I managed to get past the paywall on the article somehow, so here’s the actually important stuff:
But for a community organized around social impairment, they maintained an astonishing number of social rules. Certain language and beliefs were treated as harmful, and activists policed them aggressively. Terms like high-functioning, low-functioning, severe, and profound were condemned as “ableist.” Again and again, I watched popular accounts direct their thousands of followers to comment sections so they could scold people for using the wrong language or expressing the wrong views about autism.
AKA “muh free speech”
Activists reserved particular contempt for anyone who upheld the medical understanding of autism spectrum disorder, targeting organizations, researchers, and universities that treated autism as a disorder and supported work on its causes, treatment, or cure. They compared that work to eugenics and tried to shut it down through petitions, harassment, and public pressure. Too often, they succeeded.
“We should ‘fix’ autistic people, why doesn’t everyone agree with me??? 😢”
when I began referring to myself with the term Asperger,
The response was fierce. Activists rejected the idea that there was any sort of hierarchy in the autism spectrum.
“Why don’t people like it when I use an outdated term, removed from the DSM-5, that is often used to imply low intelligence of autistic people and want me to use the more broadly accepted inclusive term instead???”
Then, my life changed. In 2022, after working for several years as an artist, I became a journalist. The career shift was spurred by my discovering the stories of detransitioners: mainly young women who had once identified as transgender and now no longer did, and whose experiences were largely ignored by mainstream media. I could relate to them; many of them, like me, had struggled deeply as teenagers and searched for a label that seemed to explain their suffering. As I learned more about their experiences, I was forced to think more critically about how activism and media shape cultural narratives around identity and diagnosis, and how perverse social incentives can lock those narratives into place.
“I saw people detransition and that means that means autism can be a social contagion and because I see it as debilitating I want a reason to believe I’m faking it”
I soon began taking on stories that required heavy reporting. As I spoke with sources, built rapport, asked sensitive questions, and earned their trust, I realized something that should have been obvious much earlier: I do not have a social communication deficit. Not only was I competent at socializing, I was good at it, and I improved the more I did it.
“I’m good at socializing therefore I don’t have autism”
Which forced me to ask: What else could have explained my social discomfort? In retrospect, the answer was more ordinary than I wanted it to be. I was a sensitive, introverted child who felt social mistakes intensely. Instead of responding to them by becoming more resilient, I chose to retreat into my interests, because they felt safer than people. Over time, that withdrawal hardened into a pattern.
“Pull yourself up by your bootstraps” but applied to emotions. If she’d just responded better to mistakes, she’d never have been diagnosted as autistic, guys!
My diagnosis unraveled further once I started questioning the other traits I had come to see as autistic. Introversion, high sensory sensitivity, intense interests, and social camouflaging are not exclusively the features of an autist; they are widely distributed across the general population. But using the female autism framework, I came to see them as a meaningful pattern.
“I have a ton of heavily correlated traits that are all often linked to autism, but if I look at them individually instead of recognizing the actual pattern, and say that non autistic people can have them too, that means I’m ‘normal!’”
This happened very swiftly, partially because an autism diagnosis is not especially difficult to obtain. The process, which has no objective medical test and relies primarily on self-reported traits interpreted by individual clinicians, leaves enormous room for confirmation bias and error. My own evaluation did not consider alternative explanations for my experiences, only that they had been present since childhood.
“We can’t do a DNA test for autism, therefore doctors must be just guessing and patients must be making it up”
Research shows that more and more people, especially young women, are over-identifying with psychiatric diagnoses, desperate for some sort of label to explain their struggles or abnormalities.
“More people are self-diagnosing, therefore trained medical professionals using actual diagnostic methods will also be diagnosing a ton of people with autism that don’t have it”
Losing the autism label allowed me to regain something more valuable than certainty: agency. My difficulties did not disappear, but they no longer defined the limits of who I could become. There is comfort in a story that shifts responsibility away from the self. Sometimes that comfort is almost irresistible. But in the end, it is better to believe in the possibility of change than to embrace a narrative that says you never had a choice at all.
“If you think you’re autistic, you’ll assume you have innate limits and stop trying hard enough.” AKA “Autism stops you from reaching your full potential and is a crutch”
It’s so ironic, they spend quite some time insinuating these problems are just hurdles to get over with by getting gud, then they talk proudly about how they no longer label themselves autists and that’s liberating, as if accepting yourself was a hurdle that CAN’T be jumped over so I’ll just lie myself.
Wait, Asperger’s is considered a bad term? I did not know that as someone originally diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome myself (but I did understand that it became incorporated as part of the spectrum).
Doing a bit more research, looks like it’s because of its origins in WWII Nazi Germany (and therefore being linked to eugenics, white supremacy, etc., the idea that these people are better than those people). Dang, I definitely did not know that. I will try not to use it then.
The whole thing is disingenuous. The use of “Aspergers” is partly discontinued because of fascist associations. It shouldn’t be surprising that people don’t want to use a classification termed by people who wanted to sort useful autistics from the disposable (as they saw it).
I actually didn’t post all of it! The full article was probably about 4-6 times as long as just the snippets I showed, if not more. I cut out a lot of either repetitive points, or stories that just didn’t really make a point and were more there just to illustrate this specific person’s life in general for emotional attachment.
I mean, I think autism could be partially a social construct, in the sense that many people who have been diagnosed with autism (though nowhere close to all) would have very few symptoms if society were geared towards them. My autism is mostly problematic because of how other people react to it or because of getting overwhelmed by things that would be greatly reduced in a world where (at least a subsection of) autism was neurotypical.
I am not trying to minimize the experience of people whose autism is a significant disability that wouldn’t be noticeably affected by societal change, to be clear.
Yeah, it’s a social construct in the sense that it’s just natural differences among humans, specifically differences that don’t as often square with societal/social norms as the average person. If society were comprised of all autistic people, you wouldn’t have the label “autism”, you’d just have “people that are the way people are.”
That said, unlike the article implies, autism is, of course, not just something everyone is choosing, making up, or using to justify not doing work.
I will note the article doesn’t technically say “everyone with autism is faking it and it’s not real”, it just implies that because a lot of people self-diagnose with it now, that must mean that the real numbers are way lower than they actually are, and that people who have autism, but don’t experience major social or productivity related issues from it, aren’t actually autistic and are just “introverted” or some other general term that could theoretically apply.
I’m on the autism spectrum. I’m high-functioning, what would have been called Aspergers prior to DSM-V. What that means is that I largely function in day-to-day life, and that I don’t need significant supports. The term ‘Aspergers’ is helpful, because people have a rough idea of what you mean when you use it. Austism spectrum disorder is more nebulous. Treating differing levels of support as being ‘hierarchical’ is not useful, and will–in the long run–tend to mean that everyone gets the same levels of support, rather than people with greater needs getting more support. (Would it be nice to get therapy? Sure. Do I need it as much as other people might? Probably not.)
And fuck yes, if there was a magic pill that I could take and I’d suddenly be absolutely dead-average neurotypical? Yeah, I’d take it. I’d swallow a handful. I’m probably a lot older than a bunch of other people on the spectrum here, and lemme tell you, it does not get better. If anything, the older you get, the worse it is, because the friends you had in school drift away, and you don’t make new ones. I know that social lives tend to get worse as people age, but at this point, the ONLY social life I have is two hours of church (non-denom universalist unitarian; I gave up theism years ago) on Sundays.
I have a degree, I have a job that I’m good at, I own a house and land, I have a ton of cats that mostly like me, blah blah blah. But goddamn, I feel very alone. I tried for YEARS to do what I thought you were supposed to do to meet people and make friends, and shit always fell flat. And now I know that yes, it IS me, I’m the problem. I’m the one that’s fucking up. (And apparently it’s really really autistic to send out questionnaires to ask people where I could improve in my social skills.)
And fuck yes, if there was a magic pill that I could take and I’d suddenly be absolutely dead-average neurotypical? Yeah, I’d take it. I’d swallow a handful.
As another on the “high-functioning” category (though not very high I guess since I’ve failed in life already), I find this always so heart-breaking. I understand exactly where it’s coming from, but it is still so sad to me. We are conditioned to see ourselves so flawed, so unworthy, there’s no understanding to be given. You look at the others and there’s the glass wall you can’t cross, and they tell you to come over as if it isn’t there. We just can’t fit in the narrow roles society has to offer without diminishing ourselves by masking, and that’s just suffering alone in a different way anyway.
I can look at myself and think I wouldn’t change a thing, since I’m selfish enough to see the problem to be how others treat and perceive me, and very scared of becoming someone else as changing myself on such deep levels would mean. But I also fully agree; it does not get better. Society will not change and people don’t even want to, and you cannot change either, because you are you. The mismatch is always there.
I do hope you end up finding people that vibe with you, even if it’s totally hopeless now. I’m deeeeep in depression so I have only kind words to offer anymore
I managed to get past the paywall on the article somehow, so here’s the actually important stuff:
AKA “muh free speech”
“We should ‘fix’ autistic people, why doesn’t everyone agree with me??? 😢”
“Why don’t people like it when I use an outdated term, removed from the DSM-5, that is often used to imply low intelligence of autistic people and want me to use the more broadly accepted inclusive term instead???”
“I saw people detransition and that means that means autism can be a social contagion and because I see it as debilitating I want a reason to believe I’m faking it”
“I’m good at socializing therefore I don’t have autism”
“Pull yourself up by your bootstraps” but applied to emotions. If she’d just responded better to mistakes, she’d never have been diagnosted as autistic, guys!
“I have a ton of heavily correlated traits that are all often linked to autism, but if I look at them individually instead of recognizing the actual pattern, and say that non autistic people can have them too, that means I’m ‘normal!’”
“We can’t do a DNA test for autism, therefore doctors must be just guessing and patients must be making it up”
“More people are self-diagnosing, therefore trained medical professionals using actual diagnostic methods will also be diagnosing a ton of people with autism that don’t have it”
“If you think you’re autistic, you’ll assume you have innate limits and stop trying hard enough.” AKA “Autism stops you from reaching your full potential and is a crutch”
It’s so ironic, they spend quite some time insinuating these problems are just hurdles to get over with by getting gud, then they talk proudly about how they no longer label themselves autists and that’s liberating, as if accepting yourself was a hurdle that CAN’T be jumped over so I’ll just lie myself.
Wait, Asperger’s is considered a bad term? I did not know that as someone originally diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome myself (but I did understand that it became incorporated as part of the spectrum).
Doing a bit more research, looks like it’s because of its origins in WWII Nazi Germany (and therefore being linked to eugenics, white supremacy, etc., the idea that these people are better than those people). Dang, I definitely did not know that. I will try not to use it then.
The whole thing is disingenuous. The use of “Aspergers” is partly discontinued because of fascist associations. It shouldn’t be surprising that people don’t want to use a classification termed by people who wanted to sort useful autistics from the disposable (as they saw it).
Wow.
Per the article (thanks for posting it all!): autism is a social construct.
Do they just throw random things to the wall to see what sticks?
I actually didn’t post all of it! The full article was probably about 4-6 times as long as just the snippets I showed, if not more. I cut out a lot of either repetitive points, or stories that just didn’t really make a point and were more there just to illustrate this specific person’s life in general for emotional attachment.
I mean, I think autism could be partially a social construct, in the sense that many people who have been diagnosed with autism (though nowhere close to all) would have very few symptoms if society were geared towards them. My autism is mostly problematic because of how other people react to it or because of getting overwhelmed by things that would be greatly reduced in a world where (at least a subsection of) autism was neurotypical.
I am not trying to minimize the experience of people whose autism is a significant disability that wouldn’t be noticeably affected by societal change, to be clear.
Yeah, it’s a social construct in the sense that it’s just natural differences among humans, specifically differences that don’t as often square with societal/social norms as the average person. If society were comprised of all autistic people, you wouldn’t have the label “autism”, you’d just have “people that are the way people are.”
That said, unlike the article implies, autism is, of course, not just something everyone is choosing, making up, or using to justify not doing work.
I will note the article doesn’t technically say “everyone with autism is faking it and it’s not real”, it just implies that because a lot of people self-diagnose with it now, that must mean that the real numbers are way lower than they actually are, and that people who have autism, but don’t experience major social or productivity related issues from it, aren’t actually autistic and are just “introverted” or some other general term that could theoretically apply.
I’m on the autism spectrum. I’m high-functioning, what would have been called Aspergers prior to DSM-V. What that means is that I largely function in day-to-day life, and that I don’t need significant supports. The term ‘Aspergers’ is helpful, because people have a rough idea of what you mean when you use it. Austism spectrum disorder is more nebulous. Treating differing levels of support as being ‘hierarchical’ is not useful, and will–in the long run–tend to mean that everyone gets the same levels of support, rather than people with greater needs getting more support. (Would it be nice to get therapy? Sure. Do I need it as much as other people might? Probably not.)
And fuck yes, if there was a magic pill that I could take and I’d suddenly be absolutely dead-average neurotypical? Yeah, I’d take it. I’d swallow a handful. I’m probably a lot older than a bunch of other people on the spectrum here, and lemme tell you, it does not get better. If anything, the older you get, the worse it is, because the friends you had in school drift away, and you don’t make new ones. I know that social lives tend to get worse as people age, but at this point, the ONLY social life I have is two hours of church (non-denom universalist unitarian; I gave up theism years ago) on Sundays.
I have a degree, I have a job that I’m good at, I own a house and land, I have a ton of cats that mostly like me, blah blah blah. But goddamn, I feel very alone. I tried for YEARS to do what I thought you were supposed to do to meet people and make friends, and shit always fell flat. And now I know that yes, it IS me, I’m the problem. I’m the one that’s fucking up. (And apparently it’s really really autistic to send out questionnaires to ask people where I could improve in my social skills.)
As another on the “high-functioning” category (though not very high I guess since I’ve failed in life already), I find this always so heart-breaking. I understand exactly where it’s coming from, but it is still so sad to me. We are conditioned to see ourselves so flawed, so unworthy, there’s no understanding to be given. You look at the others and there’s the glass wall you can’t cross, and they tell you to come over as if it isn’t there. We just can’t fit in the narrow roles society has to offer without diminishing ourselves by masking, and that’s just suffering alone in a different way anyway.
I can look at myself and think I wouldn’t change a thing, since I’m selfish enough to see the problem to be how others treat and perceive me, and very scared of becoming someone else as changing myself on such deep levels would mean. But I also fully agree; it does not get better. Society will not change and people don’t even want to, and you cannot change either, because you are you. The mismatch is always there.
I do hope you end up finding people that vibe with you, even if it’s totally hopeless now. I’m deeeeep in depression so I have only kind words to offer anymore
The last part is actually a thing that can happen after diagnosis. But pretending to not be autistic isn’t the fix.
BIG yikes. I hope they find themselves a deep, dark hole to crawl into and never come back out of.