My Experience as an Autistic Panty Seller

Seller Sellers’ Perspective My Experience as an Autistic Panty Seller

Hello to everyone reading! My name is Stefanie or you can call me by my username NekoSadomasochist. Some people here have just called me Neko for short which is fine too.

You may already know if you’ve seen my posts on the feed that I am autistic. I decided to write my own blog about my experiences being an autistic panty seller. This idea was partially inspired by the blog What It's Like Being a Neurodiverse Panty Seller by CurvyBlondexo, where she discusses her experiences here as a seller with ADHD, I highly recommend that you give it a read.

My Experience Here

I have had some people here be very accepting and understanding, I’ve even found a few buyers that happen to be on the spectrum themselves. Unfortunately, I’ve had a chunk of people be not so accepting or understanding. Now, you’re probably thinking “Why would someone not accept someone for being autistic? That’s horrible.” A lot of the time though, it’s not as simple as that. I remember watching a tiktok from an autistic creator that was saying that most people wouldn't take issue with someone for being autistic, but they would take issue with you because of your autistic traits. I have often found this to be true myself.

A lot of the time, both here and offsite, I get told I seem standoffish or uninterested or unfriendly. This is because neurotypicals have a specific way in which they communicate with each other. Specific wording means specific things, they use tone, body language and facial expressions in a specific way. Autistic people communicate differently and have a different way of understanding socialising. We often run into misunderstandings because a neurotypical assumes we’re using a neurotypical way of communicating when we are no,t so you end up reading into what we’re saying when there’s nothing there.

The use of subtext is the biggest problem I run into as an autistic person. It’s one of the reasons I released a previous blog on improving our communication here.

Subtext is when you do or say one thing to basically hint at another. Like if you ask someone “Why are you wearing that top?”, for a neurotypical, that would mean “That’s ugly, don’t wear that.”

However, when I ask that, I mean it very literally. No subtext. I’m just curious about how you decided on wearing that top and why you like it. Nothing more.

Another thing I struggle with is picking up on hints from others, I don’t use subtext myself and I don’t detect it when others use it. It may be that someone was expecting something from me and ended up getting frustrated with me because I didn’t do it because I didn’t even realise they wanted something. The worst interaction was when a seller offered some tips for what to put in my bio and she told me to remove the fact that I’m autistic because in her words “it could put buyers off”.

If you’re put off by autistic sellers, then I don’t want to work with you anyway and of course, if I don’t talk about my autism, it leads to more misunderstandings. In terms of positives, I do find that my special interests are well received on the feed. My current special interest is astrology which I get a lot of good responses from! I also love anime, video games and horror.

Explaining My Autism and Mental Health

I’ve often had people snap at me because they assumed I was using mean subtext when I wasn't. I think this is because I speak very bluntly, matter of fact and to the point.

Neurotypical people usually only speak this way when they’re annoyed, mad at you, rushing you, hinting that they want you to go away etc. However, that’s not the case for me. It’s simply the way I speak, it's my default. There is no subtext behind it.

As a side note, I’d like to remind all the readers that we are talking over text posts and messages and often, we use voice tone, facial expressions and body language to convey our message accurately but it’s a lot harder to convey our message accurately with text.

Even with the use of emojis, we can still be easily misunderstood so we could all benefit from using more patience and understanding on ATW, given this.

Back to the topic at hand, I also deal with mental health issues. Some related to my autism, some not. Because of this, I often struggle with having sleep issues. There are nights where I take much longer to get to sleep and either wake up late or have to function on only a few hours of sleep.

There are some nights where I can not sleep at all and have to spend the next day awake with no sleep the previous night whatsoever. This is why I don’t really have a regular looking posting schedule.

Due to my mental health issues, I also have days where I don’t have as much energy and can’t put in as much effort as I usually can. I have been told by sellers that I shouldn’t be negative on the feed before when I have expressed any concern or set a boundary for myself. It may be that this is because my way of speaking makes what I’m saying seem more negative.

I only post things like that to make sure my mental health is protected, as sitting on my bed, being upset and saying nothing makes me feel very stressed and panicked so I would rather address the issues I’m having with people, which I try to do as calmly and politely as I can as I’m not looking to start an argument. I just want to set a boundary. Sometimes I speak on things that upset me and that apply to many other sellers because I feel that it needs to be said. After all, we can’t fix our problems if we don’t talk about them.

Masking

There is something called Masking. This is when an autistic person uses their knowledge of neurotypical social interactions to basically act neurotypical. We copy and mimic what we have witnessed other neurotypicals do. I’m fully aware that this is something I could do and it may help. However, there are 3 massive issues with that.

We shouldn’t have to hide our true selves and pretend to be what is deemed ‘normal’ and acceptable. There is nothing wrong with being autistic and we shouldn’t have to cover it up and live in fear of being misunderstood and judged all the time.
Masking often leaves autistic people exhausted, resulting in autistic burnouts, autistic meltdowns and sometimes shutdowns. It takes a huge toll on our mental health.
After many years of masking, I’m fed up with it. It’s left me feeling empty and hollow at times. It’s made me have more feelings of self loathing than any other negative experience in my life has. The only reason I’ve masked is out of fear of threat and judgement. It’s not something we do because we want to, we only do it when we HAVE to.

I would rather be myself and spend time helping people understand and educating them than pretending to be something else and sacrificing my mental health.

I hope this has helped people to understand where I’m coming from a bit better and has also provided some useful insight into what it’s like to be autistic and deal with mental health issues. If you have any follow up questions, feel free to comment. I hope you have a lovely day!

By NekoSadomasochist

⭐ Kink friendly and all genders welcome ⭐ 💋 Messages are welcome, along with any questions you may have. I'm happy to chat with buyers and get to know eachother first...

View Profile >

Interested in contributing to our awesome community blog? Why not get in touch with our friendly team?