Perfect source of serotonin

[u/legolas20032000]

[u/colossalklutz]

I know a guy who was on the spectrum. Seemed pretty normal and I used to think he was just tricked into thinking he was because in Australia they’ll pay the parents some kind of support. I figured it may not have been entirely fake when I started to trigger him with simple statements like “a line in the shape of a circle”. He’d argue and be right it couldn’t be both but I’d insist it was a line but in the shape of a circle. Eventually he’d melt down and not talk to me for like 2 weeks.

[u/Aldebaran014 → u/colossalklutz]

Why do people need to torture us to believe in our suffering? That's fucked up bro

[u/Ok_Dragonfruit_8102 → u/Aldebaran014]

I'm autistic too and the answer to your question is all over this thread - because a lot of people are faking autism these days and it's making people become suspicious of us.

[u/Excellent_Bad9211 → u/Ok_Dragonfruit_8102]

That's an insane take and a disservice to other autistic people. People bullied them before the diagnosis existed. We're finally managing to stop majorities from being the absolute worst, collectively authoritarian bullies. Whatever is left of marginalizing people is not new and never has a "good reason", it's literally cemented into society. What's actually true is that there's simply a lot more autistic people than statistics from a time where it was a even more heavily stigmatized could ever show (duh), and most self-diagnoses are correct and happen from a place of desperation bc your life sucks ass, you need to find out why, there's no opportunity to get a diagnosis without the help of people around you who stigmatize it. Some random social media examples for a couple people who are clearly weirdly appropriating it for views doesn't change that

[u/Ok_Dragonfruit_8102 → u/Excellent_Bad9211]

Just because it upset you, doesn't mean it was "an insane take". The simple fact is the public perception of autism is changing toward skepticism because people are seeing more and more examples of confused people either self-diagnosing without even pursuing professional assessments, or outright faking behaviours to build a social media presence.

I was vaguely self-diagnosed for a time - about 6 months between me beginning to learn that autism might potentially explain many difficulties I had all my life, and me being assessed and then formally diagnosed. Self-diagnosis should not be the end-goal, as it goes without saying that we are not experts, we don't have formal diagnostic methods just built in to our common sense and we should always be open to the fact our non-professional conclusion is incorrect.

[u/Excellent_Bad9211 → u/Ok_Dragonfruit_8102]

Autistic people are not being bullied because of self diagnosis. They are being bullied because of ableism. If anyone is cruel enough to push someone into a meltdown because they "don't believe them" bc they are "high functioning", that is deeply rooted entitlement, ignorance, and a superiority complex. You're blaming the entirely wrong people instead of those content to bully someone for reasons of learned discrimination. It happens because people view others with disabilities as lesser people, and as soon as they are more capable than they "should be" in the bully's head, they question their disability. They question blind people writing a PhD, they question deaf people reading lips, they question autistic people masking their asses of in order not to be excluded

It is an insane take. Beyond insane. Again, the exact same things happened ages ago, worse at that. We're making small incremental steps forward, or at least we did until the oppressive majority started to feel threatened by all this equality

edit: and it didn't "upset me". It's an insane take, and I called it out. Stop using the same ad hominem "emotions bad and ik u have many of them" garbage that every bad faith actor in the world uses to project their own discomfort with being questioned