Oh, you like this topic? Well I have unfettered access to the internet, a fat crush on you, and the concerning ability to give a college level lecture on something by reading a Wikipedia article. Give me 20 minutes.

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if you are autistic please read this because I am so curious if anyone else has an experience like this!!!

has any one else ever gotten in trouble for being too flirty or seemingly flirty because in reality you were just heavily masking but because that includes making the perfect eye contact, constantly smiling so you seem interested, and just laughing and nodding like they are the most thought provoking person in the world, and so neurotypical people would think you were flirting because they didn’t know you were STRAINING just to appear socially normal.

this was me my entire life and it seemed to annoy people.

there was this one girl at camp, and she asked me if I liked this boy because she was interested. I said no of course not, go for it! and it was confusing too that she asked because I didn’t realise what vibe I was giving off that made it seem like I liked him. We had just talked and laughed and become buddies.

I remember after they got together it seemed like she was getting really mad at me, and I got the feeling that whenever I interacted with him she thought I was flirting, because I was heavily masking.

Also side note, I wasn’t diagnosed at the time so I didn’t even know what masking was and therefore it wasn’t just something I could stop.

I felt so confused and also uncomfortable because it seemed like I had done something horrible just by being nice

and I started second guessing myself any time I was polite to anyone wondering even more intensely if I was doing something wrong

Sport Fishing

New Orleans Homicide Detective Will x Surgeon Hannibal. Hannigram meet at the art museum & are drawn irrevocably together whether it's good for them or not

Need me a partner that will listen to me explain the depth and nuance of the Gen 3 OU metagame 🥺

OUT FRONT Magazine - February 2024 issue - Bad At Flirting [Excerpt]

So yeah, I made a comic about trying to parse flirting when you're autistic! I've excerpted two panels here. You can find the whole comic in the February 2024 issue of OUT FRONT Magazine (I'm on page 6).

This is a complex topic that was difficult to distill into a half-page comic, for sure. An unintentional meta-joke is that this comic kinda sorta metastasized into an infographic with flow charts, but really, that's what my brain is doing when I'm trying to figure out: Flirt or Not Flirt?

It's not that I can't see that a specific behavior COULD be interpreted as flirting, it's that I can come up with five other equally plausible explanations for that behavior that are all Not Flirt. Autistic people are already punished regularly for unintentional social misfires. Flirting makes things even more complicated, because even allistic people mask their behavior when it comes to flirting, so the autist is given even less concrete information to work with. Assuming someone was flirting when they weren't is a great way to get yourself ostracized, so in general, most autistic folks I know err on the side of assuming Not Flirt in most situations.

I will add that, for queer and trans autistic folks there's an added layer of uncertainty to the proceedings. For better or worse, cishet people have a script that says Woman Coyly Flirts, Man Approaches. There are a lot of things awry with that model, but it DOES offer a framework that doesn't really exist for queer people, so that's even more guesswork to wade through.

None of this is to say that no autistic people anywhere grok flirting, or are incapable of flirting themselves. YMMV! I merely speak to my own experience, and that which I have heard expressed by autistic friends.

Finally, the corollary to my comic: Trying to Flirt While Autistic

I think I accidentally flirted with someone a month ago without realising. Social interactions are weird and difficult. But we learn a little bit more every day, so maybe I will be an expert someday.

~ Cass 🐝

Me*flirting*:"Did you know that cookiecutter sharks swallow their own teeth to get nutrients?"

The person I'm flirting with:"wtf."

made friends with a girl who lives near by me but she's very shy so we are just penguin pebbling through my mail box now because she walks by my house going to work

Someone stimming can literally be so attractive. My boyfriend is just brushing a makeup brush all over himself and he looks so comfy and I love it. I want him to always feel good like that like wow

You have eyes I actually like making contact with.

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I deeply want someone to hold me and somebody that I can send all kinds of cute things to somebody who I can support in their autistic struggles and who can support me in mine. somebody who understands what is like somebody who I can feel comfortable touching and be touched by. somebody who I can completely let down my guard and totally unmask in the presence of. somebody who doesn't need to talk to understand who can just sit in silence and vibe together. somebody that won't have to let me down when all of my feelings spill out. somebody who I can talk to and not worry about what I say or how badly I say it. I just want to feel needed and cared about in the best possible way.

You Make It Hard to Be A Gentleman

The first time Nigel laughed at one of Adam's jokes, he thought he was being laughed at. His eyes jerked up, his palms instantly clammy with anxiety.

Nigel only smiled enthusiastically, tipping his beer in casual acknowledgement.

"A-fucking-men. Who has time for bullshitters? Kill em all, let god sort em out"

That was it, just one comment, then he went back to whichever party attendee he was talking to like it was nothing. It probably was nothing for Nigel. Adam however was cast adrift for want of something familiar to hold onto. He'd never had an interaction with anyone quite like that. He didn't have any experience navigating conversations without the looming shadow of his otherness perched hulking between him and whomever he was trying to connect with.

He reran the brief conversation in his head over and over, trying to find the hidden mockery, trying to ferret out the ever familiar underlying "god why are you so weird?" but he couldn't find it. Did that mean it wasn't there? Or had he missed the obvious again?

After that night Adam started paying closer attention to Nigel when their paths crossed. Nigel was handsome, he had an easy going charm that made people eager to please him. But under the smooth meaningless smiling there was a dangerous undercurrent. That danger said that Nigel wasn't supposed to be here, that this was not his world. It also said he was having a very good time infiltrating it for his own purposes, whatever those were. To serve as some sort of distraction he was always with another very sexy person who did belong here, someone who hung from him like he was their salvation, at least for that night.

Nigel was piercingly observant, clever. It didn't suit his purposes to call attention to those observations so he never said the things he saw. The only proof that he'd seen and understood, a crooked cryptic smile. Adam knew he was getting a little obsessed with categorizing all of Nigel's smiles. But couldn't bring himself to care.

The first one was the easy smile when he knew he had his audience in the thrall of his charm. Then there was the smile when he knew he was about to make some money or get laid which was similar to the smile when the booze or food were a particular delight. Those smiles were richly self satisfied.

There was the smile when Nigel thought the people around him were being predictable or particularly unimpressive. The toothy sharp smile was one of the rarest of Nigel's smiles. It only came came out when he was angry, when he was going to enjoy teaching someone a lesson. Adam knew that smile was dangerous, that Nigel himself was dangerous. It didn't bother him as much as he thought it should

Him: Do you like history? If so what's your niche?

Me: *Long winded paragraph about folklore, cryptids, and mythology and how it ties into the local history*

Me: I'm weird

Him: So am I. That's awesome.

Someone please help me stop texting the person I like who is in fact entire light-years out of my league

My 4ut15tc 455 d035 N0T g3t fl1rt1ng

"Thinking about you makes me stim♡"