As a child, I was told frequently that the other autistic people in my family were excused from being cruel because they were “honest.” But I was also told as a child that I needed to pay attention to other people’s reactions to what I said and try to be kind, not just “honest.” I think these are gendered messages, that men are frequently encouraged to be honest/cruel and women are often told that their role in the universe is to caretake other people’s feelings (but especially men’s).
As an adult, I try very, very hard not to say anything to someone else that I think is cruel or mean or even that will make them feel bad about themselves. I’m not perfect at this. I may not even be very good at this. It’s a problem for me, because I’m not always good at guessing what other people will think is mean or what matters to them.
For instance, it has been difficult for me to understand that other women think of their physical attractiveness as something that is related to their personhood. I mostly don’t associate comments with how I look in any way with my value as a human being (though obviously, they are sometimes intended this way). But I’m nonetheless aware that this can be touchy for others, so I try to be kind. I also try to remember if someone else has told me before that comments about a certain thing trigger them feeling bad about themselves. I keep track, because even though I’m autistic, I’ve also been socialized as a woman, so it feels like this is my job, impossible as it sometimes is.
Comments about my being a bad mother are very distressing to me. Equally so are comments about my (lack of) intelligence in any particular area that matters to me. (I care much less about areas that don’t matter to me.) I’m also very sensitive if people accuse me of being unempathetic. I try so hard to be empathetic. I believe I work very hard, so being called lazy hurts enormously.
For many decades, I thought that people who proclaimed themselves “honest” or “cruelly honest” or “brutally honest” were my kind of people. I thought they had some problem related to autism (or whatever the word was I used to describe myself, like socially awkward or introverted). Every single one of those people was male. Men, autistic or not, seem to pride themselves on not paying attention to whether or not they hurt other people’s feelings.
It has taken me over fifty years to realize that these people are not, in fact, autistic. Autistic men who struggle with telling too much truth are almost always unaware of whether or not they’ve hurt someone, because they lack the very skills to tell if they’re hurting others. Men who are proud to hurt other people aren’t autistic. They’re just assholes. They are people who enjoy having power over others. They actually enjoy seeing the hurt in other people’s eyes. They thrive on it, in fact. It gives them a sense of their own superiority and invulnerability.
I hate saying it like this because it makes me fear I’m being unempathetic. But I’m just being honest (irony). For other autistic people out there, please be aware of this problem. These people are not your people. They’re going to keep saying that they’re honest for “your own good” or other nonsense. They are not models for how to be more social or how to interact in a more neurotypical way. Cruel people are simply cruel.
Is it kind to be honest? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. In my opinion, after many years of dealing with this issue, I think it is often better to be kind than to blurt out whatever criticism you have to offer from your own likes/dislikes. I’ve started to believe that the idea that there is one kind of “truth” is just sexist/white supremacist nonsense. If you need to tell someone that they have a booger hanging out of their nose, do it privately. Pull them to the side. If you want to tell them that a certain outfit isn’t accentuating their best features, again, do it privately and when you think they can receive the information without being hurt. Hurt will override their ability to hear your honesty and it will also destroy your relationship with them. Truth isn’t just a literal thing, like whether or not they made a mistake. It’s about giving them a rounded view of themselves that includes good and bad. It’s wholistic, not just about one moment.
Over my 69 years, I've slowly learned how to temper my direct communication style with kindness and what passes for politeness among neurotypical folx. However, the ability to be blunt has occasionally stood me in good stead when I really *needed* to get an annoying neurotypical person to go away and leave me alone. For a few years, I had a clothing alterations business. Even though I have little interest in "fashion", I have the ability to alter clothing to be more flattering to any figure, so I had a regular clientele who put up with my clumsy social efforts in order to receive the benefit of my services. However, at least 4 times, I had to drop any social niceties to "fire" clients who were so obnoxious that I no longer had any desire to even try to be nice. Although it made me uncomfortable to totally drop my mask with these women, I was very relieved when they went away angry and offended and never came back!
I think you’re 100% correct.