Autism forums and Incel Prevalence

[PinkTabby]

I tried to join an Autism support group and it was bloody awful. The amount of blatant misogyny and incel type language being used was commonplace. I flagged so many posts but all that happened was a mod came in and pasted a copy and paste section of the rules about ‘being nice to each other’, like we’re 4 year olds on the playground? It was demeaning and also demoralising because it wasn’t taken seriously. A very strange male poster kept dredging up posts from 6 months ago all with misogynistic replies, I assume in an effort to shit stir. In one of those threads I noticed a female member left and deleted her account, citing the many anti-female posts.

I’m not sure why I’m posting this, other than to rant I guess, and I wondered if there is a higher prevalence of incel type ideology amongst autistic males or if it’s just that those particular forums are a cesspit.

You have to be careful - there's a particular subculture on the Internet of people who aren't autistic, but effectively use the word to indicate that a forum is designed to be full of offensive shit (ie it's an excuse to say things that ordinary NTs couldn't get away with). It's particularly prevalent on Discord - seriously, do not go searching for Discord servers with "autistic" or "autism" in the name. You won't find what you're looking for.

Occasionally, those people spill out into real autistic forums and basically wreck them from the inside out, then move on to the next one. This has been going on for years.

As for the mods, that's exactly what they're supposed to do - I run a fairly large forum (not related to autism) and pasting the rules is generally part of our process as a warning, and a precursor to action being taken.