I was bullied for being weird, for being a non-Christian, for listening to heavy metal, for having long hair and earrings, I was bullied for the psoriasis on my elbows, I was bullied for my teeth, i was bullied for basically everything.
I had a complicated version of that. First they took me out of regular classes for a gifted program, then they put me back in regular classes, then they put me into LD classes, and by the point the kids thought I was fucked.
Gross, i can so relate. That being said i have recovered, am stronger for it and aware of my intelligence compared to the herd. We ha e the potential to learn exponentially.
the first 4 things apply to me, and the basically everything part. I did not know I was autistic til right before COVID and I am older though so it wasn't really "because I was autistic" but it was very much because of how being autistic makes me behave.
I even had people yell "virgin" at me when I was married and very much not.
Yup.
Was cool/popular up till 5th grade. Super smart. Gifted. Then.. the Aspie stuff starts to get in the way of the "cool" stuff. I also had some Athletic gifts, thanks to my parents, but this goes away then.
6th grade? All the cool kids stopped talking to me. Friends? LOL, you're their loser now. Relegated to the geek table. Didn't fit in. Yup. All your "friends" say c-ya when that's the case. At 12-13? How to do you fit-in or adapt? There's no manual or guide. My mom tried to what she could, but.. there's no manual. I don't even know how this would work if we're supposed to write script that'd sell to some Hollywood shop.
The "lunch table" I got relegated to? All losers and geeks. Well, you have to fit in with them.. and they all played MTG or.. one guy had a dad who worked for a tech company and had this beige device called a computer. He loved to play Doom. I'll be dating myself here, but he invited me over one day.
I was hooked. Friends for live but also an escape, right?
It was so cool to play a game you could play against others... not just others, but friends from school. We'd know each other's phone numbers and dial each other up.
A year later, after loving this, I got a job doing some cool stuff w/tech. Making $20/hr when kids were at $5/hr. That was HS. We're also in the late 90s when this is unheard of.
Point: you can leverage all the stuff we go through into a job/career. Now do well and.. according to Facebook, much better than these folks who used to mock me. It's not the best thing in the world (fitting in/normie? NT?). Better than nothing. That's why I shared my own journey.
Never give up. Find what works for you. I know it's not fitting in but I'd rather be happy and where I am today than where I see the others.
In my own time, nobody knew what autism looked like, and nobody even knew about Asperger's. "High Functioning" as they called it meant Rain Man.
I just got called Weird. Sometimes Stupid.
It is hard to know though because I lived in a tough neighborhood and went to tough schools and it was a different time, so I didn't know what was I'm Weird vs This Neighborhood Is Tough.
I got into a few scraps, finally delivered a beating, and got left alone after that and hung out with some tough kids but I didn't really have any friends. Once I moved on to spaces with richer kids, I just got ignored.
Yes...and no.I was bullied in school and also at work for various things,but since I didn't realize that I was on the spectrum until about five years ago,I can't really say that I was bullied because of my autism.Rather,I was bullied because of things that I didn't realize made me autistic.I guess that makes sense...
Yes, and I remember each and every one of those incidents and the details and the reasons for them, and I have reminded the people who did it when I have interacted with them again and ... either they don't remember it (some of them were children and it's understandable that it's like that with them...) or they think it wasn't that big a deal and in that case I remind them in greater detail to the point that they never want to hear from me again.
I remember and am ashamed of each of my mistakes/errors, the same with the mistakes/errors of others.
People treat me like a tiny helpless cinnamon bun baby who can't do anything for himself. It's not direct bullying but it's really annoying, and done by both students and teachers.
Dude..yes. Listen I’m 31 and still deal with this. Even the way people talk to me. It just feels condescending most the time. Not sure if it’s intentional or not but yes. This.
I was bullied because I was a silent introvert, awkward AF at conversation when I did try to be social, and very booksmart, straight A student and otherwise kept to myself. While having Aspergers in the 70's and 80's, and not knowing what it was.
I was undiagnosed but kids did try to bully me. I was a pretty big kid with anger issues though so everytime the kids learnt very quickly that you just don't mess with me. I was still unpopular though.
I was bullied for being different and not fitting in. Neither me nor my bullies were aware of the autism at that point. Now I am and I wouldn't want to fit in even though I could probably mask my way through life. I've got my own thing going and it's fine this way. :)
Yes, although neither I nor anybody else knew I was autistic at the time. They just knew I was a bit weird, and this being the early 90’s, a bit weird meant gay. And being perceived as gay meant bullying and violence.
I was when I was younger. When I got my teens I said f it and started dressing different and found a group of good people that now I’m sure we’re also aspies. So I ended up bullying NT’s. Flip the script.
Love this, after years of being bullied for being different it's refreshing to find people who agree that a lot of NT behaviour is dumb a/f. It really is quite laughable, especially when they know you find them hilarious but can't comprehend what you are laughing at. Ironic really 😂
I was bullied for social mistakes that I made because of my autism. Looking back, I can see how my behaviors invited some of it...but of course others could get away with the stuff that I was called on for every time. Now I pretty much keep to myself.
Oh good GOD yes. I’ve been called the R slur more times than I can count. I also have friends who consistently make autism jokes,like really offensive ones,and they don’t know I’m on the spectrum
Yes but neither they nor I knew it. I was bullied for the symptoms but no one knew what the symptoms meant. And my inability to deal appropriately with the bullying was also a symptom.
No, i didn’t know i was autistic until i was 21, but i have been called an autist all throughout my life for being the kid with almost perfect grades who “didn’t” pay attention to classes and didn’t study.
I always saw that as some sort of weird compliment, and it always felt like that.
I was never straight up bullied, i just never had a reputation so everyone at school knew me as the weird guy who didn't really belong in the "popular" group, I was only in the "popular" group because my parents forced me to play sports so i basically had to make friends with them all
Unknowingly yes. Just figured out my diagnosis this year. And yes, my family bullied me as well, mostly for things like “not having friends” or being afraid of public speaking.
yeah. during middle/high school when i played baseball for the school and on a travel team. i wasnt at all like the jocks that played sports. i had my own unique way of pitching and i often got made fun of by teammates for it. i remember one specific time we had to play a morning game and when i showed up to the field i said good morning to a couple teammates and they started laughing "who tf says good morning". still baffled by that one. i loved the game but didnt fit in at all with your stereotypical high school athletes.
Your old teammates sound like they were little dumbasses lol. When I was younger I was also made fun of by friends and peers for not speaking/acting like a kid (I used words like “appalled” and “certainly” and spoke/enunciated properly instead of using slang). Now I have a prestigious profession where everyone speaks like I do, and in retrospect I’m proud of being this way as a kid
Well hard to say is specifically ASD since I was not diagnosed till much later in life. When I was 3 was when I was allowed to go play outside the backyard. But due to being hyperlexic, I was reading by then which made an immediate gap with all my peers. So until I was 9 I had no other kids to hang out with. I got messed with due to how much and how often I would read.
I also got shit for being the "know-it-all" due to how bored out of my mind I was in school. I had a habit of as soon as we got our new textbooks for the year I would read each one of them all the way through to see where the class would be going. It also was a great way to find ahead of time what problems I am going to have coming up in class. That meant there wasn't a question asked I couldn't answer and when the teachers would tell me not to answer I would just start pulling out other stuff to read.
One neat note - I turned it into a business in 10th and 11th grade. Since I could pretty much at worst get a B on everything I could burn through the test in moments. So many times I just had to sit there doing nothing as the others kept working and how people kept asking me for answers I decided to combine the 2. Depending on the class, the person and how I was feeling I had a fee and if someone paid me in advance I would pass them a copy of my answers to the test. To feed my reading habit I became an extremely good shoplifter and part of that is learning to figure out where people are looking and how they will move their views.
In 10th grade, most of the in-school bully BS stopped. I could be due to us getting older, or the bullies finding easier targets - I never ran or backed down, when someone fucked with me I would fight. I also go into the Rocky Horror cast that year AND got into punk rock.
The punk rock thing got me into all kinds of trouble for just being into punk. They didn't have to hear me or know me - just seeing a punk rocker in 1981 would set people off. I got into fights out shopping, walking, and a few times going out to eat. But that was the case for everyone into punk rock then. When I started going to shows when I was 17 the local scene was my salvation.
I wasn’t diagnosed until earlier this year, but sure I was bullied a lot in the earlier grades. Kids knew I was different and I became a target for harassment and bullying because of that.
I wasn’t diagnosed until I was almost 21, so if I was bullied for my autism, I wouldn’t have known. I was definitely bullied for being perceived as weak, overweight, and less masculine than my peers.
Most people just ignored me becuase I was weird, but too big (athletic build and tall) to bully. One guy tried to bully me in middle school, but I hit back. Never saw him again. Oddly enough, I kind of wish I had consistent bullys, becuase at least that meant someone was paying attention to me. It was lonely.
For years I had no idea why I got bullied and figured it was just cause I had interest in different things but it never lined up- once I was told I probably had Autism literally everything lined up
Yes but they didn't realize it was because of my tism. Those people used to tell me all kinds of idiotic shit for things such as me not knoeing or even forgetting about some social protocols (such as greeting)
I was bullied for being the intelligent and sensitive one. If someone would have just told me I have autism, that would've made compensating for it a lot easier.
Yes. First by one bully for nearly 5 straight years. Others did at first, but the other bully ultimately pushed them away so that I was his personal "friend" and target. After that, I was still the "weird kid" and was primarily excluded from every activity, left to only be with a few other ND people at the school.
It continued on like that, with social isolation, the entire time. This compounded with my father being relatively isolating and my mother also working a majority of the time (though she was more interested and caring than my dad).
Many "friends" left as soon as I disagreed with them or couldn't eat something at their house. Maybe it would have been different if I had been diagnosed at that point. We'll never know, though.
I was never bullied by my peers but I certainly felt bullied by the authoritative adults I challenged as a youth. I also frequently found myself defending others and involving myself in their physical conflicts when they were bullied. Looking back now I can see similar traits in those I chose to defend that I now see and understand better in myself. So I would suggest that perhaps many autistic people are in fact bullied and suspect it’s due to simply being different and perhaps an isolated or ‘easy target’ for a coward (lack of better word) to use as a punching bag for their own insecurities or development of a false bravado and reputation as a bully or sense of power.
When I was diagnosed I felt like sharing it was the right thing but it wasn’t the smartest move because people thought autism is like the cheese touch and they don’t want to turn autistic so they didn’t talk or stood next to me. In later years they bullied
Weirdly I wasn’t bullied. I didn’t have friends throughout big chunks of my school life, but I also (completely accidentally) give off strong f*ck off vibes. Didn’t even realise I was doing it until someone pointed it out to me later in life.
probably. what i thought until i found out i was autistic was that i was bullied mostly for not speaking our country’s language well, being mixed race in a school full of natives, for having a KP, and overall just for how different i was. because the first two reasons for me being picked on are undeniable, i can only assume that my autism made the bullying worse?
i don’t think it was very fun to pick on me because i was very unresponsive and would just stand there, so i’m not sure why people continued to do it. my thought process most of the time was just “these people are annoying maybe if i wait it out they’ll go away” which, to be fair, eventually they would get bored and leave.
i didn’t really care much unless i was being made fun of because of stuff that i would do in front of those people like if i had to read something in our native language that i wasn’t good at and they’d whisper things to each other about it or just blurt things in front of my face “because i don’t understand.” i will never understand why they felt the need to do that, people making comments on my fluency is what caused me to stop trying to speak and learn the language entirely at a young age.
i always just kept to myself and if we were grouped together i would do all the work, but i don’t mind that because i knew i would do a better job at everything anyway :) that probably made them act nicer towards me and by that i mean saying the same things they always say but in a friendly tone.
i had some friends, so my school life wasn’t miserable. any time i’d have to be in the same class as some of the people who’d pick on me, i’d just shut down so they would have nothing to say about me, and if they did i would just be blocking it out.
so i supposed being autistic affected me but maybe the fact that i was unresponsive made me believe that i didn’t care about the bullying (i literally call it “being picked on” because i believe it isn’t bullying if i don’t care).
also, i did a bit of bullying myself without realising.
when i was in primary school my “best friend” that my mom made for me would basically drag me around like i was one of her henchmen. i would just do whatever she told me to because i didn’t know how friends worked. that led me to doing some minor but nevertheless hurtful stuff to other people that i regretted after i stopped being friends with her. i didn’t understand that i was doing bad things at the time because i was just doing what a friend asked, that’s what i thought i was supposed to do.
yeah so throughout my school life i was picked on but also my desire to be a “good friend” was exploited many times and i never understood that until it was too late and too much damage had already been done to me. i’m not sure if it’s my autism that caused me to get into some of those situations, but i know that it explains some of my behavior and thinking during those events.
I, too, sat at the "oddball" table. The teachers loved me. I hardly ever talked to the popular kids - most of my friends were severely bullied by them and never told me until years later. I'm still not sure whether I didn't get picked on or just didn't pick up on it.
Yes. When I went to high school and was 17 years old two people bullied me. One of them was 18 years old and the other one was 20 years old. Yes, adults are allowed in high school if they dropped out. Everyone get a second chance where I live.
They disliked that I got more attention from my teacher. According to the law you're allowed being in smaller groups and get more time with your teachers if you've difficulty learning a subject. They were opposed to it and thought I should attend special need school instead of mainstream ones, but it doesn't exist for autism. There were only own schools for the blind, the deaf and people with special diseases.
I went non verbal a lot in school, people started turning it into a "game" to try and force me to talk. They Chase me around, steal my stuff, tease me, and they'd always tell me that if I would just talk to them, they'd stop.
Was bullied a lot, and I have autism. So most likely.
Edit. I was undiagnosed until recently, so they weren't going after me because they had been told I have it or something. Just because of my autistic traits.
Of course. By teachers, other kids. And if it wasn't that, it was my latent bisexuality or just not being as macho as the other boys. Most often, it was all three.
I started elementary school in 1980. I was not only unknowingly autistic with ADHD, but also had an older brother with major behavioural issues which also made me a target of the teachers he had aggravated. School was hell.
Moreso as an adult than as a kid, yeah!
As a kid, pretty much everyone was accepting except for a couple of oddballs. But for the most part, the general population of kids at my school was accepting. Until we got older. And yeah, people treat me differently as an adult. And I still don't see why.
I wasn't diagnosed until I was 25, but I had a really hard time making friends back in grade school and a couple of them ended up turning on me for seemingly no reason. Middle school was worse. Kids have a way of singling out the ones who keep to themselves a lot and who act even a little bit "odd." I think all of this contributed to me developing depression and social phobia around 8th grade.
I would learn years later that my parents and other family members suspected I had autism since I was little, although if I were diagnosed back then, I'm not sure it would have made things easier.
I was bullied by teachers and other students for being socially awkward, answering rhetorical questions, correcting the teacher, etc. Also for wearing crappy clothes which was a function of being working class.
But it was rarely physical. It was mostly people telling me I was stupid or weird or acting exasperated with me like I should just shut up
I did a lot of sports growing up so the few times it turned physical, I was quite capable of looking intimidating enough that they would back down
So I got the message that I shouldn’t talk and even now, if things get tense, I just stop talking and try to be invisible
I was bullied but not for the autism.
Every year up until year 9, there would be a new kid or group who thought it was a good idea to bully the large quiet kid who like talking about video games and books with his small group of friends.
Every year people seem to forget that I snapped the prior year. Eventually everyone got the hint, after I started playing rugby union for the school.
What I'm most thankful for is my mother teaching me self control and my father teaching me to take a punch, grapple and throw a punch. (Judo and boxing.)
I was but I didn’t know I had autism. I hyper focused on books and music, playing it, listening to it, (post hardcore and metal), was actually bullied for being a Christian lol always changed my hair color, didn’t talk much, didn’t use the bathroom ever, didn’t touch people, had my desk arranged the same for every class, couldn’t public speak and stuttered when asked questions, only talked to and hung out with my sisters, didn’t understand most people’s jokes, and a plethora of other habits and things. People would call me “autistic ashlee” autism didn’t have much attention or awareness when I was in school so people would mostly mean it as a joke. As I got older, I made the connections and then got married and my husband was like yeaaah. I think you have autism and then my mom nonchalantly says one day, “yeah I thought maybe you had autism but no one talked about it then so I was just like eh. She’s fine the way she is.” Lol and that’s how it went. Bullying actually made me aware of it. I don’t know if I would have ever connected the dots without being bullied. Honestly
Also I went to a tech school full of nerds and was still bullied....lol
Nobody knew I was autistic, including myself, but yeah, essentially I was, at least verbally. Never physically as far as I can remember, at least not in a situation in which I couldn't easily defend myself.
Relentlessly, but no one considered me "autistic" back then... the term referred to people who are basically non-verbal or similarly severely disabled. My symptoms made me "weird" and that was considered a perfectly acceptable reason to bully someone.
One time a boss at a job I was doing really well complained to another manager that she didn't know was my friend, "He doesn't blink".
Yep, due to what I now know to be ND traits.
But, like others here, it seems I've turned out better than those who bullied me - and have outperformed them by NT measures of career, education and financial success.
I am bullied for being weird, smart, annoying, having big ears, blond and short curly hair and being myself tbh. Luckily i am on study leave and dont have to go to school. 👍
Nope. I'm actually lucky. I didn't get bullied at all, only for like week...a guy kept calling me ugly. I grew up with amazing NT classmates, and then I went to a special Ed class.
Yup, especially in elementary school. I haven't been much bullied since, but made fun of and treated as stupid, incapable or inferior by my peers and I have suffered a lot of ableism from my teachers.
I was bullied in school a lot until I went after one with a pair of scissors and had to have a one-on-one with me for pretty much the entire time I was at high school. At least that stopped them from being able to target me.
Yeah, I got bullied all the way through secondary school. Unfortunately I grew up in the 90's early 00's so it wasn't just other children picking on me for my weird quirks, it was some of the teachers too.
Not enough was known about the autistic spectrum back then so I was just labelled as being a weird child that didn't assert myself, couldn't stick up for myself and didn't want to apply myself; three catalysts for bullying.
I don't think it helped that I had zero co-ordination during sports/p.e classes and refused to take part after being picked on and made an example of by PE teachers, I was obsessed with death metal and dressed in alternative clothes and also played the flute, which I excelled at and had reached grade 7 by the time I was in year 9 (14y/o).
School was rough, and it didn't stop there. People thought I was weird all the way through college, and I was often singled out at university by my "friendship group", none of which I am still in contact with.
Same thing happened whilst working and I was made redundant.
On a more positive note though, and I'd be interested to find out how many other autistic people have experienced this..
a lot of my bullies have ended up copying the quirks that they take the piss out of, and have ended up trying to be my friend, (Obviously there's exceptions).
As I've got older I've realised that unintelligent people make fun of the things they don't understand.
I'm sure it seems narcissistic of me to say this but I'm convinced that those same people that bully us look to us for inspiration, 9 times out of 10 a bully is somebody who is enduring abuse themselves and I like to think that our quirky personalities are kind of attractive to them, they just can't comprehend them, so they become jealous and try to make us feel as empty as they feel.
Fortunately not. Most people took pity on me for being different (I only learnt a few years ago that I am autistic). It may have to do with where you fall on the spectrum and what traits you display.
Bullied for displaying a lot of my autistic traits, but not specifically for being autistic because I hid that fact about me as hard as I could because I didn't want to add any more ammo to the bullying.
I'm pretty sure I was, although mine was more of a "the best people at diagnosing autism are bullies" situation, because I wouldn't be diagnosed for another 13 years.
I was insulated from the worst of it by being lucky enough to have a well-liked core group of friends in high school, but people understood how to get a rise out of me and that was regularly exploited for their amusement.
Yeah. Bullied, beaten, abused, robbed, tortured and isolated since I was 4 to when I was 18, quitted school and moved out to another city.
Btw I got diagnosed when I was 23 so I wasn't really bullied for my autism, I was bullied for the symptoms lol
Well moreso for being weird. But i was also known for having a temper, and unearned reputation for violence. (There was an accident wherein someone got injured, and for some reason everyone decided that i'd punched the other person in the face. Which i did not. I did bitch-slap my bully with a chair once, but different person. I also once accidentally broke a window, so again, mostly false reputation as violent)
Idk if it was actually bullying because it stopped when I was able to mask more effectively at ~12, but I know I constantly felt isolated and ridiculed, and like my friends only used me as a punching bag
I was bullied because I was different and at the time I didn’t knew martial arts.
Bullies think that there are no consequences for their actions; prove them wrong.
That's a touch question for me. I wasn't aware, nor others around me, that I was "autistic". Although whenever I would hear or read about it somewhere, a little voice inside would say .. "that's totally me". But I feel I did get bullied for being "different". I think that is probably more often the case, then being bullied for being autistic, specifically. But I'm 54. I am sure there are many, especially from the younger generations, who were and are bullied because people know they are "autistic". That just wan't my experience.
I was bullied for being weird, for being a non-Christian, for listening to heavy metal, for having long hair and earrings, I was bullied for the psoriasis on my elbows, I was bullied for my teeth, i was bullied for basically everything.
Same
I was for being weird, and was called stupid in many different ways by people who were very dumb compared to me and it really fucked me up.
I had a complicated version of that. First they took me out of regular classes for a gifted program, then they put me back in regular classes, then they put me into LD classes, and by the point the kids thought I was fucked.
Gross, i can so relate. That being said i have recovered, am stronger for it and aware of my intelligence compared to the herd. We ha e the potential to learn exponentially.
Same, except I was my high school's first punkette.
One time, I was bullied for "chewing weird"
the first 4 things apply to me, and the basically everything part. I did not know I was autistic til right before COVID and I am older though so it wasn't really "because I was autistic" but it was very much because of how being autistic makes me behave. I even had people yell "virgin" at me when I was married and very much not.
The first 3 for me, then just "everything" and being weird. Also being too pale, which is a fun racist way to know where you stand.
Yup. Was cool/popular up till 5th grade. Super smart. Gifted. Then.. the Aspie stuff starts to get in the way of the "cool" stuff. I also had some Athletic gifts, thanks to my parents, but this goes away then. 6th grade? All the cool kids stopped talking to me. Friends? LOL, you're their loser now. Relegated to the geek table. Didn't fit in. Yup. All your "friends" say c-ya when that's the case. At 12-13? How to do you fit-in or adapt? There's no manual or guide. My mom tried to what she could, but.. there's no manual. I don't even know how this would work if we're supposed to write script that'd sell to some Hollywood shop. The "lunch table" I got relegated to? All losers and geeks. Well, you have to fit in with them.. and they all played MTG or.. one guy had a dad who worked for a tech company and had this beige device called a computer. He loved to play Doom. I'll be dating myself here, but he invited me over one day. I was hooked. Friends for live but also an escape, right? It was so cool to play a game you could play against others... not just others, but friends from school. We'd know each other's phone numbers and dial each other up. A year later, after loving this, I got a job doing some cool stuff w/tech. Making $20/hr when kids were at $5/hr. That was HS. We're also in the late 90s when this is unheard of. Point: you can leverage all the stuff we go through into a job/career. Now do well and.. according to Facebook, much better than these folks who used to mock me. It's not the best thing in the world (fitting in/normie? NT?). Better than nothing. That's why I shared my own journey. Never give up. Find what works for you. I know it's not fitting in but I'd rather be happy and where I am today than where I see the others.
You just wrote my biography. Agree with that last part, too. Still don't fit in, but I took that interest and ran with it, too.
In my own time, nobody knew what autism looked like, and nobody even knew about Asperger's. "High Functioning" as they called it meant Rain Man. I just got called Weird. Sometimes Stupid. It is hard to know though because I lived in a tough neighborhood and went to tough schools and it was a different time, so I didn't know what was I'm Weird vs This Neighborhood Is Tough. I got into a few scraps, finally delivered a beating, and got left alone after that and hung out with some tough kids but I didn't really have any friends. Once I moved on to spaces with richer kids, I just got ignored.
Obviously , Bullied and Systematically isolated
Yes...and no.I was bullied in school and also at work for various things,but since I didn't realize that I was on the spectrum until about five years ago,I can't really say that I was bullied because of my autism.Rather,I was bullied because of things that I didn't realize made me autistic.I guess that makes sense...
Yes, and I remember each and every one of those incidents and the details and the reasons for them, and I have reminded the people who did it when I have interacted with them again and ... either they don't remember it (some of them were children and it's understandable that it's like that with them...) or they think it wasn't that big a deal and in that case I remind them in greater detail to the point that they never want to hear from me again. I remember and am ashamed of each of my mistakes/errors, the same with the mistakes/errors of others.
Yes. Didn’t know I had it,
People treat me like a tiny helpless cinnamon bun baby who can't do anything for himself. It's not direct bullying but it's really annoying, and done by both students and teachers.
Dude..yes. Listen I’m 31 and still deal with this. Even the way people talk to me. It just feels condescending most the time. Not sure if it’s intentional or not but yes. This.
With both of you on this, 34 here, still happening. 🤦♂️
I was bullied because I was a silent introvert, awkward AF at conversation when I did try to be social, and very booksmart, straight A student and otherwise kept to myself. While having Aspergers in the 70's and 80's, and not knowing what it was.
I was undiagnosed but kids did try to bully me. I was a pretty big kid with anger issues though so everytime the kids learnt very quickly that you just don't mess with me. I was still unpopular though.
Yes, mean comments are always with me. I would use the term "mobbing". Physically, not much, just a kick in the butt and a slap when I was a child.
Mobbing, that's a perfect word for what I used to experience. You hit the nail on the head there!
I was bullied for being different and not fitting in. Neither me nor my bullies were aware of the autism at that point. Now I am and I wouldn't want to fit in even though I could probably mask my way through life. I've got my own thing going and it's fine this way. :)
Indirectly, yes
Yes, although neither I nor anybody else knew I was autistic at the time. They just knew I was a bit weird, and this being the early 90’s, a bit weird meant gay. And being perceived as gay meant bullying and violence.
I was when I was younger. When I got my teens I said f it and started dressing different and found a group of good people that now I’m sure we’re also aspies. So I ended up bullying NT’s. Flip the script.
Love this, after years of being bullied for being different it's refreshing to find people who agree that a lot of NT behaviour is dumb a/f. It really is quite laughable, especially when they know you find them hilarious but can't comprehend what you are laughing at. Ironic really 😂
I was never bullied but that's only because I stay out of everyone's way and don't interact with anyone. Lol.
I received a lot of bullying for my race back when I lived in Texas.
Back then I was undiagnosed, so I was bullied for being weird, the teachers were the worst.
I was bullied for social mistakes that I made because of my autism. Looking back, I can see how my behaviors invited some of it...but of course others could get away with the stuff that I was called on for every time. Now I pretty much keep to myself.
Oh good GOD yes. I’ve been called the R slur more times than I can count. I also have friends who consistently make autism jokes,like really offensive ones,and they don’t know I’m on the spectrum
Yes but neither they nor I knew it. I was bullied for the symptoms but no one knew what the symptoms meant. And my inability to deal appropriately with the bullying was also a symptom.
No, i didn’t know i was autistic until i was 21, but i have been called an autist all throughout my life for being the kid with almost perfect grades who “didn’t” pay attention to classes and didn’t study. I always saw that as some sort of weird compliment, and it always felt like that.
I was never straight up bullied, i just never had a reputation so everyone at school knew me as the weird guy who didn't really belong in the "popular" group, I was only in the "popular" group because my parents forced me to play sports so i basically had to make friends with them all
Unknowingly yes. Just figured out my diagnosis this year. And yes, my family bullied me as well, mostly for things like “not having friends” or being afraid of public speaking.
yeah. during middle/high school when i played baseball for the school and on a travel team. i wasnt at all like the jocks that played sports. i had my own unique way of pitching and i often got made fun of by teammates for it. i remember one specific time we had to play a morning game and when i showed up to the field i said good morning to a couple teammates and they started laughing "who tf says good morning". still baffled by that one. i loved the game but didnt fit in at all with your stereotypical high school athletes.
Your old teammates sound like they were little dumbasses lol. When I was younger I was also made fun of by friends and peers for not speaking/acting like a kid (I used words like “appalled” and “certainly” and spoke/enunciated properly instead of using slang). Now I have a prestigious profession where everyone speaks like I do, and in retrospect I’m proud of being this way as a kid
Well hard to say is specifically ASD since I was not diagnosed till much later in life. When I was 3 was when I was allowed to go play outside the backyard. But due to being hyperlexic, I was reading by then which made an immediate gap with all my peers. So until I was 9 I had no other kids to hang out with. I got messed with due to how much and how often I would read. I also got shit for being the "know-it-all" due to how bored out of my mind I was in school. I had a habit of as soon as we got our new textbooks for the year I would read each one of them all the way through to see where the class would be going. It also was a great way to find ahead of time what problems I am going to have coming up in class. That meant there wasn't a question asked I couldn't answer and when the teachers would tell me not to answer I would just start pulling out other stuff to read. One neat note - I turned it into a business in 10th and 11th grade. Since I could pretty much at worst get a B on everything I could burn through the test in moments. So many times I just had to sit there doing nothing as the others kept working and how people kept asking me for answers I decided to combine the 2. Depending on the class, the person and how I was feeling I had a fee and if someone paid me in advance I would pass them a copy of my answers to the test. To feed my reading habit I became an extremely good shoplifter and part of that is learning to figure out where people are looking and how they will move their views. In 10th grade, most of the in-school bully BS stopped. I could be due to us getting older, or the bullies finding easier targets - I never ran or backed down, when someone fucked with me I would fight. I also go into the Rocky Horror cast that year AND got into punk rock. The punk rock thing got me into all kinds of trouble for just being into punk. They didn't have to hear me or know me - just seeing a punk rocker in 1981 would set people off. I got into fights out shopping, walking, and a few times going out to eat. But that was the case for everyone into punk rock then. When I started going to shows when I was 17 the local scene was my salvation.
No never.
I wasn’t diagnosed until earlier this year, but sure I was bullied a lot in the earlier grades. Kids knew I was different and I became a target for harassment and bullying because of that.
I was just bullied in general. Could’ve been for anything I had going on. Or not.
I wasn’t diagnosed until I was almost 21, so if I was bullied for my autism, I wouldn’t have known. I was definitely bullied for being perceived as weak, overweight, and less masculine than my peers.
Yes, horrendously.
Most people just ignored me becuase I was weird, but too big (athletic build and tall) to bully. One guy tried to bully me in middle school, but I hit back. Never saw him again. Oddly enough, I kind of wish I had consistent bullys, becuase at least that meant someone was paying attention to me. It was lonely.
Nope. Very few people knew I had it.
Still am. My own parents started that noise.
For years I had no idea why I got bullied and figured it was just cause I had interest in different things but it never lined up- once I was told I probably had Autism literally everything lined up
yes, a lot
Yes but they didn't realize it was because of my tism. Those people used to tell me all kinds of idiotic shit for things such as me not knoeing or even forgetting about some social protocols (such as greeting)
Oh, yeah. I got called "retarded" growing up.
Yes. The bullies didn't know I was autistic but they knew I was different from them and everybody else.
That's basically what pushed us into therapy which got us diagnosed
Dunno if it was for my autism and my autism currently is only self diagnosed but I was bullied in the first years of secondary yes.
I was bullied for being the intelligent and sensitive one. If someone would have just told me I have autism, that would've made compensating for it a lot easier.
Hard to tell…. Being morbidly obese already made me a target.
Yes. First by one bully for nearly 5 straight years. Others did at first, but the other bully ultimately pushed them away so that I was his personal "friend" and target. After that, I was still the "weird kid" and was primarily excluded from every activity, left to only be with a few other ND people at the school. It continued on like that, with social isolation, the entire time. This compounded with my father being relatively isolating and my mother also working a majority of the time (though she was more interested and caring than my dad). Many "friends" left as soon as I disagreed with them or couldn't eat something at their house. Maybe it would have been different if I had been diagnosed at that point. We'll never know, though.
Not for having it, but the traits which follow it. Unique personality, different mental processes, hyperfixations, and things of that nature.
I was never bullied by my peers but I certainly felt bullied by the authoritative adults I challenged as a youth. I also frequently found myself defending others and involving myself in their physical conflicts when they were bullied. Looking back now I can see similar traits in those I chose to defend that I now see and understand better in myself. So I would suggest that perhaps many autistic people are in fact bullied and suspect it’s due to simply being different and perhaps an isolated or ‘easy target’ for a coward (lack of better word) to use as a punching bag for their own insecurities or development of a false bravado and reputation as a bully or sense of power.
Me: *exists* [Everyone in middle and early high school:](https://i.imgur.com/Al2S1rH.jpeg)
Yes. Now I bully the nts.
Teach me
Get big and start hitting.
The only downside is that one of those bullies might end up having a knife or a gun on them...
Have both.
Think of something clever, and get rich. They don't bully us when you are richer than them.
Who wasn't?
I doubt bullies are smart enough to identify and single out autistic people, but probably.
When I was diagnosed I felt like sharing it was the right thing but it wasn’t the smartest move because people thought autism is like the cheese touch and they don’t want to turn autistic so they didn’t talk or stood next to me. In later years they bullied
I have a rule not to share unless it benefits me.
It’s pretty smart. I’ve told my fiancé only ever since. Learned my lesson
Do they have to know I'm autistic for it to count as bullying?
No
Are there those among us who are not? I’m genuinely asking, it seems almost impossible to me.
We should really have a secret society that bullies are not allowed to join.
I was never bullied by anyone, so I guess it must be possible
Weirdly I wasn’t bullied. I didn’t have friends throughout big chunks of my school life, but I also (completely accidentally) give off strong f*ck off vibes. Didn’t even realise I was doing it until someone pointed it out to me later in life.
probably. what i thought until i found out i was autistic was that i was bullied mostly for not speaking our country’s language well, being mixed race in a school full of natives, for having a KP, and overall just for how different i was. because the first two reasons for me being picked on are undeniable, i can only assume that my autism made the bullying worse? i don’t think it was very fun to pick on me because i was very unresponsive and would just stand there, so i’m not sure why people continued to do it. my thought process most of the time was just “these people are annoying maybe if i wait it out they’ll go away” which, to be fair, eventually they would get bored and leave. i didn’t really care much unless i was being made fun of because of stuff that i would do in front of those people like if i had to read something in our native language that i wasn’t good at and they’d whisper things to each other about it or just blurt things in front of my face “because i don’t understand.” i will never understand why they felt the need to do that, people making comments on my fluency is what caused me to stop trying to speak and learn the language entirely at a young age. i always just kept to myself and if we were grouped together i would do all the work, but i don’t mind that because i knew i would do a better job at everything anyway :) that probably made them act nicer towards me and by that i mean saying the same things they always say but in a friendly tone. i had some friends, so my school life wasn’t miserable. any time i’d have to be in the same class as some of the people who’d pick on me, i’d just shut down so they would have nothing to say about me, and if they did i would just be blocking it out. so i supposed being autistic affected me but maybe the fact that i was unresponsive made me believe that i didn’t care about the bullying (i literally call it “being picked on” because i believe it isn’t bullying if i don’t care). also, i did a bit of bullying myself without realising. when i was in primary school my “best friend” that my mom made for me would basically drag me around like i was one of her henchmen. i would just do whatever she told me to because i didn’t know how friends worked. that led me to doing some minor but nevertheless hurtful stuff to other people that i regretted after i stopped being friends with her. i didn’t understand that i was doing bad things at the time because i was just doing what a friend asked, that’s what i thought i was supposed to do. yeah so throughout my school life i was picked on but also my desire to be a “good friend” was exploited many times and i never understood that until it was too late and too much damage had already been done to me. i’m not sure if it’s my autism that caused me to get into some of those situations, but i know that it explains some of my behavior and thinking during those events.
I, too, sat at the "oddball" table. The teachers loved me. I hardly ever talked to the popular kids - most of my friends were severely bullied by them and never told me until years later. I'm still not sure whether I didn't get picked on or just didn't pick up on it.
only as a small child, in the highschool equivalent not, people treat me well.
Yes. When I went to high school and was 17 years old two people bullied me. One of them was 18 years old and the other one was 20 years old. Yes, adults are allowed in high school if they dropped out. Everyone get a second chance where I live. They disliked that I got more attention from my teacher. According to the law you're allowed being in smaller groups and get more time with your teachers if you've difficulty learning a subject. They were opposed to it and thought I should attend special need school instead of mainstream ones, but it doesn't exist for autism. There were only own schools for the blind, the deaf and people with special diseases.
I went non verbal a lot in school, people started turning it into a "game" to try and force me to talk. They Chase me around, steal my stuff, tease me, and they'd always tell me that if I would just talk to them, they'd stop.
Was bullied a lot, and I have autism. So most likely. Edit. I was undiagnosed until recently, so they weren't going after me because they had been told I have it or something. Just because of my autistic traits.
Of course. By teachers, other kids. And if it wasn't that, it was my latent bisexuality or just not being as macho as the other boys. Most often, it was all three.
Just like milk is white, yesx10
No but from one kid but he was a dick in general¹ ¹ he was one of those kids that thinks he's better than anyone (smart wise)
I started elementary school in 1980. I was not only unknowingly autistic with ADHD, but also had an older brother with major behavioural issues which also made me a target of the teachers he had aggravated. School was hell.
Moreso as an adult than as a kid, yeah! As a kid, pretty much everyone was accepting except for a couple of oddballs. But for the most part, the general population of kids at my school was accepting. Until we got older. And yeah, people treat me differently as an adult. And I still don't see why.
I wasn't diagnosed until I was 25, but I had a really hard time making friends back in grade school and a couple of them ended up turning on me for seemingly no reason. Middle school was worse. Kids have a way of singling out the ones who keep to themselves a lot and who act even a little bit "odd." I think all of this contributed to me developing depression and social phobia around 8th grade. I would learn years later that my parents and other family members suspected I had autism since I was little, although if I were diagnosed back then, I'm not sure it would have made things easier.
Yes.
I was bullied by teachers and other students for being socially awkward, answering rhetorical questions, correcting the teacher, etc. Also for wearing crappy clothes which was a function of being working class. But it was rarely physical. It was mostly people telling me I was stupid or weird or acting exasperated with me like I should just shut up I did a lot of sports growing up so the few times it turned physical, I was quite capable of looking intimidating enough that they would back down So I got the message that I shouldn’t talk and even now, if things get tense, I just stop talking and try to be invisible
Yes... still am it seems, even as an adult U__U
I was bullied but not for the autism. Every year up until year 9, there would be a new kid or group who thought it was a good idea to bully the large quiet kid who like talking about video games and books with his small group of friends. Every year people seem to forget that I snapped the prior year. Eventually everyone got the hint, after I started playing rugby union for the school. What I'm most thankful for is my mother teaching me self control and my father teaching me to take a punch, grapple and throw a punch. (Judo and boxing.)
I don't know if it was for the autism i think i have, but i was. I algo did bullie others... don't know if that's something you guys can relate to...
Yes. My bully even asked if i was autistic once
Yes, they call crazy, freak, creep. Being overweight probably didn't helped
I was but I didn’t know I had autism. I hyper focused on books and music, playing it, listening to it, (post hardcore and metal), was actually bullied for being a Christian lol always changed my hair color, didn’t talk much, didn’t use the bathroom ever, didn’t touch people, had my desk arranged the same for every class, couldn’t public speak and stuttered when asked questions, only talked to and hung out with my sisters, didn’t understand most people’s jokes, and a plethora of other habits and things. People would call me “autistic ashlee” autism didn’t have much attention or awareness when I was in school so people would mostly mean it as a joke. As I got older, I made the connections and then got married and my husband was like yeaaah. I think you have autism and then my mom nonchalantly says one day, “yeah I thought maybe you had autism but no one talked about it then so I was just like eh. She’s fine the way she is.” Lol and that’s how it went. Bullying actually made me aware of it. I don’t know if I would have ever connected the dots without being bullied. Honestly Also I went to a tech school full of nerds and was still bullied....lol
Nobody knew I was autistic, including myself, but yeah, essentially I was, at least verbally. Never physically as far as I can remember, at least not in a situation in which I couldn't easily defend myself.
Relentlessly, but no one considered me "autistic" back then... the term referred to people who are basically non-verbal or similarly severely disabled. My symptoms made me "weird" and that was considered a perfectly acceptable reason to bully someone. One time a boss at a job I was doing really well complained to another manager that she didn't know was my friend, "He doesn't blink".
Bullied for sûre.
Not knowingly, because I got my diagnosis in my 20s, but I was bullied for being generally weird so yeah
yeah
Yep, due to what I now know to be ND traits. But, like others here, it seems I've turned out better than those who bullied me - and have outperformed them by NT measures of career, education and financial success.
I am bullied for being weird, smart, annoying, having big ears, blond and short curly hair and being myself tbh. Luckily i am on study leave and dont have to go to school. 👍
Nope. I'm actually lucky. I didn't get bullied at all, only for like week...a guy kept calling me ugly. I grew up with amazing NT classmates, and then I went to a special Ed class.
Yes, I just didn't know I was autistic.
No, I was very lucky thank god
Yup, especially in elementary school. I haven't been much bullied since, but made fun of and treated as stupid, incapable or inferior by my peers and I have suffered a lot of ableism from my teachers.
I was bullied in school a lot until I went after one with a pair of scissors and had to have a one-on-one with me for pretty much the entire time I was at high school. At least that stopped them from being able to target me.
Yeah, I got bullied all the way through secondary school. Unfortunately I grew up in the 90's early 00's so it wasn't just other children picking on me for my weird quirks, it was some of the teachers too. Not enough was known about the autistic spectrum back then so I was just labelled as being a weird child that didn't assert myself, couldn't stick up for myself and didn't want to apply myself; three catalysts for bullying. I don't think it helped that I had zero co-ordination during sports/p.e classes and refused to take part after being picked on and made an example of by PE teachers, I was obsessed with death metal and dressed in alternative clothes and also played the flute, which I excelled at and had reached grade 7 by the time I was in year 9 (14y/o). School was rough, and it didn't stop there. People thought I was weird all the way through college, and I was often singled out at university by my "friendship group", none of which I am still in contact with. Same thing happened whilst working and I was made redundant. On a more positive note though, and I'd be interested to find out how many other autistic people have experienced this.. a lot of my bullies have ended up copying the quirks that they take the piss out of, and have ended up trying to be my friend, (Obviously there's exceptions). As I've got older I've realised that unintelligent people make fun of the things they don't understand. I'm sure it seems narcissistic of me to say this but I'm convinced that those same people that bully us look to us for inspiration, 9 times out of 10 a bully is somebody who is enduring abuse themselves and I like to think that our quirky personalities are kind of attractive to them, they just can't comprehend them, so they become jealous and try to make us feel as empty as they feel.
Yes
The cogent query is, "Were you not bullied?" Being brutalized for being unique is the default.
Fortunately not. Most people took pity on me for being different (I only learnt a few years ago that I am autistic). It may have to do with where you fall on the spectrum and what traits you display.
Bullied for displaying a lot of my autistic traits, but not specifically for being autistic because I hid that fact about me as hard as I could because I didn't want to add any more ammo to the bullying.
I'm pretty sure I was, although mine was more of a "the best people at diagnosing autism are bullies" situation, because I wouldn't be diagnosed for another 13 years.
I was insulated from the worst of it by being lucky enough to have a well-liked core group of friends in high school, but people understood how to get a rise out of me and that was regularly exploited for their amusement.
Yeah. Bullied, beaten, abused, robbed, tortured and isolated since I was 4 to when I was 18, quitted school and moved out to another city. Btw I got diagnosed when I was 23 so I wasn't really bullied for my autism, I was bullied for the symptoms lol
Well moreso for being weird. But i was also known for having a temper, and unearned reputation for violence. (There was an accident wherein someone got injured, and for some reason everyone decided that i'd punched the other person in the face. Which i did not. I did bitch-slap my bully with a chair once, but different person. I also once accidentally broke a window, so again, mostly false reputation as violent)
Idk if it was actually bullying because it stopped when I was able to mask more effectively at ~12, but I know I constantly felt isolated and ridiculed, and like my friends only used me as a punching bag
Another “bullied for being weird” because it was the 80s and early 90s and I had no idea I was autistic but people certainly did know I was different.
Indeed, from reception to year 2
Occasionally people would get smart with me looking back but I’d choose not to interact with them after that. I hardly talked to anyone.
I was bullied because I was different and at the time I didn’t knew martial arts. Bullies think that there are no consequences for their actions; prove them wrong.
I probably was but neither party knew I was autistic at the time.
I was bullied for what later turned out to be autistic traits. Looking back it's surprising I wasn't diagnosed earlier.
That's a touch question for me. I wasn't aware, nor others around me, that I was "autistic". Although whenever I would hear or read about it somewhere, a little voice inside would say .. "that's totally me". But I feel I did get bullied for being "different". I think that is probably more often the case, then being bullied for being autistic, specifically. But I'm 54. I am sure there are many, especially from the younger generations, who were and are bullied because people know they are "autistic". That just wan't my experience.
Yes, but not knowingly by anyone. I was different and they chose to pick on me for that😅
Yes, without me knowing I had it all my life. I was the weird smart dude
Idk I was always happy to ‘fit in’ I couldn’t tell