Recently, a very un-mad person used a lot of links to very real and interesting sources in order to beat arguments nobody has ever made and lie. You all seemed to really like it and that is embarrassing so I thought I'd help you out.

And I mean that literally. Those sources are filled with actual really valuable information and I want to share it with you guys so we can all learn and grow.

Now, because lying takes zero effort and being correct takes effort, for the sake of coherency I'm going to be focussing on one source per post. So please don't see that I focussed on the first study and assume that because I 'ignored' the rest because they were unassailable truth bombs. They are not.

Let's take a look:

Autistic people are deemed less trustworthy and likable within only 10 seconds of interacting with an IQ-comparable NT.

Note that NTs preemptively judge both autistic men and women negatively long before they can accurately determine the autistic people's personalities.

Does that sound like NTs are being very empathetic to autistic people?

I knew this argument was lies before I ever opened the link. Want to know how? The last bit: 'Does that sound like'. Why yes, your paraphrasing of the content DOES make it sound like NT people aren't empathetic either so there's need to develop that skill! But if that were true, you would have just copied and pasted the researcher saying that. But you didn't.

Paraphrasing is a legit technique used in academic writing. Grammatical coherency and readability all but necessitate it. But when you see nothing but paraphrases and loose statistics, I'm going to guess you didn't like what the real phrasing said. And I'd be right.

If I were to accurately summarise the information from this study it would be like this:

Autism is a social disability that some evidence suggests causes negative first impressions in strangers due to perceptible differences in body language, posture, eye contact etc.

But why would I do this when the author kindly wrote one:

[T]he current project provides convergent evidence across three independent studies that first impressions of individuals with ASD are significantly less favorable than those of matched TD controls, and are associated with greater reluctance on the part of observers to pursue social engagement.

Hands up anyone for whom any of this is news? It should not be. But that's not very exciting is it? Wouldn't it be much more interesting if the researchers meant that you shouldn't bother working on empathy because no-one is is extending that care to you? Or that autistic people can't do anything about their behaviours so they shouldn't try? No! It fucking wouldn't! It's fascinating as it is!

Like the second experiment, where people were asked to make snap judgements based on a static image from a first person perspective camera. Autistic people were rated way lower! WTF?! Just from a view out of their eyes people are like 'nah you can keep that' lol. That is fascinating.

Or the fact that the value judgements might be even harsher for autistic women lol

our results provide preliminary support for the claim that these effects are at least as strong (if not stronger) for women with ASD (ASD men vs. ASD women: awkwardness: 0.61 vs. 0.80; approachability: 0.38 vs. 0.19; likelihood of being friends: 0.33 vs. 0.19).

So we've got some evidence here that seems to suggest pretty strongly that autism itself is responsible for a pretty big social handicap. It didn't matter if the person was a man or a woman, good looking or not, well groomed or not, hell you just had to see a still image from how they see the world to put NT people off.

However if that's true, then how come women seem to be way more socially capable and accepted despite facing the same handicap? Maybe we'll find out when we all read the next link in an embarrassing post.

Science Rules!!