Retaliation is a strategic last resort that is intended to deter cruel people from hurting us, when appeals to empathy are expected to be ineffective. If someone hurts you accidentally, and you can tell (because he can reliably express empathy), you won't retaliate; you'll ask for an apology. If someone hurts you out of cruelty, expecting an apology is actually counterproductive; you'll either get the authorities involved, or if you're in an especially shitty situation where no authority will back you with force, retaliate swiftly and perhaps at disproportionate cost to yourself, so that whoever hurt you understands that it was a bad idea - and so that, ex-ante, even the cruel aren't tempted to hurt you in the first place.
The teachers just didn't get that I had a right to be free of harassment. They didn't punish the harassers, but they did punish me when I fought back. So they were implicit in the harassment and this was a deadly part of the curriculum.
That is something I understood only after I became adult and had kids. It is not that they don't get it. It is that they prioritize lack of visible disorder over fair resolution and don't want things to escalate to even bigger disorder.
Dealing with bullies is hard frustrating long term work. Forcing victim to be silent is easier and gets "result" faster. Moreover, they can convince themselves that they at least made victim act well behaved. It is just easier and more comfortable to blame the victim, really.
Okay. So if you're autistic and upset somebody have a choice now. Tell people you're disabled so they don't take offence but stigmatize/patronize you instead. Or tell people nothing and let them be pissed off at you. They will jump right to retaliation like you say for seeing you as cruel.
No matter what you do. You always lose. The only escape is withdrawal. Temporary or permanent.
Wait, what? If you show that you're willing and able to take responsibility for what you did, and engage in compensation as needed, no one will be offended. Indeed, many will be favorably impressed because this is not something that antisocial people do often - as a rule, such people tend to be highly entitled, and have trouble with the whole idea of engaging in a successful negotiation with others. There is no quicker way to encourage the stigmatization/patronization of autism, than allowing the term be used as an excuse or a get-out-of-jail-card for bad behavior!
That is not how it works for many reasons on both autistic and non-autistic sides. First, not everyone is as forgiving and willing to engage in difficult conversation over this or that, especially not after being treated badly or seeing someone he likes treated badly. Some people hold grudges, some are cruel, etc.
Yes people will take offense. The performance needed for effective apology or "show of responsibility" is not something autistic person can easily do. It requires skills they don't necessary have. It requires knowing what you have done wrong and they often don't know. It requires being good in politics.
Also, when you tell people diagnoses, they may discriminate. They may start avoiding you and may interpret everything you do as autism - meaning you will be dismissed and your opinions ignored even when they would not otherwise.
On other side, the issues in communication are not just about not understanding super subtle cues, but also in the communication overall becoming abusive - think senior developer micromanaging junior with all the negative consequences on junior that micromanagement has. Or insisting on my way and claiming everyone else is incapable or blocking the project unless everything is my way. Or treating junior with contempt every day or repeatedly claiming that colleague done shit job when colleague is not present because of basically disagreement.
Simple apology wont make people forget those and moreover, autistic may be utterly confused over what it is that come across as micromanagement and contempt to junior.
The harm is done, the cause is inability to put himself from other peoples shoes, but they will interpret it as hostile action and proceed to protect themselves by attacking your credibility back.
Well, Bernard Crick's definition of good politics is "ethics done in public". One can obviously quibble with that (ethical negotiation is generally informal and goal-directed in a way that political activities or processes can't feasibly be), but the basic point stands - what exactly is wrong with expecting people to be ethical?
My concern wasn't getting offended. Nor is my intent to use autism as a "get out of jail free card". Yet its simply true that if you don't communicate you have a disability with people they will not understand your situation, misinterpret the situation, and assume things about you which are not true. This leads to stigma. You can try as hard as you want to accomidate others but if you have a social disability you will always fall short in some way that others do not. That is the nature of being disabled.
The issue is that taking responsibility for what you did involves clearly communicating that you have a disability or at least that you have specific social problems. If you don't do this the lack of communication WILL cause confusion and harm where it otherwise would not have happened. Communicating you have a disability is NOT a "get out of jail free card" its a way to explain you have some differences and when you act a bit differently it's not because of any ill will towards other people. It's about helping people to help you to learn how to interact with people more harmoniously.
Yet being open like this does cause stigma and patronization. Disclosed I was disabled to a job placement agency once in the efforts of clearly communication. I am closed and cautious about disclosing disability but I've had so many good experiences with public servants I trusted them. Huge mistake. I wanted try to get a job the same way as everybody else with no preferential hiring or special recruiters involved. I got assigned two case workers. Neither of them sent my resume to anybody but a disability recruiter. The jobs they found for me were bad fits for my skillset because they were more concerned with finding me a "disability job" than something I could do well.
I eventually got what I wanted by searching for a job on my own getting hired after a single interview with no disclosure of my disability. I do my job well. Yet now the lack of communication gets me in trouble at work.
Retaliation is something people do. Sometimes as last resort, oftentimes as warning or attempt to look like bad target to pick. Yet other times out of habit. Plenty times it is done out of anger not as thought out strategy.
Also, people do not see inside other people. Not just that, but when you are causing someone harm, you not meaning to will become irrelevant after certain treshold. That person will move to protect himself or his friends will mve to protect him.
