Post

I see autistic masking discourse going around again. Neurotypical social norms *are* understandable. Acting neurotypical is doable if high effort (my mom is like this). You can get a long way by being a kind of weird that doesn't rub people the wrong way, which is much easier. But it hinges on this:

Neurotypical social norms are not actually mostly arbitrary bullshit! The specific mechanics can be silly for the same reason the vagus nerve is silly, evolution over time, but they're mostly active "I am mindful that you are another person with feelings and I am not treading on them" signalling.

Gosh I am so grateful to hear you say this aloud because this is critical to why social norms exist in any society. Neurotypicals adapt to them more easily but they exist for society as a whole.