What is the point of clapping? Sitting in the packed overspill hall at Conservative party conference this week, watching Theresa May do her thing via a screen rather than live in person, the surprising thing was that people still clapped, even though they must have known the speaker couldn’t actually hear them. They might as well have been screaming into the void, or sitting in stony silence. But so deeply ingrained is the habit that this ghostly audience still reacted exactly as it would have done in the hall: dutiful smatterings of applause where they know they’re meant to show approval, more enthusiastic spanking of hands for the bits they actually like. There’s something curiously satisfying about applauding things that move us, so much so that trying to stop yourself feels awkward and frustrating.
Ironically, that’s roughly how some autistic people also feel about flapping their hands, or rocking back and forwards, or other so-called stimming behaviours that may come out when excited, or anxious, or overwhelmed by noise and lights and stimuli. The difference is that clapping is thoroughly acceptable in polite society and stimming isn’t, so some autistic people spend a great deal of energy trying to suppress the urge in a way that must feel pretty awkward and frustrating too. And it’s this question of who should be accommodating whom – how far it’s up to neurological square pegs to cram themselves into the round holes provided, and how far it’s up to the rest of us to make more generous allowances – that is at the heart of an otherwise rather madly overblown argument about clapping.
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