Friendly reminders about autism

 It's time again for a few friendly reminders about autism! Yay!

Friendly Reminder 1: Autism and Asperger Syndrome are literally the same thing. "Asperger Syndrome" is a (no longer used in the US) category of autistic people whose childhood speech development was not significantly delayed. "Autistic Disorder" was the category for autistic people who had childhood speech delays. That's it. That's the only difference.

Anyone who tries to claim that there is any other difference between "autism" and "Asperger Syndrome" (such as "'Aspies' excel in school but 'autistics' don't," or "'Aspies seek out socializing but 'autistics' don't") is either making it up, or unquestioningly repeating something someone else made up.

Autistic people are diverse -- some learn to speak at roughly average ages, some learn to speak late (or not at all). Some do well in a traditional classroom, others don't. Some have other learning disabilities, others don't. And all of these factors are COMPLETELY INDEPENDENT OF ONE ANOTHER.

Please note that I hate everything about the DSM, diagnostic criteria, and the entire concept of classifying neurodivergences as "disorders," but when you perpetuate these falsehoods or the idea that "functioning levels" are a thing, you're actually being MORE pathologizing than the DSM, which is saying something.

Friendly Reminder 2: Autism does not "manifest differently in girls/women." Autistic girls/women are not "more empathetic" or "better social mimics" than autistic boys/men. Again, autistic people are diverse. Some are pretty good at mimicking allistic people, some aren't so much. This has no relationship to gender. However, sexist professionals will interpret the exact same characteristic differently based on the perceived gender of the person they're assessing. (Also, autistic people are significantly more likely to be transgender, genderqueer, or gender non-conforming than allistic people, so a whole lot of the "autistic girls" and "autistic boys" being assessed are being misgendered in the first place.)

Friendly Reminder 3: While autism is not classified as a "mental illness," this is kind of a useless thing to point out, and is not the reason that autistic people deserve rights/ acceptance/ not to be murdered. We deserve those things because we're people. Psychiatrically disabled/ "mentally ill" people deserve those things too (they also deserve not to have their neurodivergences called "illnesses" unless they choose to conceptualize them that way). Differentiating autism from "mental illness" is also pretty ineffective distancing, because have you ever met an autistic person who wasn't also psychiatrically disabled? Me neither.