Interesting to hear about you and your daughter re: autism. Since my son was diagnosed (he's 14) I've learned a lot more about all this. My wife has insisted for years that I'm autistic, but I only recently gave the theory any credence (although, as I said, I decided not to go through with the full diagnosis). I hope you and your daughter get the support you need. We've had a lot of dialogue with our school to try and make accomodations for my son, and in fairness, they have done quite well to help.

Anyway, I'm very sorry to hear about this entire business with David. I can entirely understand why you wouldn't want to engage with bullying or meaness or any such nonsense, and I full accept that I'm only aware of one side of this situation (until your remarks explained your side of things). Ultimately, it is none of my business, so please forgive me for pressing the point earlier.

My own policy here on Medium is to answer all civil comments, but comments that aren't civil I generally ignore. I simply won't interact with people who aren't capable of basic politeness. Don't get me wrong, I have no issue with robust debate and disagreement, sarcasm, and so on, but directly calling people names is just stupid. That's one reason I refuse to be on Twitter or X or whatever the hell it is these days. As for other social media, I don't do much other than Facebook to promote my film reviews and novels.

Here, things seem reasonably civil on the whole (certainly in comparison to TwitTok and its ilk), but then again, I carefully curate who I read. My rule of thumb if I disagree with a viewpoint is always attack the argument, not the person making the argument. That's my basic rule if I decide to debate someone (and even then, I choose such people with care, as I only debate people I respect).

By the way, I have no issue with your venting, if you wish to. I quite understand feeling tired of all this. :)