Self diagnosis is valid because the formal process is bullshit lol. The diagnostic process utterly lacks reliability in practice, there has been no two years in the last half a century where autism has been diagnosed at the same rate from year to year. Diagnosis has instead multiplied many times over.

The biggest problem I have with self-diagnosis is the idea that self-diagnosis (along with formal diagnosis) is actually capable of diagnosing a neurodevelopment disorder. It just ain’t so and autism is a social construct that LARPs as a medical one.