• TriflingToad@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    It wasn’t till education and office jobs became more common that autistic people started separating from what they were seen as being “oh yeah joe, hes a tad off but gets his work done and he’s nice” to instead where you’re told to stay in a room all day and do this annoying thing.

    A few hundred years ago there wasn’t as much to overwhelm autistic folks compared to todays cities and technology. Also the repetitive farmwork (ex. churning butter) is something autistic people excell at as they can zone out and just vibe.

    I heard this quote that really makes it obvious, “how come dyslexic people didn’t exist until widespread literacy?”

    • undergroundoverground@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Capitalism and our employment based, market fundamentalist society has a funny way of identifying and singling out group who are aren’t AS profitable as they might otherwise be.

    • thisbenzingring@lemmy.sdf.org
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      2 months ago

      the interesting thing about dyslexia, is that its different in every language and the rates are similar but lean in different directions for different languages making it hard to detect and diagnose. But mostly because dyslexia is a written language reading and writing situation, its only recently in human history that so many people can read and write.

    • Wrench@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      That’s a pretty rosy interpretation. Another would be that, unless you were wealthy, no one really gave a shit. I’m sure a lot of autistic people just died in the gutters because they weren’t able to find steady employment.

      I’m sure plenty were able to contribute to family trades like farming, etc. But human history is full of death and despair.