It’s said we’re can’t do social, I beg to differ.

One of the stereotypical things one hears about autistic people is they don’t, can’t or won’t do social. It’s one of the biggest furphies of all time, of that I am convinced. On Saturday evening just passed I spent several hours having one of the most fun evenings of my life, sharing that time with about 10 other autistic people. We laughed, we talked, we shared together a social experience which we all highly valued.

But let’s rewind a few days…

Somewhere in the vicinity of one to two thousand people gathered to attend the 2017 Asia Pacific Autism Conference in Sydney’s Darling Harbour. Of course not all of them were autistic. Like any big conference there were a range of people, researchers, service providers, clinicians, diagnosticians, delegates from around the world and around the country. Amongst this melting pot of people were not a few autistic adults. Some were there simply to take in what they could, some to present talks and presentations, some to support others.

But here’s the thing, there we all were in a massive social situation and guess what, we survived, we did it. Quite frankly we did it with style.

There were some of us that even managed three social dinners together at three different restaurants in three nights fancy that!

Some of us did that on the back of standing up in front of large numbers of people and making presentations and talks.

Yes, we did. We did it, and we can and do do it a bloody lot of the time.

There’s all this talk about our deficits in social skills and communication and yet we navigate a world where the majority of the time we have to do it without the physical support of our tribe, our fellow autistics with us, we do it on our own, in our workplaces, our homes, our universities, pretty much in all the places we navigate as we go about our daily lives.

It should then be no surprise at all that we do it with aplomb when we have our tribe with us. And with aplomb we did it. We laughed, we cried we shared experiences we communicated effectively with each other and deepened relationships and made new connections. We did it all, funnily enough, we did it all just like the so called normal people did too.

Fast forward again to the present, and many of us are exhausted, having some trouble with our words, needing downtime, time to recharge to regain our selves back in our everyday worlds.

But, is that really any different than the rest of the world, isn’t it typical that after a big event that one is tired and needs to take some time to recharge?

I think the real difference for us autistic humans is the amount of energy sap we suffer when navigate such events, and then of course the consequential extra time we may need to recover and recharge.

As autistics we are absolutely different not less then so called non autistic people, but, perhaps in some things we aren’t so different after all.

It’s often assumed we can’t and don’t want social interaction, and I am sure for some of us this is true, however, for most of the autistics I am privileged to know, this is utter bullshit, we do want, and we can do social interaction. Sure, we may want it in a different way, in different amounts. Absolutely we may be more impacted by it when it comes to the toll on our energy, but by and large we want and seek connectedness with other human people just as most every other human does.

Please next time you think autistics can’t do social, can’t do communication, can’t do sarcasm, irony or humour; please, think again!