April 18, 2024 • 60 mins
Welcome to our special edition of the podcast 'Now You Know One Autistic!,' where we dive into the complex intricacies of living within the autism spectrum. In this intriguing episode, hosts Moshe and Leah unravel the allure of neurodivergence and its unexpected ties with the uncanny valley phenomenon.
Moshe, an autistic individual, shed light on the unsettling isolation many on the spectrum experience due to snap judgments based on micro-expressions. Together, they further dissect the uncanny valley effect and its role in exacerbating such prejudices and misconceptions about autistic individuals.
Through empathetic storytelling, Moshe shares personal encounters of unintentionally causing discomfort which challenges societal norms defining 'normal.' Leah, being on the other side of the spectrum, explores the possible reasons why Moshe's mannerisms aren't found problematic by some, like herself, offering an interesting outsider perspective.
Each story shared paves the way towards an open discourse on the uncanny valley of autism, with a mission to dismantle walls of misunderstanding and replacing prejudices with empathy and acceptance. A profound exploration of the term 'masking' and the impact it carries within the neurodivergent community, detailing how the endeavor to fit in social acceptance exerts pressure on autistic individuals to adopt a normative demeanor.
The episode also touches on the conundrum of the tolerance towards openness about being autistic versus the resistance against accepting unmasked autism and the misunderstandings it subsequently breeds. The hosts strongly advocate accentuating autism authentically, especially among children, and stress that autism should be comprehended, embraced, and celebrated rather than being suppressed.
Join this empowering discourse, exploring the diversities of autism, its nuances, and complexities through personal narratives and informed research. Listen in as we shed light on the subconcept of unmasking and its potential in broadening understanding and acceptance.
Learn, understand, and empathize with the varying perceptive contrasts between neurotypical and autistic individuals. Tune in to understand more about the effects rooted in the historical usage and current understanding of the term 'retarded' and the influence of cultural intricacies on these perceptions.
Finally, the hosts close on the note of advocating for understanding, open communication, and acceptance of neurodivergence, emphasizing the importance of recognizing and respecting the differences in responses and behavioural patterns between autistic and neurotypical individuals.
Join Moshe and Leah in their insightful dialogue striving to unmask the world of autism. Paving a safe path for open conversation, mutual learning, and improved understanding, they strive to inculcate supportive behaviors towards the autistic family, friends or acquaintances in your life.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Moshe (00:11):
Hi, I'm Moshe, and I'm autistic.
Leah (00:14):
I'm Leah, and I'm boring.
Moshe (00:16):
Welcome to now you know one autistic.
Leah (00:18):
A podcast about neurodiversity in couples, marriage meltdowns, and making it all
work.
Moshe (00:23):
The opinions expressed in this podcast reflect the experience of one couple and one
autistic.
Leah (00:28):
Nothing that you hear in this podcast should be taken as a medical opinion.
And unless otherwise stated, no one is anaccredited specialist in any of the many
fields that comprise the autism spectrum.
Moshe (00:39):
But as someone who is on the autism spectrum, I feel that my experiences will be
very valuable to many of you, whether you'reon the spectrum, a support person like Leah,
or just a curious bystander.
Leah (00:51):
If you think that you or someone you care about may be autistic, consult your
family doctor.
Hi, Moshe.
Moshe (01:04):
Hi, Leah.
Leah (01:05):
How are you today?
Moshe (01:07):
Very well.
How are you?
Leah (01:08):
I'm all right.
So we're gonna take a little bit of a break
from communication.
I mean, we are communicating, right?
Because we're talking.
Moshe (01:14):
We're currently communicating, right?
Leah (01:16):
But we're gonna do a different topic today just so that everybody doesn't get tired
of the same topic over and over again.
Moshe (01:23):
Sounds good.
Leah (01:23):
It might be a little bit of a controversial topic.
It might be offensive to some viewers, so justlisten with caution.
And if you have younger people who may notunderstand, possibly listen with them so that
you can explain some of the more difficultconcepts in this episode.
So what are we discussing today?Moja?
Moshe (01:43):
So today we are titling this episode, at least at this moment, as the uncanny valley
of autism.
Leah (01:53):
Can you explain to everyone what that.
Moshe (01:56):
Means, the uncanny valley of autism? Well, the uncanny valley refers to the theory
that when somebody goes from trying to portraya human versus someone who is decidedly
unhuman, there is a increase in comfort levelthat gradually increases from non human to
(02:22):
human until a point right before fully human,where there's a very significant dip.
And that dip is referred to in the theory asthe uncanny valley.
Leah (02:34):
Right.
So, as you can see, maybe with that brief
explanation, you can understand why we wouldthink that some people would find this
controversial.
We're in no way referring to people on the
spectrum or people off the spectrum as nonhumans.
It really is just the theory and thedefinition.
The reason why non human is.
Is used in the definition is because it was
(02:57):
actually coined by people who work inrobotics.
They were trying to make robots people like,and they noticed that as their robots became
more and more human, people in general wouldlike them very much until they became too
human, but not quite white.
And that would cause feelings of unease, let's
(03:19):
say.
Moshe (03:20):
Correct.
Leah (03:21):
So the definition, I mean, that I wrote down.
So let's just go with that.
What is the uncanny valley theory in general?
So it says that people find human, like robotsand or animations more appealing the more
human they appear.
Until they don't.
So when I say animations, they also sort ofuse this theory in animated movies.
(03:41):
Animated studios use it.
They use it a lot in video games.
If the non human entity, let's say, is tooclose but not quite human, they tend to cause
a feeling of unease and creepiness.
So when I was doing my research, one really
cool story that I found was, it's a reallypopular movie, Shrek.
(04:04):
I mean, it's a huge hit.
Apparently, when they first screened it for
small children, a lot of them ended up fryingor panicking or wanting to leave, asking for
their mom, because apparently Fiona looked toohuman.
So they actually had to go back to the drawingboard and make it look more like a cartoon.
And now it's the hit that we lost.
Moshe (04:23):
Exactly, because the.
I don't know.
Elea can probably explain it a little bitbetter.
But essentially, the way it works in theory isthat the things that someone find comforting
or positive emotion invoking about things thatresemble humans end up creating a sense of
(04:48):
unease when the subject, or the object,rather, is human looking.
But there's just something slightly, or maybenot so slightly off about it.
Like, for example, the reason that people findzombies to be creepy is because they're
(05:09):
basically human.
But obviously, there's something decidedly
unhuman about them.
It's the same reason that some people are
afraid of dolls, or some people are afraid ofclowns, or some people are afraid.
I use the word afraid, but some people arecreeped out, I should say, by things that are
human looking, but there's just somethingabout them that makes them feel, like,
(05:36):
uncomfortable.
Right?
Leah (05:37):
Yeah. So I looked at a lot of charts and I looked at a lot of studies, and the theory
goes that people will like non human objectsthat resemble humans up until a point when
they switch.
There's this line where they switch to, okay,
well, this is.
Oh, look, it's a robot trying to be human.
(05:57):
How cute is that?But there's a point where they can become so
lifelike that they switch to, oh, that is thehuman failing at being human.
That's creepy.
And that is the valley that you're talking
about.
So if you look up a graphic about uncanny
valley, literally see, like, a dip in thegraph.
And that's considered the uncanny valley.
(06:18):
It's a small portion of space where it goes
from, wow, that's a robot trying to be cuteto, oh, that's a human being miserably
athenian.
Moshe (06:26):
Correct.
Leah (06:27):
So how does this also tie into our topic?
I think that was sort of loosely, vaguely,yeah.
Moshe (06:33):
We're talking a lot about the concept of Uncanny Valley, and I'm sure you could look
up podcasts that deal specifically with theuncanny valley in the sense of what it is and
why it is and what might have caused it orwhat have you.
But what we're actually talking about, andagain, it's something of a controversial
topic, which is why we waited until the thirdepisode to bring it up, is how.
(06:53):
And again, I'm autistic, so I'm maybe a littlebit in a better position to talk about it, or
at least introduce it.
How autistic people or neurodivergent people
can invoke in non autistics, the uncannyvalley effect.
And just to be fair, how non neurodivergencecan invoke the same reaction, or if they even
(07:20):
invoke the same reaction in an autistic.
And just to tie it all together, why uncanny
valley?The theory of uncanny Valley is, or maybe you
can obviously give your own opinion, but ourhypothesis is that the uncanny valley theory
(07:41):
actually is different or even somewhat absentin an autistic.
And we'll definitely talk about that as well.
Leah (07:51):
Yeah. So over and over again, you'll hear, especially autistic males, for some
reason, be described as creepy.
So people will do, you know, they'll have
what's called a thin slice judgment or a snapjudgment, where they will look at a person
taking the visual, very base information andjust go, ooh, he's creepy.
(08:14):
Now, why do you say, or what do you think thereason behind that is?
Moshe (08:18):
Well, as someone who is on the spectrum, as the intro has mentioned, is that
the theory is that an autistic person,particularly an autistic person that is
masking, is acting a certain way.
(08:39):
But the mask is not perfect because it's not
able to be, because it's, you know, a personis either autistic or they're not.
And we're not even going to get into thetheory that there's autistics out there who
are just so good at masking and are able tomaintain it consistently that they're
essentially not autistic at all.
Leah (09:00):
Yes, but you don't have to be like me or a trained professional to see it.
Often trained professionals miss it becauseyou would be surprised how many times I get
asked, you know, Moshe, who's such a greatguy, but is there something wrong with him?
It'll take people, like, three months ofreally close contact with you to even go
there.
Moshe (09:18):
And that's exactly it.
And this is why it's being.
It's coming up.
It would be a very different podcast episode
if it were two neurotypicals sitting togetherand going, do you think autistic people are
creepy?But this is actually not only a theory that we
researched and read about and found examplesof.
(09:40):
This is my lived experience.
This is my lived experience from the time I
was very young until the present, even wherepeople have met me at various stages in my
life, in various stages of my autism, and Ishould really say in various stages, my
masking my autism.
And they would be close to me, and they would,
(10:05):
you know, sometimes they would go, I don'tknow, there's something.
There's something going on there.
Or I would enter a new work environment, and I
would get called in to human resources officesbecause people would say, you know, I don't
(10:26):
actually know what this is about, but somepeople have been mentioning that you've made
them feel very uncomfortable.
Do you know what that might be caused by?
And of course, I was surprised because I hadno idea, number one, that I was.
And number two, why I would.
And number three, I couldn't even imagine what
it was about what I was doing that made themfeel uncomfortable.
Leah (10:47):
It's unfortunate that the answer to it is you weren't actually doing anything.
They were basically seeing your microexpressions and the way that you look like
them, but you're acting quite like them.
And they had a snap response.
Moshe (11:04):
Yes. And some people were very subtle about it, and they just avoided me entirely.
And some people were very non subtle about it.
In a previous job that I had, I would.
I was sitting.
We were sitting a bunch of cubicles, and I was
sitting across the cubicle, separated by a.
(11:25):
By, like a glass or a poly something.
You know, what's the word I'm looking for?Pain.
We'll say, like a pain of transparent, clearsubstance.
Probably glass, maybe not, doesn't matter forthe points of this.
And there was this other female co worker thatsat on the other side of it, and I would take
(11:50):
calls, as I always do, and I would just sitthere, and I would be emoting and carrying on.
And eventually I noticed that she would takepieces of paper over the glass facing me.
And I was who I am, and I was like, I'm sorry,what?
(12:11):
Why.
Why are you.
Why are you doing that?And she would say, you.
You really do.
I don't know that.
You know, but when you're.
When you're on the phone or when you're
working, sometimes you kind of look over at meand you have this look on your face, and it
makes me very uncomfortable.
So I just.
I cannot concentrate on what I'm doing andlook at you.
(12:32):
And.
I'm sorry.
I don't know if it's intentional.
I don't know if this is something that you.
That you know that you're doing, but I need tonot look at you while I'm working.
Leah (12:43):
Right.
So that is actually very interesting because
that face thing that you're describing isessentially unmasking.
So it's when you're distracted by somethingelse or tired or upset, and you forget to put
touching in your eyebrows and turn up thecorners of your mouth and, you know, do human
(13:03):
check, like, is my face doing all the things?And that happens a lot, and it unfairly,
maybe, or maybe not.
Creeps some people out.
Moshe (13:15):
Yeah. And it's just.
It's kind of something that I've had to live
with.
But even before I had my diagnosis, I maybe
unconsciously came up with ways around it.
And the way that I chose, the way that was
most convenient for me, is I made myselfharmless or as harmless as I possibly could.
(13:39):
So I would walk around with my eyes down.
I would sort of curl up in, like, a very
shoulders inverted, like, very, very nonthreatening position.
Because what I thought, and I don't even knowto this day if it was a valid assumption or
not, was I thought people were actually afraidof me.
Leah (13:58):
Right?
Moshe (13:59):
So I looked, I said, okay, well, if they're afraid of me, then I have to make
myself as non threatening as possible.
And so eventually, I got the nickname of Sully
from Monsters, Inc. Where they said, you're amonster, but you're a very cuddly, warm,
approachable monster.
Leah (14:16):
Again, if you see him, he does kind of look like Sully.
He's a tall guy, you know, big arms, bigshoulders, big beer.
I see white people went there.
Moshe (14:25):
Yes. So I was an approachable person, and I made myself very, very non threatening.
But interestingly enough, this worked quitewell on the.
I mean, again, I didn't do, like, a poll ofthe office, but it worked very well on a lot
of the people that I worked with.
(14:47):
But I noticed that there were a lot of
employees there that were actually verydifferent, and they never had a problem with
me.
They were very, they approached me, they
talked to me.
They found me to be very nice and sweet and
friendly.
And one of them happened to have been my
supervisor.
(15:07):
And I brought up to her one day about the fact
that this was happening.
And she says, I have no idea what's going on.
I've never noticed anything like, I don'tlike, I sit, like, pretty close to you, and I
haven't noticed that you have a look on yourface so that there's anything that would cause
them to do that.
(15:27):
Maybe they're moving to a different department
anyway, so you should probably not even worryabout it.
But if it's up to me, I'm telling you, there'snothing that you're doing that seems to be,
you know, causing.
Leah (15:41):
That kind of reaction that must have been so unhappy and so uncomfortable for you.
And another pitfall, people not having adiagnosis each other much, much older.
Moshe (15:51):
Right.
Leah (15:53):
I think I put my toe or our toe into a topic that we're, we sort of kissed and we're
going to have to reveal eventually is, uh, we,unfortunately for us, haven't always been
together that, haven't always been a couple.
And that coping mechanism that Moshe describes
(16:15):
led me to find a much different man than I hadleft many years before.
And actually, this thing that he said worksfor everybody else absolutely did not work for
me, because he used to be tall and big andbrazen and arrogant, and maybe a lot of people
didn't like that, but I did.
(16:36):
And I said, who are you?
If you want to talk about the world affectingsomebody, if you want to talk about the world
beating somebody down, especially forsomething that's not even your fault, it was a
very, very sad, unfortunate thing.
Moshe (16:52):
Yeah. And the problem that many autistics face.
And again, I'm just one autistic, so I can'treally comment on the autistic community at
large.
But the problem that I would venture that a
lot of autistics and the ones that I've methave faced is the different masks that they
(17:12):
end up having to wear.
And they wear a mask for work, and they wear a
mask for their friends, and they wear a maskif they have a relationship for their partner,
and they wear a mask that they just kind ofput on when they, when they go out, because
they're going to be around people and they'relike, well, I have to person now.
I have to go to the store and be out inpublic, and it's going to be bright and it's
(17:33):
going to be loud, and it's going to be a lotof different sensations.
And if I want to fit in, then I have to wear amask.
And if you're the kind of person that I wasundiagnosed, didn't even know that I was
autistic, just knew that people were creepedout by me, then it was an unconscious effort.
(17:53):
It's not like someone told me, okay, you haveto look a certain way and act a certain way
when you're in public.
Autistics often do it without even intending
to do it.
And they, it's called masking.
It's a concept that is very familiar to theneurodivergent community.
But essentially, in very quick summary, it'sthe ability to put on a certain appearance or
(18:18):
demeanor or mannerism, copy people.
Leah (18:21):
That they find neurotypical so that they can be more like them and be accepted
socially.
Moshe (18:28):
And actually, it's something that a lot of the, we'll call them theories of, quote
unquote, handling an autistic is to teach themto mask, because VA is.
Leah (18:39):
All teachings and beauty.
Moshe (18:40):
Right.
And the thing that sort of ties into the
beginning of this episode is that Leah, and inparticular myself, are not saying that
autistics are creepy.
And we're not talking about how people with
autism create this feeling that other peopleare creeped out by them.
(19:02):
What we're saying is that in an effort toattempt to mask and behave the way we are
taught or told or led to believe that we'resupposed to act, we end up wearing someone
else's face.
Leah (19:21):
And you essentially fall into that family.
Moshe (19:24):
We put ourselves in it.
Leah (19:26):
No falls on your own.
And other people are not understanding.
So let's talk about actually an interestingconcept.
This seems to be the more functional you are,the lower support needs you have.
I'm doing air quotes, by the way.
If you can't cure in that noise, the more the
(19:46):
uncanny valet seems to become a problembecause the more capable of masking you.
So that was also within our research.
And the next step to that is it's even harder
for women on the spectrum.
And it is the hardest for attractive.
Moshe (20:06):
Women on the spectrum based on the studies.
Leah (20:09):
Yeah. Why do you think that might be?
Moshe (20:11):
Well, it really does kind of go back to a number of things that I just said, which is
when, when you are raised the way that I amand the way I'm sure a lot of other autistics
are raised.
And I just want to make mention of the fact
that there's a lot of parents out there whowere unfamiliar with autism up until the
moment that their child was diagnosed.
(20:32):
And they often have the very best of
intentions and think that they're doing thebest that they can to help their child.
And why would you ever have this person thatyou absolutely adore and love and cherish and
want the best for and not try to do what youfeel is what they need in order to function?
(20:53):
Because nobody wants to slap a label on theirchild's forehead and say, well, this kid is
nonfunctional, or this kid is semi functional.
This kid is differently abled or whatever, you
know, buzzword you want to use.
And subsequently, you're basically teaching
your child to, in effect, go out in publicwearing a clown mask because.
(21:18):
Because they're told that they need to wearthis clown mask.
And I use clown mask because I know that it'screeped out by clowns, but they're basically
telling their kid, you can't go out with thatface.
You have to wear this clown mask so peoplewill recognize that you are a part of them,
and people will look at them and go, who theheck is this?
And then the kid will be like, I don'tunderstand why people are all creeped out by
(21:41):
me.
I'm putting on the mask that you wanted me to
wear.
But conversely, if you have a parent who
either is so unfamiliar with autism thatthey're like, I don't know, just do whatever,
or they are familiar enough with it thatthey're like, you know what?
No, my kid is autistic.
He stood.
He, he has different mannerisms.
(22:02):
He has a weird walk.
He has a weird way of doing things.
He's always moving and twiddling his fingers
and twirling his hair and blinking andsnorting and doing all manner of things.
And if you don't like it, well, too bad,because that's who he is.
Leah (22:14):
That's the kind of parent are you?
Moshe (22:16):
Yes. Those are the kids that are actually, that don't get that reaction because
if you're out in, in public, then people areseeing you, and sometimes you're just acting a
certain way, or sometimes you're overly soundsensitive, so you have your muffs on, or
sometimes you're overly visually sensitive,and then you have dark glasses on, or
(22:38):
sometimes you have a parent who's walkingaround with their child on a harness.
Leah (22:43):
Got it.
Moshe (22:44):
And there's different terms that people use, which even I am still like.
Imagine later in life, learning in my fortiesthat I'm autistic and now learning the way
autistic, you know, parents or people aresupposed to are supposed to be.
It's like reading an instruction manual aboutyourself and going, oh, that's how I'm
(23:07):
supposed to act.
But if you're, if you're out in public, if
you're at the coffee shop or you're out for awalk or you're at the park and you're, you're
a kid, you have, you have an eight year old,and you have two eight year olds.
Let's say you're a parent.
Your friend is also a parent, and both of you
have an eight year old boy, and both boys areat the park playing, and one boy is just
(23:29):
living his life, doing his best.
And occasionally he'll do stuff and then just
act a certain way, and then the other boy willgo, I don't want to be his friend who's weird.
But then you have this other boy who's wearingearmuffs, and he's, like, shaking his hands
and stuff and really excited, and it's like,oh, my gosh, he's so cute.
Leah (23:48):
Exactly.
Moshe (23:49):
So doesn't that seem contradictory to you?
Leah (23:51):
It does, but it's a true thing.
And I'll tell you exactly why.
Avram.
By a neurotypical standards, Avram is so
weird.
Let's be honest.
He's a weird little dude.
Moshe (24:02):
Yes.
Leah (24:02):
But he's so popular.
People love him.
He's only ever described as adorable, cute,swooshy, so smart, so talented.
Let's be his friend.
So cool.
Because he's not expected to not be who he is.
Moshe (24:19):
Right? And that is exactly the problem.
And this is the second soapbox of the seriesthat it only took, you know, three episodes.
I have a real problem.
And again, this is not just my own opinion.
This is based on my lived experience.
I have a real problem.
And I struggled, and I'll be the first one tosay that I struggled with it, because you'd
(24:42):
think that if you're autistic, suddenly youunderstand all autistics, and you don't.
You don't understand it.
Like, we're one autistic.
And if you know one autistic, you know oneautistic.
That's the name of the podcast now.
You know one autistic.
Thank you for listening.
But.
But you.
I struggled with it, and I came to a
conclusion, unfortunately, later than I shouldhave, which is, I am very uncomfortable with
(25:07):
anything that tries to teach someone withautism to stop acting like they have autism.
Leah (25:11):
Right? Because they do.
So why should.
Moshe (25:14):
Because why would you tell anyone, especially a child, that they have to act in a
way, that's not who they actually are.
Leah (25:25):
I do want to put a disclaimer here.
Some children actually do need therapy in
order to be able to engage with the world atall.
Moshe (25:32):
Right?
Leah (25:33):
So some of them are very enclosed in that you want to use another term, own world.
Some of them don't have speech.
And if they want to engage with the world,
they do need therapy.
And a lot of them are very grateful that
they've had that therapy and can engage.
Moshe (25:46):
Right. And I'll add to that, that when I talk about, you know, raising your child
like they're not autistic, I'm not talkingabout dealing with profound issues that will
actually limit their ability to function atall.
I'm talking about, and here's another soapboxtopic, the high functioning autistic, which
(26:09):
skims a little bit.
And we're trying to get him to stop doing
that, and he's really hung up on one thing,and you got to get them to learn how to do
this.
It's the things that allow them to mask
better.
But then you.
You have autistics.
And because autism is.
Is a global delay, you have autistics thatare.
(26:33):
I don't, again, not going to use the word, butare differently.
That are.
That are definitely communicative.
And a lot of these parents are referred tospeech therapists, which isn't a bad thing,
because if a child is.
Is having difficulty learning how to form
words, then there are therapies you can use tosort of take them through the steps and maybe
(26:54):
help them to communicate, and then there'sdifferent things that they can do to allow
them to function.
Leah (27:01):
So we lived in Canada, and a healthcare system in Canada stinks.
Moshe (27:06):
It is.
Leah (27:07):
And Akram has what you would call an affectation in his mouth that causes me to
have an accent.
So I'm gonna say.
Or lisp.
Moshe (27:17):
It's not really an accent.
It's an affectation.
Leah (27:21):
And he did not get speech therapy in time, so he still has that, and he'll likely
have it forever, but.
Moshe (27:26):
It'S not nearly as bad as it used to be.
Leah (27:29):
No, he sounds.
How would you put it?
He kind of sounds like a british baby or likea boss Tony or something.
Moshe (27:37):
He.
Leah (27:39):
You'll hear him eventually.
Moshe (27:44):
When I first met him, it was very.
It. It was very interesting.
And as his voice has changed, it's actuallygotten a lot less significant, but it's there,
and it's just how he talks.
And in an effort to try and correct him, they
wanted to make his affectation stop.
And I guess for their efforts.
(28:06):
They really thought that that was somethingthat was important for him, but I.
Leah (28:12):
Don'T really understand why it's not to his overall functionality.
The only thing I could say is that he's a bitsensitive about it.
So if you bring it up, he will say, stopmaking fun of my accent, because I can't help
it.
There was a point in time, he became aware of
it probably around seven ish years old, and heknows it's a thing, but it's just the way his
(28:33):
mouth works.
And in an attempt for them to correct his
speech, he sort of started to sound a bit,like, robotic.
And I think I would just rather him sound likehimself.
What do you think?
Moshe (28:45):
I think it's important for him to be himself.
And because we are living in Israel, and theexpectation is that children speak Hebrew,
which has a whole series of other affectationsthat are associated with that language.
And we discovered that when he speaks Hebrew,he doesn't have an affectation.
(29:06):
And it's kind of interesting because forwhatever reason, we know some people from
different parts of the world who do haveaccents or affectations, that when they speak
Hebrew, they still maintain it, which isinteresting to me.
I am fortunate in that I have lived inmultiple regions, in multiple countries now,
and I have adapted my vocalization to avariety of different things.
(29:31):
My grandmother, my Bubby, spent several yearsin England, so she adopted a somewhat british
affectation, not an accent so much, just, youknow, vestibule and strawberries and stuff.
So I admired her.
So I took that on, and I lived in Quebec, so I
had something of a Quebecois accent for awhile, and then I lived in western Canada for
(29:53):
many years.
So I had something of a west coast californian
thing.
And I lived in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, for
a while.
So I sort of took on a little bit of the
Atlantic Canadian, you know, broom rum roof,you know, things like that.
So I would say that at this point, mydifferent ways of pronouncing things continue
(30:15):
to amuse.
And the other thing is, unfortunately, I have
also been told that I have a bad voice.
And so I have been corrected in my.
My pronunciation of things at various pointsin my childhood.
So I tend to speak a lot slower than I mighthave done at one point, because it makes you
(30:42):
amazing at customer service, because I dothings fast.
I walk fast, I eat fast, I drink fast, I run.
I'm always moving fast.
So what I've been told, and this actually camefrom my father, is slow down and soften your
tone, because I had volume control issues anda lot of autistics do, to my understanding,
(31:07):
where I would basically speak everything at avery high volume because I was expressing
myself.
I was passionate about it.
And if you're passionate about something, whatyou really want to do is yell in somebody's
face as loud as you can so they can hear theexcitement in your voice.
Leah (31:21):
You want to talk about another misunderstanding, try to explain that to
somebody.
Ma'am, why is your large husband yelling in
your face?So he's not.
Moshe (31:31):
It took me years for people to be like, calm down, calm down.
And so now I feel like, I don't know.
You can tell me.
And there's going to be editing softwarebecause it's very quiet and I'm a lot louder,
but my.
My voice has sort of become a lot more even
toned, I guess.
Leah (31:49):
Yeah, I think you have an amazing voice, actually.
Thank you.
So going back to the topic then, having said
all that and all the difficulties that itcauses, you know, the neurotypical parties and
their discomforting feelings and the autisticparties in not understanding why people around
them don't like them or don't want to bearound, et cetera.
Do you think that unmasking could help?So I'm going to call back to the example you
(32:12):
gave the woman that you worked with.
If she said, I'm not sure why you creep me
out, but you creep me out.
And you could have said, I apologize, but it's
because I'm autistic, and I can't always maskwhat my face is doing.
Do you think that would have helped thesituation?
Moshe (32:26):
Probably not.
But she was russian, and so much like many
Israelis here, eastern Europeans, Russians,Israelis, a lot of different demographic
groups tend to be much more.
A lot of asian groups, they tend to be much
more blunt in their speech.
Americanized and canadianized social skills
(32:48):
are very reserved, very shy, very constructed,very sanitized.
Leah (32:54):
Yes, in Jerusalem, we've already heard the r word multiple times.
They still use it here.
Moshe (32:59):
And it's my word.
Leah (33:00):
They don't need a fence.
Moshe (33:01):
No, but I mean, this is exactly the point.
And I said it in the first episode, and I'llsay it again, because when I was growing up
back in way, way back in the 1980s andnineties, we didn't really have a very good
understanding of neurodivergency.
We certainly might not have called it
neurodivergency.
(33:21):
So when people asked me what was wrong with
me, they would assume that I was retarded,because that doesn't necessarily now it's
actually a very pejorative term for mentallychallenged or mentally delayed.
Delayed.
Leah (33:34):
Intellectual.
Moshe (33:35):
Intellectual delay is, I guess, the term name.
But retarded was sort of the catch all termfor anyone who expresses or projects
themselves in a different way.
Leah (33:46):
If you look it up, it literally means slow.
Slow or delayed.
Yeah, it's gotten a really, really bad rap
because of the way it's been used as anabusive.
Moshe (33:58):
And it is.
And there's very few instances where, unless
you're referring to someone in French beinglate, that you can use the word ****** or
retarded in a positive way.
Leah (34:10):
I clean that up.
Moshe (34:11):
Right.
But it's my word, and I'm.
And I'm going to use it.
And if you have an issue with me using it,
then absolutely let me know.
But again, as I said in the very first
episode, way, way, two episodes ago, it's aword that I've had to adapt for myself because
one of the common catchphrases that I would.
(34:34):
That I came up with for telling people what I
was.
Cause they were like, are you retarded?
And I started telling people, no, I'm notretarded.
I'm autistic.
And they were like, ooh, you can't use that
word.
So now I'm gonna put it on a t shirt.
And I don't know that anyone would everactually print it, but it's very important.
And I taught it to Avram back in Canada.
Leah (34:57):
He also used to say, I'm autistic.
I'm not the r word.
But then for us to come here and be in hismeeting for school and for them to ask us
questions, and one of the questions was, he'snot our, is he?
And I went, what planet are we on?
Moshe (35:14):
Because it's a different way of life.
Anyway, that is to say that if you are
autistic, then you can.
I would be able to say at this point, given.
Given my recent experience and not so recentexperience, that if I had to pick between
teaching your child how to function like ahuman, and, again, don't mean that autistic
(35:39):
people aren't humans, but try to function in away that doesn't project your disability or
your different abil, I don't know what youwant to call to the forefront or to teach them
to just accept and love and operate, because,again, I just want to say, for the record,
that I am not saying, and Leah is not sayingthat if your child or your partner or your
(36:03):
friend or your spouse or whatever is autistic,that every one of their behaviors just kind of
has to be accepted as part of who they are.
Absolutely not.
Because you can still say you are autistic.
And I understand that this behavior is because
you're autistic, but it's still not a behaviorthat I, you know, that I feel is fair or good
(36:25):
or functional.
And so we need to work on that.
Leah (36:28):
I actually think I'm going to compile a list of things and one episode will actually
be a game that I like to play called, youknow, Samosha being autistic, or is he just
being on end?
Moshe (36:37):
Because what Leah and I like to say is autism is, is not a, an obstacle.
It is not a barrier.
Sorry, it's a barrier.
It's not a, no, it's not a barrier.
It's an obstacle.
It's something that you have to overcome.
But it doesn't mean that someone just is that
way.
They're just naturally arrogant, naturally
(36:57):
selfish, naturally don't care about otherpeople, naturally have no empathy, naturally
treat others with disrespect, naturally, youknow, operate in a way that is just who they
are.
That's just what happens.
Leah (37:10):
There are certain things that are autism and certain things that are personality.
And separating the two is sometimes difficult,but what I've always said to Moshe is, it is
harder for you, but it is not impossible.
Moshe (37:22):
Exactly.
Leah (37:22):
This topic is very important to me.
So we're going to talk about it again and
we're going to work on.
Moshe (37:28):
And this has been the long term work that Leah and I put into our relationship.
And again, to be fair, it's as much about howI relate to her as it is about how she relates
to me.
And that's a whole other different topic.
But back to the original question.
Some people will look at somebody who is very
clearly autistic, or they'll ask them, but whyare you behaving that way?
(37:51):
And then you'll go, I'm autistic.
And they'll be like, oh, okay, that makes
sense now.
I'm sorry, I was wondering.
Or they'll go, you know what?I don't care.
I still don't like that behavior.
And that's just something you kind of have to
learn to deal with.
Leah (38:05):
So that is your experience, in your opinion?
Doing my research again on the Internet, themajority of people do think that unmasking and
autism will help a lot with this universally.
Moshe (38:15):
Absolutely.
Leah (38:16):
A lot of people, they really are nice and they will understand.
It's just that they don't know crayons.
They don't have a file in their brain that
tells them what to do when some of thesefacial muscles all go slack in there, you
know.
Moshe (38:27):
Right.
Leah (38:28):
So it's a learning opportunity for them as well.
Moshe (38:32):
Right.
Leah (38:32):
So this would be a really good time for us to turn the table, actually, and say,
moshe, do I creep you out?Do autistics actually experience the uncanny
valley?
Moshe (38:44):
And the answer is, we do somewhat and not in the same way.
And again, I just want to preface this, as Ialways do, with saying that this is the
experience of one autistic.
And it may not reflect on everyone else, but
autistic people have been observed in variousstudies where their discomfort may even be the
(39:08):
reverse of uncanny Valley, where they'll findit more comfortable for people that are less
human looking than more human looking.
And I think they refer to it as, like, the
uncanny cliff or the uncanny hill.
Leah (39:22):
It's a drop off.
Yeah, absolutely.
Moshe (39:25):
And that is the one aspect of it.
The other aspect of it is that autistic people
will not traditionally be creeped out in thesame way as neurotypicals.
Again, just experience based on research andmy own experience, because we don't have, or
at least we're not born with the innateconcept that certain things should make us
(39:48):
uncomfortable.
So if a situation is scary or a person is
meant to be creepy, or there's a zombie or amonster on the screen, if you have an autistic
child, the autistic child will offer verylittle reaction.
Or they might actually laugh at it becausethey're so silly looking, but they won't have
the innate concept that this kind of person islooking that way in order to be creepy.
Leah (40:13):
Right.
And we actually talked about this this
afternoon.
We came up with this theory on our own, right.
Is that autistic people in general seem tohave less of a concern about their own safety.
Moshe (40:24):
Correct.
Leah (40:24):
That's not every autistic.
Obviously, Avram has that issue.
So he.
Where danger is really a concept, preservation
of one's life is not something that you wishyou're processing tower off.
So it may actually prevent the uncanny valley,because they're typicals like me.
(40:45):
And many of you out there are sort of bornwith the genes of our ancestors, where if we
were sitting by the campfire and we saw creepyeyes in the woods, that was actual danger to
our lives.
So that could be where this reaction comes
from.
Whereas autistics seem to sort of be missing
that.
Moshe (41:04):
Yes. A lot of autistic people, particularly autistic parents of autistic
people, have noted that their child seemed tolack fear response.
It had to be explained to them.
And trying to explain to someone why they
should be afraid of certain things seemsalmost counterproductive.
It's like inserting negativity into a person'spositive outlook.
(41:27):
And I found it very fascinating, actually,because autism is a very difficult concept to
nail them.
And again, if you've ever tried to look up the
question, what is autism?You get millions and millions of different
studies and hits and references, and it couldbe this or it could be that or it could be
this or that.
(41:48):
So it's really not something that people have
spent a lot of time studying.
So I do what I always do.
And I said, okay, well, what's somethingthat's like autism, that might be better at
defining it?So I did a lot of research on something called
Williams syndrome.
And you can actually look that up.
It's a genetic, we'll call it disorder.
And a lot of the symptoms of Williams syndrome
(42:10):
are very similar or even identical to autism.
And in fact, in a bit of a double whammy, a
lot of people with alien syndrome are alsodiagnosed with autism.
So I'm not even sure how that goes, but it isout there.
And the characteristics that the DSM six.
Leah (42:25):
Is going to look very different.
Moshe (42:27):
Stay tuned, folks, because people have the piecemeal disorders, and they interviewed
people with Williams syndrome and Williamssyndrome children and adults, because it's
fortunately not one of those disabilities thatactually reduces your lifespan or causes any
serious health issues.
I don't believe, and again, if I'm wrong,
(42:47):
please let me know.
But it also comes with a complete absence of
fear, a complete absence of suspicion, and acomplete absence of wariness and a complete
absence of the ability to see someone orsomething as a threat.
And there have been instances where childrenwith Williams syndrome, much like autistic
(43:09):
children, will just run into traffic, notbecause they're concerned, even if they see
the car coming, they'll be like, oh, I want togo there.
It's right across the street.
Leah (43:19):
That's why I had Avraham on a leash.
And if you have a problem with that, you can
certainly write to me.
Moshe (43:24):
And this is the idea.
And they talk to people with Williams syndrome
because their speech is oftentimes veryarticulate.
They're very, very articulate.
And a lot of them, they're still not sure why,
but a lot of them have enhanced auditorysensations.
So they're able to, they're very musicallyinclined, a lot of them.
And they talked to them and they said, whydon't you feel like, why are you concerned?
(43:48):
Like, why aren't you concerned that thesethings might hurt you?
And it's just, it's a complete absence of theability to conceive.
A lot of times that a person would be harmful.
So they'll go up to complete strangers and hug
them and tell them their whole life storybecause they lack the ability to understand
(44:16):
that this person who they don't know fromnobody, might be a threat to them.
And it's kind of sad because you have to tellthis child, this adult, even, who has
basically kept in a state of innocence, thatthey have to be afraid when they have no
concept of what fear even is.
But fear is actually a very positive thing.
(44:38):
We have these instincts in our subconscious tohelp us, to protect us.
If we see a fire, we don't go walking into thefire because we know it's going to burn us.
If we see a man standing there holding a giantmachete, we go, you know what?
I think that guy with the hockey mask and themachete might intend to harm me.
Whereas person with autism with Williamssyndrome might be like, wow, that guy is kind
(45:01):
of cool.
I wonder what he's up to.
Leah (45:02):
What are you doing? Exactly.
Moshe (45:04):
Because they don't have the ability to understand that that person might be a threat
to them.
Leah (45:08):
Exactly.
And this brought up a whole other thing
because, you know, that I'm a giant nerd.
And we might explore this more in another
episode.
Moshe (45:15):
Right.
Leah (45:16):
But in terms of why, if you subscribe to Darwinism, why nature hasn't actually selected
against autism at this point.
Moshe (45:26):
Yeah. So Darwinism is a really good theory.
And of course, we are orthodox Jews, so it'svery much part and parcel of what we believe
anyway, because Judaism definitely does acceptscience.
So the idea of evolution and.
And evolved evolution based on the strongest
characteristics of each individual person orthing or animal or what have you, is there.
(45:49):
Our whole book is about that and the reality.
Exactly.
And the reality of the situation.
Leah (45:55):
We were better than them.
We smashed.
That's the whole fight books, is that.
Moshe (45:59):
Darwinism is not bad.
And again, I don't want the soundbite from
this episode to be Moshe and Leia talk aboutthe fallacy of Darwinism.
No, no, that's not what we're saying.
Darwinism is actually a very valid concept,
but what we're saying is that maybe thefittest amongst us is not necessarily the
(46:20):
goal.
Maybe.
Leah (46:21):
Right.
So that's a very confusing thing to me because
you would think, theoretically, that a personwho has no care for their safety and a very
limited ability to care for themselves wouldhave been selected against back in the days of
cavemen.
Moshe (46:37):
Right.
Leah (46:37):
And I have some interesting ideas as to why that hasn't happened, but you know what?
That might actually be a good topic forputting content.
Moshe (46:46):
It would be.
We can, we can discuss the, the nature of
Darwinism as it relates to neurodivergency andwhy Darwinism does not disqualify
neurodivergency, and some theories behindthat.
But essentially, when you have a community, ifyou're individuals, then obviously the person
(47:06):
who can run the fastest and live the longestand put up with the most harsh conditions are
going to be in demand.
But when you settle down and start building
communities and you have a multitude ofdifferent people who are all differently able,
then you can look at your population and go,you know what?
We have x number of people over there doingall the heavy lifting.
(47:28):
These people seem to struggle with socialconcepts, but they're real good at figuring
out things.
Maybe, maybe we should put them to work on
that.
And you guys, with the clubs and the spears,
you can keep them safe so that they can dotheir job, and in turn they will design better
spears for you or something like that.
Leah (47:49):
That's essentially, yes, what happened or what I think happened.
And so I don't know what this episode is.
It comments definitely hasn't stuck to the
topic.
I do have a couple of more things that I
wanted to cover.
Do autistics and non autistics fall into each
other's uncanny value?Now I have something personally to say about
(48:10):
this.
Moshe, in any of his incarnations as a child,
as a teenager, as an adult, has never creepedme out, ever.
However, clowns make me cringe.
I will run away.
I will smack them.
So try to explain that to me.
Moshe (48:30):
I can't explain that to you.
It's just phobias is outside of my price, is
outside of my pay range.
Leah (48:40):
The phobia of clowns.
It's known as clover phobia.
It's very popular phobia, yes.
And I believe it's actually based in the
uncanny Valley characteristic.
Moshe (48:50):
It actually is.
And it's a very, it's.
I mean, it's a very common phobia.
And it does actually fall, at least I believe
that it does, in the same category of whypeople are creeped out in certain respects by
autistics who are masking because they'reacting in a way that's human, but also not
quote.
Leah (49:08):
People find this very funny.
I'm warning you now, don't email me pictures
of clowns.
Don't send me clowns.
Don't.
Don't.
Moshe (49:16):
But the uncanny Valley effect for autistics is a difficult concept to express
because when you're autistic and you'refinding it difficult to social with someone,
it actually makes you more comforted bysomebody who is less traditionally focused or
(49:37):
looking rather, but they don't fit the modelof what you have come to feel is threatening
to you.
So, for example, somebody who.
I don't know, I want to use a really extremeexample.
Leah (49:51):
Great.
Something new and different for you.
Moshe (49:53):
Yes. So let's say I was talking to somebody who had their eyes gouged out.
Leah (49:58):
I get bald.
Moshe (49:59):
I wouldn't find that very creepy.
Leah (50:01):
I would.
Moshe (50:02):
Because to me, the eyes are one of the things that autistic people often struggle to
relate to.
And in fact, I'll tell a really quick story
because we're running low on time.
I again called into the human resources office
because one of the supervisors, one of myemployers, said that I was leering at her.
(50:22):
And I was called into the office and the humanresources manager talked to me and said, okay,
so the complaint is that he is looking at me,and then he'll look away, and then he'll look
at me, and then he'll look away, and thenhe'll look at me.
And based on that, I was apparently scanningher body up and down.
So he talked to me and he asked me whathappened and what I think was happening.
(50:44):
And he looked at me and he saw that my eyeswould look at him and then look away and then
look at him and then look away.
And he said, you know what?
I already know what's happened here.
You can go.
There's nothing.
I'm going to dismiss this.
And I didn't know why at the time.
I thought, oh, cool, so I'm free to go then.
Great and easy going to maybe stay away fromher if that's how she feels.
Leah (51:06):
Some people are so full of themselves and that.
Moshe (51:09):
And that is essentially what it really came down to.
But if somebody had a difficulty, if someone'sblind, I find it a lot easier to look at them
than if someone is.
We'll say a regular psych when we're.
Leah (51:23):
Talking about communication again in the next episode.
We're going to delve deeply into eye contact,actually.
Moshe (51:28):
And a lot of the things that make it hard for me to look at people or relate to
people are what anyone would consider to benormal.
But then to top it off, and sort of one of ourfinal statements, what I find creepy is
anything that goes away from the concept ofwhat I determine is a standard function of the
(51:53):
human body.
So tattoos creep me out, piercings creep me
out, plastic surgery creeps me out, because inmy mind, I have learned, either consciously or
unconsciously, the way a person is supposed tolook.
And anything that goes outside of that normmakeup, believe it or not, I don't wear
makeup, makes me uncomfortable becauseanything that alters a person's appearance
(52:16):
beyond what my concept of their appearanceshould be.
And again, that can come across as verycontrolling.
And it's been pointed out to me.
Leah (52:27):
I would like to say I don't wear makeup anymore, and that was my choice because it
made him uncomfortable.
He didn't demand that, but it's very.
Moshe (52:34):
Simple for that to go well.
You know, he's trying to control me.
He doesn't want me to wear makeup.
Actually, it's a lot sadder than that.
It's that I have struggled to relate topeople, as many autistics have.
And my way of relating to them is toessentially picture them in a certain way.
And if they don't exactly match that conceptof how they're supposed to look, then I find
(53:01):
that makes me very uncomfortable.
But it has to be subtle, and that's the
difference.
It has to be subtle.
It has to be, I have a tattoo or I have aparticular, you know.
You know, I had hair growing out of my nose.
Leah (53:17):
The hair and the nose got.
We were both uncanny galley by him, right?
We discussed that.
So there was a man.
He was a very nice man.
He was checking our groceries for us, and he
had hair growing all the way down the bridgeof his nose to the tip.
And Moshe and I both noticed it.
But I was able to sort of talk myself down
from it, where he was totally creeped up byit.
(53:37):
He didn't say anything, should congratulatehim.
He was very good about it, but I was sort ofable to be like, okay, so this is weird, but
I'm sure this man is very nice and, andcontinue to just treat him the way that I
would anybody.
And that feeling of initial unrest for me went
away.
Moshe claims that it didn't, but he was very
good about it.
He wasn't insulted.
Moshe (53:57):
Oh, no. Because I. I have learned over time that I have no poker face.
So if I'm finding someone to be, particularlyif something.
If I find something about someone makes meparticularly uncomfortable, a lot of the time,
I'll just look away, or I won't.
I won't engage with them.
And it can come across as shy or unfriendly orwhy isn't he looking at me?
(54:18):
But really, it's as much for you as it is forme, because I don't want to look at you and
have a reaction and we just make youuncomfortable.
Leah (54:27):
We discussed this earlier, actually.
I can tell by the way he's holding his
shoulders, the cut of his jaw, the look in hiseye, the look on his face, what he's likely to
be feeling.
And when people in meetings, for example, look
at him and say, moshe, do you have anything toadd?
I will openly say at this point, nothing thatyou want to hear.
Moshe (54:49):
And that is actually something that we can talk about in the next episode on
revisiting communication.
And so did you have any, do you have any final
points?
Leah (55:00):
I mean, for me, I actually left for conclusions, but I wanted to share one thing
that another content creator said.
Sure, an autistic content creator.
She is a high functioning female autistic whowas also diagnosed later in life.
And she said, you know, the reason whyneurotypical people are often uncomfortable in
(55:25):
dealing with autistic is because autisticpeople who are unmasked will violate the human
norms of social interactions.
Sometimes what it can do is hold up a mirror
to us regarding, really, how insignificant andhow shallow a lot of the things neurotypicals
(55:46):
concentrate on are.
Moshe (55:47):
Right? And that is something that sort of intersects
between sort of the uncanny Valley conceptthat we were talking about today and
revisiting communication, because somethingthat autistics are very good at is brutal
honesty unfiltered by social norms, socialcues, social customs.
(56:12):
And this is what led me to make a teacher atAuburn school cry.
And the fact that when we were out of.
Leah (56:22):
Don't be modest.
More than once.
Moshe (56:24):
More than once.
And when we were at another meeting, most
recently, there was, I made another teachercry, because I have learned through experience
that I am not very good at either hiding myexpression or hiding my feelings.
So the question becomes, if you want myopinion, I will give you my opinion, but you
(56:50):
might not want my opinion if you want to lullyourself into a sense of, you know, self
righteousness or sense of security about whatyou're doing, because I will tell you to your
face, what you're doing is unfair, unjust.
You're clearly unaware of what you're doing.
And I will just kind of sit back and go, well,you wanted my opinion.
Leah (57:11):
Yeah. And that's fair.
I mean, you go into meetings for Avram with
only Avram in mind, and you're not shy aboutthat.
Moshe (57:19):
Yeah.
Leah (57:19):
Because somebody cares how the music is.
Moshe (57:22):
Yes, because I'm out for my family.
I'm out for my kids and out for Leah.
And I am never shy to talk about how somethingmakes me feel.
I've been told that I should be, but I don'tthink that that's reasonable.
Leah (57:39):
Absolutely.
So do we have any conclusions about the
uncanny Valley and autism?
Moshe (57:43):
The only conclusion that I have is essentially we've already discussed, which is
that the uncanny valley, once again, is notsaying that autistic people are, by their
nature creepy.
It's that unfortunately, we live in a society,
wherever you happen to live, when you'relistening to this, that tells you that you
have to behave in a certain way.
(58:05):
And because autistics don't necessarily always
behave in the way that they're expected tobehave, that they're told that they have to
behave a certain way.
And by trying to be someone that they're not,
then they end up causing more people to beuncomfortable by them than if they just were.
Like, you know what?This is who I am, and that is something that
(58:26):
you'll have to get used to.
So if you're autistic and you've had
experiences like I have, let me know.
Write in, comment on this.
Write us five stars or four stars or one star,whatever.
But don't be ashamed and don't beuncomfortable by your own autism.
Accept it, love it.
(58:46):
If you have an autistic child, don't try and
figure out ways to make them look more normal.
Accept who they are and help other people.
Leah (58:58):
I want to say it also on the other way around, if one of your friends or a spouse of
yours or somebody you're dating gives you thatcreepy feeling, don't be ashamed of that.
Openly communicate it.
So your face is doing a thing.
Is there something you'd like to tell me?
Moshe (59:13):
And that's definitely a good way to open up a conversation and maybe start a
dialogue about breaking down barriers andunderstanding each other better.
Leah (59:24):
Can we in on a joke?
Moshe (59:26):
Sure.
Leah (59:26):
How should.
Moshe (59:27):
Yes.
Leah (59:28):
What do you call it when we mask so well that a neurotypical can't tell that you're
autistic?
Moshe (59:33):
I don't know.
What do you call it?
Leah (59:35):
You committed ASCII and Oz.
Moshe (59:37):
Thank you for listening.
Well, that's our show for today.
Now, you know one autistic just a little bitbetter.
So something you may not know about someautistics is that we often struggle with
ending social interactions.
So, Leah.
Leah (59:55):
All right, Bonshaw.
I'll take care of it.
It. Thank you for listening to now you knowone autistic.
See you next week.
Hi, I'm Moshe, and I'm autistic.
Leah (00:14):
I'm Leah, and I'm boring.
Moshe (00:16):
Welcome to now you know one autistic.
Leah (00:18):
A podcast about neurodiversity in couples, marriage meltdowns, and making it all
work.
Moshe (00:23):
The opinions expressed in this podcast reflect the experience of one couple and one
autistic.
Leah (00:28):
Nothing that you hear in this podcast should be taken as a medical opinion.
And unless otherwise stated, no one is anaccredited specialist in any of the many
fields that comprise the autism spectrum.
Moshe (00:39):
But as someone who is on the autism spectrum, I feel that my experiences will be
very valuable to many of you, whether you'reon the spectrum, a support person like Leah,
or just a curious bystander.
Leah (00:51):
If you think that you or someone you care about may be autistic, consult your
family doctor.
Hi, Moshe.
Moshe (01:04):
Hi, Leah.
Leah (01:05):
How are you today?
Moshe (01:07):
Very well.
How are you?
Leah (01:08):
I'm all right.
So we're gonna take a little bit of a break
from communication.
I mean, we are communicating, right?
Because we're talking.
Moshe (01:14):
We're currently communicating, right?
Leah (01:16):
But we're gonna do a different topic today just so that everybody doesn't get tired
of the same topic over and over again.
Moshe (01:23):
Sounds good.
Leah (01:23):
It might be a little bit of a controversial topic.
It might be offensive to some viewers, so justlisten with caution.
And if you have younger people who may notunderstand, possibly listen with them so that
you can explain some of the more difficultconcepts in this episode.
So what are we discussing today?Moja?
Moshe (01:43):
So today we are titling this episode, at least at this moment, as the uncanny valley
of autism.
Leah (01:53):
Can you explain to everyone what that.
Moshe (01:56):
Means, the uncanny valley of autism? Well, the uncanny valley refers to the theory
that when somebody goes from trying to portraya human versus someone who is decidedly
unhuman, there is a increase in comfort levelthat gradually increases from non human to
(02:22):
human until a point right before fully human,where there's a very significant dip.
And that dip is referred to in the theory asthe uncanny valley.
Leah (02:34):
Right.
So, as you can see, maybe with that brief
explanation, you can understand why we wouldthink that some people would find this
controversial.
We're in no way referring to people on the
spectrum or people off the spectrum as nonhumans.
It really is just the theory and thedefinition.
The reason why non human is.
Is used in the definition is because it was
(02:57):
actually coined by people who work inrobotics.
They were trying to make robots people like,and they noticed that as their robots became
more and more human, people in general wouldlike them very much until they became too
human, but not quite white.
And that would cause feelings of unease, let's
(03:19):
say.
Moshe (03:20):
Correct.
Leah (03:21):
So the definition, I mean, that I wrote down.
So let's just go with that.
What is the uncanny valley theory in general?
So it says that people find human, like robotsand or animations more appealing the more
human they appear.
Until they don't.
So when I say animations, they also sort ofuse this theory in animated movies.
(03:41):
Animated studios use it.
They use it a lot in video games.
If the non human entity, let's say, is tooclose but not quite human, they tend to cause
a feeling of unease and creepiness.
So when I was doing my research, one really
cool story that I found was, it's a reallypopular movie, Shrek.
(04:04):
I mean, it's a huge hit.
Apparently, when they first screened it for
small children, a lot of them ended up fryingor panicking or wanting to leave, asking for
their mom, because apparently Fiona looked toohuman.
So they actually had to go back to the drawingboard and make it look more like a cartoon.
And now it's the hit that we lost.
Moshe (04:23):
Exactly, because the.
I don't know.
Elea can probably explain it a little bitbetter.
But essentially, the way it works in theory isthat the things that someone find comforting
or positive emotion invoking about things thatresemble humans end up creating a sense of
(04:48):
unease when the subject, or the object,rather, is human looking.
But there's just something slightly, or maybenot so slightly off about it.
Like, for example, the reason that people findzombies to be creepy is because they're
(05:09):
basically human.
But obviously, there's something decidedly
unhuman about them.
It's the same reason that some people are
afraid of dolls, or some people are afraid ofclowns, or some people are afraid.
I use the word afraid, but some people arecreeped out, I should say, by things that are
human looking, but there's just somethingabout them that makes them feel, like,
(05:36):
uncomfortable.
Right?
Leah (05:37):
Yeah. So I looked at a lot of charts and I looked at a lot of studies, and the theory
goes that people will like non human objectsthat resemble humans up until a point when
they switch.
There's this line where they switch to, okay,
well, this is.
Oh, look, it's a robot trying to be human.
(05:57):
How cute is that?But there's a point where they can become so
lifelike that they switch to, oh, that is thehuman failing at being human.
That's creepy.
And that is the valley that you're talking
about.
So if you look up a graphic about uncanny
valley, literally see, like, a dip in thegraph.
And that's considered the uncanny valley.
(06:18):
It's a small portion of space where it goes
from, wow, that's a robot trying to be cuteto, oh, that's a human being miserably
athenian.
Moshe (06:26):
Correct.
Leah (06:27):
So how does this also tie into our topic?
I think that was sort of loosely, vaguely,yeah.
Moshe (06:33):
We're talking a lot about the concept of Uncanny Valley, and I'm sure you could look
up podcasts that deal specifically with theuncanny valley in the sense of what it is and
why it is and what might have caused it orwhat have you.
But what we're actually talking about, andagain, it's something of a controversial
topic, which is why we waited until the thirdepisode to bring it up, is how.
(06:53):
And again, I'm autistic, so I'm maybe a littlebit in a better position to talk about it, or
at least introduce it.
How autistic people or neurodivergent people
can invoke in non autistics, the uncannyvalley effect.
And just to be fair, how non neurodivergencecan invoke the same reaction, or if they even
(07:20):
invoke the same reaction in an autistic.
And just to tie it all together, why uncanny
valley?The theory of uncanny Valley is, or maybe you
can obviously give your own opinion, but ourhypothesis is that the uncanny valley theory
(07:41):
actually is different or even somewhat absentin an autistic.
And we'll definitely talk about that as well.
Leah (07:51):
Yeah. So over and over again, you'll hear, especially autistic males, for some
reason, be described as creepy.
So people will do, you know, they'll have
what's called a thin slice judgment or a snapjudgment, where they will look at a person
taking the visual, very base information andjust go, ooh, he's creepy.
(08:14):
Now, why do you say, or what do you think thereason behind that is?
Moshe (08:18):
Well, as someone who is on the spectrum, as the intro has mentioned, is that
the theory is that an autistic person,particularly an autistic person that is
masking, is acting a certain way.
(08:39):
But the mask is not perfect because it's not
able to be, because it's, you know, a personis either autistic or they're not.
And we're not even going to get into thetheory that there's autistics out there who
are just so good at masking and are able tomaintain it consistently that they're
essentially not autistic at all.
Leah (09:00):
Yes, but you don't have to be like me or a trained professional to see it.
Often trained professionals miss it becauseyou would be surprised how many times I get
asked, you know, Moshe, who's such a greatguy, but is there something wrong with him?
It'll take people, like, three months ofreally close contact with you to even go
there.
Moshe (09:18):
And that's exactly it.
And this is why it's being.
It's coming up.
It would be a very different podcast episode
if it were two neurotypicals sitting togetherand going, do you think autistic people are
creepy?But this is actually not only a theory that we
researched and read about and found examplesof.
(09:40):
This is my lived experience.
This is my lived experience from the time I
was very young until the present, even wherepeople have met me at various stages in my
life, in various stages of my autism, and Ishould really say in various stages, my
masking my autism.
And they would be close to me, and they would,
(10:05):
you know, sometimes they would go, I don'tknow, there's something.
There's something going on there.
Or I would enter a new work environment, and I
would get called in to human resources officesbecause people would say, you know, I don't
(10:26):
actually know what this is about, but somepeople have been mentioning that you've made
them feel very uncomfortable.
Do you know what that might be caused by?
And of course, I was surprised because I hadno idea, number one, that I was.
And number two, why I would.
And number three, I couldn't even imagine what
it was about what I was doing that made themfeel uncomfortable.
Leah (10:47):
It's unfortunate that the answer to it is you weren't actually doing anything.
They were basically seeing your microexpressions and the way that you look like
them, but you're acting quite like them.
And they had a snap response.
Moshe (11:04):
Yes. And some people were very subtle about it, and they just avoided me entirely.
And some people were very non subtle about it.
In a previous job that I had, I would.
I was sitting.
We were sitting a bunch of cubicles, and I was
sitting across the cubicle, separated by a.
(11:25):
By, like a glass or a poly something.
You know, what's the word I'm looking for?Pain.
We'll say, like a pain of transparent, clearsubstance.
Probably glass, maybe not, doesn't matter forthe points of this.
And there was this other female co worker thatsat on the other side of it, and I would take
(11:50):
calls, as I always do, and I would just sitthere, and I would be emoting and carrying on.
And eventually I noticed that she would takepieces of paper over the glass facing me.
And I was who I am, and I was like, I'm sorry,what?
(12:11):
Why.
Why are you.
Why are you doing that?And she would say, you.
You really do.
I don't know that.
You know, but when you're.
When you're on the phone or when you're
working, sometimes you kind of look over at meand you have this look on your face, and it
makes me very uncomfortable.
So I just.
I cannot concentrate on what I'm doing andlook at you.
(12:32):
And.
I'm sorry.
I don't know if it's intentional.
I don't know if this is something that you.
That you know that you're doing, but I need tonot look at you while I'm working.
Leah (12:43):
Right.
So that is actually very interesting because
that face thing that you're describing isessentially unmasking.
So it's when you're distracted by somethingelse or tired or upset, and you forget to put
touching in your eyebrows and turn up thecorners of your mouth and, you know, do human
(13:03):
check, like, is my face doing all the things?And that happens a lot, and it unfairly,
maybe, or maybe not.
Creeps some people out.
Moshe (13:15):
Yeah. And it's just.
It's kind of something that I've had to live
with.
But even before I had my diagnosis, I maybe
unconsciously came up with ways around it.
And the way that I chose, the way that was
most convenient for me, is I made myselfharmless or as harmless as I possibly could.
(13:39):
So I would walk around with my eyes down.
I would sort of curl up in, like, a very
shoulders inverted, like, very, very nonthreatening position.
Because what I thought, and I don't even knowto this day if it was a valid assumption or
not, was I thought people were actually afraidof me.
Leah (13:58):
Right?
Moshe (13:59):
So I looked, I said, okay, well, if they're afraid of me, then I have to make
myself as non threatening as possible.
And so eventually, I got the nickname of Sully
from Monsters, Inc. Where they said, you're amonster, but you're a very cuddly, warm,
approachable monster.
Leah (14:16):
Again, if you see him, he does kind of look like Sully.
He's a tall guy, you know, big arms, bigshoulders, big beer.
I see white people went there.
Moshe (14:25):
Yes. So I was an approachable person, and I made myself very, very non threatening.
But interestingly enough, this worked quitewell on the.
I mean, again, I didn't do, like, a poll ofthe office, but it worked very well on a lot
of the people that I worked with.
(14:47):
But I noticed that there were a lot of
employees there that were actually verydifferent, and they never had a problem with
me.
They were very, they approached me, they
talked to me.
They found me to be very nice and sweet and
friendly.
And one of them happened to have been my
supervisor.
(15:07):
And I brought up to her one day about the fact
that this was happening.
And she says, I have no idea what's going on.
I've never noticed anything like, I don'tlike, I sit, like, pretty close to you, and I
haven't noticed that you have a look on yourface so that there's anything that would cause
them to do that.
(15:27):
Maybe they're moving to a different department
anyway, so you should probably not even worryabout it.
But if it's up to me, I'm telling you, there'snothing that you're doing that seems to be,
you know, causing.
Leah (15:41):
That kind of reaction that must have been so unhappy and so uncomfortable for you.
And another pitfall, people not having adiagnosis each other much, much older.
Moshe (15:51):
Right.
Leah (15:53):
I think I put my toe or our toe into a topic that we're, we sort of kissed and we're
going to have to reveal eventually is, uh, we,unfortunately for us, haven't always been
together that, haven't always been a couple.
And that coping mechanism that Moshe describes
(16:15):
led me to find a much different man than I hadleft many years before.
And actually, this thing that he said worksfor everybody else absolutely did not work for
me, because he used to be tall and big andbrazen and arrogant, and maybe a lot of people
didn't like that, but I did.
(16:36):
And I said, who are you?
If you want to talk about the world affectingsomebody, if you want to talk about the world
beating somebody down, especially forsomething that's not even your fault, it was a
very, very sad, unfortunate thing.
Moshe (16:52):
Yeah. And the problem that many autistics face.
And again, I'm just one autistic, so I can'treally comment on the autistic community at
large.
But the problem that I would venture that a
lot of autistics and the ones that I've methave faced is the different masks that they
(17:12):
end up having to wear.
And they wear a mask for work, and they wear a
mask for their friends, and they wear a maskif they have a relationship for their partner,
and they wear a mask that they just kind ofput on when they, when they go out, because
they're going to be around people and they'relike, well, I have to person now.
I have to go to the store and be out inpublic, and it's going to be bright and it's
(17:33):
going to be loud, and it's going to be a lotof different sensations.
And if I want to fit in, then I have to wear amask.
And if you're the kind of person that I wasundiagnosed, didn't even know that I was
autistic, just knew that people were creepedout by me, then it was an unconscious effort.
(17:53):
It's not like someone told me, okay, you haveto look a certain way and act a certain way
when you're in public.
Autistics often do it without even intending
to do it.
And they, it's called masking.
It's a concept that is very familiar to theneurodivergent community.
But essentially, in very quick summary, it'sthe ability to put on a certain appearance or
(18:18):
demeanor or mannerism, copy people.
Leah (18:21):
That they find neurotypical so that they can be more like them and be accepted
socially.
Moshe (18:28):
And actually, it's something that a lot of the, we'll call them theories of, quote
unquote, handling an autistic is to teach themto mask, because VA is.
Leah (18:39):
All teachings and beauty.
Moshe (18:40):
Right.
And the thing that sort of ties into the
beginning of this episode is that Leah, and inparticular myself, are not saying that
autistics are creepy.
And we're not talking about how people with
autism create this feeling that other peopleare creeped out by them.
(19:02):
What we're saying is that in an effort toattempt to mask and behave the way we are
taught or told or led to believe that we'resupposed to act, we end up wearing someone
else's face.
Leah (19:21):
And you essentially fall into that family.
Moshe (19:24):
We put ourselves in it.
Leah (19:26):
No falls on your own.
And other people are not understanding.
So let's talk about actually an interestingconcept.
This seems to be the more functional you are,the lower support needs you have.
I'm doing air quotes, by the way.
If you can't cure in that noise, the more the
(19:46):
uncanny valet seems to become a problembecause the more capable of masking you.
So that was also within our research.
And the next step to that is it's even harder
for women on the spectrum.
And it is the hardest for attractive.
Moshe (20:06):
Women on the spectrum based on the studies.
Leah (20:09):
Yeah. Why do you think that might be?
Moshe (20:11):
Well, it really does kind of go back to a number of things that I just said, which is
when, when you are raised the way that I amand the way I'm sure a lot of other autistics
are raised.
And I just want to make mention of the fact
that there's a lot of parents out there whowere unfamiliar with autism up until the
moment that their child was diagnosed.
(20:32):
And they often have the very best of
intentions and think that they're doing thebest that they can to help their child.
And why would you ever have this person thatyou absolutely adore and love and cherish and
want the best for and not try to do what youfeel is what they need in order to function?
(20:53):
Because nobody wants to slap a label on theirchild's forehead and say, well, this kid is
nonfunctional, or this kid is semi functional.
This kid is differently abled or whatever, you
know, buzzword you want to use.
And subsequently, you're basically teaching
your child to, in effect, go out in publicwearing a clown mask because.
(21:18):
Because they're told that they need to wearthis clown mask.
And I use clown mask because I know that it'screeped out by clowns, but they're basically
telling their kid, you can't go out with thatface.
You have to wear this clown mask so peoplewill recognize that you are a part of them,
and people will look at them and go, who theheck is this?
And then the kid will be like, I don'tunderstand why people are all creeped out by
(21:41):
me.
I'm putting on the mask that you wanted me to
wear.
But conversely, if you have a parent who
either is so unfamiliar with autism thatthey're like, I don't know, just do whatever,
or they are familiar enough with it thatthey're like, you know what?
No, my kid is autistic.
He stood.
He, he has different mannerisms.
(22:02):
He has a weird walk.
He has a weird way of doing things.
He's always moving and twiddling his fingers
and twirling his hair and blinking andsnorting and doing all manner of things.
And if you don't like it, well, too bad,because that's who he is.
Leah (22:14):
That's the kind of parent are you?
Moshe (22:16):
Yes. Those are the kids that are actually, that don't get that reaction because
if you're out in, in public, then people areseeing you, and sometimes you're just acting a
certain way, or sometimes you're overly soundsensitive, so you have your muffs on, or
sometimes you're overly visually sensitive,and then you have dark glasses on, or
(22:38):
sometimes you have a parent who's walkingaround with their child on a harness.
Leah (22:43):
Got it.
Moshe (22:44):
And there's different terms that people use, which even I am still like.
Imagine later in life, learning in my fortiesthat I'm autistic and now learning the way
autistic, you know, parents or people aresupposed to are supposed to be.
It's like reading an instruction manual aboutyourself and going, oh, that's how I'm
(23:07):
supposed to act.
But if you're, if you're out in public, if
you're at the coffee shop or you're out for awalk or you're at the park and you're, you're
a kid, you have, you have an eight year old,and you have two eight year olds.
Let's say you're a parent.
Your friend is also a parent, and both of you
have an eight year old boy, and both boys areat the park playing, and one boy is just
(23:29):
living his life, doing his best.
And occasionally he'll do stuff and then just
act a certain way, and then the other boy willgo, I don't want to be his friend who's weird.
But then you have this other boy who's wearingearmuffs, and he's, like, shaking his hands
and stuff and really excited, and it's like,oh, my gosh, he's so cute.
Leah (23:48):
Exactly.
Moshe (23:49):
So doesn't that seem contradictory to you?
Leah (23:51):
It does, but it's a true thing.
And I'll tell you exactly why.
Avram.
By a neurotypical standards, Avram is so
weird.
Let's be honest.
He's a weird little dude.
Moshe (24:02):
Yes.
Leah (24:02):
But he's so popular.
People love him.
He's only ever described as adorable, cute,swooshy, so smart, so talented.
Let's be his friend.
So cool.
Because he's not expected to not be who he is.
Moshe (24:19):
Right? And that is exactly the problem.
And this is the second soapbox of the seriesthat it only took, you know, three episodes.
I have a real problem.
And again, this is not just my own opinion.
This is based on my lived experience.
I have a real problem.
And I struggled, and I'll be the first one tosay that I struggled with it, because you'd
(24:42):
think that if you're autistic, suddenly youunderstand all autistics, and you don't.
You don't understand it.
Like, we're one autistic.
And if you know one autistic, you know oneautistic.
That's the name of the podcast now.
You know one autistic.
Thank you for listening.
But.
But you.
I struggled with it, and I came to a
conclusion, unfortunately, later than I shouldhave, which is, I am very uncomfortable with
(25:07):
anything that tries to teach someone withautism to stop acting like they have autism.
Leah (25:11):
Right? Because they do.
So why should.
Moshe (25:14):
Because why would you tell anyone, especially a child, that they have to act in a
way, that's not who they actually are.
Leah (25:25):
I do want to put a disclaimer here.
Some children actually do need therapy in
order to be able to engage with the world atall.
Moshe (25:32):
Right?
Leah (25:33):
So some of them are very enclosed in that you want to use another term, own world.
Some of them don't have speech.
And if they want to engage with the world,
they do need therapy.
And a lot of them are very grateful that
they've had that therapy and can engage.
Moshe (25:46):
Right. And I'll add to that, that when I talk about, you know, raising your child
like they're not autistic, I'm not talkingabout dealing with profound issues that will
actually limit their ability to function atall.
I'm talking about, and here's another soapboxtopic, the high functioning autistic, which
(26:09):
skims a little bit.
And we're trying to get him to stop doing
that, and he's really hung up on one thing,and you got to get them to learn how to do
this.
It's the things that allow them to mask
better.
But then you.
You have autistics.
And because autism is.
Is a global delay, you have autistics thatare.
(26:33):
I don't, again, not going to use the word, butare differently.
That are.
That are definitely communicative.
And a lot of these parents are referred tospeech therapists, which isn't a bad thing,
because if a child is.
Is having difficulty learning how to form
words, then there are therapies you can use tosort of take them through the steps and maybe
(26:54):
help them to communicate, and then there'sdifferent things that they can do to allow
them to function.
Leah (27:01):
So we lived in Canada, and a healthcare system in Canada stinks.
Moshe (27:06):
It is.
Leah (27:07):
And Akram has what you would call an affectation in his mouth that causes me to
have an accent.
So I'm gonna say.
Or lisp.
Moshe (27:17):
It's not really an accent.
It's an affectation.
Leah (27:21):
And he did not get speech therapy in time, so he still has that, and he'll likely
have it forever, but.
Moshe (27:26):
It'S not nearly as bad as it used to be.
Leah (27:29):
No, he sounds.
How would you put it?
He kind of sounds like a british baby or likea boss Tony or something.
Moshe (27:37):
He.
Leah (27:39):
You'll hear him eventually.
Moshe (27:44):
When I first met him, it was very.
It. It was very interesting.
And as his voice has changed, it's actuallygotten a lot less significant, but it's there,
and it's just how he talks.
And in an effort to try and correct him, they
wanted to make his affectation stop.
And I guess for their efforts.
(28:06):
They really thought that that was somethingthat was important for him, but I.
Leah (28:12):
Don'T really understand why it's not to his overall functionality.
The only thing I could say is that he's a bitsensitive about it.
So if you bring it up, he will say, stopmaking fun of my accent, because I can't help
it.
There was a point in time, he became aware of
it probably around seven ish years old, and heknows it's a thing, but it's just the way his
(28:33):
mouth works.
And in an attempt for them to correct his
speech, he sort of started to sound a bit,like, robotic.
And I think I would just rather him sound likehimself.
What do you think?
Moshe (28:45):
I think it's important for him to be himself.
And because we are living in Israel, and theexpectation is that children speak Hebrew,
which has a whole series of other affectationsthat are associated with that language.
And we discovered that when he speaks Hebrew,he doesn't have an affectation.
(29:06):
And it's kind of interesting because forwhatever reason, we know some people from
different parts of the world who do haveaccents or affectations, that when they speak
Hebrew, they still maintain it, which isinteresting to me.
I am fortunate in that I have lived inmultiple regions, in multiple countries now,
and I have adapted my vocalization to avariety of different things.
(29:31):
My grandmother, my Bubby, spent several yearsin England, so she adopted a somewhat british
affectation, not an accent so much, just, youknow, vestibule and strawberries and stuff.
So I admired her.
So I took that on, and I lived in Quebec, so I
had something of a Quebecois accent for awhile, and then I lived in western Canada for
(29:53):
many years.
So I had something of a west coast californian
thing.
And I lived in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, for
a while.
So I sort of took on a little bit of the
Atlantic Canadian, you know, broom rum roof,you know, things like that.
So I would say that at this point, mydifferent ways of pronouncing things continue
(30:15):
to amuse.
And the other thing is, unfortunately, I have
also been told that I have a bad voice.
And so I have been corrected in my.
My pronunciation of things at various pointsin my childhood.
So I tend to speak a lot slower than I mighthave done at one point, because it makes you
(30:42):
amazing at customer service, because I dothings fast.
I walk fast, I eat fast, I drink fast, I run.
I'm always moving fast.
So what I've been told, and this actually camefrom my father, is slow down and soften your
tone, because I had volume control issues anda lot of autistics do, to my understanding,
(31:07):
where I would basically speak everything at avery high volume because I was expressing
myself.
I was passionate about it.
And if you're passionate about something, whatyou really want to do is yell in somebody's
face as loud as you can so they can hear theexcitement in your voice.
Leah (31:21):
You want to talk about another misunderstanding, try to explain that to
somebody.
Ma'am, why is your large husband yelling in
your face?So he's not.
Moshe (31:31):
It took me years for people to be like, calm down, calm down.
And so now I feel like, I don't know.
You can tell me.
And there's going to be editing softwarebecause it's very quiet and I'm a lot louder,
but my.
My voice has sort of become a lot more even
toned, I guess.
Leah (31:49):
Yeah, I think you have an amazing voice, actually.
Thank you.
So going back to the topic then, having said
all that and all the difficulties that itcauses, you know, the neurotypical parties and
their discomforting feelings and the autisticparties in not understanding why people around
them don't like them or don't want to bearound, et cetera.
Do you think that unmasking could help?So I'm going to call back to the example you
(32:12):
gave the woman that you worked with.
If she said, I'm not sure why you creep me
out, but you creep me out.
And you could have said, I apologize, but it's
because I'm autistic, and I can't always maskwhat my face is doing.
Do you think that would have helped thesituation?
Moshe (32:26):
Probably not.
But she was russian, and so much like many
Israelis here, eastern Europeans, Russians,Israelis, a lot of different demographic
groups tend to be much more.
A lot of asian groups, they tend to be much
more blunt in their speech.
Americanized and canadianized social skills
(32:48):
are very reserved, very shy, very constructed,very sanitized.
Leah (32:54):
Yes, in Jerusalem, we've already heard the r word multiple times.
They still use it here.
Moshe (32:59):
And it's my word.
Leah (33:00):
They don't need a fence.
Moshe (33:01):
No, but I mean, this is exactly the point.
And I said it in the first episode, and I'llsay it again, because when I was growing up
back in way, way back in the 1980s andnineties, we didn't really have a very good
understanding of neurodivergency.
We certainly might not have called it
neurodivergency.
(33:21):
So when people asked me what was wrong with
me, they would assume that I was retarded,because that doesn't necessarily now it's
actually a very pejorative term for mentallychallenged or mentally delayed.
Delayed.
Leah (33:34):
Intellectual.
Moshe (33:35):
Intellectual delay is, I guess, the term name.
But retarded was sort of the catch all termfor anyone who expresses or projects
themselves in a different way.
Leah (33:46):
If you look it up, it literally means slow.
Slow or delayed.
Yeah, it's gotten a really, really bad rap
because of the way it's been used as anabusive.
Moshe (33:58):
And it is.
And there's very few instances where, unless
you're referring to someone in French beinglate, that you can use the word ****** or
retarded in a positive way.
Leah (34:10):
I clean that up.
Moshe (34:11):
Right.
But it's my word, and I'm.
And I'm going to use it.
And if you have an issue with me using it,
then absolutely let me know.
But again, as I said in the very first
episode, way, way, two episodes ago, it's aword that I've had to adapt for myself because
one of the common catchphrases that I would.
(34:34):
That I came up with for telling people what I
was.
Cause they were like, are you retarded?
And I started telling people, no, I'm notretarded.
I'm autistic.
And they were like, ooh, you can't use that
word.
So now I'm gonna put it on a t shirt.
And I don't know that anyone would everactually print it, but it's very important.
And I taught it to Avram back in Canada.
Leah (34:57):
He also used to say, I'm autistic.
I'm not the r word.
But then for us to come here and be in hismeeting for school and for them to ask us
questions, and one of the questions was, he'snot our, is he?
And I went, what planet are we on?
Moshe (35:14):
Because it's a different way of life.
Anyway, that is to say that if you are
autistic, then you can.
I would be able to say at this point, given.
Given my recent experience and not so recentexperience, that if I had to pick between
teaching your child how to function like ahuman, and, again, don't mean that autistic
(35:39):
people aren't humans, but try to function in away that doesn't project your disability or
your different abil, I don't know what youwant to call to the forefront or to teach them
to just accept and love and operate, because,again, I just want to say, for the record,
that I am not saying, and Leah is not sayingthat if your child or your partner or your
(36:03):
friend or your spouse or whatever is autistic,that every one of their behaviors just kind of
has to be accepted as part of who they are.
Absolutely not.
Because you can still say you are autistic.
And I understand that this behavior is because
you're autistic, but it's still not a behaviorthat I, you know, that I feel is fair or good
(36:25):
or functional.
And so we need to work on that.
Leah (36:28):
I actually think I'm going to compile a list of things and one episode will actually
be a game that I like to play called, youknow, Samosha being autistic, or is he just
being on end?
Moshe (36:37):
Because what Leah and I like to say is autism is, is not a, an obstacle.
It is not a barrier.
Sorry, it's a barrier.
It's not a, no, it's not a barrier.
It's an obstacle.
It's something that you have to overcome.
But it doesn't mean that someone just is that
way.
They're just naturally arrogant, naturally
(36:57):
selfish, naturally don't care about otherpeople, naturally have no empathy, naturally
treat others with disrespect, naturally, youknow, operate in a way that is just who they
are.
That's just what happens.
Leah (37:10):
There are certain things that are autism and certain things that are personality.
And separating the two is sometimes difficult,but what I've always said to Moshe is, it is
harder for you, but it is not impossible.
Moshe (37:22):
Exactly.
Leah (37:22):
This topic is very important to me.
So we're going to talk about it again and
we're going to work on.
Moshe (37:28):
And this has been the long term work that Leah and I put into our relationship.
And again, to be fair, it's as much about howI relate to her as it is about how she relates
to me.
And that's a whole other different topic.
But back to the original question.
Some people will look at somebody who is very
clearly autistic, or they'll ask them, but whyare you behaving that way?
(37:51):
And then you'll go, I'm autistic.
And they'll be like, oh, okay, that makes
sense now.
I'm sorry, I was wondering.
Or they'll go, you know what?I don't care.
I still don't like that behavior.
And that's just something you kind of have to
learn to deal with.
Leah (38:05):
So that is your experience, in your opinion?
Doing my research again on the Internet, themajority of people do think that unmasking and
autism will help a lot with this universally.
Moshe (38:15):
Absolutely.
Leah (38:16):
A lot of people, they really are nice and they will understand.
It's just that they don't know crayons.
They don't have a file in their brain that
tells them what to do when some of thesefacial muscles all go slack in there, you
know.
Moshe (38:27):
Right.
Leah (38:28):
So it's a learning opportunity for them as well.
Moshe (38:32):
Right.
Leah (38:32):
So this would be a really good time for us to turn the table, actually, and say,
moshe, do I creep you out?Do autistics actually experience the uncanny
valley?
Moshe (38:44):
And the answer is, we do somewhat and not in the same way.
And again, I just want to preface this, as Ialways do, with saying that this is the
experience of one autistic.
And it may not reflect on everyone else, but
autistic people have been observed in variousstudies where their discomfort may even be the
(39:08):
reverse of uncanny Valley, where they'll findit more comfortable for people that are less
human looking than more human looking.
And I think they refer to it as, like, the
uncanny cliff or the uncanny hill.
Leah (39:22):
It's a drop off.
Yeah, absolutely.
Moshe (39:25):
And that is the one aspect of it.
The other aspect of it is that autistic people
will not traditionally be creeped out in thesame way as neurotypicals.
Again, just experience based on research andmy own experience, because we don't have, or
at least we're not born with the innateconcept that certain things should make us
(39:48):
uncomfortable.
So if a situation is scary or a person is
meant to be creepy, or there's a zombie or amonster on the screen, if you have an autistic
child, the autistic child will offer verylittle reaction.
Or they might actually laugh at it becausethey're so silly looking, but they won't have
the innate concept that this kind of person islooking that way in order to be creepy.
Leah (40:13):
Right.
And we actually talked about this this
afternoon.
We came up with this theory on our own, right.
Is that autistic people in general seem tohave less of a concern about their own safety.
Moshe (40:24):
Correct.
Leah (40:24):
That's not every autistic.
Obviously, Avram has that issue.
So he.
Where danger is really a concept, preservation
of one's life is not something that you wishyou're processing tower off.
So it may actually prevent the uncanny valley,because they're typicals like me.
(40:45):
And many of you out there are sort of bornwith the genes of our ancestors, where if we
were sitting by the campfire and we saw creepyeyes in the woods, that was actual danger to
our lives.
So that could be where this reaction comes
from.
Whereas autistics seem to sort of be missing
that.
Moshe (41:04):
Yes. A lot of autistic people, particularly autistic parents of autistic
people, have noted that their child seemed tolack fear response.
It had to be explained to them.
And trying to explain to someone why they
should be afraid of certain things seemsalmost counterproductive.
It's like inserting negativity into a person'spositive outlook.
(41:27):
And I found it very fascinating, actually,because autism is a very difficult concept to
nail them.
And again, if you've ever tried to look up the
question, what is autism?You get millions and millions of different
studies and hits and references, and it couldbe this or it could be that or it could be
this or that.
(41:48):
So it's really not something that people have
spent a lot of time studying.
So I do what I always do.
And I said, okay, well, what's somethingthat's like autism, that might be better at
defining it?So I did a lot of research on something called
Williams syndrome.
And you can actually look that up.
It's a genetic, we'll call it disorder.
And a lot of the symptoms of Williams syndrome
(42:10):
are very similar or even identical to autism.
And in fact, in a bit of a double whammy, a
lot of people with alien syndrome are alsodiagnosed with autism.
So I'm not even sure how that goes, but it isout there.
And the characteristics that the DSM six.
Leah (42:25):
Is going to look very different.
Moshe (42:27):
Stay tuned, folks, because people have the piecemeal disorders, and they interviewed
people with Williams syndrome and Williamssyndrome children and adults, because it's
fortunately not one of those disabilities thatactually reduces your lifespan or causes any
serious health issues.
I don't believe, and again, if I'm wrong,
(42:47):
please let me know.
But it also comes with a complete absence of
fear, a complete absence of suspicion, and acomplete absence of wariness and a complete
absence of the ability to see someone orsomething as a threat.
And there have been instances where childrenwith Williams syndrome, much like autistic
(43:09):
children, will just run into traffic, notbecause they're concerned, even if they see
the car coming, they'll be like, oh, I want togo there.
It's right across the street.
Leah (43:19):
That's why I had Avraham on a leash.
And if you have a problem with that, you can
certainly write to me.
Moshe (43:24):
And this is the idea.
And they talk to people with Williams syndrome
because their speech is oftentimes veryarticulate.
They're very, very articulate.
And a lot of them, they're still not sure why,
but a lot of them have enhanced auditorysensations.
So they're able to, they're very musicallyinclined, a lot of them.
And they talked to them and they said, whydon't you feel like, why are you concerned?
(43:48):
Like, why aren't you concerned that thesethings might hurt you?
And it's just, it's a complete absence of theability to conceive.
A lot of times that a person would be harmful.
So they'll go up to complete strangers and hug
them and tell them their whole life storybecause they lack the ability to understand
(44:16):
that this person who they don't know fromnobody, might be a threat to them.
And it's kind of sad because you have to tellthis child, this adult, even, who has
basically kept in a state of innocence, thatthey have to be afraid when they have no
concept of what fear even is.
But fear is actually a very positive thing.
(44:38):
We have these instincts in our subconscious tohelp us, to protect us.
If we see a fire, we don't go walking into thefire because we know it's going to burn us.
If we see a man standing there holding a giantmachete, we go, you know what?
I think that guy with the hockey mask and themachete might intend to harm me.
Whereas person with autism with Williamssyndrome might be like, wow, that guy is kind
(45:01):
of cool.
I wonder what he's up to.
Leah (45:02):
What are you doing? Exactly.
Moshe (45:04):
Because they don't have the ability to understand that that person might be a threat
to them.
Leah (45:08):
Exactly.
And this brought up a whole other thing
because, you know, that I'm a giant nerd.
And we might explore this more in another
episode.
Moshe (45:15):
Right.
Leah (45:16):
But in terms of why, if you subscribe to Darwinism, why nature hasn't actually selected
against autism at this point.
Moshe (45:26):
Yeah. So Darwinism is a really good theory.
And of course, we are orthodox Jews, so it'svery much part and parcel of what we believe
anyway, because Judaism definitely does acceptscience.
So the idea of evolution and.
And evolved evolution based on the strongest
characteristics of each individual person orthing or animal or what have you, is there.
(45:49):
Our whole book is about that and the reality.
Exactly.
And the reality of the situation.
Leah (45:55):
We were better than them.
We smashed.
That's the whole fight books, is that.
Moshe (45:59):
Darwinism is not bad.
And again, I don't want the soundbite from
this episode to be Moshe and Leia talk aboutthe fallacy of Darwinism.
No, no, that's not what we're saying.
Darwinism is actually a very valid concept,
but what we're saying is that maybe thefittest amongst us is not necessarily the
(46:20):
goal.
Maybe.
Leah (46:21):
Right.
So that's a very confusing thing to me because
you would think, theoretically, that a personwho has no care for their safety and a very
limited ability to care for themselves wouldhave been selected against back in the days of
cavemen.
Moshe (46:37):
Right.
Leah (46:37):
And I have some interesting ideas as to why that hasn't happened, but you know what?
That might actually be a good topic forputting content.
Moshe (46:46):
It would be.
We can, we can discuss the, the nature of
Darwinism as it relates to neurodivergency andwhy Darwinism does not disqualify
neurodivergency, and some theories behindthat.
But essentially, when you have a community, ifyou're individuals, then obviously the person
(47:06):
who can run the fastest and live the longestand put up with the most harsh conditions are
going to be in demand.
But when you settle down and start building
communities and you have a multitude ofdifferent people who are all differently able,
then you can look at your population and go,you know what?
We have x number of people over there doingall the heavy lifting.
(47:28):
These people seem to struggle with socialconcepts, but they're real good at figuring
out things.
Maybe, maybe we should put them to work on
that.
And you guys, with the clubs and the spears,
you can keep them safe so that they can dotheir job, and in turn they will design better
spears for you or something like that.
Leah (47:49):
That's essentially, yes, what happened or what I think happened.
And so I don't know what this episode is.
It comments definitely hasn't stuck to the
topic.
I do have a couple of more things that I
wanted to cover.
Do autistics and non autistics fall into each
other's uncanny value?Now I have something personally to say about
(48:10):
this.
Moshe, in any of his incarnations as a child,
as a teenager, as an adult, has never creepedme out, ever.
However, clowns make me cringe.
I will run away.
I will smack them.
So try to explain that to me.
Moshe (48:30):
I can't explain that to you.
It's just phobias is outside of my price, is
outside of my pay range.
Leah (48:40):
The phobia of clowns.
It's known as clover phobia.
It's very popular phobia, yes.
And I believe it's actually based in the
uncanny Valley characteristic.
Moshe (48:50):
It actually is.
And it's a very, it's.
I mean, it's a very common phobia.
And it does actually fall, at least I believe
that it does, in the same category of whypeople are creeped out in certain respects by
autistics who are masking because they'reacting in a way that's human, but also not
quote.
Leah (49:08):
People find this very funny.
I'm warning you now, don't email me pictures
of clowns.
Don't send me clowns.
Don't.
Don't.
Moshe (49:16):
But the uncanny Valley effect for autistics is a difficult concept to express
because when you're autistic and you'refinding it difficult to social with someone,
it actually makes you more comforted bysomebody who is less traditionally focused or
(49:37):
looking rather, but they don't fit the modelof what you have come to feel is threatening
to you.
So, for example, somebody who.
I don't know, I want to use a really extremeexample.
Leah (49:51):
Great.
Something new and different for you.
Moshe (49:53):
Yes. So let's say I was talking to somebody who had their eyes gouged out.
Leah (49:58):
I get bald.
Moshe (49:59):
I wouldn't find that very creepy.
Leah (50:01):
I would.
Moshe (50:02):
Because to me, the eyes are one of the things that autistic people often struggle to
relate to.
And in fact, I'll tell a really quick story
because we're running low on time.
I again called into the human resources office
because one of the supervisors, one of myemployers, said that I was leering at her.
(50:22):
And I was called into the office and the humanresources manager talked to me and said, okay,
so the complaint is that he is looking at me,and then he'll look away, and then he'll look
at me, and then he'll look away, and thenhe'll look at me.
And based on that, I was apparently scanningher body up and down.
So he talked to me and he asked me whathappened and what I think was happening.
(50:44):
And he looked at me and he saw that my eyeswould look at him and then look away and then
look at him and then look away.
And he said, you know what?
I already know what's happened here.
You can go.
There's nothing.
I'm going to dismiss this.
And I didn't know why at the time.
I thought, oh, cool, so I'm free to go then.
Great and easy going to maybe stay away fromher if that's how she feels.
Leah (51:06):
Some people are so full of themselves and that.
Moshe (51:09):
And that is essentially what it really came down to.
But if somebody had a difficulty, if someone'sblind, I find it a lot easier to look at them
than if someone is.
We'll say a regular psych when we're.
Leah (51:23):
Talking about communication again in the next episode.
We're going to delve deeply into eye contact,actually.
Moshe (51:28):
And a lot of the things that make it hard for me to look at people or relate to
people are what anyone would consider to benormal.
But then to top it off, and sort of one of ourfinal statements, what I find creepy is
anything that goes away from the concept ofwhat I determine is a standard function of the
(51:53):
human body.
So tattoos creep me out, piercings creep me
out, plastic surgery creeps me out, because inmy mind, I have learned, either consciously or
unconsciously, the way a person is supposed tolook.
And anything that goes outside of that normmakeup, believe it or not, I don't wear
makeup, makes me uncomfortable becauseanything that alters a person's appearance
(52:16):
beyond what my concept of their appearanceshould be.
And again, that can come across as verycontrolling.
And it's been pointed out to me.
Leah (52:27):
I would like to say I don't wear makeup anymore, and that was my choice because it
made him uncomfortable.
He didn't demand that, but it's very.
Moshe (52:34):
Simple for that to go well.
You know, he's trying to control me.
He doesn't want me to wear makeup.
Actually, it's a lot sadder than that.
It's that I have struggled to relate topeople, as many autistics have.
And my way of relating to them is toessentially picture them in a certain way.
And if they don't exactly match that conceptof how they're supposed to look, then I find
(53:01):
that makes me very uncomfortable.
But it has to be subtle, and that's the
difference.
It has to be subtle.
It has to be, I have a tattoo or I have aparticular, you know.
You know, I had hair growing out of my nose.
Leah (53:17):
The hair and the nose got.
We were both uncanny galley by him, right?
We discussed that.
So there was a man.
He was a very nice man.
He was checking our groceries for us, and he
had hair growing all the way down the bridgeof his nose to the tip.
And Moshe and I both noticed it.
But I was able to sort of talk myself down
from it, where he was totally creeped up byit.
(53:37):
He didn't say anything, should congratulatehim.
He was very good about it, but I was sort ofable to be like, okay, so this is weird, but
I'm sure this man is very nice and, andcontinue to just treat him the way that I
would anybody.
And that feeling of initial unrest for me went
away.
Moshe claims that it didn't, but he was very
good about it.
He wasn't insulted.
Moshe (53:57):
Oh, no. Because I. I have learned over time that I have no poker face.
So if I'm finding someone to be, particularlyif something.
If I find something about someone makes meparticularly uncomfortable, a lot of the time,
I'll just look away, or I won't.
I won't engage with them.
And it can come across as shy or unfriendly orwhy isn't he looking at me?
(54:18):
But really, it's as much for you as it is forme, because I don't want to look at you and
have a reaction and we just make youuncomfortable.
Leah (54:27):
We discussed this earlier, actually.
I can tell by the way he's holding his
shoulders, the cut of his jaw, the look in hiseye, the look on his face, what he's likely to
be feeling.
And when people in meetings, for example, look
at him and say, moshe, do you have anything toadd?
I will openly say at this point, nothing thatyou want to hear.
Moshe (54:49):
And that is actually something that we can talk about in the next episode on
revisiting communication.
And so did you have any, do you have any final
points?
Leah (55:00):
I mean, for me, I actually left for conclusions, but I wanted to share one thing
that another content creator said.
Sure, an autistic content creator.
She is a high functioning female autistic whowas also diagnosed later in life.
And she said, you know, the reason whyneurotypical people are often uncomfortable in
(55:25):
dealing with autistic is because autisticpeople who are unmasked will violate the human
norms of social interactions.
Sometimes what it can do is hold up a mirror
to us regarding, really, how insignificant andhow shallow a lot of the things neurotypicals
(55:46):
concentrate on are.
Moshe (55:47):
Right? And that is something that sort of intersects
between sort of the uncanny Valley conceptthat we were talking about today and
revisiting communication, because somethingthat autistics are very good at is brutal
honesty unfiltered by social norms, socialcues, social customs.
(56:12):
And this is what led me to make a teacher atAuburn school cry.
And the fact that when we were out of.
Leah (56:22):
Don't be modest.
More than once.
Moshe (56:24):
More than once.
And when we were at another meeting, most
recently, there was, I made another teachercry, because I have learned through experience
that I am not very good at either hiding myexpression or hiding my feelings.
So the question becomes, if you want myopinion, I will give you my opinion, but you
(56:50):
might not want my opinion if you want to lullyourself into a sense of, you know, self
righteousness or sense of security about whatyou're doing, because I will tell you to your
face, what you're doing is unfair, unjust.
You're clearly unaware of what you're doing.
And I will just kind of sit back and go, well,you wanted my opinion.
Leah (57:11):
Yeah. And that's fair.
I mean, you go into meetings for Avram with
only Avram in mind, and you're not shy aboutthat.
Moshe (57:19):
Yeah.
Leah (57:19):
Because somebody cares how the music is.
Moshe (57:22):
Yes, because I'm out for my family.
I'm out for my kids and out for Leah.
And I am never shy to talk about how somethingmakes me feel.
I've been told that I should be, but I don'tthink that that's reasonable.
Leah (57:39):
Absolutely.
So do we have any conclusions about the
uncanny Valley and autism?
Moshe (57:43):
The only conclusion that I have is essentially we've already discussed, which is
that the uncanny valley, once again, is notsaying that autistic people are, by their
nature creepy.
It's that unfortunately, we live in a society,
wherever you happen to live, when you'relistening to this, that tells you that you
have to behave in a certain way.
(58:05):
And because autistics don't necessarily always
behave in the way that they're expected tobehave, that they're told that they have to
behave a certain way.
And by trying to be someone that they're not,
then they end up causing more people to beuncomfortable by them than if they just were.
Like, you know what?This is who I am, and that is something that
(58:26):
you'll have to get used to.
So if you're autistic and you've had
experiences like I have, let me know.
Write in, comment on this.
Write us five stars or four stars or one star,whatever.
But don't be ashamed and don't beuncomfortable by your own autism.
Accept it, love it.
(58:46):
If you have an autistic child, don't try and
figure out ways to make them look more normal.
Accept who they are and help other people.
Leah (58:58):
I want to say it also on the other way around, if one of your friends or a spouse of
yours or somebody you're dating gives you thatcreepy feeling, don't be ashamed of that.
Openly communicate it.
So your face is doing a thing.
Is there something you'd like to tell me?
Moshe (59:13):
And that's definitely a good way to open up a conversation and maybe start a
dialogue about breaking down barriers andunderstanding each other better.
Leah (59:24):
Can we in on a joke?
Moshe (59:26):
Sure.
Leah (59:26):
How should.
Moshe (59:27):
Yes.
Leah (59:28):
What do you call it when we mask so well that a neurotypical can't tell that you're
autistic?
Moshe (59:33):
I don't know.
What do you call it?
Leah (59:35):
You committed ASCII and Oz.
Moshe (59:37):
Thank you for listening.
Well, that's our show for today.
Now, you know one autistic just a little bitbetter.
So something you may not know about someautistics is that we often struggle with
ending social interactions.
So, Leah.
Leah (59:55):
All right, Bonshaw.
I'll take care of it.
It. Thank you for listening to now you knowone autistic.
See you next week.
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