'Cheer up'

‘Cheer up’

 I am not in possession of a face that is naturally expressive in every-day situations. I can actively concentrate to make my face display an emotion and if I’m feeling an extreme emotion then my face will show that. But if my emotions fall into the category of ‘not extreme’ and I’m not actively concentrating on making my face look expressive then quite often my face looks very blank. This is a fairly common thing for autistic people and it doesn’t really cause that much of an issue most of the time. Where an issue does arise however is when other people project their expectations onto me as to what an expressionless face is expressing. I’ve had people think I’m displaying sadness or anger, even at times when internally I’ve felt either total contentment or mild happiness. And that in itself isn’t a bad thing, mis-reading people’s body language is something that a lot of us do and being autistic I’m used to having to ask for clarification because I often can’t be sure what someone else is expressing. So there’s no issue with someone double checking with me that I’m ok etc. Where the problems start is when people take it a step further and instead of checking what it is I’m feeling or checking I’m ok, I get met with hostility and commands.

 This is not a phenomena unique to autistic people and nor is it unique to female-appearing people, but it IS more commonly experienced by us than by male-appearing people and as autistic peeps seem to have a higher-than average blank-face occurrence….you can be pretty sure we get these comments more than average too.

I have had complete strangers in the street angrily tell me to ‘cheer up’ and to ‘smile’. I’ve had a street salesperson mock my expression by saying ‘alright smiler!’ to me in a loud carrying voice, I’ve even had it when I’ve been at work! One thing that links all my experiences of it is that every single comment that I can remember, and believe me I remember a lot of them, have come from men. I cannot remember a woman, genderqueer or female-presenting person ever telling me what my face should be expressing. Ever.

Considering that I am autistic, human interaction, especially when uninvited and unexpected, can be quite draining and stressful, so to have a total stranger suddenly decide they have the right to comment on my expression of emotion (or lack of) and tell me I should remedy it….that’s really upsetting. It also only seems to happen when I’m on my own, which makes it more distressing because I’m fairly little and most people, especially male people are a lot bigger than me, so to have to deal with all those combined factors is very daunting and intimidating. Especially because a lot of the time when I’m out of the house I’m concentrating on doing something specific and depending on my levels of energy, I might be having to concentrate really hard on remembering what I’m doing, or reminding myself that I don’t need to panic, that I can do this, I’m just going to buy some bread etc

Thing is, this ‘smile’ or ‘cheer up love’ phenomena constantly gets dismissed by those who have not experienced it. You get people saying ‘oh well they were just trying to cheer you up’ or whatever, but that’s not actually what the people who say it are trying to do. There’s no concern there, there’s no query as to if you are ok. It takes the shape of a command, which by its very nature is both critical of you and dismissive of the very real fact that maybe today is not a good day for you and you have every right in the world to be expressing whatever emotions you want (or not express any). It is a phenomena that is directly connected to the fact that women and female-presenting people are constantly told we are decorative, we are there to look pleasing, and a lot of us know from personal experience that when we do not appearing friendly and welcoming, we get met by a horrible amount of negativity for it. It’s like we’re not allowed to be full humans. But sometimes we do have a bad day, sometimes our faces don’t look expressive, it’s no one else’s business what emotions we may or may not be showing and it’s a disgusting dismissal of our right to exist that total strangers believe that have a right to tell us what we should be doing when it does not affect them one bit.

And I do know the difference between concern and commands. Because I’ve had both, and I’ve had both from men and the difference is very, very obvious, because one involves a conversation that asks me a question and one involves a command or mocking comment that is often made in passing and does not expect me to reply.

The example of concern that I like to use is of one night when I was walking back from town and a guy sitting on the pavement by the bridge saw me and called to me ‘excuse me, are you ok? You look a bit sad, are you alright?’ And then had an actual conversation with me. He wanted to know if I was ok because he read my face as looking sad so asked me about it. He wasn’t offended that I wasn’t smiling, he didn’t tell me to look happy, he considered the fact that I was a fellow human being who might be feeling upset and wanted to check if that was the case. THAT is what concern looks like. It involves RESPECT.

This is quite clearly a very different approach to the comments of ‘doesn’t hurt to smile you know’ or ‘smile!’ or ‘cheer up love!’ which are not questions and do not involve respect. They are not treating me as an equal to have a conversation with, they ask for no input from me. They are full of assumption and command, which is not an indicator of concern for my wellbeing at all.

Why I’m writing this post now however is because yesterday I was on the receiving end of this phenomena yet again, but this one really broke the record for levels of upsetting.

This one was from a member of staff at a bank where I had gone to make a transaction.

First off this member of staff attempted to make small talk with me, as quite often people do when serving a customer. I did what I usually do when this happens and I’m not in a headspace to make conversation and replied by nodding and one word answers. Normally this is enough to express quite clearly that I’m not ok to talk just now, I just want to make a transaction and go on my way. And normally what happens is that the staff respect this, because not everyone makes small talk and when you work with the public, you pick that fact up fairly quickly, so it’s really no big deal. This guy however decided it WAS a big deal. He kept firing mockery and questions at me in an increasingly rude way. He mocked the fact I’d brought my money in a small cardboard box (because it wouldn’t fit in my purse) and then kept asking questions about m day even though it was obviously something I did not wish to talk about. ‘what have you been up to this morning?’ ‘What are you doing this afternoon?’ ‘have you had a good day so far?’ to which I replied ‘no’. Without missing a beat and in a tone of complete lack of concern he says ‘why?’

I felt literally amazed that he thought it appropriate to ask such an invasive question when it was clear that a) I didn’t want to talk and b) when someone answers that they’ve not had a good day and don’t automatically offer further details, they probably don’t want to talk about it, especially not to a stranger in a public setting! He didn’t know me, he quite clearly didn’t care, he had already mocked me and his tone had got increasingly upsetting. I did not reply at all to this question and there was a pause while he counted some more money. He then said, (and bear in mind this is a member of STAFF at a BANK with me as a CUSTOMER) ‘you could cheer up you know, it’s really not that bad.’

At which point I snapped and leant on the counter and told him exactly what I’d been doing that morning ‘I have just been to an abuse counselling session, it is none of your business what I am doing today and you should NEVER tell a woman to ‘cheer up it’s not that bad’ because it quite often IS.’

He instantly looked horrified and said ‘my apologies, my apologies’ over and over. But I was nearly crying and felt utterly humiliated. For once my blank face had been genuinely trying to cover feelings of upset and anxiety, and I got met with that comment. The assumption that I had nothing in my life which I might be feeling upset or anxious about, the sheer nerve of someone to assume they knew my life better than me and had the right to tell me how to feel about it….that was just…. It amazed me. I felt utterly humiliated at being pushed into a metaphorical corner by him so that I said what I did. I did not wish to reveal that information to him nor to the large queue of people behind me, nor to his colleagues beside him. But I am somewhat glad that I did because maybe now he will think twice before assuming he has the right to tell anyone how to feel or assuming there’s nothing in someone’s life that might cause them to feel down.

It’s not that I’m surprised by his comment or his mockery, or insistence that I speak to him even when I clearly did not wish to. Because I’ve had that all loads of times before. It’s never acceptable, it’s always upsetting, but it’s never that surprising. It was more the shock factor that he, as a member of staff serving a customer, thought it was appropriate for him to speak like that to me. I finished my transaction and left immediately. I went into a nearby shop and went to hide in the bra section, a place where it is usually nice and quiet and I have never had anyone make horrible comments to me. I very nearly had a full on panic attack and had to text one of my friends to see if I could go and hide at hers for a while. It was horrible and I felt shakey for the rest of the day. I still don’t feel right now.

I’ve put in a formal complaint with the bank and they have said they will write an email to the branch in question, which is great because that guy needs some serious education, but also leaves me feeling rather sad inside. Because while the context of him saying stuff like that as a member of staff was new and the comments were made in a perfect example of bad-timing (straight after a counselling session) the comments themselves are standard, and that’s the really upsetting bit.

I’m autistic and I’m female-appearing. And I feel anxious about human interaction, especially with strangers, and especially with male strangers, and yet these comments happen sometimes on a weekly basis. It’s a double layer of sucky-ness. The sexism AND the fact that I’m being emotionally drained by unwanted interaction.

I just wish people would think before they said this sort of stuff because genuinely: you often have NO idea what may or may not be happening in someone else’s life so to make any assumptions is a disgusting thing to do, and to tell someone to do something, not for their benefit but because…..I don’t even know, does it offend these people when we aren’t smiling all the time? I have no idea….but whatever the reason, it’s not cool. Someone else’s expression or lack of expression is none of your business, we’re just going about our lives, just leave us to it, ok?