At one point on re-AOL, I had to give staff members what amounted to sensitivity training because some of them had conveniently forgotten how to deal with or speak to an autistic person even though they had been able to do it just fine until it benefited them more to play stupid — now, bear in mind, this wasn’t all of staff members, some of them were better than others, and the ones that I knew were neurodiverse didn’t give me a problem… but I shouldn’t have had to do their job to them explaining this sort of thing to them like they were five. This should never have become a thing to begin with. I was complaining about the fact that I had to do it with my friend Andy when it was happening, and he was agreeing with me on the fundamental concept of “this should not have ever become a thing to begin with”. He can attest to those conversations.

Also, take two: it is extremely bad praxis for a man to unload on a woman like a crazed, unhinged lunatic. This goes out to one person in particular. I shouldn’t have to explain to you that trying to talk yourself up to make yourself sound, or look, more demeaning and threatening should not be a thing that men do in 2022. But at any rate, that was the straw that broke the camel’s back with me as it related to this project. More than one person caused more than one of these problems at times, even though I’m not attempting to paint the project as a whole with too broad of a paintbrush. But there was always one person… involved with them (don’t tell me how little, or how much, I should reveal about my children unless you are a Twitch Affiliate or Twitch Partner), and I have the bad habit of putting up with things that I shouldn’t put up with for longer periods of time. And then, of course, when I finally do say something about it to more than one person at a time — that, or a carefully curated, filtered social media post — people that haven’t been privy to those exchanges think that I am blowing up over nothing. (“Nothing.”) It’s almost always the neurotypicals, too…