Name calling and stereotypical assumptions ?

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Why is there such a negative thing about autism in that people who don't have it seem to go of their way to make people with it with feel worse.For example you look down whilst you walk your called "ret*d" you childish rant,stimmer you called "ret*d" you ain't normal your called having "special needs".Another example you join a football team you can just see the thoughts going though their head "Oh no not a ret*d person runaway!,thick glasses mean with special needs guaranteed".

Whats the worst name you've been called in public ?

Because those with low self esteem feel better by stomping on the esteem of others.

Ain't that the truth.

And then there's something about junior high and high school that brings out the mean streak in people. It is not a healthy environment in any way, shape, or form. You would think, gee, one more person volunteering to help out, that's a good thing. But that is not the way sports teams, or even things like drama societies, tend to look at things.

In the essay "Why are Nerds Unpopular?" the author basically makes the case that formal "school" is an artificial environment, doesn't really do anything in the here and now that connects with the external world, and thus all the energy gets turned inward in a negative way.
http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html

Junior high is for sorting out the social hierarchy to be used throughout high school. What junior high students don't realize is that hierarchy doesn't mean squat once you graduate and go off to college or get a job. So, in their blind hubris, the dominant personalities decide the in and out crowds. Once decided, you are stuck with it. No changing of social standing allowed! Those at the apex decide who is in the most favored clique, and also the hierarchy of all the other cliques. Each step down from the apex is another sorting of the population, with the less easily categorized and those easily marked as strange pushed further and further down to pyramid. Each group in the pyramid has the right to harass anyone in a lower group. Which group do most autistics end up in? I suspect they are over-represented in the lowest tiers. I was fortunate enough to one the outside of even the lowest groups. A group of one, I suppose. I was so low down in the hierarchy, the apex clique didn't even bother to acknowledge my existence.

Ah yes. Junior high. The foundry where cynicism is annealed into our psyches.

The worst name I've ever been called in public (or anywhere for that matter) is "revolting lesbian slime". Said to me by a former best friend, no less. Teenage girls can be so cruel...

Great article. I was struck by one sentence (paraphrasing here), about how being popular takes work and training, just like being smart, and nerds ultimately would rather be smart. I would slightly disagree. For Aspies at least, this is not a voluntary choice. Socialization is a skill that we don't have. But his point remains somewhat valid. There is a gulf in what we prioritize versus NTs. Earlier, I read an article in WIRED about how nerd culture was being co-opted by the mainstream. Like hot girls being paid to walk around in Comic-Con in superhero costumes. At once it's both an invasion of a "safe space" that was previously inviolate and an erosion of standards for entry into nerd-dom.

Just today, I laughed at a reference someone on Twitter made to the origin of the term "OK" (oll korrect). Elsewhere, I made an obscure Silmarillion joke. The pleasure I derived from these things came from the connection I felt to the community of people who understood, who had acquired this knowledge through reading the encyclopedia and Lord of the Rings over many lonely hours. I would not trade this for "rolling with the homies eight deep" into a Vegas nightclub.

Ultimately, what we all want is to be accepted and loved for who we are. I think this is the goal, to have people, or even just one person, who REALLY "gets" you. If I worked hard at it, I could go to crazy pool parties at Beverly Hills mansions. But that would leave me as unhappy as the girls who are being paid to walk around in a costume at Comic-Con. It's not what we really want in life.