seem intrusive in
some circumstances.  People who are familiar with my Well posting style
will recognize this.

Another point that was made upstream was about getting to a point in
conversation where you can finally contribute and then you miss your
chance.  I would say that it has only been about the last five years or
so that I have been able to be comfortable with accepting that I am
not going to get to pipe in on that particular point.  In the past I
would wedge it in later no matter whether it was appropriate or not.  I
still have to conciously let it go, though.  The tug to just blurt it
out is still there.
  

    
For some autism charities today, it's "Communication Shutdown" day -- a 
day when non-autistic people are supposed to log off from social networks 
like Facebook and Twitter to experience the social isolation of autism, 
and download a "charity app" to raise money for autism organizations.  
This viral campaign has been endorsed by lots of celebs, including Steven 
Seagal and Temple Grandin.

https://communicationshutdown.org/

For many autistic people, however, the notion of falling mute for a day to
raise autism awareness seems misguided.  They have instead declared today,
November 1, to be "Autistics Speaking Day," when people on the spectrum
step forward and tell the stories of their lives online.

Today I have donated my blog space to Corina Becker, a young Canadian
writer and artist who launched Autistics Speaking Day. She wrote this, and 
it's very powerful:

25 Things I Know as an Autistic Person

[...]

3. I know that I do not suffer from Autism. I suffer from a lack of 
understanding and support.

4. I know that being "high functioning" does not mean not being disabled.  
It means that my disabilities are invisible.

For more:

<http://blogs.plos.org/neurotribes/2010/10/31/corina-becker-communication-shutd
own-for-autism-awareness-no-thanks/>
  

    
There remain contradictory needs. You build a bubble and you live
there for sometime in a relative peace, filtering, sometimes blocking,
sometimes sieving external imputs: once in while, or perhaps often, as
a persisting longing in the background, you are forced to open ajar an
interstice, ìf not a window or a door (too dangerous, too dangerous!)
and you administer with frugality the air entering, the voices, the
words of people. The approaches of othere may be well intentioned, and
you caution, your reserve may be offensive for the other, or others.

I have in mind a famous great Florentine painter (Pontormo) who, when
finished his work, took refuge in his solitary room in an old house. He
might enter the room via a mobile ladder. He entered and retracted the
stair, so no one could get in, nor he  

I 
  

    
A typing mishap. He retired the ladder and didn't answer any call and
external solicitation, neither of friends or foes.