I have a friend who was diagnosed as an adult with Autism. 40 ish years into their life and they finally got a name to attach to their “quirks”. And the thing that they found most frustrating (and which I find sympathy for feeling that frustration) is the number of people who now treat them completely differently and with much more grace and respect.

On the one hand, of course we extend extra grace and accommodations to a person with a given disability because we expect people without the disability to behave differently. On the other hand, they didn’t just magically get the disability when they got diagnosed. They’ve had it their entire life, and needed that grace and accommodation their entire life. But only it’s only now, half way through their life with their shiny new diagnosis that people give them that grace and accommodation. Is it then any wonder that people who haven’t been able to get that official diagnosis are still trying to at least get people to accept an unofficial diagnosis? If we were better at not needing the labels in order to accommodate, maybe we wouldn’t also have so many “self diagnosed” people. Or ironically maybe we’d have more officially diagnosed people because we wouldn’t be having a moral panic over fakes.