No, i don’t think that identifying as autistic fulfills the same need that belonging to the Elks or the Harvard club fulfills. But i do think that people are happier when they can hang out with “people like me”, and that these days, picking the right label can be part of finding actual groups to hang out with that include “people like me”.
Are we though? Personally I would not want to be the only one “like me” in a social group but I’d find a group of mes unappealing. No ding on me, just that a variety of interests and personality styles is much more interesting. (True some others I’d rather avoid.)
FWIW and off subject some, the phenomenon you describe has been used as a possible explanation for the apparent increase in autism cases (beyond the more inclusive case identification), the assertive mating theory: generations past someone with a few autism predisposing genes, who was socially awkward and had a narrow interest focus and who now might get identified as mild ASD instead of just quirky, would often end up partnered to someone with more social skills who took more of the social lead. Genes diluted. The greater self selection of those with narrow focus into groups like themselves in in the workplace and socially, partially enabled by the the internet and no eye contact required, led, in this hypothesis, to more pairing of those with mild to moderate gene loads and more children born with higher loads, far enough on the spectrum that it becomes major disability.
But that is an aside.
I’ve heard it called the “son of MIT” syndrome, and it’s usually linked not so much to people choosing to flock with people like them, but with colleges (where many people find their mate) becoming more gender-balanced, so MIT students are likely to date each other, instead of the boys at MIT dating the girls at nearby women’s colleges.
But I’m surprised by your claim that you prefer groups of people mostly different from you. As a quirky kid who liked math, as a girl who didn’t like girly things, i have been far happier since i graduated from high school and went to a selective college full of geeky math nerds, and have also fallen into a mostly queer crowd, not because I’m really queer, but because queer people are okay with my not fulfilling gender norms. Do people in those groups also have interests i don’t share? Of course they do. But they are enough like me that i can let down my guard, and enjoy socializing.
Fwiw, I’ve “joined” several fringe communities. I hang out with puzzle enthusiasts, dancers, board game players, queer people, and gardeners. But I’m each of those groups i have important commonalities with other members of the group. And that makes me SO much happier than socializing with random groups of neighbors, for instance. (Which i also do.)
I think that depends a little bit on what “people like me” means. I don’t want to hang out with a bunch of people who are exactly “like me” in terms of their interests, opinions, personality, etc. But I do want to hang out with people “like me” who have conversations and opinions about a variety of topics, unlike some of my husband’s friends who really only talk about sports.
if they were partnered at all.
It’s the logic that underlies my support for DEI, just at a personal lived experience level. Mind you my lived experience is mostly spending time at work and with my spouse, then with other family and occasionally out as couples with old friends. I likely socialize much less than you do! But when socializing I’d rather have a conversation with someone different than me than with someone who has my exact background. Of course you are correct that there has to be some commonality to connect upon though.
Then i think you are wrong about people grouping to find people exactly like them. Most people who grab a diagnosis or a form of sexual identity are looking for people who have one important thing in common with them, not for people identical to them. At least, that’s what they are likely to find, i guess i didn’t know the actually motivations.
Not a claim I mean to make.
I was just commenting on your claim that people are happier when they can hang out with “people like me” … I am not sure that actually being “like me” is what is behind these waving of identity flags and club memberships. (Nor, as a separate comment, am I convinced that being in such a group delivers being happier.)
If you aren’t fairly close to “normal”, i am 100% convinced that it does. I’m not claiming that identifying with X creates happiness, but that hanging out with people who share X with you, at least part of the time, does facilitate happiness.
There are a lot of reasons that Black people like to live in neighborhoods with other Black people, Jews like to live in neighborhoods with other Jews, queer people like to live in neighborhoods with other queer people, Catholics like to live with other Catholics, Greeks like to live with other Greeks, people who have university degrees like to live with other people with university degrees, artists like to live near other artists, etc. Yes, it’s ALSO rewarding to sometimes hang out with people who are different from you. But if most people are different from you in important ways, and you don’t have a lot of time with people “like me”, there are huge benefits to happiness from spending some time with people “like me” in those ways.
Sure there are reasons, but I am unconvinced that living in segregated communities delivers greater happiness than living in communities integrated across religious, racial, ethnic, and economic lines. Probably for a different thread but it seems multiracial communities deliver happiness just fine, and economic diversity has benefits, for example.
Did i say that people need segregated communities? I did not. I said that people prefer to live in communities that include other people like them.
Now, Vi Hart has a nice illustration of how a preference for living with a few people like you can lead to a lot of segregation in society.
But I’m curious. I believe you are Jewish. Do you live in a community with no Jews? Would you prefer to do so? Do you think it would be good for you? Does it help to identify as a Jew to find other Jews?
As evidence that being with people like you makes for greater happiness.
As I have said from the start of this digression:
I am not the only Jew in my community but we are a definite minority of a community that is diverse across religious, ethnic, racial, and economic lines. There is another Jewish family on our block and I am no more or less friendly with them than with my other neighbors.
But “a definite minority” still means you can gather for Yom Kippur, and you can share the experience of being Jewish.
I think it’s the same for trans people. Or neurodiverse people. They don’t need, or even want, to spend all their time only with people like them, but they are happier if they can find other people like them to share important experiences and fragile feelings. But, critically, they can’t do that without first identifying as trans or neurodiverse.
My guess is you are mostly “normal” in your community, and are rarely othered. So your community offers you the support you crave, without your needing to look for specific sub-communities. I’m not. In elementary school, i was always the only Jew in my class. I was always the only kid who liked math in my class. I was always the only tomboy in my class.
I don’t live in a community of gender-non-conforming mathy Jews. But i do identify with and spend time with sub communities that tick each of those boxes. And i am SO much happier for it. And i think that’s why people choose to identity as queer or neurodiverse. So they, too, can reap those benefits.
Which happily returns to the poorly articulated OP!
Agreed that finding ways to connect with others across aspects of our individual intersectional identities can be beneficial to our well being. My OP is not intended to be about identifying aspects of identity that makes us feel different and connecting some by that label. It is more about the sense of some number wanting to have these aspects become the flag for who they are increasingly, more at the margins of the identity doing so, and speculating about if the lack of other means of belonging contributes to it.
Jews also tend to live near other Jews because that’s where the amenities they need are located:
- kosher markets and eateries
- religious schools
- and most crucially, synagogues, which need to be within walking distance at least one day a week.
And gay people tend to live near other gay people because that’s where they can find people to date, gay bars to hang out in, etc.
We are wired to belong to a group. Exile from the group meant almost certain death in primitive tribes. The dynamics have changed faster than we have been able to adapt to this. Religion addresses a large part of this. I have had a minor obsession with this concept my entire adult life. I have been working on a book I call the collaboration which formulates a plan that greatly increases ones chance of finding their niche in life with likeminded people.
FWIW (i.e. very little), when I think of people claiming non-diagnosed neurodivergence as a personality trait, it’s not often ASD but usually some sanitized benign version of a “Oops, that’s just my OCD/ADD, teehee” type thing. Or introversion. A whole lot of “Well, as an introvert, you have to understand my habits…”
Just my experience and all the usual caveats about there being a bajillion people so you can always find someone who did something.
Except that most Jews in the Diaspora don’t keep kosher or attend Synagogue on a regular basis, even if that’s how many communities originally formed. There is still a desire to have community of thought in close proximity.
The Dope provides an excellent real world example to examine.
By many standards, the people here are different: age, sex, sexual identity, race, location, education, income, interests. At first glance we are as random a group of people as to be found on the internet.
But we are nearly universally liberal, Democratic, tolerant of racial, sexual, and preference matters, and virulently anti-Trump.
That is not by sheer happenstance. The Board has worked consistently, if at times slowly, to remove Others of a certain type to make this a more congenial environment for the ones who haven’t yet been driven away by the Others’ speech.
The Dope thereby has gained the diversity that you talked of but also subsumed that to the more important virtue of a crowd of “people like us.” I would suggest that is the sweet spot of club membership, the factor that created so many physical types of clubs in the olden days and the factor that sieves out non-compliant voices on the internet to make echo chambers.