this post was submitted on 27 May 2025
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Just an FYI, having autism doesn't make someone an abuser... it's just possible for assholes to have autism too.
Are you seriously trying to absolve my parents of responsibility for their abuse? You're disgusting.
❌ My parents were autists, therefore I was abused.
✅ My parents were narcissistic abusive assholes, therefore I was abused. (They were also autists, which may have altered the presentation of their abuse, but was not the root cause ✅✅)
I'm more than happy to say my parents abused me because they had a mental disorder, but they weren't diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder, so I'm stuck using autism instead. I wish they had a more socially acceptable disorder to blame.
Ok.
❌ My parents were autists, therefore I was abused.
✅ My parents were ~~narcissistic~~ abusive assholes, therefore I was abused. (They were also autists, which may have altered the presentation of their abuse, but was not the root cause ✅✅)
So how come you think autism isn't okay to blame for abuse but narcissism is? And why should I listen to a hypocrite who can't decide whether disorders cause abuse?
Because autistic traits aren’t abusive traits? If someone is autistic it doesn’t mean they will be abusive. They aren’t mutually exclusive, but they can overlap.
Whereas narcissistic traits are abusive traits, so a narcissist will almost definitely be abusive. But these aren’t mutually inclusive with each other, so someone can be abusive without being a narcissist.
I don’t know your parents or your situation; if you say they were abusive, I believe you. But if you say they were abusive because of their autism, that is just plainly false. You don’t have to blame it on some mental disorder, diagnosed or not. You can just say they were abusive.
ASD and NPD both involve a lack of empathy. They're exactly as abusive as each other.
Lol, ok.
ASD
NPD
Those are the DSM-5 entries for ASD and NPD. I see no mention of empathy in the ASD entry, but an explicit mention for NPD. Individuals with ASD might occasionally appear to have no empathy, but only because they have trouble with social norms, contexts, and cues.
I’ll note that the NPD criteria also includes “interpersonal exploitative behavior” which I would interpret as manipulative/abusive.
The most famous feral child case in history is a girl named Genie, who was abused because her single father had autism and noise sensitivity. He couldn't stand the sound of crying, so he locked her in a room and beat her if she cried. She learned that making noise was bad, and never learned to talk. When she was rescued, she learned a few words, but never how to use them properly.
And you want me to believe that's not as bad as narcissism. You want to minimise Genie's abuse and my abuse, because our parents didn't have the "right" disorder to call out. You're a disgusting abuse enabler.
I guess I am the abuse enabler for trying to put the blame on the abuser instead of an arbitrarily chosen mental disorder.
Did they conduct a full psychiatric evaluation on the father? Did they conclude that he only had autism? Any anger disorders that may have caused him to lash out more with more severity? Any personality disorders that caused a lack of empathy and an interest only in the self? Any intellectual disabilities that inhibited him from seeking better solutions (like wearing noise isolation muffs)? No? Because the father shot himself after being charged with child abuse? Because the case study was done on the child, after the fact, to study the effects of what was done to her, and not why those things were done?
You can conclude from the study that abuse is bad. With regard to the father, the effects of autism on abusive behavior is inconclusive at best. Yeah, it sucks that that happened to her. No one is saying “aw shucks, looks like the father didn’t have a definitive NPD diagnosis, I guess it wasn’t abuse then” because fucking obviously it was abuse and fucking obviously abuse is bad, you just don’t need a mental disorder to pin it on. There are other ways to become an abuser: generational trauma, neglect, and yes NPD.
On an entirely unrelated note, I caught my girlfriend cheating the other day, but I could not for the life of me figure out why, so I could only conclude that I was wrong and she never actually cheated on me in the first place 🤷🏽♂️
I'm sorry but you're never going to convince me that some mental disorders make people abusive and some magically don't. The reason you think autism is a magical exception among all those other examples you gave is just politics. You don't really believe your own rhetoric.
Holy shit man, it’s not that hard. You don’t need a mental disorder to be classified as an abuser. I said in my last comment that there are other ways to become an abuser, many of which are sociopolitical. You can have no mental disorders and grow up abused, and you are much more likely to continue the cycle than those who were not. You can be an alcoholic with routinely impaired judgement and become an abuser. You can simply be an asshole. There are any number of ways to be/become one without fitting the criteria of a mental disorder. The fact that some of the abusers you know happen to have autism is coincidental at best.
Also, I’m not sure what “politics” you’re talking about (I jest, I know exactly the “politics” you mean) when I literally cited the DSM-5 to you. Not that it’s relevant when half my point was that mental disorders and abusive tendencies are neither mutually inclusive nor exclusive; but you keep insisting that a mental disorder must be the cause, so I did it anyway. If it has to be relevant, it would only be with regard to the specific way the abuse manifests, not whether it manifests in the first place.
It’s not magic, and it’s not rhetoric, it’s just science. If you’re convinced that I won’t convince you - fine, I’ll stop trying. Just know that I’m not trying to convince you of what you think I’m trying to convince you of. If you were confused by that, reread this comment.
The fact that you're willing to argue that mental disorders can cause abusive behaviour at all tells me you're not coming from a place of intellectual honesty.
There are two legitimate sides to this argument: they do, and they don't. You're part of the manufactured hypocritical third side, which argues some do and some don't, and the difference is how many people with the disorder you've heard a sob story from.
So you are just going to state your false dichotomy fallacy outright? Yes different disorders have different symptoms and not all have the same effect on social functions. Just as I wouldn’t expect an amputated leg and a toothache to be the same in regards to their effect on running speed. Not all physical illnesses “either do or don’t make it more difficult to run” so why would all mental conditions “either make or not make one abusive”?
Fuck you, narcissists are abusers and they deserve to be put to death
I thought all mental disorders made people abusers in your opinion? Do you think everyone with a mental disorder should be killed? Narcissists, autistic people and people with depression or post traumatic stress alike?
Exactly what did I say to give you the impression that any disorder caused abusive behavior?
I said they are neither mutually inclusive nor exclusive - in other words, no direct causal relationship. Ever heard the phrase “correlation is not causation”? It just so happens that NPD correlates with abusive behavior much more than ASD does, and that isn’t according to any “sob stories” I heard - it’s from the DSM-5 which I linked to and which I’m now guessing you probably didn’t read.
Anyway, I’m done with this. Have fun with your black-and-white life.
The DSM isn't for correlations, it's for causation
Lol