THIS IS ALL LEO'S FAULT

Also the further you move toward the poles the more pronounced the difference between the length of day and night is. Worst part of a far-north (or south) heatwave is it doesn’t get dark long enough for meaningful cooling.

If things are normally hot, you build things expecting it to get hot. You don't build everything close together with material that holds and reflects heat. You make sure there is shade everywhere there can be. You make sure there is space for air to flow and wind to blow.

If things are normally cold, you aren't doing any of that! It's freezing! You need to make sure your buildings retain warmth! The sunshine melts the ice and you need as much of it as possible! The wind is bitter, cold, and biting, you block it whenever you can!

The same heat that is manageable standing on the grass under a tree with a nice breeze, is deadly on heat-reflecting asphalt in direct sunlight with no air movement.

it took me asking three more times before she finally told me she wanted me to leave the fans where they are instead of moving them to my room or something. and I said oh! I had no intention of doing so but thank you for letting me know what the expectation is.

"You left your dish in the sink." > the hidden request is "please clean your dish, preferably right now." since it's phrased as an observation, I don't immediately intuit the request and instead think my housemate thinks I forgot about it. so I reply "oh, I know." housemate thinks i'm sassing her and gets annoyed with me. only then do I realize she was asking me to do something about the dish in the sink.

"There's hot soup on the stove." > said to me while I was preparing a sandwich. the hidden request is "please eat the soup." since it's phrased as a statement of fact, I don't immediately intuit the request and instead think my mom thinks I didn't see the soup. I did see it, but I wanted a sandwich instead. so I reply, "I saw it, thank you." mother thinks I'm being rude and gets annoyed with me. only then do I realize she was asking me to do something about the soup (and furthermore is offended I am eating a sandwich instead).

"Your bread is on the counter." > the hidden request is "please remove your sliced bread from the counter and store it elsewhere." since it's phrased as an observation, I don't immediately intuit the request and think my roommate thinks I meant to store the bread elsewhere and forgot. when I reassure her I know it's there, she gets annoyed. only then do I realize she wants me to do something about the bread on the counter.

"You can turn up the heat, you know." > said to me while I was scrambling eggs slowly over low heat. this one really confused me because of course I knew I could turn up the heat, but I had no reason to as I was only cooking for myself. when I ignored the statement because I was focused on my task and had nothing to say, my mother added, "the eggs will cook faster if you do." sure, I'm aware of this too, but I don't want to cook them faster. I won't get the texture I want. when I reply, "I don't want to, though," mom thinks I'm being rude and gets irritated, then asks me how long I'm going to take. only then do I realize she was telling me to cook faster (because she wanted the stove), instead of simply informing me I could.

"There are donuts in the break room." > a more benign example, but similar outcome. once again I hear this as a piece of information being given to me, and thank my coworker for telling me. when I don't immediately leave my desk to get donuts because I'm finishing a task, my coworker hovers and says, "well? aren't you getting some?" only then do I realize there was actually a hidden invitation, and I was supposed to respond to the hidden part and say, "I'll come get them in a minute," or "no thank you I don't want any."

as I said, I've learned over time this is something many allistic (non-autistic) people do (as well as high masking autistic folks who have learned the social rules and wear themselves out following them rigidly). despite what I've learned, my default autistic response is pretty much always to take the words at face value (especially when I'm distracted or multitasking), before remembering I have to translate them. and while I can make a decent educated guess in most cases, sometimes I just cannot and simply ask, "what are you asking me?"

unfortunately, many allistic people suffer from an inability to take words literally just as much as they struggle to speak literally, which can further obfuscate communication. this is why I emphasize gentle reassurance that you are not criticizing them, but asking them to help you, a person in need, by clarifying their intent. people generally like to be helpful and I have had moderate success with this approach.

"I'm putting the kettle on." (not just announcing what they're doing, they're expecting you to affirm whether you want tea or not.)

"Boy the trash is full." (not just voicing an observation, they're expecting you to take the trash out.)

"If you leave your window open, bugs will get in." (not just giving you information to decide what to do with, they're expecting you to close the window.)

Any variation of "do you want to do [unpleasant task]?" (you aren't actually supposed to say yes or no, they aren't asking your opinion, they're telling you to do it and saying you don't want to is rude.)

"Let me show you how to do something." (they want you to do it this way, they aren't just sharing an insight that you can choose to incorporate into your habits or not)

"Mm that food smells good." (might be complimenting your cooking, might be hoping you'll offer them some.)

"What are you watching/playing?" (might be curious about your interests, but might also want you to invite them to join.)

"Company's arriving in 15 minutes." (this one was from a mom to her kids and she wasn't just giving them a heads up, she was telling them to clean up.)

"Sorry my desk is such a mess." (APPARENTLY this was NOT a comment on her own desk but implying her COWORKER'S desk was messy and she wanted them to clean it??? sorry to the commenter who shared this one but that sounds genuinely deranged and you can't convince me this is common even for the most indirect allists out there)

to everyone saying this is simply a direct vs indirect culture issue, yes you can have communication breakdowns between people with differing degrees of directness, regardless of their neurodiversity status. what I am trying to illustrate is that autistic people in indirect cultures will miss these indirect cues at much higher rates than others, because we do not pick up on social norms at the same rate or proficiency as everyone else, because of our autism. essentially making us "direct-culture" people by default. some autistic folks do learn and practice those norms (some of us are literally traumatized into doing so), but it's something we often must remind ourselves to do, manually, and it can take a lot of extra effort. this is why high maskers end up in burn-out if they cannot learn to unmask btw.

Like "You left a dish in the sink". You see that sentence as stating a fact. Which does not have a natural response.

The allistic person sees it as stating a problem. The obvious response to a problem is to solve or medicate it. To another allistic person, that is direct!

A more objective example of this would be: "You are too loud." If I said that, you probably know what I'm asking of you.

They state the problem instead of requesting a specific solution because they are giving you permission to solve it however you want! You can lower your voice, leave the room, reschedule what you're doing, shut the door, etc. They don't need you to "lower your voice" specifically. They just need "too loud" to stop. It can be by whatever means are most convenient to you!

So coaxing specific directions out of them feels like a trap. Like you are telling them to give you orders instead of making a request. You can understand why they need so much assurance before they feel comfortable doing that.

"You left a dish in the sink." Is SUPPOSED to mean "You left a mess in a communal space and inconvenienced me." Which obviously means I want you the deal with the mess and fix the behavior.

But you didn't hear that! You hear "This is what the sink looks like right now." and you're right! That gives you absolutely NO indication of what you are supposed to do!

Once you realize that allistic people believe they have just reported a problem to you, you can see why they get defensive when you respond with confusion or dismissal. Same as allistic people realizing that your confusion or dismissal is a completely normal and sane response to what you believed to be a casual observation.

Remember: The "'E" in email stands for evidence.

That cuts both ways. Be careful what you put into an email. It never really goes away and can be used against you.

But can also be a powerful tool for workplace fairness.

Case 1: Your supervisor asks you to do something you know is either illegal or against company policy. A verbal request. If things go wrong, you can count on them denying that they ever told you to do that. You go back to your desk, or wherever and you send them an email: "I just want to make sure that I understood correctly that you want me to do xxxxx" Quite often, once they see it in writing, they will change their mind about having you do it. If not, you have documentation.

Me; That's illegal.

Them: (start italics) three slow, long seconds of staring at me blankly (end italics) Uh...

Me: That's an illegal policy to have. The right to discuss wages is a right protected by the National Labor Relations board. I used to be in a union. I know this.

HR: Oh, this is news to me! I have been working HR for 18 years and I never knew that. Haha. Well try not do do it anyway, it makes people upset, haha.

Me: people are entitled to their opinions about what their work is worth. Bye.

I then left, and sent her several texts and emails saying I would like a copy of their company policy to see where this wage discussion policy was kept. She quickly called me back in to her office.

HR: You know what, there is no policy like that in the handbook! I double check. Sorry about the confusion, my apologies.

Me: You still haven't given me the paper saying that we had this discussion. I am going to need some protection against retaliation.

HR: Oh haha yes here you go.

The woman would then storm back into my office screaming at me for putting the discussion in writing and arguing about pushing back the other project or whatever. At which point I would summarize that conversation in email as well. Which would bring her storming back in, rinse and repeat ad nauseum.

Anyway I cannot imagine how badly that job would have gone if I hadn’t put all her wildly unreasonable demands in writing. Bitch still hated me but she could never hang me for “missing deadlines” because I always had in writing that she’d pushed the project back because she wanted something else done first.

After a casual conversation with friends, write up a brief synopsis of what you discussed & agreed to. (...Do not email this to friends unless you have their agreement that this would be a fun group project.) Get practice with,

"A, B, and C had a brief meeting about food options after the big game. We decided on pizza, with A&B agreeing to contribute X dollars each, and C agreeing to contribute Y dollars and also bring soda. A will call for pizza on the day of the game and schedule it for delivery at 8:30 pm."

"A, B & C discussed movie options. A wanted something lite and fun; B wanted something scifi; C was fine with anything but horror. Nobody wanted superheroes. Decided on Lost Space Wanderers which opened last weekend; C agreed to research theatre options and report tomorrow."

...and so on. Practice describing the results of "meetings" with friends and you'll be ready to sum up "boss told me to set aside Project A to focus on Project B for the next two weeks" - because what's likely is that boss didn't say anything that clear; boss talked about how important Project B is and how the company needs parts X and Y done asap and you have the best skills for that, and when you mentioned how much time Project A was taking, boss said "eh don't worry about that right now; marketing is breathing down my neck so we really need part X by Friday, okay?"

...at no point did you get a direct instruction.

To: Boss

From: you

Cc: work group, team lead, project partner, direct supervisor, etc.

(Depending on severity of problem) Bcc: your personal email

"Hi Boss, I'm trying to resolve some confusion here. After our conversation about priority projects on [date] I reached out to you for confirmation of these details (see attached outlook item) and didn't receive an update to the timeline since that communication. I have been working from the agenda we discussed (summarized in attached outlook item from [date]) in absence of further direction. Do you have a copy of your response updating the changes or correcting mistakes in my summary? It's possible that I didn't see your email and I'd like to identify where a communication was missed so that we can avoid issues like this in future projects.

Best,

[Name]"

I have in recent years discovered the magic of carrying a brain dump notebook. It's great for ADHD!

Did you know the physically writing a note helps you remember something, even if you never look at the note ever again? (Sadly this doesn't work for typing or texting. It has to be writing.) I write all kinds of nonsense down in my notebook! It's covered in doodles I drew when I was bored and pulling my phone out would look bad! I've written some fanfic in the margins. It's filled with grocery lists and chore list and petty shit I was trying not to say out loud. The point isn't reading it, it's writing it! So, it doesn't need to be in anything even remotely resembling order.

Anyways, I carry my notebook everywhere when I'm at work. It helps me so much!

And oh boy does it make some people nervous! Someone amends my schedule and I'm writing it down (to make sure I remember it). Someone sets a date and I've pulled out my planner (to visualize it) Anything and everything is potentially documented and no one knows how good my records are on any given incident. Which makes it a risky gambit to lie about what they said or did when I was around.

At least one co-worker got herself in some HOT water with our boss because she didn't realize I had started writing down dates and times for a repeated behavior I was getting sick of. She was planning on saying I was exaggerating the frequency when I finally took it to our boss, but she didn't realize I had a scary looking list to back me up. Immediate action was taken to make sure it stopped happening to me. (Kept happening to other people, but their situations are between them and applicable parties. Not my business.)

Being the person that writes everything down (especially if 90% of it has nothing to do with your coworkers! Because they can't even call it petty or targeted! You sound ridiculous if you say your co-worker's grocery list is making you uncomfortable!) really makes people think twice about throwing you in particular under the bus.

It also helps that I write ᵗᶦⁿʸᵎ They straight up cannot read over my shoulder. I might as well be writing in code! I can fit three lines of text in a single line space. (I wrote a lot of fanfiction on receipt paper when I worked as a cashier. I got very good at fitting a LOT of words onto a tiny scrap of paper.) So nobody knows what is and isn't documented until I explicitly show someone.

My more honest co-workers come to appreciate it for the same reasons dishonest people hate it. If they tell me something, I will remember exactly what they told me. If you aren't trying to lie about anything, it's handy to have someone notice "Wait...you said the 21st? Friday is the 23rd." and catch mistakes before they happen.

We are doing something. We’re rejecting allonormative ideals and that’s a massive thing to do. We’re actively fighting not just to help other aspecs, but to help everyone, because amatonormativity (and allonormativity as a whole) hurt everyone. Single people who want to find a partner but can’t also deserve to be able to exist.

There are so many issues with the expectation of marriage, including:

A single income isn't enough to get by anymore

Having a spouse is almost necessary under the current medical system

Society shames and pressures people who are single to get into relationships constantly

Rejecting allonormativity means fighting against these things that hurt everyone.

He genuinely didn't know what oppression asexuals faced. We weren't going out and seeking a partner, so our identity shouldn't even come up unless we explicitly bring it up, right? So theoretically, any bigotry or oppression we faced was entirely avoidable.

I explained that our society is built with a very rigid expectation that we have a life partner of some kind. The same problems gay people needed legal marriages to solve, are problems ace people have. Except we don't have an alternative to simply legalize. Marriage is the only way to create a legal family tie without straight up adoption. Found families aren't legally recognized unless you're married to someone.

We expect people to have two incomes. We expect people to be taken care by their partner when they get hurt or sick. We build houses with the expectation you are a family, a couple, or it's a temporary situation. You have less career opportunities if you don't have a spouse. Retirement assumes you have, or will have, a partner. Insurance assumes you have, or will have, a partner. Childcare assumes you have, or will have, a partner.

I also pointed out that while he's right and there is no logic to acephobia, it still very much happens, and it's just way more unpredictable than homophobia!

A homophobe can come up with a rationale for their disgust and stick to it. Deep down, it's not because of religion or anything (Nobody quotes any other part of Leviticus. It's clearly not that important.) it's disgust and anger that someone is deviating from the norm. It's discomfort with someone being different from them in a way they don't understand. But they can tell themselves it's because of religion, or that it's dirty and wrong. They can justify their disgust to themselves when someone is having gay sex.

Someone that says they don't want sex, triggers the same discomfort and disgust. Because an ace is still different from them. They can't understand not wanting sex anymore than they can understand wanting sex with the same gender. Not having sex is fine and relatable, but not wanting sex is weird and deviant.

But they can't rationalize that! Ace people aren't doing anything dirty or forbidden by any metrics! The deviation is a refusal to do something and you can't ban inaction!

The reaction people have to all this discomfort and disgust that they can't justify to themselves can get....wild. Because if they don't know why they hate you, they will try to find a reason.

Sometimes they just confuse themselves and walk away. Sometimes they decide they must be mad because you're attention seeking. Sometimes they decide that it's your lack of childbearing that upsets them. Sometimes they decide they don't care if it makes sense to call you a "dirty predator" and do it anyways. Sometimes they decide you're just lazy or immature and lecture you. Sometimes they decide your lying and they need "punish" you, or they decide you're broken and they need to "fix" you; and that spins a second roulette wheel on how they decide to go about that! Ranging from unwelcomed advice, all the way to out right assault!

And really you don't know what flavor you're going to get. It's less common to get attacked, berated, insulted, and/or assaulted for being ace than it is for being gay, but it still happens! It doesn't have to make any sense. Bigots aren't rational.

I did acknowledge that he was correct in that asexuals are probably the most privileged group under the rainbow. It's really fucking hard to systematically target us. (How would you even begin do that? Arrest everyone that's not getting laid?) And the inconsistency in what justification people land on makes it impossible to centralize any large hate movements against us. Our oppression is more rooted in dismissal than it is in bigotry, but we still face oppression all the same.

There were issues in how I was raised and it fucked with my ability to keep my living space clean. Like at all. Like I was incapable of keeping my room from devolving into hoarder conditions for more than a month.

I could write an essay on all the factors that caused this, but not the point and no one cares. Just know there is a long list of very understandable reasons for why it was this way.

Every time it got cleaned, either because someone helped me or something forced me, it didn't stay that way. The floor soon disappeared. It felt like sisyphus. I was just doomed to live this way.

Then one day as an adult I was forced to yet again clean my room. It took a week as it always did. I enjoyed my clean room knowing I would ruin it within a week.

And I.... didn't.

I waited and waited for this temporary streak to break and... it didn't. I actually kept it clean. "cleaning my room" was an hour every month or two instead of a week every year or two, and it actually got done.

Turns out I had done enough work on my mental health that, without me realizing it, I had healed the parts of myself that were blocking me. I literally had no idea that was the last time my room would be that bad. It took two years before it finally sunk in that this wasn't temporary success, it was permanent change.

When you're in your twenties, you live the life your circumstances give you.

Think about it like this: Say you value outdoor space and green space is a priority for you. You want to live somewhere with a yard.

When you're a teenager, you live in where ever your parents live. They made the choice. Maybe they took your input about the yard. Maybe they didn't. Either way, you have to live in their choice, yard or no.

When you're in your twenties, you live where you can afford. Maybe you're lucky and can get what you want. Maybe you have to settle for plants in the windows. You are not in a position to turn a good place down just because it doesn't have a yard.

When you're thirty? You have some kind of paper trail to your name. Whether it's good or bad depends on the choices you made. What you prioritized and what you compromised. Even if there was no "right" choice, you still got to make a choice!

If you put your energy into your living situation, your thirties is when that starts to pay off. When you finally get to be choosey and decide that a yard is non-negotiable for you.

You probably neglected your career or love life or health or something else in favor of this, but you choose what you ignored. You choose what part of your life you put first and what part you put last. Maybe you'll be happy with it. Maybe you'll realize you made a horrible mistake. Either way, you did it.