Well if it makes you feel better, I don't plan to have children. I don't feel physically nor emotionally capable of it, and even if I was, I'd vastly prefer to simply adopt. I was simply speaking for myself on that last part, because if life is that cruel to the point that children shouldn't be born like me (be it as neurodivergent, a woman, or ace, considering the above), then why should I exist either? Because I refuse to go out without clawing at the system first.

Nor do I have anything to say on your experiences, because again, as autism is a spectrum I can't speak on them in an educated fashion. Not that I'm not tempted to, and actually did somewhat against my own better wisdom in a post I deleted (among other things I quickly regretted). But ultimately I can't speak on when one thinks a life equivalent to theirs is "fair" to live, merely when an argument for such is too broad.

Let's take workplace struggles. So does sexual harassment not count as disrupting workflow? Or the fact that women are observably taken less seriously than men and verbally abused more? What about transgender people who are outed in the workplace against their will, or can't get their deadname changed on their paperwork? What about gender and racial pay disparity? What about people who have their applications rejected for having "ethnic" names? Do you think autistic people are the only ones to ever struggle with a job for reasons outside their own control? And this is in the "good" countries. In the "bad" countries, autistic people aren't the ones who have to worry about being killed for loving the wrong person or not wearing a hat.

Also, out of curiosity, have you talked to your friends about how you think they shouldn't have children? What have they said on it?

Well if it makes you feel better, I'm not planning to have kids, certainly not giving birth, and was merely speaking to my own continued existence on that last part rather than anyone else's. After all, if autistic existence is so terrible that children should never be born with it, then why should I still be alive? Because perhaps, just perhaps, there's still something I can do about it other than simply go away, regardless of if anyone wants me to or not.

If I had a child, it would be out of love, not hate. But I feel neither physically nor emotionally responsible enough for the task, nor do I feel desperate enough to carry on my own genes to not try to give that love to someone that already exists and was abandoned by those who should have cared for them instead of some new wholecloth being instead. But I don't see the point in spiting people who feel different, either.

The truth is, people suffer. And the argument about location can be offered conversely. You generally won't get killed for being autistic, at least not at this specific moment in history, but you can be in many places for being gay or for not conforming to repressive social norms as a woman. And even in places where they aren't, is your workflow not sabotaged by being sexually harassed? Is someone's workflow not disrupted by being unwillingly outed as transgender in the workplace, or by the staff refusing to change paperwork from their deadname? Do women not statistically get paid less for the same jobs as men? Do women not also get their workflow disrupted by being taken observably less seriously and getting verbally abused more while doing the same jobs as men? Do resumes not get rejected for having names that "sound foreign?"

And even if you got rid of all that, people aren't going to stop suffering. Even if every autistic child, every LGBTQ child, every child from every local minority and every little girl were prevented from existing, humanity would still find new ways to segregate and torment whatever little remained. And for that matter, that behavior is mirrored in the animal kingdom as well. Short of wiping life itself clean, it's not really possible to prevent suffering. And at that point, aren't you just causing the most suffering of all?

And yet. Humanity is special because of the capacity to recognize that the status quo is wrong, and to iterate upon it. 100 years ago, the acceptance seen towards women and the LGBTQ+ community in "the good" places was nonexistent. 200 years ago, overt and public ownership of other human beings as cattle was seen as a social norm. Braille is put up for the blind, subtitles for the deaf, ramps and automatic doors for the paralyzed. There was a time when being gay was diagnosed as a mental disorder, and if women were insubordinate they were diagnosed with the mental disorder of hysteria and lobotomized. And yet? Some people decided, stubbornly, that the solution wasn't to keep tolerating the status quo.

Not to say that autism cannot be more of a burden than most other things depending on the person. Again, it's a spectrum. It's not for me to speak on how it feels to be someone else. But the fact that it's a spectrum also means that there's no line. At what point does a person have the "right" genes to carry a child? At what point is it "fair?" Because clearly people who are "carriers" are a no-go as well in your books, and a huge chunk of the global population is autistic. And if you count every person who has at least one disability or allergy or genetic disease or general disadvantage in society, that's just about every genetic line at that point outright. Human genetics is inherently flawed. So is the only answer to engineer humanity to be perfect, then? And if so, what defines "perfection?" Work productivity in a late-stage capitalist society?

For my part, I wholeheartedly agree with your decision to not have children as well. But it's not because you're autistic. There are billions of people on this planet, and it's no one's responsibility to keep that number ticking up. Having a child should be the choice of someone who believes that the world is worth living in for that child. To lack that and still press on would be an act of cruelty to parent and child alike.

Although I do wonder. Have you talked with your friends about how you feel about autistic individuals having children to your friends? How do they feel? Do they agree that they wish they'd never been born, as you do?

"Remind me when we're not going be in a system which refuses to treat X properly" is honestly, uh. Your other arguments are honestly strongly tied to neurodivergency being a spectrum and thus outside of my personal experience to speak on one way or another, but I just can't abide by this one. The system is fundamentally stacked against women and the LGBTQ+ community as well. Should people stop having girls as children, as some countries have actively attempted for cultural reasons? Should people continue searching for "the gay gene" as they have historically in order to eliminate homosexuality? Should one want to bring an "innocent kid" into existence fearing walking alone at night, or fearing being beaten to death if they visit the wrong place? Oppression is NOT an argument against the existence of a group, regardless of all else. And said oppression is the exact reason why eugenics is coming to mind for people in the first place. Because this line of logic basically posits that if it's harder to live as a minority, one should simply get rid of minorities entirely.

I'm sure plenty of people would be happier if they were born straight or white as well. But how much of that is inherent, and how much of that is a product of the system? Even if you consider neurodivergency to be actively disabling, being blind is a disability and many blind people still find joy and pride in their existence, even to the point of spurning the idea of a cure.

And heck, I'm clinically depressed. Without active medication, it can be very easy to slip into the idea that it'd hurt a lot less if I simply wasn't here. That because of my neurodivergency among other issues, I can never accomplish anything. Sometimes even with medication, I still feel that way. But somehow, posts like this actually steel my resolve to fight that. Because your argument basically pointed out that at least some of the voices telling every neurodivergent person that they're a failure aren't ours. And however seemingly futile the action is, that means there's something to rebel against. And there's nothing like existing as an act of spite to help keep one going, at least a little.

Oh, phrenology's been back for a while. Or at the very least, these idiots have been taking tape measures to bones because of bigoted nonsense. Phrenology in the historical sense might actually be too complex for them.

Incel communities have long been touting the existence of a dating appeal hierarchy based on "canthal tilt" and "hunter eyes." They believe that you're born more or less likely to pick up "Stacies" based on the subtle shape of your eyebrows and chin. Meanwhile, "transvestigators" take the "we can always tell" insistence of transphobes to such insane depths that they think they can tell from photographs and video that every person they see on TV is transgender and secretly part of a literal satanic cult because of minute observations that they think they're making about celebrity bone structure. Oh, yeah, and it's a huge staple of transphobia just in general. "Transvestigators" have just raised it to what they think is an art form, but is really just raw, concentrated delusion.

Never underestimate the depths of pseudoscience to which people will stoop in order to create out-groups. You will always be disappointed.

Sometimes I hate being on the autistic spectrum, because I KNOW I'd end up making the same scene that this guy did and launch into the exact same petty argument. Well. . .probably. I'm a woman in my case, so I might just be stuck baking the cake myself and never have it come up. It's not that, to use this guy's situation as an example, vanilla is bad, it's that once something is decided, it gets baked (heh) into my head, so any deviation from what was explicitly established throws me off hard enough that I start feeling way less logical and appreciative than I would otherwise and acting like a child.

Granted, the response from the woman (and the response neurotypicals tend to give to pushback over minor situations in general) confuses me anyway. It's. . .cake? It's not that serious? Since I'm also PICKY, I also very much get having to quickly cover my blunt comments with "I'm not saying this because of anything wrong with your cooking, I swear, the dish was cooked well and looked great, I'm just super finicky and dislike (insert ingredient here)." Which. . .apparently wasn't enough in this case? Like, it's not personal. It's REALLY not personal. If I say I'm not in the mood for vanilla today, it means I'm just not in the mood for vanilla today. I assume it's the same for this guy. No one is trying to "embarrass you in front of your kids." How does that reflect on you? You're not the one eating around a line of vanilla and complaining about home cooking made with love. THAT'S embarrassing. When I eat around stuff, I KNOW I look like a clown and just hope no one cares. Then she tried to intimidate him by threatening to stop doing something nice for him and he. . .gave an admittedly pretty rude but also perfectly fair response in the heat of the moment? Like, he DID overreact, and it's weird he didn't notice in retrospect, but HUMANS overreact just by nature, and the response to this both privately and publicly is enough to make me live in existential terror because holy crap, THIS is all it takes to be a pariah?

Is all this drawing battle lines in the sand between neurotypical and neurodivergent people? Finicky people and people who just scoop up anything on their plate? Both? Considering all the women responding to the question, is it partially because he's a guy and there's some kind of subtext of assumed misogyny, so to a degree I DON'T have to worry about this? Or is there something else here I'm missing?

EDIT All of which is to say, his behavior was still BAD, and frankly I think he lacks a shocking amount of self awareness, I just GET it. Frankly, I SUPER agree with some of the other comments here that say the core issue here is a communication issue. Neither of these people know how to explain their side, so it's just. . .two people getting progressively angrier at each other and it turning into a mess.

I'm in camp "Midwestern American who says tuna fish". . .but I'm also right there with the person that said they don't order them and tuna fish sandwiches are something made at home.

For the record, I don't know why the fish part is specified. It just always was. It's not like my family called it a "can of tuna fish" growing up or anything. It's just the sandwiches. Put that tuna between two slices of bread and suddenly the word "fish" gets thrown in there. Maybe it just sounds more fun if you add more syllables? Either that or somebody in the region had to explain that tuna was a kind of fish years and years ago and it just stuck.

Well, Jabba is wide, wrinkly, and tapers off at the end, so,

Croissant

"But that's not a bagel-"

Jabba is also a crime lord, and thus does not care about your laws.

Croissant