Another way to look at it is that some traits are harmful for the individual but beneficial for the group. Insomnia does a number on your health, but the tribe wants someone to jump at every cracking of a twig in the night, just in case it's something bad.

In general, the standard in mental illnesses is that in order for a diagnosis to be made, the condition must interfere with leading a fulfilling life; a narcissist is only diagnosed with NPD if their narcissism prevents them from achieving their goals in life (hold down a job, maintain relationships, etc).

People who take issue with autism being described as a disease would generally believe that most autistic people live close-to-normal lives and simply aren't recognised as being autistic. This comes back to the question of whether there ought to be a separate label for those who are severely disabled by their cognitive differences vs. those who are more able to function in general society despite similar cognitive differences. But it does seem to be the case that there is a large subgroup of society that thinks qualitatively differently to the general population (but similarly to each other), has to work hard to compensate for that in order to fit in, and often has social and mental health difficulties both due to the effort of maintaining that facade and because of the backlash they get when they fail to consistently do so.

There is no debate, the answer to this is yes.

To improve my example, it’s like describing left-handedness as a disease because a small percentage of lefties experience extreme left-handedness where they can’t use their right hand at all.

There are aspects of the kitchen sink that is Autistic Spectrum Disorder that can reasonably be argued to be an impairment (e.g. sensory overloads, situational mutism, etc) but autism is not in any way objectively suboptimal in itself, other than when it comes to interacting with allistics (but that goes both ways).

For this to be true, autists would have to communicate and/or work with other autists as competently as neurotypicals mesh with each other. Strictly speaking, we should be able to work with other autists more easily than we work with neurotypicals who have a basic familiarity with autism, since we also have that advantage. In my experience we are not. Replacing your left hand with a sword also has measurable advantages but that doesn't make it not an overall impairment. Personally I find this cultural trend where "your deviation is your identity" to be illogical and offensive.

Part of, not the whole

I am who I am, in part, because of my quirks. Saying they are not part of me would be denying who I am.

I don’t understand what’s offensive about people being happy with who they are.

Question: isn’t identity that which makes one distinct from others, like name or government identity number?

Not at all. You're judging by the standards of neurotypicals.

Suppose we discover a genotype that correlates with extremely high social competence, people who are just naturally much better at communicating and working with others. (This isn't much of a stretch; we know there are people like that; we just don't know if it's genetic.) If we document this new, higher level of social functioning, does that mean that neurotypicals are now also defective, diseased?

The entire community you are here representing with your comment is intellectually dishonest, at the least, and at the most, actively harming our understanding of autism.

I remind you, like others have in this thread, that there are non-verbal people who share the designation of autistic. There are people in jail, permanent homes, and who do not have power of attorney over themselves who share the designation of autistic. There are children who spend their days wanting to bash their head into the nearest wall, and who cry and cry due to sensory issues, that share the designation of autistic. I COULD GO ON.

By sharing the thoughts you just did you are directly denying that those things exist. The community who promotes those opinions operates as if those things do not exist. It is bad.

There are traits that can arguably be considered "suboptimal" that can be part of an ASD diagnosis. But they are neither necessary nor sufficient for someone to be autistic. That's why I said "autism is not [..] suboptimal in itself" (emphasis added).

Also, can we please stop pointing at children when talking about autism? Somehow everybody who does so stops caring about them as soon as they're old enough to speak for themselves. Autism isn't defined by autistic trauma, we just don't care enough about autistic people to acknowledge them for anything other than their trauma responses.

And yes, my exact problem with it is that it is normative. Just because neurotypicals are in the majority does not make them better. Imagine if it were reversed, for example. In my view, the neurotypical fondness for drama is incredibly harmful. Ditto the way neurotypicals not only believe in all sorts of nonsense (UFOs, angels, gods, devils, etc.) but use that as justification for all sorts of dominance-driven behavior, up to and including genocide.

And in practice the normative nature combined with the disease model leads to "medicalization of deviance". E.g., queer people's deviance was medicalized, seen as illness. ANd since they were sick, treatment was necessary, sometimes violently enforced treatment.