e_jo_m | So who's up for some autism discourse? (Reply)

Psychiatrist thinks that it seems tremendously insensitive to call himself autistic when all he has is little things like cute hand movements while there are people whose autism requires they be straitjacketed lest they chew off their fingers.

If you have arthritis that makes your ankle ache sometimes, and you see someone whose arthritis gives them terrible pain and prevents them from walking at all, it feels appallingly self-centred to point at her and say, "I have the same thing she does." But it's meaningfully true. Treatments, advice, anecdotes, and so forth are going to overlap a ton between you and the wheelchair-user, because you have the same medical condition! If science comes up with a cure, it (by definition) will work on both of you! Because it's the same dang thing! One of you just has a much more severe case than the other.

"And my sensitivities are a fraction of a fraction of what real autistic people suffer," says the psychiatrist, and he's right that others with his condition have it worse than he. (Though this is someone who, at age twenty-five had "ever been on a date in my life, every time I ask someone out I get laughed at, I’m constantly teased and mocked for being a virgin and a nerd whom no one could ever love, starting to develop a serious neurosis about it." He's not suffering as much as the average institutionalized patient, but he's sure suffering a lot!) But that doesn't mean that he doesn't have the condition at all! Degrees, people!

This is without getting into the fuss and kerfuffle regarding whether autism is a bell curve including all humans, and whether it counts as an ailment per se ('But Jo, but Jo! Autism isn't an illness, it's only considered that because society says it is!' That is true of literally all disabilities. Also, "Once you’re trying to chew off your own body parts, I feel like the question 'But is it really a disease or not?' sort of loses its oomph."), and so on. My point is that it's just plain incorrect to say "I have a diagnosable medical condition, but it's much more severe in some other people, therefore I don't have it." And if it's significantly impacted your life (which is the case with the psychiatrist), it's impactfully untrue to say that you don't have it at all. Obviously it's rude as all get out to act like you have it as bad as, eg, someone who needs a straitjacket; but if you're worried about implying that, just say that you don't have it as bad as, eg, someone who needs a straitjacket!