Sure, my current knowledge may be wrong, but tearing down any generalizations "if you met one person with autism, you met one person with autism" just makes it impossible to define as a thing separate from non-autism.
Yet the author tries to create generalizations later? Autistic people experience the world in a different way than non-autistic people.
Okay, let's let this inconsistency slide. So to what extent? Are they trying to say that all non-autistic people perceive the world exactly the same way? Nonsense, so where's the line?
From the article, there's no line: some are like this, some are the opposite.
I feel the points about the form of communication are valid, but the ones describing the actual subject of communication are not helping.
I don't think this is a generalization. In fact, it is the opposite of a generalization.
> all non-autistic people perceive the world exactly the same way
They aren't trying to say this. The first statement doesn't imply the second.
Maybe "generalization" is the wrong word, but it's still a way to carve out a niche, which was previously denied.
> The first statement doesn't imply the second.
True, but this leaves us with "where is the line?" as the crucial but unanswered question.
There's a full list of diagnostic criteria you can look up, but in short Autistic people lack the "hardware acceleration" that neurotypicals have to assist them with social interaction (and, in the more extreme cases, language).
In childhood, this usually shows itself as a deficit in theory of mind (ie, the child will assume that the other people know what they know).
In adulthood, it usually means that people struggle to maintain the types of cognitive dissonance that smooths over interpersonal interactions (I suspect this is because neurotypicals run multiple systems to simultaneously process the concrete reality and socially agreed-upon "ostensible reality", whereas Autistics rely on a single system to process both).
Just like any other group, this does come with shared experiences. Just like any other group, though, just because there are some shared experiences it doesn't mean everybody is the same.
Please do not blame Aspies for something that is clearly not their doing. This is just Twitter being Twitter, pretending that they can talk on anyone's behalf. Just ignore the noise.
2. I'm not talking on anyone's behalf and spend half the words in the text validating people who disagree with any of my claims.
3. Oh, I see, Autistic people are like Trans people in that we aren't worth listening to. I wish I'd seen that line before I started responding, but here you go!
Is this just about the IFL/PFL stuff? Because it’s a tiny part of the piece and I don’t see how you could possibly write about that in a more careful way- do you have specific suggestions?
It's tone-deaf in the sense that this type of activism is unbelievably unpopular amongst Autistics, self-aggrandising in the sense that he has declared himself a representative for the (loosely defined) Autistic community without actually earning the respect, and unproductive in the sense that he's making communication between Autistics and neurotypicals harder, not easier, which limits opportunities for the culture to actually develop and become accepted more broadly.
On those points- PFL _is_ preferred by the majority from the surveys I've seen?
Concerns that introducing the concept of "severe autism" risks non-verbal people being written off and "high-functioning" autists finding it more difficult to get accommodations seem to me at least worth talking about? You think not?
If nobody writes articles explaining the basics of autism- in particular things like the double-empathy problem, then nobody will know about them. Specifically how would you write an article explaining poorly-understood aspects of autism without it being an article "like this"?
Honestly, I can't think of anything more counterproductive than Aspies trying to create more rules and further complicate discourse...
He hasn't been chosen by us, doesn't represent our views, and yet still feels like he can talk on our behalf.
I've heard the same thing from trans people before. We need to stop listening to these people.