Disclaimer
I want to start off by saying that I don’t believe most people don’t behave in passive-aggressive ways with malicious intent. Most people, at least in North American culture, are raised and taught to behave this way.
They’re often genuinely trying to be polite, or haven’t been given the tools and skills needed to be respectfully assertive. We all have strengths and weaknesses, and I am not trying to position one approach as superior to another.
What I want, however, is for people to take a critical look at how they (we, as a society) interpret and define manners. I hope to incite a little bit of self-reflection and critical evaluation of what we consider to be polite and, most importantly, why.
Oftentimes we, Autistic and other Neurodivergent (ND) folks, are accused of being harsh, abrasive, or rude for simply being honest and direct. Our styles of communication are significantly different from those of Neurotypical (NT) folks, that’s the nature of having different neurotypes.
The problem lies in the way in which NT styles of communication are presumed to be superior simply because they’re more prevalent. I absolutely beg to differ, especially when it comes to this whole conflating of passive aggressiveness with politeness.
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