so this one girl, i’ll call her ella (19f) is transphobic, homophobic
she lashes out a lot, exaggerates things, and cannot read social cues. however, she has autism and adhd and is mentally much younger.
she also gets mad when i call a trans man “he” and she says “SHE’S A GIRL EVEN THO SHE LOOKS LIKE A MAN LOL”
she says she got her views from her parents and refuses to change because “it’s the way i am”. for someone who was mentally 19, I’d cut contact, but she’s mentally a lot younger.
I think it’s cruel to put up with this kind of behavior and use her disability as a reason to excuse it. Basically, you’re enabling her when you could be a true friend by giving her the feedback she needs to possibly one day change her shitty attitude. There’s nothing wrong with telling her that you choose to avoid people who say things like that. Maybe she will eventually change. And maybe she won’t.
you can cut anyone off for any reason.
You’re gonna see a whooole lot of “ASD here, kick her arse”
Add mine to the pile.
While I know it’s not exactly the same situation, bear with me. There’s a leadership book called What got you here won’t get you there by Marshall Goldsmith.
It’s focus on C suite people, their habits, and how their personality affects their career aspects, etc.
The reason I bring it up is because in pointing out characteristic flaws the author talks about how people say, well this is who I am, or I’m just bringing my whole self to work as reasoning for behaving the way they do. Then the author goes on to say how this is an excuse for the unwilling behavior to change as people don’t want to change who they are as a person, but rebuts with “is changing this one aspect of how you behave going to drastically change you as a person?”
While I acknowledge that this person is young, I would say that pointing out that not saying anything is an option. She doesn’t need to change who she is, just how she behaves and respecting others costs nothing. Additionally, if she is not willing to look at how her behavior hurts others then she is unwilling to mature. Being neurodivergent is not a justified excuse to be mean towards others. While it may be harder for her to understand, explaining that her words hurt people emotionally and asking her why she thinks hurting others is okay could be a good starting point.
It goes back to the old saying, if you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say anything.
The only thing I’m looking at is the age 19. A lot of people are stupid when they’re 19, including her. It could be that she doesn’t have enough life experience to question what she’s been taught, so she defaults to what she was taught.
It is up to you to decide to be around her as she grows up and you find out who she will become.
start calling her a he or him. tell her you’re under no obligation to refer to her as her preferred pronoun.
after a day or two ask her how it made her feel to have her request denied. then draw the point that what you just did is how she treats people, and they felt the same way she did.
if she demands you to stop, tell her “this is just the way the world is”.
Not a bad plan. What parents fail to teach the society must finish.
No. Being disabled isn’t an excuse for bigotry.
Nah. Being disabled, old, minority or family does not mean you are a good person.
I mean cut em some slack sure, but don’t feel responsible for her actions. It’s good that you realise it and as someone with ADHD it’s immensely helpful when someone points out obvious things I’m doing wrong.
Executive mental functions thats seemingly normal for you could be impossible for them sometimes. Expect someone like that act matured in another 10 years, unless they fall off a ‘cliff’.
Usually society would spit them out much earlier
Being “mentally much younger” is not an excuse to be an asshole. I’ve personally known five and six year olds who understand quite well that some people love and marry people the same gender as themselves, and also accept being corrected on whether someone is “he,” “she,” or even “they.”
Bigotry isn’t natural, it’s learned behavior you can accept and reinforce through your responses to her, attempt to correct, or simply judge her by and decide whether or not to continue involving her in your life.
(If Ella isn’t capable of matching the mental age of a toddler, the help she needs is probably beyond your ability or responsibility to provide.)
I can’t speak for you, but in my current position, I don’t have the mental space for reeducating a person like this so I kinda have to let them go and fall off the cliff as to speak. Hopefully they’ll find a way back but it’s hard to change bigots.
Hi! I’m also a lady with au/ADHD.
Ella is a twat. Having a disability/handicap does excuse dehumanizing someone else. She can be hateful with her parents if she really wants, but don’t tolerate that shit.
She’s on a slippery slope for a larger part of society to start dehumanizing her based on her diagnosis/identity, too. Glass houses, I guess. 💅
On a slightly related note, some kid I went to school with constantly got away with touching girls inappropriately because he blamed it on his ADHD. He gleefully kept getting away with it. It was absolutely disgusting. He graduated and ended up going to prison a couple years later. Turns out, “it was my ADHD!” is not a viable defense in the real world! 🤡
Reminds me of Rosanne when she tweeted racism and then blamed it on Xanax. Guess what she does now? Hint, it’s not TV and it involves a red hat.
Turns out, being a shitty person makes you a shitty person. Who knew?
Removed by mod
No. Autism is not a reason to be a bigot. Maybe the “lashes out” could be explained by sensory sensitivity (depending on the scenario and what you mean by “lashing out”), but that doesn’t excuse bigotry.
Edit: also, what makes you say she is “mentally younger”? Autism and ADHD don’t stunt maturity in and of themselves
No. Autism is not a reason to be a bigot.
Autist here, completely agree.
Many subtle, more context dependent social cues took me a lot longer than NTs, Allistic people, to figure out… though I excelled at school and have gone on to hold highly technical data analysis/reporting, db admin type jobs.
Blatant bigotry is… not a very subtle or context dependent thing to understand.
This fairly young 19F girl comes from a bigotted family that has completely or mostly normalized this kind of behavior, and has also infantalized her into believing Autism and ADHD are excuses for her poor behavior, as opposed to explanations.
Right wing bigots tend to treat Autism (and really any mental disorder) as basically ‘they’re retards, just expect them to be shitty, and also I am a hero for raising a retard baby’, as opposed to actually taking time to learn the ins and outs of how their minds operate differently, and learn together how to bridge that gap, with a bit of accomodation coming from both sides.
This often results in infantilization of the kid, of just taking away their agency, instead of actually putting in the extra work to help them build up their agency and tweak or tune their worldview to be a bit more aligned with, or at least aware of, how much of the world doesn’t operate by the rules that an Autistic person would default to.
(Just go look at how RFK Jr apparently think we are literally pants shittingly stupid and will never pay taxes or go on a date… given the Kennedy family history of literally lobotomizing his own aunt I think it was, for her mental disorder… yeah not looking great for us NDs with this frat boy fail son with a brain worm where his brain should be as fucking Health Secretary.)
Right wing idiot bigots are not very good at critical thinking, so… yeah, it makes sense that they also suck at teaching critical thinking.
I have often seen this produce many additional behavioral problems in other younger Autistic people… because their idiot familes basically Munchausen-by-proxy their Autistic kids into beleiving they are far, far less capable generally than they actually are.
In a sense, her family was probably bigoted toward her by treating her as a caricature of what Autism actually is during her most fundamental developmental years… needlessly stifling her mental development… so now she is doing the same and broadly being bigoted toward other people with other ‘labels’ that fit into other ‘boxes’.
This girl needs to learn to stop excusing her bigotrd shittiness by pointing at her mental conditions.
There are plenty of people with Autism and/or ADHD who … yes their minds work differently, but they aren’t all raging bigots, thats on her.
There seems to be evidence that ADHD brains are a few years behind in development. I think I remember it being 3 years on average? Don’t quote me, I have ADHD and my brain shouldn’t be trusted with details. Anyway, that really shouldn’t result in the kind of behaviour OP is describing though.
I think I remember it being 3 years on average?
No chance in hell it’s linear, the gap would definitely change with age. But, as an adult with ADHD, I have certainly always felt a little younger than all of my peers… obviously anecdotal, but 🤷♂️
More anecdotal stuff but from lurking in autism spaces I’ve picked up that the feeling ‘younger’ or like a child compared to your peers thing is also felt by a lot of autistic people.
Personally, I’m starting to think that it’s just one of the ways that our brains deal with feeling like an ‘other’ compared to general society. When it’s clear to you that your mind just isn’t working in the same way, certain things just don’t come as easily to you and that something is definitely ‘wrong’, I guess it makes sense that our minds would register that as also being ‘lesser’ or not as developed.
I know that my whole life before I started asking certain questions, I’ve always felt like I’m still a child in the company of men in particular. That’s how my brain registered my particular brand of ‘otherness’ my whole life. Which might indicate some sort of internalized misogyny or something. But I’m starting to think that feeling like a child or immature in some way is probably an almost universal thing that people who don’t fit in with everyone else feel at some point.
Yeah, I should’ve looked it up first, Russell Barkley says it’s 30% (I got a digit correct yay!). I know what you mean, all my classmates somehow seemed much more mature than me and I had no way to express that feeling back then.
Hm, I guess dealing with parental quirks tilted me the other way. I feel now like I want to be perpetually 20, but I had a chronically depressed single/divorced mom and an alcoholic dad (I’m pretty sure he was self medicating for his undiagnosed ADHD, and have come to terms with all that went on). So yeah, I parented my parents.
Do you have more info on this?
https://honestlyadhd.com/adhd-executive-age/
This seems like a good overview.
I was hoping more for studies that illustrate this, not just an article summarizing it all
All I can do is point you to Dr Barkley’s work (he’s a trusted authority on ADHD) and the references at the bottom. I know this isn’t ideal but I am utterly incapable of reading entire actual scientific papers, it’s a miracle when I manage to read articles like this from start to finish - which I know is an issue. Which is also why I tried to hedge my words in my original post (there seems to be evidence).
I’m 54 and have ADHD. It may ever regress. Well according to my wife who says I act like teenage boy sometimes … especially with the filter turned off.
She doesn’t need slack for that. She needs firm redirection. If she’s not able to take that, then cut contact.
