Autism and Boundaries Part 2: The Double Standard

As always, names and details changed to protect others' privacy...

Oh my God, I can't believe how long it's been. Again. I intended to write the followup to Part 1 of "Autism and Boundaries" a week later but... I really have no good excuse. All I can say is that the timing was bad: ever since the 2024 United States Presidential Election, I have been overwhelmed. But here I am. Finally. If you haven't read Part 1 or need to refresh your memory, please do read it before continuing further with this post, because I'm not going to rehash everything. 

Well, what I can say is this: for many years, I didn't question the fallout with Kat that happened on the overnight field trip in eighth grade. I took it for granted that the whole thing was my fault. Sure, Kat and the other girls humiliated me and jokingly speculated about my personal medical history ("she needs hormones and hasn't gotten her period yet") to explain why I wasn't interested in dating, but apparently that was to be expected after my comment about "old people smell". My reaction after that episode was not to confront Kat and say, "Why the hell did you humiliate me like that?" but to ask her if she was still mad at me. That was what made sense to me: not to take care of myself, but to throw myself at the mercy of others and beg for forgiveness. I said something so truly horrible that the reaction of the other girls was warranted. Same with any other social drama I found myself in throughout adolescence. It was just the way things were.

Years later, in 2008, I wrote about the incident with Kat as a way to illustrate early signs of my being autistic and my lack of social skills. My brother read it, and said something to the effect of, "I don't understand what you are trying to convey. Kat sounds like a psycho, and it sounds like you had mean friends-- mean, flaky 'friends.'" Additionally, when I workshopped the piece at a writers' group, others likewise expressed their confusion. One woman said, "I knew when I was reading this it had to have happened in seventh or eighth grade."

Looking back, I cannot believe it never crossed my mind that, well, my boundaries were constantly being violated, and egregiously so. But I realize now that I was held to a double standard. While I constantly got in trouble for violating others' boundaries, I also got a very clear message that mine did not matter.

They also didn't matter when I was at a Bar Mitzvah as a teenager and didn't want to dance with a random boy who asked me to dance. At a Bat Mitzvah that same year, I said "hello" to the Bat Mitzvah girl's brother, a friend from early childhood whom I hadn't seen in years. The photographer, who just happened to be right there, asked us to pose for a picture, and insisted that the boy put his hand on my hip. I was extremely uncomfortable with this, and the boy didn't seem to want to do it either. In both instances, my parents admonished me, telling me to grow up. What can I say? It was the '90s and the concept of consent wasn't talked about with the broad awareness that it is today.

The message I got over the years was clear: others' boundaries were sacrosanct, and mine didn't matter. If I didn't make an effort to understand others' points of view, I was rigid and immature. If others didn't make an attempt to understand mine, well, I shouldn't expect them to, because it's a huge burden for that person. If I had a crying fit at home because some kids humiliated me, I needed to learn to be stoic and let bitingly painful comments roll off my back. But in terms of me making stupid throwaway jokes not intended to hurt anybody? I needed to accept that other people were fragile as fuck and that I should expect such slips to end friendships. If I didn't want to hug my grandmother or uncle or dance with a boy or let an old friend put his hand on my hip, that was me being inappropriate and immature instead of understanding what I was comfortable with.

My story is far from unique. Here we are in 2025, and we are seeing similar double standards play out in real time. People who are viewed as the "default"-- white, heterosexual, cisgender, male, and non-autistic-- are allowed more leeway, are allowed to set boundaries while getting away with blatantly violating others'. Look at our current president-- an obscenely rich white man-- and how in his almost 79 years he hasn't been once held accountable. Could Barack Obama, a Black man, have gotten away with the things Trump is doing? Could he have gotten elected had he been caught on video bragging about grabbing women "by the pussy?" And as for women, especially women of color, trying to get elected? They have to be perfect. And if any of these people were autistic and couldn't mask well? Forget it.

If you want to teach your child to respect boundaries, you need to be consistent. Because I am living proof as to how they end up internalizing the double standards they're held to.