Autism

From my experience, it's the inability to read the cues, especially body language, of autistic people.

Picture it from the other side for a moment. Neurotypical people constantly show some kind of body language. And they often don't even know it - it's instinctual for them. It shows the outside world whether they're happy, sad, think of themselves as better or worse than others, how much energy they have, etc. They also read everyone else's body language, and use it to interpret whether the people may pose a threat to them. This guy is relaxed, on his phone and has tuned out the outside world - not a threat. This guy is happy and quite joyful - not a threat. This guy is agressive and has his nose in the air - stay the fuck away. And again, all of this happens subconsciously. So then suddenly, there's a person who's body language your subconscious can't interpret. Your subconscious has no clue if this person is a threat or not, and that makes it uncomfortable. If in doubt, your subconscious says "rather safe than sorry". And if your conscious side doesn't know how autistic people can express themselves, you don't have anything to override it.

A theater teacher I had once explained how to make your body language 100% neutral. He then said: "this is not something you ever do in daily life. Normally, you're always communicating something through your body language, and others pick up on it subconsciously. If you want to have some fun, go to a crowded subway platform and do that neutral stance. It won't take long before people start taking a distance, it freaks people the fuck out."

It's possible to learn most of the body language of autistic people, but it's not something that comes naturally to most. I've learned it myself, since I grew up with a number of autistic relatives (although sometimes I suspect I may be ever so slightly on the spectrum, but I've never bothered to look into it too deeply, so maybe take me "learning" it with a grain of salt), and if I pay attention I can notice the moment where my brain switches how it interprets cues from other people.

It's because most neueotypicals don't know how to deal with the quirks of neurodiverse people.

And because our society is set up in a way where we have to put in most of the work to bridge that gap, this just results in a lot of extra baggage for us to deal with, in addition to functioning in the first place.

The only thing I can tell you is that it's not your fault, and most people don't intentionally do it, they just don't know how to handle it, and it's usually subconscious.

You're kind of stuck with putting in more effort, but remember, we as people with autism are used to bridging gaps, so we have excellent training and usually a huge amount of patience. Make that your strength. Be persistent and observe, and then you'll realize what people like and don't like about you, and that's how you can make yourself more fun to be around for neueotypicals.

I always think that all of the people with autism have limitations in a lot of regards, but our superpower is that we have way better control over ourselves and if we face tough things, we are so much more intentional and experienced, and that's what makes is awesome - but in a different way.

I'm morbidly obsessed with this, it's a psychology thing! We trigger the uncanny valley effect in them!

So most of how NT humans interact is using signifiers and symbolic behaviors and interpreting them based on patterns they naturally learn at formative ages. Patterns that we don't unless we're specifically forced to. It's never what we say, it's how we say it.

So when we try to learn those signals it's actually worse because the closer we're coming to replicating the correct "vibe" or whatever, the more manipulative we seem if we still somehow don't get it right. They think we're trying to be cunning.

But if you don't use those signals, then you still look human but you're triggering the ancient lizard brain instincts that say "This individual is ill. That is dangerous. Avert. Kill." which has to be dealt with by a modern human who is mostly not allowed to just kill mentally different humans. So they're frustrated. Brain says kill, run, avoid. Society says better not unless you can justify it. Gotta resolve that contention.

If you're not familiar with it, start with the double empathy problem.

The challenge is that we do not have the same social rules and behaviours as the NT population. They are used to specific body language cues and small talk; unless we mask, we don't provide all the right body language (let alone small talk), which impacts how they read us. For example, plenty of people on the spectrum can have a relatively flat affect compared to NTs, leading to all kinds of misunderstandings. We also respond differently to the same sensory input because for many ND individuals the senses are over-reactive or under-reactive.

NTs usually default to viewing the world through their social and behavioural rules, so unless they know you're autistic and what that means, they can often misinterpret autistic body language. Unfortunately ND behaviour is often perceived as arrogant/hurtful (our "brutal honesty"), distant/cold (flat affect), lacking a sense of humour or appropriateness (either not laughing or laughing at the wrong things), etc. which does not incline them to like us.

As for stimming, unfortunately in many regions it is not considered socially acceptable. I've also seen it in (usually older) movies and TV shows associated with characters who are unstable or dangerous. So a random NT seeing a random autistic stimming on public transport or at a mall/shopping centre may assume there's something "wrong" with the ND individual and assess them as a potential threat.

ND people grow up learning to interact with everyone, while NT only learn to interact with themselves and force/bully non compliance to their expectations so they never have to deal with people who aren't like them.

they are unable to empathize with people like US, while we can do that

They are afraid of the difference.

speaking from a high functioning position. it's not that they dislike us, that's just the way they treat everyone who is an obstacle.

that and most NTs just don't care about how they make others feel. ND or NT.

it wasn't always like this. many things changed in our society that have allowed NTs to feel this is acceptable behavior.

I was going to jump into a big thing about comparing how NTs treat NDs with how hearing people treat Deaf people. But there's already a lot of novel length comments here now and I feel weird jumping in with another lol

But anyway, if you're curious for a parallel, check out some posts written by Deaf people! There's a lot that can be relatable there.

Most of them are too emotionally fragile to deal with reality. They need a constant stream of little social lies just to feel OK. Since most NDs don't naturally support fragile NT delusions they get upset.