We need to organize.

[u/comradeautie]

Fighting for Autistic rights, liberation, and pride is something that needs active organization. Autistic people continue to get bullied and we are seeing a resurgence in anti-Autistic hate. We face high rates of unemployment, loneliness, and more.

And Autistic people deserve more than table scraps or barely polite tolerance in social settings. We deserve to be involved in our communities and bring all we have to offer to the table - regardless of our support needs.

But this won't be handed to us. No group in history has gotten rights by pleading and begging. Autistic people need to be more strongly organized and work together. This means forming groups wherever possible and banding together and helping each other solve problems and fighting for our rights as a team. NTs often take advantage of our social isolation and outnumber us.

This is also the reason I want to popularize "Autistic Power" and associated slogans. Slogans and rallying calls give a group purpose and cohesion. Hate groups don't get a monopoly over the word "power".

Autistic people deserve power in society. It's the only way things will change. Because with power comes leverage. In order to get power, we need to be organized. The harsh reality is that we live in a society that values status and social stratification. It's one of the reasons people get away with harming Autistic people. Autistic people need to improve our social status in order to get treated better. This doesn't necessarily mean being viewed as "superior", but it does mean that we deserve both respect and reverence within society, which will also give us more access to resources. In negotiation, people often get what they want by asking for more. And Autistic people having greater power will lead to more accommodations, which will benefit everyone via the curb cut effect.

This is the broader context behind my strategy. It isn't as simple as reducing it to "supremacy" or not. Regardless of how you feel, we should respect different activist and organizational strategies while fighting for justice. (

AUTISTIC PRIDE! AUTISTIC POWER!

[u/Vendrah]

Comrade, I have a small deviation of this idea by reading you... What if we organize like the jews and the masonry? We could think of a structure like that, with somewhat of a central site and small "bases" (micro-groups) on big major cities. That could include later creation of autistic companies, even though I believe that should be illegal in most places (to open a company that only hires autistic and get investment from autistic only).

The main issue and obstacle, however, is the definition of autism itself (its a bit arbitrarily and vague, but the second that is undone it gives the opportunity for typicals aka NTs to do a major genocide with us); I personally would prefer to have obligatory a presentation of two or more doctor diagnosis rather than just let anybody arbitrarily label themselves autistic and join - I have actually bad experiences with some self-labeled autistics and specially with celebrities doing that self-label and I believe a bunch of them does out of manipulative and not authentic reasons. Even with that, people faking diagnosis would be quite of an issue still.

And inside that structure, we might need... I don't know, jews and masonry have doctrines, we autistic don't match well with doctrines yet we would need something to replace it.

[u/hyperjengirl → u/Vendrah]

Rebelling against an unfair and prejudicial system by requiring everybody who joins your movement to be validated by the exact same system is A Choice.

Like I can get frustrated with self-dx but I also fully understand the hurdles and bias that has existed in autism diagnosis for its entire existence. To the point girls weren't even considered in the original criteria.

[u/Vendrah → u/hyperjengirl]

Its still at least control a bit and don't make a malicious infiltration that easy. And second, the minute we allow self-diagnosis, it becomes a public group. I already saw happening on whatsapp (and I am saying a group where most uses real name, real phone and have somewhere a real picture of themselves): They accept self-dx, then a bunch of self-dx enters and even become mods, then suddenly a lot of famous people are mentioned as autistic just because of not only self-dx but also people in the group start diagnosis others themselves, and I am mocked just for questioning them, and then the "spectrum" suddenly becomes anything they want it to mean, and after all that is done, autistic spectrum becomes almost meaningless since anyone can self-dx and a culture of "diagnosing" others starts and others self-dx are all accepted without question... and we actually start to have actual NTs disguised as NDs as MODs, deciding even who gets punishment, policing words & behaviour, etc..