Member-only story
Autistic women aren’t ‘unkind’: we need to be more understanding of what autism is
None of my autistic friends ever want to offend or upset you
“Why on earth is he upset with me?” an autistic friend asked me recently, blinking her beautiful dark eyes in sincere confusion. “I don’t understand. I didn’t say anything mean.” I licked my lips, trying to work out how to explain it without being patronising or rude. “When you told him you were bored by what he was talking about, and wanted him to stop talking about it, that hurt his feelings.” She shook her head in astonishment. “Why?” she said. “I was telling him the truth. I didn’t say he wasn’t interesting, or that he boring.”
Which, honestly, was well intentioned. But the man was upset, and I could definitely understand why, and eventually, I convinced her to send him a polite apology note. She was mortified. “I can’t believe he thought I was being unkind,” she mused. “I would never be mean. I was being honest.”
This makes total sense when you understand words and concepts as strictly how they are meant in a dictionary: mean, in her head, was malicious. Honesty, in her head, was good and a virtuous thing. She wasn’t interested, and he was boring her, so she was honest. It made perfect sense, in her head, to tell the man to stop talking, and that she…
