On emotional authenticity and masking as an autistic person

In English one refers to a male as "him" and a female as "her". However, some people identify as "non-binary", which means that in their own internal self they so not feel that they are entirely male, or entirely female. As a result, they find it not quite right to be referred to as "him", but also not quite right to be referred to as "her".

So they prefer to be referred to in the gender-neutral "them".

If you are "traditionally aligned", if your personal self-identity matches the body your ghost[0] inhabits, this can be totally mystifying. Personally, I've come to accept that people are weird, and if someone says they want to be referred to as "they" and "them" then why not?

[0] "You are a ghost driving a meat covered skeleton made from stardust[1] riding a rock floating through space."

[1] Or nuclear waste - take your pick.

Edit: To the people downvoting this, it was intended to be a factual answer to a direct and reasonable question. I have no idea why you think this comment is inappropriate and deserves a downvote.

The singular "they" is already commonly used when the gender of a person is not known, so its extension into non-binary genders is quite sensible, in my opinion. Some others who regard themselves as a non-binary gender prefer invented pronouns such as "xe" or "ze", but I think expecting others to remember and use these is rather unrealistic, whereas "they" has the advantage of already having mainstream use in similar contexts.

It's pithy to say, but telling someone to work around memtal illness is just not in the same category of standard woes - the fundamental tools of cognition you're expected to use to come up with, or implement, a workaround (like the one you propose) are also the tools which are malfunctioning. Acting like there is no difference between normal issues and mental illness is simply reductionist.

Now, because another thing you said was so left field, and seems to reveal a critical assumption of your views though, I'd like to take a minute to call it out.

>If the author was a super athlete and couldn't relate to people, he would simply be a 'jerk'. I bet he wouldn't have written that article :)

There's incredible survivorship bias in this assumption, in a way that tells me you're failing to contextualize that it's actually remarkable and important that the article was written by someone you don't know versus by an athlete.

Athletes are first and foremost entertainers, and especially in sports, the channels and forms through which they express their opinions are heavily monitored and limited. This is very visible when someone isn't playing ball with the standard line to toe -

(Aside: The lines you've probably heard from most athletes: I love my coach and team; We're all in this together; I'm grateful to be out here playing today; the other team is made up of great guys and we both played pretty well and had some fun; it's not about the money, it's about the love of the game; I'm an everyman and you could be me someday, kids, making bank! Try your hardest and you'll get there; $SOCIETAL_ISSUE? I don't really think about that, I just want to play $SPORT.

Most of these lines are bullshit we don't actually think represents the athlete's opinions, and everyone involved knows it. We still expect them, though. Why?

In the end, sane athletes are basically compelled to say them, either by their contract or by common sense, to avoid starting a media shitstorm about a rogue athlete.)

So, you'll only ever hear about athlete's views when they're either absolute top-of-the-heap untouchable AND they know they are willing to accept the personal consequences ala Muhammad Ali, or when then they don't care about the consequences and are willing to be despised ala Colin Kaepernick.

All this is to say that an athlete with a brand and surrounded by brands wouldn't post an article about themselves being autistic and struggling to form emotional connections NOT because they're good at something, but because they're being watched like hawks for any slip-ups, their sponsors will abandon them because they want to use them to sell to kids and wannabees who don't want their brands associated with mental illness, and if you admit to being mentally ill as a public figure it is all you will be known for.

This is where this becomes a core assumption: you've assumed a clean split - on one side, the poor-me's who would write this kind of article, and on the other side the successful people who have found a coping workaround and thus wouldn't want to write this article.

That divide doesn't exist, and can be explained by individuals in public roles rationally recognizing and fearing that writing an article like this would have terrible consequences for their public image and their livelihood. You need to, roughly speaking, have nothing more to lose to be willing to write this kind of article.

Your assuming that this is from a 'complainer' who hasn't found a powerful and public dedication, rather than recognizing that those with public dedications are not always "Doing just fine", but are merely forced to hide it, tells me that you're only focusing on messages you see about mental illness, rather than noticing how poignant it is that those specific messages are the ones you see, compared to the ones that seem to be absent.

I disagree with what it seems you're saying, but I'm not sure I get your point.

Personally I try to use less invasive openers, or at least take a moment to genuinely respond with how I feel at the time.