A lot of autistic girls get told that we're stuck up

A lot of autistic girls get told that we're stuck up or we think that we're all that when we're literally just existing. A big piece of why this happens comes down to a neurotypical bonding technique called "ritual self deprecation." When neurotypical girls bond, they will often speak badly about themselves to signal humility and safety. They'll say things like "I look so gross today," which signals an expected, mandatory game of mutual reassurance. It is essentially like an animal showing you their underbelly or vulnerabilities to signal to you that they're not a threat. But to our logical autistic brains, participating in this can feel really awkward because we tend to be wired for authenticity, whereas neurotypical language is often used to manage social structures. So when someone insults themselves, our hyper empathy will often recognise it as like a real distress signal. And we also tend to treat language literally, so saying something false or negative about ourselves just to bond can feel like a performative lie and a waste of time and energy. But when we don't play along with that reassurance game, they can misinterpret our personal boundaries as arrogance and falsely assume that because we refuse to put ourselves down, we must think we're better than everyone else. Personally, I think words have a lot of power, so I've never participated in this, even when I observed it. But it's still interesting to understand why I may be taken a certain way in these situations.