Another example: when adults immigrate to a different culture, the social norms and conversational norms and cultural references are all unknown-to-them, and they certainly have issues getting by for a while, but I don’t think those transient enculturation issues look anything like autism.
Interesting looked at in reverse—from at least anecdotal data, autistic folk often report being much more comfortable traveling in another culture, because the social norms, conversational norms and cultural references are expected to be unknown to them, and people we interact with therefore tend to be much more charitable about them.
Does this include socially conservative autistic people? I have the impression that the autistic people who are more prominent or coordinated tend to be socially progressive, and that socially progressive people have greater enjoyment of foreign cultures.
(Incidentally, I also have the impression that a lot of the EQ-SQ debate is really about this? Some conservative male autist saying “sex/race differences are real!”, puritanical progressives going “how could you say such a horrible thing?!”, the conservative autist going “I don’t understand what I did wrong, maybe it is because of my male brain being very logical rather than obsessed about social harmony?”. And then a big part of why EQ-SQ theory is so marginalized is because progressive autists don’t want to be associated with sexism/racism, so they go “no, that’s not autism, he’s just a horrible person!”. In a way, this connects to my point in the post; I could respond on an object level to the arguments forwarded by SBC, but if EQ-SQ stuff is really motivated by this sort of drama, then maybe people wouldn’t be convinced by anything other than a response to that drama?)
I don’t know as many probably-socially-conservative probably-autistic people, but from who I do know they seem to enjoy spending time in foreign cultures still? Not very firm data there, even anecdotally, though.
Interesting looked at in reverse—from at least anecdotal data, autistic folk often report being much more comfortable traveling in another culture, because the social norms, conversational norms and cultural references are expected to be unknown to them, and people we interact with therefore tend to be much more charitable about them.
Does this include socially conservative autistic people? I have the impression that the autistic people who are more prominent or coordinated tend to be socially progressive, and that socially progressive people have greater enjoyment of foreign cultures.
(Incidentally, I also have the impression that a lot of the EQ-SQ debate is really about this? Some conservative male autist saying “sex/race differences are real!”, puritanical progressives going “how could you say such a horrible thing?!”, the conservative autist going “I don’t understand what I did wrong, maybe it is because of my male brain being very logical rather than obsessed about social harmony?”. And then a big part of why EQ-SQ theory is so marginalized is because progressive autists don’t want to be associated with sexism/racism, so they go “no, that’s not autism, he’s just a horrible person!”. In a way, this connects to my point in the post; I could respond on an object level to the arguments forwarded by SBC, but if EQ-SQ stuff is really motivated by this sort of drama, then maybe people wouldn’t be convinced by anything other than a response to that drama?)
I don’t know as many probably-socially-conservative probably-autistic people, but from who I do know they seem to enjoy spending time in foreign cultures still? Not very firm data there, even anecdotally, though.