manipulation is a social construct i think a lot of neurodivergent people struggle with thinking themselves to be manipulative in social situations and i've been thinking about why
manipulation is a social construct society tends to think of manipulation as a bad, malicious and evil thing what is manipulation? most people would probably define it as "trying to impact a person or situation indirectly or covertly / without expressive open statement"
and societally agreed is: thats bad. ... ... ... ... unless its polite unless its an agreed upon (never spoken, never stated, never affirmed) social rule that a specific kind of manipulation is okay and actually good and expected of you.
i think a lot of neurodivergent people take the literal / textbook definition of "manipulation" and then find themselves thinking that any indirect or covert attempt to impact a situation or person is that: manipulation = bad.
but society is so contradictory that it simply chooses to ignore the definition that it itself wrote and coined.
manipulation is bad. being indirect is bad. unless being direct is impolite or rude. unless a social script that would, by textbook definition, be considered manipulation, is considered good and polite.
and sometimes its polite and good UNTIL you get caught. sometimes its considered good and polite as long as you're good enough at concealing your attempts to indirectly and covertly impact situations and people but then if you get caught it was, per definition, always bad that you did that (until the next time when you're expected to attempt the same thing again and try to not get caught again).