I guess the question is why did we start labeling slightly socially awkward people as the same category as the people you describe in the first place?

The social protocol that low support needs autistic people use is similar to the social protocol that some higher (meaning those who can communicate) support needs autistic people use. The fundamental difference in my opinion (which is primarily formed from fairly extensive personal experience and thinking about it) is that autistic communication is fundamentally collaborative, while allistic communication is fundamentally adversarial. This is not to say that anyone is always collaborative or adversarial, or that the communication mode necessarily matches intentions.

For example, an allistic (meaning not autistic, but perhaps neurodivergent in some other way) person is more likely to keep their goal unstated and only known through subtle semi-involuntary signs that others evolved to pick up on due to the advantages that come from understanding such semi-involuntarily-shared information. Autistic people who can speak generally just say, with words alone, what they want to communicate, and are less inclined to make such subtle inferences and less likely to perform them in the way that allistic people do. For some people this manifests in an autism accent where the speech is completely well formed in a grammatical sense (not necessarily the same grammar that's in formal writing) but has no tonal information.

This difference is also reflected in conflict resolution: most autistic people will each say what their goals are and then try to find a way to satisfy everyone's goals. Allistic people I have observed are more likely to not want to put that effort in, and will this via the aforementioned subtle communication decide on some particular resolution or will play social status games to get their way.

There is also some scientific research in this area that provides support for this understanding of different modes of communication. For example this¹ provides evidence that there is a different mode of communication, although it doesn't explore what makes up those differences. It filtered for typical IQ scores, but not for support needs.

1: Crompton, C. J., Ropar, D., Evans-Jones, M., Adams, C., Pearson, A., Scott, F., & Fletcher-Watson, S. (2019). Autistic people’s social camouflaging in daily life. Autism, 23(3), 606–613.

The labeling of every little thing as a pathology is part of a broader trend. Nobody can be down for a few weeks, it must be a "depressive episode". If you feel nervous before a big test or presentation, you have "anxiety". It's an overcorrection from the under-diagnosing of the past, and a phenomenon reflective of the intensely political environment around funding for research and services. You could say it may have to do with increasing billables, you could say it's because sub-clinical cases might still benefit from a few sessions of therapy that are covered by insurance only with an insurance code, but whatever.

In the case of autism, "social awkwardness" used to fall under aspergers, a diagnosis that was removed over the protestations of many aspergers advocacy organizations in the DSM-V. See, the DSM-V was massively influenced by a lobbying effort or "intelligence" operation. They were hugely focused on things like eradicating any mention of "sub-clinical" autism or recovery criteria. The abolition of aspergers was a concerted effort to essentially force people with aspergers to fight the stigma suffered by "somebody who might have to wear adult diapers and maybe a head-restraining device." As the committee representatives claimed, "it was our belief that the best way to address stigma was to confront it across the spectrum. Why did we deserve protection that other autistic people did not receive?"

"This was... reflective of our commitment to 'cross-spectrum solidarity'." To be clear, this was an effort towards imposed "solidarity", where people with one disorder that often presented mildly enough they could make an attempt at passing for normal were forced to identify as and engage in activism on behalf of said adult-diaper-wearers if they wanted recognition, destigmatization, or access to services. It was an effort I can see only as malign to re-stigmatize or explicitly block "normalization" for those who could enjoy it.

Really, the consolidation of autism into one "spectrum" diagnosis involving a massively diverse constellation of systems was a political mistake not a scientific choice. It's one based fundamentally on presentation, not on etiology, despite dealing with a massively polygenic disease that appears to have many different potential causes. It only served to slow down efforts towards management and a cure (no surprise, given many "advocate" types continue to assert it is simply wrong that the world has norms in a tone similar to those deaf people who oppose cochlear implants.)

You can see this intellectual thread carried forward to recent times. A piece from 2023 reflects very similar sentiments, essentially saying that the consolidation of diagnoses is good because it "[protects] the most vulnerable": https://www.thetransmitter.org/spectrum/weaponized-heterogen...

Those who have a shot at a "normal" life passing as "normal" are, naturally, not considered. You can see this pretty easily in the basic framing of the issue as "access to services", services which Asperger's patients required and used much less. This was a transparent and explicit effort to lower chances of "normalcy" in an attempt to benefit those who didn't have a shot at it; the "solidarity" framing was, in that sense, completely honest. I see it as nothing less than ascientific and contemptible.

(Much of this information is drawn from a paper the two men who liased with the DSM-V committee wrote some years later and which may be found here: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/337112539_Lobbying_...)

"Why should the school district fund accommodations for your child? It's not a disability, it's a different-ability lol!!!"