Interesting Links for 20-04-2025

[andrewducker]

1. In Gaza, we are seeing the normalisation of evil

(tags:gaza Israel Palestine )

2. On language and trans people, some tips

(tags:transgender language )

3. Life before the Equalities Act 2010

(tags:transgender gender equality rights UK law history )

4. The lead civil servant on drafting the Equality Act says the aim was to include trans people.

(tags:equality lgbt transgender OhForFucksSake law uk )

5. The Minister who introduced the Gender Recognition Bill in the House of Lords in 2003 made it clear that "a transsexual person would have protection under the Sex Discrimination Act [the predecessor to the Equality Act] as a person of the acquired sex or

(tags:transgender lgbt law uk history )

6. Settlers of Catan - Globe Edition

(tags:3dprinting boardgames SettlersOfCatan )

7. Thousands of trans rights protesters on Edinburgh streets following court ruling

(tags:Edinburgh transgender protests )

8. Musk to Force Pentagon to Build and Then Pay Him to Use Network of Killer Satellites

(tags:ElonMusk corruption space )

9. Hungary's Orbán urges Hungarians to vote against Ukraine's membership of EU

(tags:Hungary Ukraine Europe OhForFucksSake )

10. The UK is going to have to start making choices about Europe and the USA

(tags:UK USA Europe )

11. Fusion power plants would require titanic amounts of lithium.

(tags:materials fusion )

12. "Masking Is Life": Experiences of Masking in Autistic and Nonautistic Adults

(tags:autism society psychology )

Comments

[bens_dad]

Most of the autistic people in this study were women.
I am not at all sure that autistic boys mask to any great extend.

As a boy I was vaguely aware of pressure to conform, which I usually ignored.
Most of the time I did as I wanted and it was not a problem since it was what people I respected wanted me to do anyway.

While I am not certain I would recognise masking in my son, I think he too has a strong ability and desire to do what he wants and not what other people want him to do.

[andrewducker]

That's an excellent point. See also the recent link about autistic women. Apparently they tend to be focused much more than average on being accepted.

[channelpenguin]

I am a woman, and if I'm autistic (Andrew could take a guess, he's known me since we were teenagers), I didn't (and don't) feel any so am urge to mask my (slight) weirdness. I've worked in IT all my life. My major hobbies have also been ones full of geeks (music, motorbikes,sailing) a lot of whom don't mask or don't mask much. So maybe I don't stand out!

I come from a family of engineers on both sides of my father's side and my mother is musically talented, a bit hyperactive and definitely socially "odd" like she often doesn't "get" people (also very impatient and great at optimising task parallelism). So, at home, I guess that oddness was normal?

Mind you, my sister is insanely good with numbers (like doing actuary exams for "fun" when she was managing a bunch of them type insane), but also the most effortlessly social of us all.

I know I'm dreadful with eye contact when speaking German, so I think there's definitely something hard about it when people have to think too hard about what and how they are going to say things!