Argh, just because I quoted somebody else doesn't mean...

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Full title: "Argh, just because I quoted somebody else doesn't mean that I endorse his or her views."

Incident 1...
Me: I learnt something interesting in school recently. A teacher told us that the West used Christianity as a tool to brainwash its colonies into accepting Western supremacy.
Person A (A Christian): How dare you say such a thing about Christianity and still have the cheek to call yourself a Christian?! Christianity isn't a tool; Christianity isn't exclusive to Westerners. Christianity is our relationship with God.
Me: But... I'm just trying to share with you what my teacher said.
Person A: Oh, surely you agree with your teacher's teachings, otherwise you wouldn't have shared your true opinion of Christianity with me. Thanks for sharing.
(Person A then stormed off. He started avoiding me while shooting me dirty looks from then onwards.)

Incident 2...
Me: Blahblahblah... I stumbled upon a schoolmate's blog one day. She blogged that she would apply for teachers' college only if her grades couldn't get her into Law or Accountancy.
Person B (A teacher who is also my mom's acquaintance): Oh, how interesting.
Several days later, my mom told me that Person B phoned her one day suddenly to complain about my "prejudice against teachers".
My mom: Person B told me that you would only apply for teachers college only if your grades couldn't get you into Law or Accountancy? Is it true? Your grades have always been subpar.
Me: No, it isn't me! It was a schoolmate who wrote something like this in her blog.
My mom: Oh I see. Person B probably thinks that the schoolmate is a fictitious character that you invented to hide your own prejudice against teachers' colleges.

To all: Have you gotten into misunderstandings because people assume that the person you quoted is the person you endorsed?

This hasn't happened to me as far as I can remember, but I can imagine it would be really frustrating. From these transcripts you've given, you seem to have clearly shown that you were quoting someone else. So it's an issue with how they understand things, rather than an issue with how you've communicated. I would have ve thought people would be better able to see the difference between a quote and your own opinion.

Haha. Sometimes I think the "social problem" that AS folks have is that they forget that many people are insecure fools who are quick to leap into snide defensiveness.

Don't lose sleep over those two clowns, OP.

If you're really concerned about such situations in the future, you can try to make an effort to anticipate and preempt such stupidity, but in the end you'll probably just piss someone off a different way by convincing them that you think they're stupid, too.

Just forget about it, and maybe mention to your mom that it was pretty sh***y and unfair of her friend to not hear your entire comment out, or to make crazy paranoid assumptions that you were making things up to secretly insult her.

Yes. I hate it when that happens. Same as when I tell the reason for things. One time I told someone on here that people think it's abusing social security when you are on it and don't even try and getting a job. She took it personally accusing me of bullying her as if I think that, not them. I think it was a question I answered and she wanted to know why it was so wrong to be on it so I told her what people think to so she would know why people have a beef about others being on it. I don't remember how the situation exactly went.


Another time I said on a AB/DL forum about why people didn't like this one person named Heidi Lynn who liked dressing up like an adult baby girl and would go out in public like that. It was actually a man and that was his little's name. I said the reason why lot of people in the AB/DL community didn't like him was because he dressed up as a big baby and went out in public like that making us all look bad. One of my online friends read that comment over a year later and took it personally. First of all, I never said in that post what I thought of him and he acted like I did. I believe I was answering someone's question about why people had issues with him and about how he lived his life before his death. Then again I don't exactly remember this incident so I am just guessing. I think I was answering a question. I did try and find that post but couldn't find it.


I have also noticed that when you explain why something happened or why people do things or think things, etc. people think you are making excuses for them. I don't get that logic either. It's like I say "Dave Pelzer's mother had a grudge against her mother and hated her so she took it out on her son David by abusing him because she was sick, mentally ill. She "showed them." Then someone says "she may have had problems and been unstable but she still didn't have an excuse for what she did." Hello, I never made excuses or said it was okay for what she did, I said why she did it.

I have had this very problem countless times. I think it is difficult for many to understand the position of the objective observer. And once the misunderstanding has occurred it seems there is no possibility of resolution; any attempt at rational explanation seems to only exacerbate the situation. You can not use logic to win over an irrational person.

the problem becomes worse when you have to tip toe around someone you care about. Because then you must explain to an irrational person.

I have done this countless times. I am not making excuses, I am explaining!
For the future (I am already practicing) I will just say "sorry", makes it a lot simpler to avoid them unfathomable social norms.

Well, a lot of typical people don't 'get' pure information sharing. They automatically assume that you must have a specific reason to share this exact bit of information with exactly them. They also assume that this reason for sharing is based on emotions and or opinions - about the subject and about how the subject relates to their own self in particular. So, they assume that there is an emotional subtext to what you are saying, and they take it personally - sometimes very much so.

The reason NT's do this is that this is how they often communicate themselves. They talk about a subject based on their emotional attachment to it, because they want to share their likes and dislikes with others in order to confirm their identity both as a person and (not least) as a member of a specific social group (e.g. teachers or Christians). The stronger the emotional attachment, the more offended they get by a perceived criticism of themselves or their group.

What works for me is this:
When I get the impulse to share a piece of information with someone, I ask myself If there's a specific reason that I want to tell this particular person. Is there a reason this person would be at all interested in the information? Is there an interest that we share? Do I really care what they think about the subject, or do i just want to share for the simple joy of sharing? Often this ends up with me not saying anything after all, because I discover that my interest is in the sharing itself - not in the person I happen to be talking to. But this person will most likely look to relate the information to themselves, and so the misunderstanding is created.

Questioning my own motives like that, I try to mostly share information with others when I judge it likely that the information will be well received. I do of course still get it wrong sometimes, but not as often as I used to.

I don't think it's an NT thing since autistic people have done this too.

On reflection, I think you are right. Having emotional attachments that get in the way of rational communication is probably common for many people, NT or otherwise. Maybe it's more of a personality issue.

I still think that my point is valid, though - that some people are more prone to relate everything they hear to themselves, quick to latch on to parts of the conversation with their emotions, not really listening to the rest of it, thereby misunderstanding what is actually being said. Their subsequent reaction is then rooted in this emotional response, rather than in any rational thought about the facts. Like JBlitzen said: "many people are insecure fools who are quick to leap into snide defensiveness."

I've had to deal with this a lot, having both a father and a sister who were and are very quick to take offense no matter the subject. For the longest time I was completely baffled by their ability to twist every conversation into being about them and their hurt feelings, often with explosive results. It took years of therapy and buddhist practice for me to understand what was going on, and how to be patient with insecure fools if necessary, if only to avoid further emotional trauma on my part (when people frequently explode in your face it's bound to leave a mark).