Actually, (as another person on the spectrum), I believe you've just been tone-policed by a privileged person. Note that the confrontational tone, random anecdotes and judgement of people involved in the community were all present in your post's parent - so the only difference seems to be that the original post is a neurotypical parent.

This is a common strawmanning of communities, so it's no wonder some of us get irate - I do, for example. Sure, there are neglectful parent who try to hide their neglect (or inability to handle an overwhelming situation) behind claims that it's all "working as intended" - but positing them as representative of people who ask for more acceptance is unfair.

Ultimately, confrontation and aggression isn't all that great, but you need two sides to keep things civil. I believe your comment was far less aggressive than it's parent, which isn't surprising for someone who's conscious of their tone issues - and that its perception comes from a bigger dissonance between expected and perceived aggression.

This wasn't tone-policing, it was tone-neighborhood watch at worst. You can't dismiss an argument because of tone, but you certainly can call someone's attention to how their argument may be interpreted by their tone.

There's no straw-manning going on here. He interpreted (quite sensibly in my opinion) it as a challenge to the father. Regardless if that was intended or not, it was the first-read impression I had as well. Now that the OP has clarified his position, now I know that it was not the intended position. If it were not for the response, none of this would have been clarified.

> tone-neighborhood watch

Nice name for a tone-lynch-mob, but are you sure that's any better than tone-police?

> as a challenge to the father

Seriously? The OP starts with "There seems to be a movement to accept any and all behaviors of children on the spectrum". If that's not the challenge, then I don't know what is. It's not possible to slap someone with an iron gauntlet over the Internet though. That's as fair as "there seems to be a movement to enslave all men/whites/extremely rich rocket company owners" - I'm even sure you're going to find a few people who do have those beliefs, but representing them as anything but fringe is unfair and challenging.

> Nice name for a tone-lynch-mob

You wanted to talk about strawmanning?

Your name just reminded me of Terry Pratchet's death

While I gently agree with some of what you say it's probably important to note that I say in my profile that I struggle with tone and that I welcome email or downvotes to guide me to do better. And I sometimes talk about the increased hostility on HN.

So I invited this tone policing. (And of course I continue to do so)

> I believe your comment was far less aggressive than it's parent,

I'll be honest: I thought so too. It's interesting to me that other people read the posts so differently.

Still, the change I made stopped downvotes so tone matters.