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More like “I thought I was autistic. I know I am autistic.”
Yes, I’m actually autistic. Seriously!
Well what are their names?
Her hair is fantastic.
It’s funny since if you think you’re autistic and it turns out you’re not the consequence is literally nothing; your life continues the same as it was before.
Also let’s be honest; Christina Buttons is 100% an AI generated character.
IMHO, in a way, it’s the desperate, desperate, oh so desperate need of people who can’t deal with the uncertainty of Probability and Statistics and thus require everything to be a clearly defined something, no variance, no deviations.
It’s the same reason why some people simply can’t accept the Theory Of Evolution: the idea that “countless” (not literally, but figurativelly) random variances will yield incremental changes which over time add up to major change is just beyond them, so better have a single (or a handful) of fantastical all powerful beings of unexplained (and never questioned) provenance be the designers and agents of creation of all we see.
As I see it, shit like this is mainly stupid people compensating (in the Psychology sense of the word) for their own inability to comprehend the World as is and without mentally simplify it down to a handful of little labelled boxes.
Isn‘t autism and many other psychological conditions under and over diagnosed at the same time? A friend of mine got her diagnosis at the age of 31 (under diagnosed) and her doctor talked with her about social media bringing more people to her, which think they have autism, but don‘t (over diagnosing).
I don‘t want to talk anyone out of their diagnosis or give them doubts. As long as there are tests there will always be false negatives and positives and so if you test more it will influence the outcome.
PS: The article is probably bullshit.
Yeah, and there does seem to be an increasing number of people who self-diagnose medical conditions such as autism, and then use them as excuses for their own shitty behavior.
Or sometimes that of others. I had a relative try to excuse Elon’s bullshit as autism. No, aunt Grace, autism does not make people throw out Nazi salutes.
Often it’s the same people who dismiss legitimate challenges other people face due to medical conditions yet have one of their own (self-diagnosed) they use to excuse shitty behavior.
What you’re describing isn’t really an over-diagnosis thing though, it’s more that visibility has increased and the stigma has been reduced, so more people go to a professional to have it investigated.
Over-diagnosis would be people who actually get diagnosed with autism but end up not having it.
I think the criteria and diagnosis evolving as the science gets better also has an impact. The idea that only young boys have autism was the prevalent one not that long ago, but we know better now so now more people are being diagnosed with it since we understand it better.
I disagree, I think the anecdote of an adult over 30 years of age being diagnosed is a fair example of under-diagnosis. And since your comment was more on the over-diagnosis side, I think it’s fair to point out. That the visibility and lowered stigma contribute to the over-diagnosing. It can’t be helped. Medical professionals are subject to the same biases of visibility that the rest of us are, even if they should know better.
Also some patients are certainly self-diagnosing based on freely available information, be it valid or not, and sharing their diagnosis as if it was a real one. When others encounter these claims, their instinct typically isn’t to argue or accuse someone of being a fake autist so they update their own mental models with a “this is what autism looks like” and the trend continues.
It is exactly what I am describing. In any test you will have false positives. Then the broader you test the more false positives you get. This was also a thing during Corona in Germany. At the start of the pandemic only people with symptoms should get tested, because with low case number and even a very good test and test procedure you can easily get more false positives than true positives. This is true for every test where true positives are rare. The math is pretty simple here.
Well, there’s two things to consider.
One is just how many folks “self diagnose”. Rather than a stigma being reduced, it’s often held up as a trait of superiority to the “normies”, so some folks will assert it. There’s a fine line to walk between unfair stigma versus unjustified glorification. The internet is full of this.
Two is that ultimately, there’s room for being subjective even among professionals. See the parents of a kid that my kid was friends with. They lamented they got told by 5 psychologists that their kid was not autistic before they finally found one that “correctly” saw the kid’s autism. They were so excited to have proof that their kid was one of those autistic folks that are super smart…
Good example. It‘s not only about how many people take a test, but also if the test is taken multiple times. Then you are in realm of statistics.
Probably to find the true result would be to consult those earlier doctors with the diagnosis of that last doctor. They might have missed something (or not).
One is just how many folks “self diagnose”.
I’m not sure this would count towards any statistics of over-diagnosis though, as a self-diagnosis isn’t a diagnosis.
Two is that ultimately, there’s room for being subjective even among professionals.
This is true. Ultimately it’s humans judging humans and there will be errors in the process.
The diagnosis was just a formality for me.
I say we sick these cunts on the antivaxxer idiots and let them claw each other’s eyes out over which logical fallacy is the true one lol
Let them gaslight each other to death as society slowly moves forward without them.
Im following here, I am getting that there islikely overlap in anti-lgbt and antivaxxers but what has one to do with the other in terms or people living their lives?
One is a diagnosis, the other is definitively not
Because trans people’s brains are literally wired to be the gender they transition into, not the body they’re born in.
Every transgender person I know, including the one I’m married to, knew from a very young age their brain didn’t match their body.
Finding out and accepting you’re trans is the diagnosis.
Honestly, wouldn’t be that surprised. There’s like 30-50 people who are pushing the anti-trans narrative. Seems like you don’t need a whole lot of people to build a conspiracy like this.
The free press
Look inside: paywall
They mean the government can’t tell them what to print. Unfortunately the government also doesn’t seem to tell them not to print lies either.
It seems like nothing they wrote supports their conclusion. I mean look, if you have some challenges, and you find ways to handle them, that doesn’t mean you are (or aren’t) autistic… But somehow they worked hard to ignore this key point that undercuts everything they wrote.
“I do not struggle with X. I got a system.”
One of the most telltale signs of autism.
For me it was " I don’t struggle with understanding people’s emotions"
Then it was pointed out to me that I have spent years watching people and learning how they work.
Turns out people are my trains.
Autism (neuro divergence in general really) under capitalism, is the engineering equivilent to being a sacrificial gear in a gear box. You have your purpose, you do it well when placed in the proper gear set. But you wear out faster than all the other gears, not because you are a bad gear, but because the system itself was designed to crush you rather than crush the bigger more expensive gears. It was built for their longevity and success, not yours. This is them giving the squeeky wheel or “gear” “the grease” in a fucked up way.
They are trying to gaslight different groups into thinking they are just a regular normal gear, and they need to just work harder, even if it means the gear breaks quicker as a result. We are cheaper to replace than we are to repair, and that is the logic that makes capitalism unworthy of human participation, it is inherently anti human in all spectrums.
I don’t think this is a Capitalist thing explicitly.
Being significantly outside the norm in visible ways is often a problem in any human societies, mainly depending on which traits one has which are most different from the masses and the time and society one is in. I mean, a highly intelligent woman with knowledge of herbal remedies in a 12th century European village would likely be deemed a witch, in a Native American tribe would be a healer and in present day society either nobody would notice or think her as old-fashioned “with all those teas”.
I expect that Neuro-divergence, being behavioural, is one of the hardest to accept as “normal” things in any human societies since humans are generally social beings. I mean, in present day in most of the West even Introversion (which is much more prevalent) is often perceived as a problem that people must overcome (“You need to go out more”) rather than just another perfectly normal way of being.
As I see it the neuro-divergent are just unlucky of living in an age of cities were it’s pretty hard for people to just live away from the rest most of the time and being out of the norm behaviouralliy ratther than say, in terms of body shape or having a preference for unusual foods.
PS: Now that I think about it, the whole insane “grift everything” culture of the current Late Stage Neoliberal Capitalism probably makes life way harder than it need be for people whose more variant traits negativelly affect social interaction, since in so many areas where merit in that domain was usually enough, now one must “pitch” and “network” a lot to get ahead.
We’re spelling it wrong. It’s capitolizm.
50 people with names and addresses, you say?
Sounds VERY solvable.
I have like 10 of those addresses and could get more. No I’m not going to get them for you or doxx them, there are other folk in here who have the same list in mind (associated with the same cult) because like, just having that kind of list makes you suspect for like blood crimes and I’m really more down for gay crimes and maybe a little international arms snuggling Steven call me
“international arms snuggling” <4
I’m not going to get them for you
Great, I’m not an American, not my job
or doxx them
Then you’re a coward. Doxxing them is step 1. You should be on step 5 if you give a shit about this.
Just say “I care about my own comfort more than I care about this issue.” And then don’t fucking bring it up again unless you’re willing to do something about it.
Are you unhappy that someone is not prepared to commit murder? It’s a very weird worldview you’ve got there I suspect it’s not actually well thought out.
It’s very weird that your mind went immediately to “murder” without considering other possibilities.
I thought I was autistic but turns out I have a different set of things that manifest similarly on the screeners but have totally different origins and approaches.
I don’t think that’s what these folks are talking about though.
The Behind the Bastards episode on autism was fascinating.
I’m not going to do it justice but the tl;dr is that parents felt like it couldn’t have been their fault or their genes that made their kid this way. That it must have been vaccines or trans frogs or whatever the fuck they can blame. Because blaming something else made them feel better. And it gave them an excuse to not deal with their kid that has real difficulty.
And, to a certain extent…I get it. I don’t agree with them but having a child with a disability was not what they expected.
But you raise the child you have and not the one you wish you had.
Trans frogs is hilarious first of all. Secondly I thing even the most unhinged nutjobs only ever used trans frogs as a symptom not a cause. Trans frogs causing autism is the equivalent of such a deranged reversal of cause and effect as to be comparable to Covid causing 5G.
Anyways, I agree. I think parents want a scapegoat for why they find their kid to be “cringey” when speaking to their peers and Autism (effect) and vaccine (cause) provide pseudo medical rationales.
It probably doesn’t help that they may have an outdated image of autism. Their child does not have high support needs, so it can’t be that. The doctor must be mistaken.
My mother grew up in a time where it was considered something a mother ‘did’ to cause it.
Which is why she denies and denies we’re autistic.
I mean, everyone who meets the two of us together go “yeah you both are” soooooo.
That was the one about the “compression clinic” or whatever they were called, right? Where they put kids in hypobaric chambers? Sick fucks
I think so. It’s been a while since I listened to it.
The sad thing about it is that like many conspiracy theories, they started from a well-meaning place. But the brain rot algorithm pushed them towards fringe theories because it would make people feel better.
everyone is different and unique but the DSM just categorises some patterns as “disorders” because… well it doesn’t make efficient workers in modern society… kinda dumb if you ask me
Well it was causing me distress in my personal life, I was pretty successful at work.
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).
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 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.
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
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.
