Thread by @erikaheidewald

idk how to stop being frustrated by people who try to argue with me and tell me i’m stupid and wrong and even accuse me of spreading misinformation or being ableist bc they assume i’m making an argument i’m not and will not take two minutes to think & see what i’m actually saying

i know why it happens. i even know exactly the misperception they have, and why, and i could explain it to them in two minutes if they had any desire to see my point, but they don’t. and they do shit like report my tiktoks and fuck up my account for days. it fucks with my work.

i really, really care about what i put out into the world. i am very careful with what i talk about and say and i only present things as true that i know are true. i explicitly call out when things are just my experience or my opinion. i could answer any question about my ideas.

but many people do not ask questions - they make assumptions and will not budge from them because they are sure they know who i am, they’re sure i am just like other people they have seen, saying things they have heard before. no benefit of the doubt that i might know something.

usually knowing why people do what they do helps me be ok with it and not stress about it. it becomes a fact of life that i account for and deal with. so it’s really bugging me that i can’t stop being frustrated. i don’t worry about people who will never agree with me.

what frustrates me is when it’s people who i know could get what i am saying if they would stop shitting on me for their own enjoyment for two seconds. they’re having too much fun feeling smarter or better than me and it would be ok except sometimes it’s 50, 100 people a day. jfc

and like - i already know why they’re doing it. i already have that empathy for them. it just doesn’t stop it from being so frustrating that sometimes i want to break things. i am fine with people disagreeing with me if they actually have a valid point & can back it up.

if any of my ideas have a fundamental flaw i WANT to know. but if it’s not actually engaging with my idea - just rejecting it out of an assumption that i am making a ridiculous argument i’d never make - that has zero value to me. don’t fight with me just to fight with me.

all day long every day i get people assuming that i don’t know very basic things about topics i know incredibly well and have studied for years. people who don’t see the careful wording i am using and argue with me like i said something else. people who are mad i think for myself

a lot of it boils down to people’s belief in authority. i am not an approved authority getting my ideas from approved expert sources so i am not allowed to share what i see. it can’t possibly be that i know things that an authority doesn’t. i’m not allowed to actually think.

a lot of the conclusions i’ve come to are things other autistic people have come to as well. but as far as i can tell, there are some very true things about neurodiversity that i figured out using pattern recognition and rational deduction that nobody else figured out before.

people want me to point them to a source where i got my information and i can’t do that because nobody else has found what i found. all i can do is point out all the sources that i synthesized and tell people to think about it for themselves. but they won’t. they think they can’t

someone said to me today, “if that was true, every autism screening would just ask that question. but they don’t.” and i get the logic. i feel out of my mind too, sometimes. why are psychiatrists diagnosing on traits when those traits can be traced back to one thought process?

but the fact is, no neurotypical psychiatrist knows what i know about how autistic people think. they don’t ask this question bc they don’t even know to ask this question. they can’t see what’s actually happening bc they still believe the biased assumptions from ableist research

and i get it, too. i’m young and pretty and AFAB and do social media and onlyfans. surely i’m just preaching toxic positivity. surely i’m just stating my opinions. who the fuck do i think i am to think i know more than people who went to medical school? people with PhDs?

it does frustrate me that people’s misogyny makes them assume i am someone i’m not and refuse to see the person i am and see my ideas as they actually are. it does frustrate me that people don’t recognize that i’m not an authority bc those doors aren’t open to me, not bc i’m dumb

but what frustrates me the most is that people refuse to see that a lot of what i figured out i found because i just asked “why” one or two more times than the professionals. i just went and asked people about how they think. they could do the same fucking thing.

people are always angrily insisting to me that i am wrong about other people’s minds bc they think they know how other people think but they have never actually asked. that’s all it takes. i tell them - just go ask your friends. ask them this question about how they think.

most of the time people just continue to laugh at me and tell me i’m wrong. but sometimes they do go ask people my questions and they come back and tell me, “my bad, it turns out you were right.” everyone has the resources around them to get the same information i have.

but this society has brainwashed us into believing that only an expert can tell you about your mind, and if there’s an idea the experts haven’t said, that means it’s false. because of course the experts would know. if it were true, the experts would be saying it.

if someone thinks they might be autistic, i think they can find out with an honest and thoughtful answer to just one question. it’s often not an easy question. it’s an unfamiliar idea to some. it might take some research. and it requires a good faith effort to try & understand it

can you instinctively intuit status and hierarchy in the subtext of language? that’s the question. in its essence, that’s it. but to clarify what i mean and tease apart your basic thought process from your life experience, learned information, and trauma, i have follow-ups.

can you feel social status? this is not the same as perceiving it - is it a feeling for you? do you feel some kind of pain, discomfort, or misery when someone is talking to you like they’re higher status? do you feel high status people? an intangible feeling you can’t describe?

that instinctive intuition of social status is something allistic people can do and autistic people can’t. it’s the only true inherent difference in our social skills and the unspoken rules, strict cultural norms, bruised egos, inscrutable group dynamics all come from there.

the thing is - lots of autistic people can pick up on social status and hierarchy and understand it conceptually just fine. lots of autistic people have developed emotional triggers to communication of status thanks to trauma. it can be hard to tell the difference at first

autistic people learn neurotypical social skills through pattern recognition. once you know a pattern, you know what it means, if you have a feeling about that thing, you get that feeling next time you encounter that pattern. i actually made a video about it last night

if you have reasons you could verbalize for why you think some people have higher or lower status, that’s a good sign it’s pattern recognition. you can think back to when you were a kid and try to remember if you learned it at some point or always felt it

but probably the best way to figure out which thought process you’re using is to ask other people about theirs. You will hear people describe things you do not relate to at all. You will be shocked at how differently other people experience the world, and they’ll be shocked, too

so here’s the thing - thousands of people have tried my little test and the only times people thought i was wrong, they were either too busy trying to say i was wrong to hear that they were actually agreeing with me, or they were confused and we talked it out.

this test has not been wrong once and i don’t think it can be wrong because i think it is one of the fundamental distinctions in thought process from allistic people. it’s the source of the difference in how we socialize & communicate. it answers a million questions.

if people continue to believe that only authorities can know what’s true, we will never be free. this one idea of mine undermines the autism industry and 40 years of research. that study Stanford is doing, giving autistic toddlers Nexium to improve their social skills?

how would they do tests like that if they admit that there is one fundamental difference in our social skills, and this is it? you can’t drug a toddler and make them believe in social hierarchy. furthermore, the fundamental rule of the hierarchy is it stays in the subtext.

how do neurotypicals stay at the top of the hierarchy if they have to admit that it is a social construct and that autistic people don’t have any defects, we are just neurologically oriented to a fundamentally different social structure - one that they insist can’t exist?

i’m glad i wrote this thread bc it did what it always does - i started with a confusing feeling and now i understand it. i know why i can’t stop being frustrated. the power of the hierarchy is what’s keeping people from seeing the existence of the hierarchy. it’s self-reinforcing

what is so frustrating is that the key to getting people to see the existence of the hierarchy, how much we have been lied to, how horrific our oppression is, and the truth of who we are is all around them. literally just go ask a bunch of people if they feel status & hierarchy.

the authorities will never admit that autistic people are just human beings oriented to a cooperative social structure, so as long as people require authority to validate any thought they have, i can never get them to see who they really are and what system they really live in.

neurotypical hegemony rests on the belief that humans are inherently selfish & competitive. this is the foundational belief of capitalism - self-interest is human nature. this awful oppressive system continues bc we believe no other option is possible. our existence proves it is

neurotypical supremacy is tied in with white supremacy, capitalism, patriarchy, and colonialism as the invisible power structure that perpetuates itself by hiding its intentional power structure & pretending it is the fundamental, unchangeable way of the world. human nature.

just like how many working class people support capitalism out of a belief that they will be rich someday, many neurodivergent people support this system of neurotypical interests because they’ve been convinced that they’re neurotypical, too! we’re all the same!

the medical establishment, run by the NT ruling class, made themselves the standard person, and anyone who can’t conform well enough to appear just like them is disordered. they made us believe neurodivergence is a problem to be fixed or to pretend that you don’t have.

we have no evidence the majority of the population is neurotypical. there’s no scientific basis to the idea that neurotypical people are any kind of standard human that others should be measured against. that’s just the neurotype of the guys who built the system & made the rules

the other basic thing that it seems i’m the only person who has figured this out or at least is talking about it is this - there are two basic algorithmic thought processes human brains use - the autistic one, and the neurotypical one. allistic neurodivergents have both.

i can’t explain all the reasons i know this rn or this thread will be a book but it’s not hard to see if you ask allistic NDs about their thought processes. they can think a lot like autistics & a lot like NTs but the simultaneous existence of both makes them work differently

allistic neurodivergents who think they’re NT assume everyone has both of those thought processes. because they have their egalitarian cooperative divergent side, they’re less oriented to status competition than NTs, so they think NTs are less competitive than they really are

so what we’re left with is neurotypical people who are extremely competitive and hierarchical, playing a constant game of status that they don’t tell the rest of us exists. they play by pushing NDs down and NDs don’t know that’s just what NTs do so they internalize the blame

NTs are never going to change their view of autistic people bc their power rests on maintaining the status quo so as long as NDs defer the right to even analyze their own brains to NT authorities, they will never see what’s happening. so i am trying to show them

i KNOW this sounds insane. i also know that if you think about it rationally and with an open mind, try to understand it, and ask other people about their brains, you’ll see that it’s true. i WANT people to critically analyze it. that’s the key to changing things.

but i get responses like this:
this self diagnosis trend is so toxic!
this is misinformation. it’s not how autism is diagnosed
autism is a spectrum! not just your experience!
i understand this and i’m autistic so you’re wrong
gee thanks my autism is cured!
this is dangerous

all of those responses rest on the belief that the medical model is right and it’s morally wrong to disagree with it. they don’t understand what i’m actually saying and don’t want to. it’s demoralizing sometimes to be met with all of that bc it’s like talking to a wall

the other thing that happens is people ask for examples bc theory is too intangible so i give them examples and explain that all examples will be cultural so this is just to give an idea - and they just argue with my examples. i don’t give a shit about the examples! just the idea

i don’t care how the idea is conveyed as long as it’s conveyed but people just argue with me about word choice and their lived experience but none of that is the point. i just want people to think about the ideas and hopefully use these ideas to free themselves

i don’t know for sure that i always have all the details right. the mechanics of everything, and unknowns like how many NDs there are. all i can really know for sure is the algorithms. the systems. bc that’s what my brain does. they have a logical form. i can see them.

so i guess i just don’t know how to be a person who thinks in theory and systems and communicate those to people who think i’m stupid and that i’m telling them to just be positive even though all they’d have to do is just go ask people how they think. that’s what’s frustrating me