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News › Age and Ethnic Pressure to Conform
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Brian Henson: Age and Ethnic Pressure to Conform
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Posted by Sylvia on Sunday, March 14, 2004 (12:51:53)
As a person on the autistic spectrum, I have had one major hurdle all of my life in dealing with others.
That hurdle involves dealing with people whom I call "peers"; that is people in the same age as myself and/or the same ethnic or cultural sphere to which I was involved.
As far as age, I noticed from early years that I could not make friends my own age. When I tried to interact with others from the earliest days of elementary school, youth of the same age seemed to be my worst enemy. All they could do is treat me as though I was the scum of the earth, with teasing and scoffing.
However, the teachers seemed to be the only source of hope, as most of them were much more open to me and my ways, including my behaviour and my interests. I was very fortunate to have such teachers (and other school staff) who, despite their lack of knowledge (or any hint of what the problem was at that time), they did show empathy towards me.
As I entered later years of elementary school and high school, the problem followed me. I was lost, for example, as to why I could make friends with the teachers and other school staff when peers my own age avoided me. There were a couple of exceptions, where perhaps one or two peers every other year would let me relate to them away from school, but still avoided me on the school property.
In later teens, I could even speak to children (whom I met through their parents), without getting a sense of avoidance, and I still could relate to older people better than those in my own age sphere (approximately within five years younger or older).
Even in my own family, the closest person in age was a younger (by two years) brother who always stayed away from me except in the home when involved with daily family events (basically meals and television). In the areas of recreation, he was an avid sports person,
and, since I was not interested in sports but in nature and the landscape, we did not have much in common.
Full Article
As I got into my twenties, I could not deal with peers any more at work than at school. In my first job, as a draftsman for the provincial government (Department of Highways, as they called it then), I was hounded by about four others in the large room filled with about forty draftspersons close to my age. I did not go to this job to spend "idle" time chatting about the recent scores in the sports world, or to be intimidated by pornographic images.
I was there to work, and since most of the others in my own group wanted to work about five
hours out of eight and "take it easy" the rest of the time, I found myself in hot water. The others in the group began to take my drafting equipment and hide it so that I could not continue with the work.
Also, one time, after I finished a project, another person to whom I had to pass the work after looking at the work for about three minutes, stated that the work was not "up to par" (without providing any more details) and tore the work up right in front of me. I was devastated.
Finally, after about two months, I was called into an engineer's office, and asked to explain what was going on, as far as my dealings with the others. I told this engineer that I did have problems in dealing with peers my own age, but could not get any answers, so far. He accused me of "rocking the boat" in this department, and ultimately gave me this option: resign or be fired. (This was still within the three month "probation period" in employment where employers can fire a person without cause, and there is no appeal.) I resigned, and could not understand where, on earth, I was headed.
Years later, after being diagnosed as a person on the spectrum, I got involved with the autism community on the Internet, and began to meet lots of others who were also on the spectrum. The peer isolation, as far as others in this ethnic area, has continued with
myself being expelled or banned from about five other autistic spectrum lists.
Also, where, fortunately, I have not been expelled, a few autistic spectrum people have given me their personal assessment of my opinions by using almost every negative term up to the point of swearing. Why, I ask, do these peers feel this way, as my peers in early education felt towards me? I have tried to avoid any negative comments about them, and (as some people, both spectrum and non-spectrum, have hinted), I tried to reinforce the need for respect for differences of opinion and outlook.
This lack of respect for differing perspectives seems to be a sore point in my dealings with peers all of my life. Why could my peers in Grade Six, for example, not treat me with anything but contempt because I was not involved with any sport? Why, at this time in my life, when I mention the need for understanding words and terms in any language, do I get such remarks as: "Your ideas about that word are ludicrous!"? What is this need, amongst these peers, to try to drive me into the ground?
Another point of peer pressure is the constant reminder that I get almost every day to "think positive!" I try to tell these people that, to me, positive is but one element in any cycle, and, like a battery, both terminals are needed. I respond to their jeering with the term
"realistic thinking", where a person looks at all the possibilities of risk in any situation. One does not just see the "positive" side, but also the potential for other events to happen. With this way of thinking, there is not the "shock" of a tragic event when it happens.
Nonetheless, these peers are still relentless, even today. I was just evicted from an email group (owned by an autistic person) for being "silent" for the last month. I thought, how many people would be evicted today from all of the email lists if they did not sent something to the list for one month? Probably tens of millions...
However, being "ostracised" by my peers, there were always people there, albeit a very few, who were willing to stand by me and show their appreciation and support for what I did. Without them, I wonder where I would be today. I will discuss how these people and myself supported each other, in another article, somewhere down the road.
Note: Brian Henson is our online columnist, if you have any comments or questions please add them below or use our feedback form.
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Posted by Sylvia on Sunday, March 14, 2004 (12:51:53) (6930 reads)
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