Thinking differently
Written on 1st Mar 2022 by Alex Lowery
Autism often gives us an unusual way of looking at the world and we think about things in a way that most people would not. One example for me is I used to think of nearly everything as having a gender. I’d think of knives as male and forks as female. I’d think of strawberries and raspberries as female but apples as male. I’d also think of days of the week like Friday as male and Thursday as female. I’d also think of England as male and Wales as female along with many other examples too.
I also used to think of doctors as being a job for men and nurses as being a job for women. Most doctors in my local surgery were male and most nurses I had seen were female. I remember being shocked when I went to the hospital at age 11 and seeing loads of male nurses. I kept assuming the men were doctors because I really didn’t think of a nurse as being a male job. I was only very young. Now I don’t think anything of it anymore.
I even thought of people’s ages as having genders. I remember when my mum was in her 30s and my dad was in his 40s. I naturally thought of the 30s as being a female age group and the 40s as being a male age group because that’s what I was used to seeing with my parents. I also remember thinking 16 was a female age. In a number of films I had seen, the oldest daughter was often 16. I remember the oldest girl in ‘The Sound of Music’ being 16 along with others. When my big brother turned 16, I thought it was odd because he was a boy and 16 to me was an age for girls. I know it sounds ridiculous now but that is what I tended to think at the time. This might have come across as sexist to some people but I promise this wasn’t my intention. I was a child who was used to seeing things a certain way. and due to being autistic: I’d always see things in a set way.
Thank you for reading. I know this is a pretty unusual thing for me to write about hopefully you found it interesting and it shows an example of where autistic people see things differently.
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