feeling excluded, social justice(?)
I'm in a chat group for locals of my town. it's an unmoderated group where everyone has admin rights, people mostly just ask whether the buses are running and stuff like that.
yesterday a member with a history of making shitty transphobic jokes made another shitty transphobic joke. someone objected, the transphobe doubled down and got more aggressive, so I just removed the transphobe from the group immediately and everyone seemed fine with that.
after that, the conversation went on to how to avoid or handle similar situations in future. several people made suggestions like writing rules or choosing mods, and I mentioned a few ideas too. it felt like I was participating in a fairly constructive practical conversation about something that's important to me and that I think about a lot.
but then the conversation moved on again to a different direction, and I'm not even sure I know how to properly describe the direction. I guess, political? several people started talking about transformative justice and using phrases like "holding compassion" and vague abstract ideas about community.
I'm not trying to say that I'm angry at people for caring about social justice, because that's not it at all. but there's this very specific way of talking that I absolutely cannot comprehend or participate in. it's like a different language to me, and it makes me feel so frustrated because I just become instantly excluded from the conversation.
I thought I was participating, but it turns out actually I don't fit in with these people, I can't talk the way they talk, I can't understand their interactions. I just feel like an outsider or an alien, or maybe even a child trying to listen to the grown-ups talk about politics.
do any other autistic people sturggle with this kind of social justice(?) type language?
@simplemycelium @actuallyautistic
An academic perspective here
A few years ago I took a post-grad course in education and I perfectly understand what you're saying. Coming from a scientific background, I had to start reading academic literature about teaching and learning, which is full of buzzwords with little practical meaning. I was looking for practical solutions on how to teach and I was getting none of that.
Or so I thought at the time...
After a while I did realize that
a) Those words made sense (mostly) once I their meaning was explained to me. There is no shame in saying "I'm not familiar with this concept, could you please explain it in a simpler/more practical way?". That's also a quick test to see if the person you're speaking to actually means something or if they're making it up
b) if you read a scientific paper and you're not a scientist you'll also find plenty of buzzwords that make little sense, and I was probably guilty of that myself! So, I took this as an exercise to try and avoid buzzwords for the sake of using a buzzword, and to try to explain concepts more clearly.
c) some people like to overcomplicate things to show they're smart. I'm happy to let them do that, if that makes them happy. I'm not going to recommend their work to anyone. :)
