A Few Positive Qualities of Autistics that Make Us Pretty Cool

I’ve found, since I’ve discovered I’m one of the up to 80% of unidentified autistic females, that people have one of two reactions when I disclose to them that I’m autistic. Either they tell me how sorry they are for the awful hand life has dealt me, or they say something to the effect of, “You can’t be autistic. You’re too .”

I’ve gotten to the point where I don’t have the time or the patience to explain the autistic female phenotype or autistic masking to allistics who won’t even let me educate them, much less educate themselves, on the subject. It’s just easier to keep my mouth shut about my neurodivergence and live my autistic life without seeking validation from allistics.

Yet I can’t let go of the fact that of all the times I’ve disclosed to anyone that I’m autistic, I’ve never gotten a positive response. It’s either pity and condolences or a staunch refusal to believe that anyone who isn’t a totally dysfunctional and dependent mess could ever fit the definition of autistic. By and large, the mainstream still views autism as a horrible defect and the autistic individual as someone to be pitied and looked down upon. They see us as pathologically and intrinsically disabled, with few to no redeeming qualities and certainly no ability to be productive or contributing members of society.

I’ll admit I fall somewhere in the center of the social and medical models of disability. There are plenty of ways that societal discrimination against people like me is 100% responsible for the challenged I’ve faced in life. But there are also ways that my neurotype itself gives me hell. Society doesn’t make cloudy glare literally unbearable, and it doesn’t make my circadian rhythm basically the opposite of a diurnal schedule. The lack of accommodation definitely disables me when it comes to my career options and my ability to live independently, but I would also really love it if every little light or sound didn’t keep me awake and give me a headache. I’d also love to be able to wake up early and enjoy the morning time without sleeping through half the day if I am able to sleep at all. It is what it is.

On the other hand, despite my issues, both inherent and imposed upon me by society, I still don’t see my autistic experience in an entirely negative light. I might have different struggles than allistics, but there are many things I and other autistics are much better at than them. Yes. You read that right. Though most don’t seem to believe it, we are better than allistics in certain areas — not equal to, not almost as good. Better. How? Let me count the ways.

We’re More Logical

I hate to break it to all the allistic men who’ve ever tried to use the stealth ad hominem fallacy of “men are more logical” against me in a debate, but it turns out, allistics as a whole are actually pretty illogical, regardless of gender. Of course, all humans are irrational, emotional creatures, and the idea that any of us is (or should be) mostly logical is just ludicrous on the face of it. That being said, studies have indicated that things like critical thinking and analytical decision-making actually come more naturally to autistic people, perhaps because we’re less aware of our emotions and put less value on things like feelings and intuition.

Whereas most allistics are emotive and intuitive and make choices based on their feelings (many times, to their detriment), autistics tend to base our decisions on factual evidence and information. If we feel we don’t have sufficient information to make a decision or formulate an opinion, we go out and gather more. This means we take much longer than allistics to come to decisions and opinions, but our decisions and opinions are often much more logically sound when we do get to them.

We’re Less Susceptible to Peer Pressure

On the whole, it’s pretty hard to “socialize” an autistic. We tend to find most social rules silly and unnecessary, and we are not as prone to thinking or doing things because “that’s what’s cool” or because “everybody else does so.” We’re also more resistant to the kind of groupthink and social pressure that makes it easier for neurotypicals to coerce us into doing what we don’t want to do.

Don’t get me wrong. Most of us go through at least a few phases where we’re desperate to fit in, and we mask in order to do so, though we often still fail. But many of us are also sufficiently inoculated against social pressure that we don’t engage in dangerous or harmful behaviors because strangers might not think well of us if we refuse. Things like keeping up with the Joneses or being the prom queen/king are often not on our radar, and many of us are not willing to give up things we genuinely like for social status or membership in one clique or another. We know it’s not an even trade.

Most of the time, we’re unaware of social pressure, place less value on pleasing strangers or acquaintances, don’t care much about our social reputations, or all of the above. Every allistic in the world could jump off a cliff because “it’s cool” or “everyone is doing it,” and we autistics will be standing well away from the edge. If we’re engaged in our SpIns, we might not even notice y’all jumped.

We’re More Questioning of Authority and Tradition

Autistics, on the whole, don’t tend to go along with things just because an authority figure told us to or because “that’s the way it’s always been,” as neurotypical people are unfortunately prone to do. For better or worse, our analytical thinking leads us to deconstruct everything, including traditions and instructions often taken for granted by the mainstream.

In my own experience, this has resulted in my staunch refusal to attend prom or graduation because they were, quote, “boring and stupid.” I also refused to have a wedding because I didn’t want to kill myself for a year and flush my savings down the toilet for some pictures and a party everyone would just trash-talk the next day. My poor parents also couldn’t get me to do literally anything without answering why. “Because I said so,” “because the Bible says so,” “just do it,” and other platitudes were never good enough. If only they’d learned they could easily get me to do or not do things by laying out rational arguments for why I should do as they said. Logic isn’t much of an asset in a Christian household, so we had plenty of conflict because I was as antiauthoritarian as my family was authoritarian.

While autistics’ natural questioning and disregard of authority figures might make for a difficult childhood for both allistic parents and autistic children, it has its virtues. We might refuse commands to make our beds or go to church just because we’re told to. On the other hand, if we’re told to hate and discriminate against others, abuse those who are different from us, or head off to wars we deem pointless or even morally wrong, we might just refuse those commands too. We are more likely to do what we think is right, regardless of what we’re told.

We’re More Skeptical and Irreligious

Some may not think this is a good thing (though I do), but some research has shown that autistics are more likely to question and leave our faiths of origin. We’re likely overrepresented in the atheist and agnostic community, and we’re less likely to report participation in organized religion across the board.

Lots of people have put forth lots of theories as to why this is, and the ableist and allistic-centric “theory of the mind” is one of the most common suggestions for the link between autism and a lack of religion. The suggestion is that because autistics are evidently too dense to fathom that other people have minds, we’re unable to understand the concept of a personal god (queue eye-roll).

Obviously, the theory of the mind nonsense is being slowly debunked by actually autistic writers and researchers, but the fact that we tend to be less religiously inclined still stands. I think there are several things going on that contribute to this. I would posit that one of the primary reasons autistics are less religious is our superior analytical thinking skills. There’s evidence to suggest that the better one is at analytical reasoning, the more likely they are to walk away from religion.

In addition to this, we autists often put much less stock in authority figures than your average neurotypical. We question them sooner, harder, and with less belief in their responses than our allistic peers. Speaking of our allistic peers, our lowered awareness of social pressure makes us more resistant to groupthink. Religion relies heavily on social pressure and a hivemind mentality to maintain its grip on people. Assuming we’re not talking about physical violence as a means to subdue heresy — and, let’s face it, we often are — one of the main ways religion keeps people in line is by exerting collective pressure to coerce adherence. This could be in the form of parents or friends becoming distraught at expressions of dissent or even places of worship and families rejecting and ostracizing those who doubt.

This tactic is losing efficacy in the population as a whole, thanks to the rise of secular social networks, but I’d argue it was never as effective with autistics in the first place. Not only are we frequently less interested in what our peers think of us, but we’re also much more likely to be rejected by our churches and peer groups anyway, regardless of whether we parrot back religious tripe. That’s been my experience, anyhow. Between our more honed critical thinking abilities, our lack of unearned respect for authority, and our lowered susceptibility to social pressure, it’s no wonder many of us lose our patience with religion.

We’re Better at Relationships (Sort Of)

Contrary to popular belief, autistics can and do have fulfilling romantic relationships and friendships. In fact, in some respects, we’re better at relationships than our allistic peers. Autistic people often get a bad rap for our “social deficits” and “communication problems,” but our partners and friends know better. We may miss sarcasm and nonverbal cues, but what we don’t miss is all the toxicity and unnecessary conflict that happens in neurotypical relationships.

As a rule, autistics like to keep our entire lives in a state of smooth homeostasis. We don’t go seeking novelty for its own sake, so we’re not usually driven to cheat, especially not out of boredom. We don’t create unnecessary drama because we’re bored either. When we do fight, we do it to fix a problem and not because we’re venting unspoken resentments. If we do feel resentment, you’ll know it because we don’t normally engage in ridiculous passive-aggressive nonsense like expecting our partners to read our minds. We don’t like it when they do that to us, either.

All this can translate into romantic relationships that last longer and are often healthier than those of our allistic peers. This is predicated on both parties being willing to work out communication style differences and learn to empathize with one another, especially for couples where one partner is autistic and the other is allistic. But even these relationships can function well if the partners can learn to live with each other’s idiosyncrasies. Having been with an allistic partner for ten years, I can say from personal experience that it is possible to solve the double empathy problem.

Autistics also often form deeper, more meaningful friendships because of our natural aversion to shallow chitchat and faux relationships. We’re not very good at being frenemies, and many of us don’t even understand how that BS would even work. If we don’t like you, we’re not going to hang out with you just because we’re bored or trying to get something out of you. If you’re cruel or two-faced to us, we’re not going to subject ourselves to you. We would rather enjoy ourselves on our own than deal with lying, fake, uninteresting, or irritating people.

That means if we do hang around you, it comes from a place of genuine liking. This is part of what makes us so loyal and steadfast, even over many years or many miles of physical distance. If you make a friend of an autistic, unless you do something drastic to destroy that relationship, you’ve often made a friend for life.

We’re Not Swayed by Advertising

This one has been fairly well-established for a while now. Autistics are less susceptible to marketing companies’ insidious psychological warfare. We don’t buy products because the ads for them have cute mascots. We don’t make purchases based on where items are in the store or what they’re placed next to. We don’t let silly jingles or pushy salespeople tell us what to buy. We make purchases based on our current needs and our critical analysis of whether a potential purchase fits those needs at a reasonable price. Marketing psychology wasn’t designed with us in mind, its ads weren’t made for us, and they work about as well as you’d expect them to under those circumstances.

We’re Often the Most Creative and Inventive in the Crowd

Though we’re often viewed as having limited thinking or being only good at pursuits like programming and math, being autistic is actually linked to being highly creative, and it’s not just because of “divergent thinking.” A lot of autistics have noticed that, though our SpIns are labeled maladaptive and harmful by clinicians, they can actually be harnessed and directed toward productive pursuits.

We’re often autodidacts, and many of us have made lifelong hobbies or even successful careers out of our obsessions. I used mine to learn other languages, write not just a novel but a series of novels, and teach myself all sorts of things, from cooking to paddle boarding to vegetable and herb gardening. I can grow my vegetables, harvest them, cook them up in a pan, and then write all about it — and nobody taught me how to do any of those things but the last one.

We autists can also reach a “flow state” virtually at will when engaging in our interests. We can hyperfocus for hours, pumping out words, writing or learning new songs, building massive scale models, inventing the next revolutionary technology, building a business, engaging in activism, or whatever else tickles our fancy. When we get going on something we really care about, there’s no stopping us! We can slip into this state of flow within minutes and lose track of time for hours or even days, which can (and does) result in astounding, monumental achievements. Most allistics have to work hard to enter a comparable state of flow, and many may go their whole lives without experiencing it. For us, it comes automatically. We may not even realize we’re doing it because it happens so easily.

Thinking Outside the Box is Natural to Us

The autistic brain doesn’t work the way the allistic brain does. We know that much, though research is still being conducted on exactly how our brains work differently. We may have divergent connections and altered structure in a host of unique ways. The only thing that’s certain is autistics have very different modes of thinking than allistics.

Because of this, we often come at problems with a unique and distinct perspective from our allistic counterparts. A room full of allistic people might all solve the same problem in virtually the same way, while an autistic person arrives at a distinct or maybe even better solution using a totally different route to get there.

Our divergent thinking can sometimes get us unfairly targeted, especially in situations like standardized tests or other times when we’re expected to do the same work in the same way as everyone else. But sometimes, our ability to see things differently allows us to solve problems no one has ever solved or do things no one has ever done.

Our brain differences don’t just let us think outside the box. They also translate into better pattern recognition, more attention to detail, an above-average ability to focus for extended periods (hyperfocus), and a deeper understanding of animals. All these traits are vital to the success of organizations and civilization in general. Societies cannot progress if everyone conforms and complies all the time. Allistics would do well to remember that next time they’re passing us up for jobs or rejecting us from their social groups because we don’t “fit the culture,” “talk right,” or “make eye contact.”

Bottom Line

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not writing this article to argue that autistics are better than allistics. I’m not an autistic supremacist — not by a long shot — nor do I advocate for the idea that autistics have “superpowers.” This is a condescending, ridiculous idea that, to me, is a little better than the deficit model because it’s equally reductionist and dehumanizing.

The reality is no individual or group is inherently better than another. Different groups and individuals just have different strengths and weaknesses. What happens to autistics (and lots of other marginalized groups) is that everyone focuses solely on our weaknesses. Everyone is so interested in our deficits and deficiencies that no one in the allistic community ever stops to think that we might be better than them at literally anything.

To most people, we’re just perpetual children, burdens on society with no social skills and nothing to contribute — and that’s a kind assessment. There are plenty of people who think we’re all idiot savants, metaphorical aliens in human bodies, and even ticking time bombs that are going to snap one day and go shoot up a school or a store. These people often call for some form of getting rid of us, whether that’s the benevolently ableist “cure” for autism or outright forcible institutionalization and worse — all because our difficulties in socializing with the neuromajority are mistaken for narcissism and our meltdowns mislabeled as violence.

Meltdowns or no meltdowns, autistics are more likely to be the victims of violence than the perpetrators of it, and we’re more likely to harm ourselves than anyone else. Because of the discrimination we face, 85% of college-graduate autistics in the US are unemployed. We’re three to nine times more likely to commit suicide and 28 times more likely to fantasize about or consider it than allistics. Those of us who haven’t killed ourselves yet have overwhelmingly engaged in other types of self-harm. We’re more likely to be addicted to substances, and a world that was not made for us or even with us in mind can leave us feeling anxious and depressed. We also often live in fear of being unnecessarily institutionalized and deprived of our civil or even basic human rights, even if we’re capable of living on our own and supporting ourselves. In the past, we’ve been one of the many targets of eugenicists looking to rid the world’s parents of burdensome neurominority and disabled children.

That’s why I wrote this piece, and it’s why I hope more actually autistic people write a slew more pieces just like it. I haven’t even scratched the surface of all the ways autistic people benefit humanity as a whole. Maybe if we keep writing long enough, the medical community and society at large will start focusing more on our strengths than our weaknesses. This focus shift is starting to happen somewhat, but the pace is glacial, and many of the people who do focus on autistics’ innate strengths somehow end up touting our supposed “superpowers.” We’re not superhuman. We’re just human. We should get to be just human without having to have some supernatural ability to justify our existence.

The neuromajority doesn’t have to constantly prove to the world that they “deserve” to be here, but the mainstream community’s constant laser focus on autistic challenges and difficulties leaves many of us feeling the need to prove we’re worthy of pretty much everything: love, gainful employment, healthcare, decent food, shelter, safety, right down to the air we breathe. Perhaps redirecting focus away from our collective difficulties and toward our collective strengths can help allistics start to realize we’re just as worthy as they are.