[romwell]

As an autistic: no.

Lack of social awareness isn't an excuse for rape and abuse jokes. You don't need any social awareness to figure out that you shouldn't do that. The concept of "jokes at someone else's expense = bad" isn't hard to grasp for an analytical mind.

Autism is not stupidity. You are not doing "autists" any favor by trying to excuse this behavior.

(Also, for some reason, autistic women aren't seen joking about rape and domestic abuse. Perhaps autism isn't the reason why someone may feel comfortable making these jokes, huh.)

[sokoloff]

“Jokes at someone else’s expense = bad” seems to me like it literally* requires some social awareness.

* in its original definition

[romwell]

What definition are you using? The idea that autistics don't empathize is, put it simply, false.

And difficulty reading social cues doesn't apply in cases where many, many, many people openly and directly explain why jokes at someone else's expense are bad (and correlate with the people being the butt of the joke being mistreated).

I have deconstructed the rape joke in another comment. Maybe to you immediately feel why it's not an OK thing to say. I go through the analysis. We both arrive at the same destination by different means.

[sokoloff]

> What definition are you using?

Literally to mean “in a literal sense; exactly” not the novel accepted usage to include meaning “figuratively, not literally”.

[romwell]

facepalm

What definition of social awareness are you using to make that assertion?

[sokoloff]

The first definition that came up in Google seems to apply: “social awareness: The ability to take the perspective of and empathize with others.”

If you have literally* not any of that, you might need to have a procedural/analytical rule to tell you “Jokes at someone else’s expense = bad”

Then, having the necessity to apply that rule, you would need to be able to evaluate “is this contemplated joke going to be at someone’s expense?”

I can’t see how you could correctly evaluate such a predicate if you had literally not any “ability to take the perspective of [nor] empathize with others”. Evaluating that correctly requires at least a shred of social awareness.

* defined as above and referenced originally here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29186509

[romwell]

>The first definition that came up in Google seems to apply: “social awareness: The ability to take the perspective of and empathize with others.”

Yeah, that's not what autism assessments mean by "social awareness". When it comes to autism, social awareness is more narrowly defined to be literally that: ability to be aware of what's going on in social settings. This would be things like "reading social cues", "reading emotions", etc. (See [1]). However, let's proceed with your definition.

>If you have literally* not any of that, you might need to have a procedural/analytical rule to tell you “Jokes at someone else’s expense = bad”

First, as I said, autistic people can take perspective of others and empathize with others. What's lacking is the ability to do that through indirect communication, aka "getting the hint".

Second, I do have a rule, and that procedural rule is known as "learning from history", or "taking 5 seconds to google the link between hateful jokes and violence".

The full version of the rule is " Jokes at someone else's expense = bad whenever the people joked about are defined by a characteristic not resulting from their choice".

There are many examples in history how racist / sexist humor being normalized correlated with hate and violence; how "just joking" is used as an excuse to push an agenda[2][3].

You can analyze what makes a joke funny. Take the joke that got a juror dismissed from the Rittenhouse hearings ("Why did the cop shoot Jacob Blake seven times? Because he ran out of bullets"). Its punchline is, effectively, "Because you don't need a reason to murder a black person".

Now, if a black person makes this joke, it can be seen as gallows humor - a commentary on the grim situation they find themselves in while interacting with the police - the reality that they don't get to choose. A black person saying "our lives are worth nothing" is calling your attention to a serious problem.

A white person making that joke would be making fun at Jacob Blake's expense (as well as other people killed by police). A white person saying "black people's lives are worth nothing" - well, given the history of racial violence, the premise that this is the person's actual belief may not be excluded; and telling this joke without additional context is harmful, because it would simply reinforce this idea, and put black people in more danger.

There are very good reasons why we should avoid laughing at characteristics that people don't get to choose. I can go on, however - does the above satisfy your inference criteria?

Perhaps it does require * a shred * of social awareness, but to say that autistic people don't have that much would be simply false.

[1]https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/erv.2736

[2]https://www.npr.org/2021/04/26/990274685/how-extremists-weap...

[3]https://gap.hks.harvard.edu/sexist-humor-and-rape-proclivity...

[wayoutthere]

Look, autistic people don’t get a pass for being socially awkward, nor are we entitled to one. The internet autism communities (particularly the edgelordy ones) often enable this nonsense because “fuck you I don’t want to change”.

Social skills therapy exists and you can learn these things. Poor social awareness does not make up for contributing to a hostile work environment, full stop. Autism means you have to work on yourself and understand your emotional triggers to a degree non-autistic people just don’t. That’s just our lot in life.

[Jensson]

Right, we shouldn't exempt autistic people who make bad jokes. But you shouldn't assume that those people are rapists or domestic abusers just because they make those jokes.

[wayoutthere]

I’m sorry, but a cavalier attitude around rape and domestic abuse absolutely contribute to a hostile work environment which both from a legal and simple fairness perspective is a problem. Sexual assault and domestic abuse are unfortunately quite common — when you make that joke, there’s a very real chance that someone within earshot has been raped or abused. And it’s not just women who are the victims, so they’re not ok around “just the boys” either.

Autistic people aren’t dumb. We do understand when actions have consequences. The reasons why may seem arbitrary to us, but again, it doesn’t mean the consequences aren’t real or that we can violate the psychological safety of others with impunity. Yeah, that may mean getting fired for telling edgy jokes to understand you don’t make edgy jokes at work. I’m 100% ok with that as an autistic person.

[romwell]

>But you shouldn't assume that those people are rapists or domestic abusers just because they make those jokes.

No such assumption is made. However, rape jokes are a signal that gives some credibility to such accusations.

Just like the knowledge of someone making constantly jokes about murdering a particular person (say, Jensson) would be very much on the radar as a suspect in case Jensson accuses that person of attempted murder.

[Chris2048]

There's (famously) a spectrum for autism, and individual differences in any case. You can't speak for the whole spectrum just for placing somewhere on it.

[romwell]

Oh, but the parent comment gets to speak for the whole spectrum by saying that autistic people wouldn't know that they shouldn't make rape jokes in public because they are autistic? Without citing any sources, or having any qualifications to do so, or even claiming to speak from personal experience?

Perhaps you should direct your comment to them.

[Chris2048]

> gets to speak for the whole spectrum

I don't see any claim that they speak for the spectrum, i.e. no appeal to authority/identity. Sure, it means they don't provide a basis for their claims, but in this case I am attacking what I see as an invalid basis.

Also:

> by saying that autistic people wouldn't know that..

They said "Autists often don't.." i.e they aren't speaking about all/any/every, but some. They are talking about some subset of the population.

> Perhaps you should direct your comment to them.

What I feel is worth spending time criticising is my business. Given the hedge of talking about some autistic people it's almost certainly true without qualification.

> or even claiming to speak from personal experience

OP didn't talk from PE of other autistic people, but purely from their own behaviour, i.e. an n=1 generalisation.

[romwell]

Look, the OP implied that autism maybe be a likely reason why someone could be observed regularly making denigrating jokes like "9 out of 10 people enjoy gang rape", because we lack "social awareness" to tell otherwise.

As an autistic person, who knows other autistic people, and is a part of online community of autistic people, I'll go out on limb and say that the OP is talking out of their ass, and I can comfortably speak on the behalf of the community on this topic. Other people who identified as being on the spectrum in this thread agreed.

OP never said they were autistic. It's just what they think autistic people would do.

It's an n=√-1 generalization: purely imaginary, and on top of it, insulting, because figuring out why a joke like "9 out of 10 people enjoy gang rape" is bad doesn't take that much.

Particularly because so much has been written about it. Go ahead and read [1], it's an excellent article. Or my comments elsewhere.

TL;DR: portraying the condition of "being a jerk" as an autistic trait is a jerk move.

>What I feel is worth spending time criticising is my business.

Then perhaps you should spend less time criticizing, and more time getting a clue — though again, I'm sure you have different plans regarding that too.

[1] https://theconversation.com/psychology-behind-the-unfunny-co...

[Chris2048]

Does it take much to figure out if your tone is off?

[romwell]

Not at all, people misread my tone so often that I might as well assume it's off all the time.

It works both ways though; sometimes I'm trying to tell someone to go fuck themselves in a polite way, and for some reason it takes them forever to get the hint.

I've learned to be patient in either case.