This fits in with another thread on an article about over-diagnosis.

I think it’s safe to say that if someone appears “weird” to the hive mind of a community, that person is more likely to be correctly diagnosed.

There are people who desire a diagnosis for special treatment, but if the first time you find out about a person’s diagnosis is after knowing them as “weird” the whole time, then they’re not acting weird on purpose, or saying they are X for attention or special treatment.

Disabled people, mentally or otherwise, usually like to keep their business to themselves, unless they absolutely don’t need to. Some mentally disabled people might even forgo getting special treatment via disability services at their colleges, or getting parking permits for disability because they’re not interested in bringing attention to their difficulties or differences, or using these issues as a cause for special treatment. Though, I’d advised that people who need accommodations should get them.

I also saw a comment about disability becoming normalized due to late stage capitalism, which sounds like a thesis out of postmodernist thinking. The fact is that group behavior has always isolated “weird” behaviors and put undue negative attention on them, but it just happened to be the case that that weird behavior was evolutionary helpful, which is why it has persisted for millions of generations of humans across their evolutionary history.

This only applies to high-functioning categories of behaviors. But I’ve found that more often than not, it’s the social reaction of groups that is the problem for high-functioning autists, and less the autism itself. Maybe neurotypical behavior or neurotypical mindedness is the disease because I don’t understand why or how some people find it so hard to think differently. Are they not individuals, are they zombies?

Let’s also shed light on what behaviors neurotypicals usually have a problem with that they cast as negatives in high-functioning autists:

1) Not being mindful of hierarchy

2) Not being mindful of socially determined rules, that is rules which are not codified in any official language of conduct

3) Not wanting to socialize, or wanting to socialize differently

4) Trouble with emotional regulation, possibly due to social issues

Tell me, which of these points, and there are many more, point to this being an individual’s problem?

For high-functioning autists, the problem is other people.

People need to realize that they’re not great to deal with on average, and if someone chooses to not engage with you, don’t take that as an insult. Maybe you’re all better off not interacting with each other, but that doesn’t imply causing someone financial, emotional or physical harm just because they’re autistic.

Society both explicitly and implicitly punishes high-functioning autism.