People who aren't easily offended, what is offensive to you?

I spent a decade (no-one really shit talks a toddler) being bullied about being too quiet to the point where I was seen as 'rude', or 'stuck up' because in real life, I don't really use slang or abbreviations or dumb down the way sentences form in my mind for the sake of seeming normal, I generally prefer reading, drawing and listening to music over interacting with others, I tap tables and have an apparently unnerving blank stare, etc. But the one thing I always was? The smart kid. I was always top of my year but now people assume I'm an idiot when they hear that I'm autistic or mollycoddle me because 'poor little misguided girl with no friends!'. I have no issue with people, I just prefer my own company.

This strikes a chord with me. I was bullied my entire life for being the "weird" kid. I was (and still am) nonathletic, would rather read than play on the yard, had extreme difficulties making friends, and those that did talk to me disliked that I used big words. It was always a big turn off to people that I talked that way because they couldn't understand the words I used. "Pedantic speech" as it's called. I was a straight A student and everyone treated me like shit for it. Eventually I stopped trying in school, stopped talking to people and just sat and listened, adding in bits of conversation just so it would continue, never really adding to it. Still very much the same way today because I had been ostracized for so long because I was smart. Not for being autistic, because I've never been diagnosed. Just because I was the smart kid.

Fuck people. My younger brother was diagnosed with Asperger's and XYY when he was a very young child. He was relentlessly bullied for it, even by his teachers. He was incredibly gifted before he got into school even though he was virtually non-verbal. That kid couldn't read a book, but god damn could he act out or tell a story to those who could understand him. He was an incredible artist, able to individually move his hands and draw 2 completely different pictures at the same time. I know how awesome he was back then, capable of things virtually no one else was. He wasn't stupid, just worked differently. And that's enough to be treated shitty. Now all that artistic ability is gone. He's focused on other things now, he's a professional Twitch streamer and makes pretty decent money at it, but it breaks my heart that the few things he could do as a kid were punished for not being normal.

/r/AskReddit Thread Parent