FITTING IN OR STANDING OUT.

A few years ago, I can remember having an online stoush with someone who claimed to be a hairdresser who was telling everyone to vote for a politician I wouldn't vote for even after hell froze over. I said to this hairdresser that that is not the way to run a business, if you want repeat customers. If a customer comes in, you don't initiate a political discussion, if the customer asks you what you think of a certain politician, you either say, "Oh, I haven't thought much about them, to be honest," or, "Well, what do YOU think about them?" and a fly on the wall, if you sent a few different customers, all with differing views, wouldn't know what you really thought. That hairdresser finally acknowledged that I knew how it went.

I remember, when I was in a writers group, a right-wing shock jock made an offensive statement that Australia's then-Prime Minister, Julia Gillard's father, had, "died of shame". I was appalled by it and when I received news of it, I joined the voices of those condemning him. Initially, the shock jock denied it, until presented with auditory proof that he did say it. What marked the beginning of the end of my association with that writers group was the fact that two members (one thing I learnt also is never equate education with intelligence, as one had an engineering degree and supposedly had a good maths brain, but was a bloody idiot, and another left school at 14, and was equally, a bloody idiot) supported this shock jock, and one even said, disgustingly, that he had written to this shock jock claiming his freedom of speech was under attack! I will note, I am not saying that they are bloody idiots because they have a different political view, but one didn't believe in global warming, but could not provide any evidence to support it but supposition that 97% of the scientists were funded by those profiting from it. (Well, where do the 3% who oppose it get their funding, does this idiot think? Of course, fossil fuel companies.) The one who left school at 14 had no capacity for empathy, and even said, later on, that when my support worker had given them some information about me, such as, he doesn't like being touched by people (males, especially) and he's autistic, thought, "What have we got here?" I felt like saying, "Well, do you REALLY think that if I was a murderer too ill to stand trial and subjected to psychiatric confinement that I'd be brought to a writers group by a lone female?" No!

As I wrote in another story, yesterday, about a man who was a teacher who was secretly homosexual and married and had four kids, but later divorced and lived his life as a heterosexual, I ask two questions: 1) Should you really have to suppress your true self? And, 2) Do you really want to be friends with someone who has such opposing views to you when you have nothing else in common?

My mother does not understand why I tell people that I'm autistic, and my rationale or doing so is thus, people who matter don't mind and people who mind don't matter and that people have to decide which group they want to belong to. If someone cannot abide the fact that I am a left-wing autistic, well, that's THEIR bad luck, not mine. If someone is autistic and right-wing (as long as they're not too far right, as in if they are a small l liberal and in the USA would NOT vote for Trump, in the UK would have voted Remain and WOULD NOT support Steven Yaxley-Lennon, Farage, the UKIP or support the EDL and in Australia, WOULD NOT support the likes of Turnbull's predecessor or the Horror Affairs Portfolio holder) that may be a possibility. As it is, a former Deputy Prime Minister from the National Party is someone I respect, okay, his son and I agree on politics, and the father was a gentleman compared to Turnbull's predecessor, and that's because of autism.

The one person I did have an affinity with, in the writers group, one day, when I had submitted a topic for a story, after the one who left school at 14 said, "That's a weird one," and I apologised, replied, "Don't apologise for being yourself. Be who you are, but not everyone's going to like you." Well, no, I don't set out to make enemies, but I say, the people who like you are those who matter most. Those who don't like you, well, unless they bully or harass you, you don't really have to worry.

I guess the bottom line is, if someone tells you they're going to have a gathering and you're not invited, you can really think, two things. One, are they worth worrying about? And, two, do you really want to go to a gathering with people you have nothing in common with just to be an extra? No can actually be quite liberating.