I did complain on the blog several times that I hate when people stereotype me and when it’s the British who do that I consider it to be racism. I didn’t change my mind about it, as yet. I doubt I ever do.

However, two days ago I started reading a book Qualitative Research by David Silverman. I hope it will help me with my university course. After just a few pages I realised I behave like an ethnographer. That means I constantly observe people, never stereotype, never jump to conclusion. I started wondering if that’s my natural way of being or maybe it’s something I decided to do ages ago.

I quickly realised that when I first got interested in psychology, maybe around the time I was 17, I read a lot that we shouldn’t be stereotyping so possibly that is why I decided not to do that.

But not stereotyping is not necessarily such a good thing either, especially when we are in a situation that is not good for us. Do I really need to continue a friendship with someone who constantly says ‘such and such situation wouldn’t happen to me because I know how to talk to people’ when I complain about something, but they never answers my question about what they would do instead. And to clarify, that person knew I’m autistic.

Perhaps it would be better to stereotype the above person as someone who’s dishonest and move on instead of looking for a reason why they’re dishonest and assuming that if I didn’t find a dead body there’s no evidence that the crime has been commited.

Those kind of situations never end well, there’s a lot of heartache for good couple of months and finally a big argument, when I decided I had had enough. But I never know the reason for their behaviour.

Perhaps I should include some degree of stereotyping into my coping strategies.

What I wonder about now though is, how come, with all those talks on tv, tweets and articles online about how we shouldn’t be stereotyping people, non autistics have absolutely no problems with doing that.