This is very cute, love these two, but I still am kinda confused about characters in comic going, “Yup, that’s true.” She hasn’t actually been diagnosed and isn’t at the point of self-identifying with it (though last panel, maybe she’s getting there). It’s not like she’s telling people she definitely is autistic.
Yeah, but this is a weird circumstance for that, for me. Like, I could see being like, “That would make sense.” But they’re going a little far.
not someone else
When my Mom let slip that as a kid she was basically told by doctors that I was exactly like an autistic person but I couldn’t’ve been because that was only for boys, my entire friends group was startled to found out that I didn’t already have a formal diagnosis.
Yumi
To be a little clearer, I don’t mean “confused” in the sense that “I think this is unrealistic,” more in that “I think this is a strange behavior.” Not sure that makes it clearer, but
Liliet
The reliance on formal diagnosis casts autism as something mysterious and mystical, that only the initiated (doctors) can truly have insight into. It’s not. You don’t need a doctor to self-diagnose/home-diagnose things you’re closely familiar with that present clearly. I made a comparison with a broken leg below, here’s some more: common cold, food poisoning, a cut, a scrape, flu,
It’s not strange for someone to know their diagnosis before going to the doctor for the formal piece of paper that says it, and it’s also not strange for someone to not go to the doctor at all when they don’t feel the need for that piece of paper.
And autism is not a special divine mystery held apart from the more mundane situations, to the people who are sufficiently familiar with it in a mundane way.
Yumi
Okay, I was going to let go of all the people misunderstanding me here, but for fuck’s sake! This is not what I was saying! Not even a little! Holy shit! I support self-diagnosis! That has not yet been what has happened in the comic! The strange part referred to her friends reaction! Fucking hell.
Marrow
I think a couple of us are trying to point out why it isn’t weird for us because the exact thing happened in reality for a few of us. It’s like someone pointing out that isn’t it weird that people who live in apartments on tv have loud upstairs neighbors. It isn’t every time, but it’s common enough that it isn’t wierd.
It happened to me. When i told my friends i was autistic, the exact same ” oh that makes sense” reaction happened. It happened to my friend Nate too.
Yumi
*sigh* I already said I didn’t mean “unrealistic.” The experience you’re describing is also different than what’s happening in the comic.
People respond in ways others find weird all the time! And that doesn’t mean that the person thinks it’s unrealistic or that they’ve never heard of such a thing.
I think it is a strange response to someone going “Here’s something someone suggested I check into that now I am wondering about myself” with, “Yes, that is definitely what you are.” “That makes sense” is a different level of response to that. “Here is something that I am” is a different setup than what’s happening.
Once again, weird =/= unrealistic.
Daibhid C
Yeah, this tracks for me.
When I was told I officially wasn’t autistic, pretty much everyone said “Okay, but that’s wrong, you should get a second opinon.” And it turned out (about a decade later) they were right — I hadn’t even been given a real autism test!
Alyssa
On one hand: yeah, perhaps a bit far.
On the other hand: not as far as my friends went lol. I got quite a few variants of “wait, you mean you’re NOT already diagnosed???” and “yeah we knew that”, not even ‘oh shit it makes sense’, when I told my friends the school psychologist suggested it in high school.
When I was 19 and was like “Huh, I may have ADHD” everyone was like “ya THINK?!” As in, they didn’t even realize that I didn’t know this and had never been diagnosed, I was such a poster-child for inattentive type.
So yeah, this is a thing that happens.
Part of the thing about this is, it’s not like there’s a blood test or anything to find autism, so by the time you’ve jumped through enough hoops to even get to talk to experts, you are probably not going to be getting a surprise.
I can see that, but it’s also not the situation here.
Liliet
Sure Joyce hasn’t gone thought all that just yet, but the cast includes plenty of people who HAVE. Dina and Amber said it outright, but from her behavior I’m also betting on Sarah. Becky clearly knows from Dina. I don’t remember if Joe said anything, but his mom is diagnosed, so he has a source on it too.
Dorothy is being weird about it.
(Even though she’s probably also autistic, she’s clearly never either been diagnosed or done in-depth research on it)
My best friend makes fun of me because I dont have a gaydar (and as such, have COMPLETELY missed when I’m being hit on ?♀️) but I do have what I dubbed spectrumdar. I grew up surrounded by autistic people and usually within a couple minutes of meeting someone can figure it out, prediagnosis even. Sometimes when something is finally put to words, it just makes sense.
Also a lot of people take “a doctor told me this might be happening” as “this is happening.”
More than that though, Becky is reassuring Joyce here. Joyce certainly seems to believe the possibility is true.
tbf a few ppl are oblivious or not that self confident to assume someone’s hitting on them. On the flip side it’s annoying when you’re just being friendly and the other person thinks ur flirting.
Tho as long as the other person doesn’t think you’re uncomfortable i’d assume they’d go back to you another day and maybe ask on a more concrete date or attempt to be friends or so unless you are just hanging out at like a bar/places where you might not run into the same person again
Psychie
Yeah, that’s why I always make it explicitly clear when I’m hitting on someone, to differentiate my normally kinda flirty personality. I have had people be shocked because they thought I was hitting on them and then just walked away without making a move or asking them out or whatever, but like when I hit on someone I *lead* with some direct expression of interest. Granted, it might not seem that way to some people because its also rare that I hit on someone I’ve only just met, because I don’t hit on people without developing an emotional attachment first and/or think we have compatible personalities and interests, but some people interpret the whole “make friends and get to know people” part as hitting on them and building up to asking them out, but that’s just how I treat all potential new friends.
I have also failed horribly at identifying when someone else is hitting on me, in fact I don’t think I’ve ever correctly identified it in the moment. I’d probably have had a girlfriend at some point by now if people would just clearly state their interest rather than dropping super subtle hints. Amusingly the only times I’ve had people be direct like that when hitting on me was when I received offers for casual sex, which is something I’m not interested in and yet it’s happened on 3 separate occasions with totally different women, I can’t get a date to save my life but apparently I could be drowning in sex if I was willing to put love aside. Unfortunately those women were all only looking for casual hook ups and I am not.
Leorale
If it’s any consolation, people are really terrible at figuring out when other people are flirting. In some experiment, where people had to pick ‘is this person flirting, y/n’, people got it correct less than 50% of the time — as in, people were less accurate than if we’d picked randomly.
My flirtation starts with “I am flirting with you”. When I ask people out, I include “I am totally asking you out!” People have 100% always been glad that I was so direct.
Nova
This, this, this. If I ask someone out (particularly when they’re also femme since I am femme) I’m like “As a date, romantically, because you’re gorgeous.” No sense leaving grey areas.
Kimi
I was once really excited in high school to talk to a fellow student about swords since I had grown up playing dnd like games like Baldur’s Gate (actually tried making my own quarterstaff when I was like 10), and he actually forged swords. One of his friends got mad at me because he thought that I was flirting with the guy, and the guy actually liked and wanted to date my best friend. Still don’t understand how I was flirting or why he was mad at me.
On the other hand, once thought someone was flirting with me in college only to find out that he was already dating someone and they were keeping it on the downlow because they didn’t want to be “annoying”. I’ve just given up on guessing unless someone explicitly states it now. I’ve been told recently to get tested for autism though, so that might be part of my issue.
Taffy
In high school, everyone think everything is flirting. It got old.
Kimi
Yeah. Hormones and learning and all. Still don’t even understand why flirting was a problem since she was dating someone else at the time so it wasn’t even enticement to cheat in any sense. Someone said that it might have been that the person that got mad was interesting in me, but yelling at me for “flirting” with someone he thinks should be dating my best friend is a weird way of showing it. I don’t know, teenage logic is weird.
Yumi
So your best friend was already in a relationship when this happened? Yeah, that’s stupid. Like, it already would have been stupid, but that adds a layer.
Unfortunately, stupidity doesn’t always stop at high school, and I feel like I could see an adult on a reality TV show act in the same way.
StClair
One of the themes of this comic is that “adult” is a pretty arbitrary line. Yes, we have to draw one somewhere, but any accompanying assumption that the newly-minted “adults” are now fully competent and prepared for life is, well…
(Many – perhaps even most – never reach such a state, or feel that they have.)
thejeff
“Adult” is a verb and you basically do it when you have to.
Slartibeast Button, BIA
Besides just being oblivious to flirting there is also the reaction to having previously been wrong about it. Not having no idea that someone is flirting with you, but thinking they are flirting with you, and then recalling all the times you thought that and were wrong. So you ignore it on the assumption you are just seeing something that isn’t there *again*.
And if they don’t come back later being more overt, that proves they weren’t flirting with you, right?
Yumi
It can also be a fun see-saw of being off about IDing flirting sometimes, probably especially for AFAB, but possibly for anyone.
By this I mean, it makes sense to guard yourself against being wrong about people flirting with you if you thought someone was and were wrong about it in the past. It ALSO makes sense to guard yourself against being wrong about people flirting with you if you did not realize someone was flirting with you. Because some people will flirt with you and take polite responses or engagement as you being onboard with the flirting, or flirting back, and then think you’re okay with things that you ARE NOT okay with, or even get aggressive when you get to the point of saying “no” to something.
So then it’s fun calculations of “would it be worse if I assumed this person is flirting and they were not or if I assumed this person is not flirting and they were.”
thejeff
And those people who were flirting with you are thinking that you recognized what they were doing, but didn’t respond in kind because you weren’t interested in them, so they’re certainly not going to come back more overtly because that would just be pushing themselves in when you’ve already rejected them.
‘Why do you think that’s true? He could just be half tree. Why assume he’s missing two arms and a leg?’
People are saying it because Joyce is painfully, obviously autistic to the point of it being apparent to anyone who knows about it. I’m ashamed to admit I didn’t see it until the diagnosis but she is definitely autistic. So people are saying ‘yup’ because it’s obviously true.
There was no diagnosis. Joyce also hasn’t said here that she thinks she’s autistic. I do think it’s fine to get to a “yes, this is the case” stance as the audience to a fictional world, though.
Liliet
It’s not about the diagnosis as such, it’s about the possibility being brought up. “Oh hey I haven’t thought about it this way before but it’s TOTALLY true”
I guess I must have forgotten all of the comments prior to the doctor visit about Joyce being autistic. It seems strange to me to see so much enthusiasm for a diagnosis that, from my recollection, was not apparent.
Yumi
All the in-universe comments about it or all the comment section comments about it? Because there were definitely commenters who suggested it in the past.
The need for a formal “diagnosis” of something that can only be determined though some level of subjectivity, especially something that is often disregarded (see Dina, Joe’s mom), is tricky. I think your point about Joyce not self-IDing as autistic is good to bring up because it does paint some of these reactions she’s gotten as somewhat insensitive. However, given that she’s getting diagnosed for something that isn’t (or shouldn’t be, at the very least) “treated” the way other conditions that necessitate a diagnosis (i.e. it’s something that necessitates understanding, support, and resources, rather than something that needs a cure or mitigation), having to wait for a formal diagnosis to receive those resources or get the understanding that might help her operate around her friends can be detrimental
Sure, and in no way was I suggesting otherwise. I’m just saying that neither of these things (formal diagnosis or self-IDing) are the case.
Liliet
And they’re not some kind of “you are now allowed to acknowledge it” magic ticket. I mean yeah, it’s impolite to just say “you’re autistic aren’t you” to someone out of the blue because of the long and unpleasant history of ableist use of the phrasing as an insult, but just it being brought up as a possibility in a non-insult way is enough of social context that you can acknowledge it without sounding like a dipshit.
And you don’t need to either be a doctor or the person themselves to notice clear patterns. Same way Joyce’s doctor who gave her the referral isn’t officially specialized in it, she just /knows about it/.
The whole diagnosis thing can be kind of a moving target. In the 80’s when I was getting my psych degree ADHD was just really starting to get a lot of discussion. It was the early 90’s before I had a patient where someone said, “Oh yeah, this kid’s autistic”. During that time the definition of ADHD and Autism Spectrum have been getting expanded and refined. It is better than it was 30 years ago but the average person on the street still doesn’t have a lot of insight.
davidbreslin101
In the UK, there seems to have been a sudden rise in diagnoses in kids with non-“classic” autism born a year or two after me….
A verifiable third-party diagnosis is totally and completely irrelevant unless we are talking about medication choices. Becky is cutting through all the clutter as if she were, well, Booster. The label is not supposed to help or shame Joyce, it is for helping others get on Joyce’s page better.
Frankly, given the basic Willis mouthpiece role of Joyce, this sounds like his spouse’s love declaration. What a fabulous way to put this into perspective.
To the original comment: I think it’s a) great that Becky is being supportive about it, and b) very normal and expected for everybody to just leap to the conclusion that this IS the one and only truth, based on their experience, and c) definitely not actually the best way to treat your friend with a pending diagnosis that she has complicated feelings about.
But all that’s like par for the course–well-meaning friends overdo it sometimes, and sometimes it’s lovable, like in this case, and sometimes it’s not. So i do get the confusion. I think the reaction of the majority of the friend group is realistic. it’s not ideal, but nothing is, and not-ideal things can come out good sometimes, anyway.
Like I spent most of my life being implicitly called autistic without ever being explicitly called autistic, and I think it’s because a lot of people in my life had a very binary view of autism so they never thought the term would fit, but I was always compared to fictional characters that I now see are autistic coded
“You don’t need to go to a doctor to diagnose a broken leg.”
I’m not sure that’s the best comparison. It’s not uncommon for someone to have a pain and not realise they’ve fractured a bone until they get an x-ray. Plus, broken bones have a very definitive and relatively easy to determine diagnosis.
(I’m not saying I disagree with your wider point, just that I think they are fundamentally different things to figure out.)
Allistic is just non-autistic, so they could still be allistic and otherwise neurodiverse. Sorry if you knew this and fully meant that you read them all as autistic.
Allistic just means “not autistic”. My therapist uses it to refer to my ADHD roommate when explaining why my roommate might think differently than me (an autistic person).
Eh. Becky was (is?) also extremely tapped into the progressive Twitterverse. For me, that’s a very convenient excuse to explain how Becky knows a lot of stuff her backstory doesn’t naturally explain. Not that she’s getting explanations from there, but certainly getting keywords to look up.
Gonna be real awkward when she never gets diagnosed cause the American medical system is a joke and we all live in a limbo of uncertainty over the diagnosis for forever.
Healthcare is ridiculous but unless you’re trying to also apply for benefits i don’t think you need an official diagnosis as long as you’re fine with yourself/know enough about your body/needs to be able to take care of yourself without someone needing to step in unless you have an injury or overwhelmed with personal stuff (and even then you shouldn’t have to pay for a test [on a lesser note i remember seeing ppl needing to pay for SATs/testing for college as well, and that’s already a money sink too])
212 thoughts on “Truth first”
Yumi
This is very cute, love these two, but I still am kinda confused about characters in comic going, “Yup, that’s true.” She hasn’t actually been diagnosed and isn’t at the point of self-identifying with it (though last panel, maybe she’s getting there). It’s not like she’s telling people she definitely is autistic.
Thag Simmons
Sometimes “this might be what’s happening” strikes people as immediately correct enough to say “yeah that’s what’s happening”
Yumi
Yeah, but this is a weird circumstance for that, for me. Like, I could see being like, “That would make sense.” But they’re going a little far.
not someone else
When my Mom let slip that as a kid she was basically told by doctors that I was exactly like an autistic person but I couldn’t’ve been because that was only for boys, my entire friends group was startled to found out that I didn’t already have a formal diagnosis.
Yumi
To be a little clearer, I don’t mean “confused” in the sense that “I think this is unrealistic,” more in that “I think this is a strange behavior.” Not sure that makes it clearer, but
Liliet
The reliance on formal diagnosis casts autism as something mysterious and mystical, that only the initiated (doctors) can truly have insight into. It’s not. You don’t need a doctor to self-diagnose/home-diagnose things you’re closely familiar with that present clearly. I made a comparison with a broken leg below, here’s some more: common cold, food poisoning, a cut, a scrape, flu,
It’s not strange for someone to know their diagnosis before going to the doctor for the formal piece of paper that says it, and it’s also not strange for someone to not go to the doctor at all when they don’t feel the need for that piece of paper.
And autism is not a special divine mystery held apart from the more mundane situations, to the people who are sufficiently familiar with it in a mundane way.
Yumi
Okay, I was going to let go of all the people misunderstanding me here, but for fuck’s sake! This is not what I was saying! Not even a little! Holy shit! I support self-diagnosis! That has not yet been what has happened in the comic! The strange part referred to her friends reaction! Fucking hell.
Marrow
I think a couple of us are trying to point out why it isn’t weird for us because the exact thing happened in reality for a few of us. It’s like someone pointing out that isn’t it weird that people who live in apartments on tv have loud upstairs neighbors. It isn’t every time, but it’s common enough that it isn’t wierd.
It happened to me. When i told my friends i was autistic, the exact same ” oh that makes sense” reaction happened. It happened to my friend Nate too.
Yumi
*sigh* I already said I didn’t mean “unrealistic.” The experience you’re describing is also different than what’s happening in the comic.
People respond in ways others find weird all the time! And that doesn’t mean that the person thinks it’s unrealistic or that they’ve never heard of such a thing.
I think it is a strange response to someone going “Here’s something someone suggested I check into that now I am wondering about myself” with, “Yes, that is definitely what you are.” “That makes sense” is a different level of response to that. “Here is something that I am” is a different setup than what’s happening.
Once again, weird =/= unrealistic.
Daibhid C
Yeah, this tracks for me.
When I was told I officially wasn’t autistic, pretty much everyone said “Okay, but that’s wrong, you should get a second opinon.” And it turned out (about a decade later) they were right — I hadn’t even been given a real autism test!
Alyssa
On one hand: yeah, perhaps a bit far.
On the other hand: not as far as my friends went lol. I got quite a few variants of “wait, you mean you’re NOT already diagnosed???” and “yeah we knew that”, not even ‘oh shit it makes sense’, when I told my friends the school psychologist suggested it in high school.
Leorale
When I was 19 and was like “Huh, I may have ADHD” everyone was like “ya THINK?!” As in, they didn’t even realize that I didn’t know this and had never been diagnosed, I was such a poster-child for inattentive type.
So yeah, this is a thing that happens.
DailyBrad
Part of the thing about this is, it’s not like there’s a blood test or anything to find autism, so by the time you’ve jumped through enough hoops to even get to talk to experts, you are probably not going to be getting a surprise.
Yumi
I can see that, but it’s also not the situation here.
Liliet
Sure Joyce hasn’t gone thought all that just yet, but the cast includes plenty of people who HAVE. Dina and Amber said it outright, but from her behavior I’m also betting on Sarah. Becky clearly knows from Dina. I don’t remember if Joe said anything, but his mom is diagnosed, so he has a source on it too.
Dorothy is being weird about it.
(Even though she’s probably also autistic, she’s clearly never either been diagnosed or done in-depth research on it)
Suzi
My best friend makes fun of me because I dont have a gaydar (and as such, have COMPLETELY missed when I’m being hit on ?♀️) but I do have what I dubbed spectrumdar. I grew up surrounded by autistic people and usually within a couple minutes of meeting someone can figure it out, prediagnosis even. Sometimes when something is finally put to words, it just makes sense.
Also a lot of people take “a doctor told me this might be happening” as “this is happening.”
More than that though, Becky is reassuring Joyce here. Joyce certainly seems to believe the possibility is true.
anon
tbf a few ppl are oblivious or not that self confident to assume someone’s hitting on them. On the flip side it’s annoying when you’re just being friendly and the other person thinks ur flirting.
Tho as long as the other person doesn’t think you’re uncomfortable i’d assume they’d go back to you another day and maybe ask on a more concrete date or attempt to be friends or so unless you are just hanging out at like a bar/places where you might not run into the same person again
Psychie
Yeah, that’s why I always make it explicitly clear when I’m hitting on someone, to differentiate my normally kinda flirty personality. I have had people be shocked because they thought I was hitting on them and then just walked away without making a move or asking them out or whatever, but like when I hit on someone I *lead* with some direct expression of interest. Granted, it might not seem that way to some people because its also rare that I hit on someone I’ve only just met, because I don’t hit on people without developing an emotional attachment first and/or think we have compatible personalities and interests, but some people interpret the whole “make friends and get to know people” part as hitting on them and building up to asking them out, but that’s just how I treat all potential new friends.
I have also failed horribly at identifying when someone else is hitting on me, in fact I don’t think I’ve ever correctly identified it in the moment. I’d probably have had a girlfriend at some point by now if people would just clearly state their interest rather than dropping super subtle hints. Amusingly the only times I’ve had people be direct like that when hitting on me was when I received offers for casual sex, which is something I’m not interested in and yet it’s happened on 3 separate occasions with totally different women, I can’t get a date to save my life but apparently I could be drowning in sex if I was willing to put love aside. Unfortunately those women were all only looking for casual hook ups and I am not.
Leorale
If it’s any consolation, people are really terrible at figuring out when other people are flirting. In some experiment, where people had to pick ‘is this person flirting, y/n’, people got it correct less than 50% of the time — as in, people were less accurate than if we’d picked randomly.
My flirtation starts with “I am flirting with you”. When I ask people out, I include “I am totally asking you out!” People have 100% always been glad that I was so direct.
Nova
This, this, this. If I ask someone out (particularly when they’re also femme since I am femme) I’m like “As a date, romantically, because you’re gorgeous.” No sense leaving grey areas.
Kimi
I was once really excited in high school to talk to a fellow student about swords since I had grown up playing dnd like games like Baldur’s Gate (actually tried making my own quarterstaff when I was like 10), and he actually forged swords. One of his friends got mad at me because he thought that I was flirting with the guy, and the guy actually liked and wanted to date my best friend. Still don’t understand how I was flirting or why he was mad at me.
On the other hand, once thought someone was flirting with me in college only to find out that he was already dating someone and they were keeping it on the downlow because they didn’t want to be “annoying”. I’ve just given up on guessing unless someone explicitly states it now. I’ve been told recently to get tested for autism though, so that might be part of my issue.
Taffy
In high school, everyone think everything is flirting. It got old.
Kimi
Yeah. Hormones and learning and all. Still don’t even understand why flirting was a problem since she was dating someone else at the time so it wasn’t even enticement to cheat in any sense. Someone said that it might have been that the person that got mad was interesting in me, but yelling at me for “flirting” with someone he thinks should be dating my best friend is a weird way of showing it. I don’t know, teenage logic is weird.
Yumi
So your best friend was already in a relationship when this happened? Yeah, that’s stupid. Like, it already would have been stupid, but that adds a layer.
Unfortunately, stupidity doesn’t always stop at high school, and I feel like I could see an adult on a reality TV show act in the same way.
StClair
One of the themes of this comic is that “adult” is a pretty arbitrary line. Yes, we have to draw one somewhere, but any accompanying assumption that the newly-minted “adults” are now fully competent and prepared for life is, well…
(Many – perhaps even most – never reach such a state, or feel that they have.)
thejeff
“Adult” is a verb and you basically do it when you have to.
Slartibeast Button, BIA
Besides just being oblivious to flirting there is also the reaction to having previously been wrong about it. Not having no idea that someone is flirting with you, but thinking they are flirting with you, and then recalling all the times you thought that and were wrong. So you ignore it on the assumption you are just seeing something that isn’t there *again*.
And if they don’t come back later being more overt, that proves they weren’t flirting with you, right?
Yumi
It can also be a fun see-saw of being off about IDing flirting sometimes, probably especially for AFAB, but possibly for anyone.
By this I mean, it makes sense to guard yourself against being wrong about people flirting with you if you thought someone was and were wrong about it in the past. It ALSO makes sense to guard yourself against being wrong about people flirting with you if you did not realize someone was flirting with you. Because some people will flirt with you and take polite responses or engagement as you being onboard with the flirting, or flirting back, and then think you’re okay with things that you ARE NOT okay with, or even get aggressive when you get to the point of saying “no” to something.
So then it’s fun calculations of “would it be worse if I assumed this person is flirting and they were not or if I assumed this person is not flirting and they were.”
thejeff
And those people who were flirting with you are thinking that you recognized what they were doing, but didn’t respond in kind because you weren’t interested in them, so they’re certainly not going to come back more overtly because that would just be pushing themselves in when you’ve already rejected them.
Marillius
‘I think that man is missing two arms and a leg.’
‘Yup that’s true.’
‘Why do you think that’s true? He could just be half tree. Why assume he’s missing two arms and a leg?’
People are saying it because Joyce is painfully, obviously autistic to the point of it being apparent to anyone who knows about it. I’m ashamed to admit I didn’t see it until the diagnosis but she is definitely autistic. So people are saying ‘yup’ because it’s obviously true.
Yumi
There was no diagnosis. Joyce also hasn’t said here that she thinks she’s autistic. I do think it’s fine to get to a “yes, this is the case” stance as the audience to a fictional world, though.
Liliet
It’s not about the diagnosis as such, it’s about the possibility being brought up. “Oh hey I haven’t thought about it this way before but it’s TOTALLY true”
Skeptible
I guess I must have forgotten all of the comments prior to the doctor visit about Joyce being autistic. It seems strange to me to see so much enthusiasm for a diagnosis that, from my recollection, was not apparent.
Yumi
All the in-universe comments about it or all the comment section comments about it? Because there were definitely commenters who suggested it in the past.
Lan
The need for a formal “diagnosis” of something that can only be determined though some level of subjectivity, especially something that is often disregarded (see Dina, Joe’s mom), is tricky. I think your point about Joyce not self-IDing as autistic is good to bring up because it does paint some of these reactions she’s gotten as somewhat insensitive. However, given that she’s getting diagnosed for something that isn’t (or shouldn’t be, at the very least) “treated” the way other conditions that necessitate a diagnosis (i.e. it’s something that necessitates understanding, support, and resources, rather than something that needs a cure or mitigation), having to wait for a formal diagnosis to receive those resources or get the understanding that might help her operate around her friends can be detrimental
Yumi
Sure, and in no way was I suggesting otherwise. I’m just saying that neither of these things (formal diagnosis or self-IDing) are the case.
Liliet
And they’re not some kind of “you are now allowed to acknowledge it” magic ticket. I mean yeah, it’s impolite to just say “you’re autistic aren’t you” to someone out of the blue because of the long and unpleasant history of ableist use of the phrasing as an insult, but just it being brought up as a possibility in a non-insult way is enough of social context that you can acknowledge it without sounding like a dipshit.
And you don’t need to either be a doctor or the person themselves to notice clear patterns. Same way Joyce’s doctor who gave her the referral isn’t officially specialized in it, she just /knows about it/.
Mgnostic
The whole diagnosis thing can be kind of a moving target. In the 80’s when I was getting my psych degree ADHD was just really starting to get a lot of discussion. It was the early 90’s before I had a patient where someone said, “Oh yeah, this kid’s autistic”. During that time the definition of ADHD and Autism Spectrum have been getting expanded and refined. It is better than it was 30 years ago but the average person on the street still doesn’t have a lot of insight.
davidbreslin101
In the UK, there seems to have been a sudden rise in diagnoses in kids with non-“classic” autism born a year or two after me….
David
A verifiable third-party diagnosis is totally and completely irrelevant unless we are talking about medication choices. Becky is cutting through all the clutter as if she were, well, Booster. The label is not supposed to help or shame Joyce, it is for helping others get on Joyce’s page better.
Frankly, given the basic Willis mouthpiece role of Joyce, this sounds like his spouse’s love declaration. What a fabulous way to put this into perspective.
Steelbright
To the original comment: I think it’s a) great that Becky is being supportive about it, and b) very normal and expected for everybody to just leap to the conclusion that this IS the one and only truth, based on their experience, and c) definitely not actually the best way to treat your friend with a pending diagnosis that she has complicated feelings about.
But all that’s like par for the course–well-meaning friends overdo it sometimes, and sometimes it’s lovable, like in this case, and sometimes it’s not. So i do get the confusion. I think the reaction of the majority of the friend group is realistic. it’s not ideal, but nothing is, and not-ideal things can come out good sometimes, anyway.
C. L. Hunt
Thanks for this comment. I wholeheartedly agree.
Kazuma Taichi
I can see it honestly.
Like I spent most of my life being implicitly called autistic without ever being explicitly called autistic, and I think it’s because a lot of people in my life had a very binary view of autism so they never thought the term would fit, but I was always compared to fictional characters that I now see are autistic coded
Liliet
You don’t need to go to a doctor to diagnose a broken leg.
Sometimes, if you know enough about it, being autistic is the same way.
(Dorothy is being weird about it. Most other people actually do know things on the topic and are not )
LiamKav
“You don’t need to go to a doctor to diagnose a broken leg.”
I’m not sure that’s the best comparison. It’s not uncommon for someone to have a pain and not realise they’ve fractured a bone until they get an x-ray. Plus, broken bones have a very definitive and relatively easy to determine diagnosis.
(I’m not saying I disagree with your wider point, just that I think they are fundamentally different things to figure out.)
Yumi
You sure made a lot of comments to agree against things I wasn’t saying.
The Wellerman
That compliment kinda got away from you, didn’t it Becky? ?
Joyce is autistic, and you’re an adorable smol brain human dumdum, complete with hair like Philip J. Fry! ?
shadowcell
it’s the
rainautismWack'd
It’s the norms we all have to endure
Leorale
We berate it, but it’s each eyepop and word from your face that traces out who you are.
Clif
The parallel occured to me as well. Willis’s comics have their moments and this is one of them.
Raen
It’s the 1988 Best Picture.
The Wellerman
It’s an age-old offensive stereotype (-_-), along with Sheldon Cooper.
Yotomoe
It’s a reference to Joyce and Walky.
The Wellerman
sauce? I thought Rain Main came out in 1988
Jeff K!
The famous “It’s the rain” speech:
https://www.itswalky.com/comic/its-the-rain/
The Wellerman
Ah, classic.
Raen
Fuck Raen.
Slartibeast Button, BIA
Raen a Sul hant Meth-maren was only getting her just revenge on the Suil sept that murdered her family.
OTOH, she does own slaves and sleep with them. So, you’re right.
(We’re talking about the protagonist of “Serpent’s Reach” by CJ Cherryh, right?)
Raen
That, or a typo for “Raven” some probably-not-autistic male made over a decade ago.
Wack'd
This is the wrongest Becky has ever been about anything.
None of Joyce’s friends are friggin’ allistic
Yumi
Allistic is just non-autistic, so they could still be allistic and otherwise neurodiverse. Sorry if you knew this and fully meant that you read them all as autistic.
Carla's #2 Fan
Allistic just means “not autistic”. My therapist uses it to refer to my ADHD roommate when explaining why my roommate might think differently than me (an autistic person).
Yotomoe
Naw none of her friends are RE-Alistic. I think they’re exaggerated comic characters.
newlland(Henryvolt)
I wish I read the replies to this before looking up the word Allistic.
RassilonTDavros
Honestly just the fact that Becky knows the word “allistic” is a pretty good sign that she and Dina have talked about it, then.
Anyway I’m gonna go cry now
Jamie
Eh. Becky was (is?) also extremely tapped into the progressive Twitterverse. For me, that’s a very convenient excuse to explain how Becky knows a lot of stuff her backstory doesn’t naturally explain. Not that she’s getting explanations from there, but certainly getting keywords to look up.
BBCC
Ah, yeah, there’s my girls <3
I've missed the sweet moments with these two.
Sirksome
Gonna be real awkward when she never gets diagnosed cause the American medical system is a joke and we all live in a limbo of uncertainty over the diagnosis for forever.
Yotomoe
Same. I can’t forsee myself getting diagnosed any time soon. Mostly cuz of money but also just like…I dunno seems like a pain.
anon
Healthcare is ridiculous but unless you’re trying to also apply for benefits i don’t think you need an official diagnosis as long as you’re fine with yourself/know enough about your body/needs to be able to take care of yourself without someone needing to step in unless you have an injury or overwhelmed with personal stuff (and even then you shouldn’t have to pay for a test [on a lesser note i remember seeing ppl needing to pay for SATs/testing for college as well, and that’s already a money sink too])
Segnosaur