He says his girlfriend suggested he was a high functioning Aspie. It sounds like she's right. I think I'm a high functioning Aspie. Learning not to do exactly this kind of shit was something I needed to do manually. I don't feel he's done that.
snark aside. Being perceived as an asshole is undoubtedly subjective. It's going to happen if you don't take care to try and be aware of your audience.
Later he says:
> I’m empathic about suffering but I also very much misread audiences
So we've got a guy who acknowledges he can be an asshole, and acknowledges that he is very bad at reading audiences, and who gives several examples of upsetting people with technical arguments. That is why I think he comes off to others as an asshole.
This is a common problem for aspies, much like blaming thoughtless comments that offend people on aspergers (sp?).
Perceiving the subject as exhibiting red flags or being an asshole is really a crude/tone-deaf reading of the situation.
Me too. I wouldn't want or expect the world to change to fit me. I understand well that there are natural consequences for the ways that we behave -- and after fumbling through them my whole life they even make a strange kind of sense. Gaining a particular reputation and having some people avoid you seems to lie within the realm of the reasonable.
But the consequences in this case were not commensurate with the crimes. To have your coworkers gang up against you? And pass around a petition to get you fired? And use logic like "intentions don't matter"? Surely you see that this got completely out of hand.
And the part that makes it just that much worse: Some of the people who lead the charge on this would not have had a leg to stand on just a handful of years ago, before their chosen political ideology was en vogue. And as soon as they do, this is how they use their power. To gut this person, this fellow prickly traveler of theirs. It's just depressing as hell.
I can slip back and forth between the cultural standards of my older brother's generation and mine depending on who the group is. I don't agree with all of either but I'm pretty damn good at fitting in either context.
Only one of those subcultures have accused me of mental defectiveness for not unquestionably internalizing their standards through osmosis.
It probably is a mental limitations that I don't read the norms of my brother's generation as easily I do my own. But that's not the one I'm accused of being too autistic to understand.
The "you're mentally defective if you don't agree with my norms" line of reasoning is just schoolyard bullying to enforce conformity. Even if true.
You don’t suddenly acquire aspergers in your 40s or 50s when your same behavior caused no issue whatsoever just 5 years ago.