3 ms·

I was under the impression that the primary characteristic is social; that is, you need to have some sort of difficulty in social situations to qualify at all f

I was under the impression that the primary characteristic is social; that is, you need to have some sort of difficulty in social situations to qualify at all for "autism". I would not imagine that these tests would be the line between "autistic" and "socionormal" (probably not the right term) but between "autism" and some other diagnosis. So perhaps the problem here is either a) I'm missing something with respect to autism diagnosis or b) they shouldn't be portraying this as crucial evidence in public discourse, which is what i think you've been arguing for. Is this a good understanding? I might add i agree; I think certain fields attractive a different way of thinking that overlaps heavily with the autistic spectrum.

Mz 9y ago
A tldr of what I think is that the world has radically changed in the last 100 years and society has become openly hostile to people in ways that are more problematic for some people than others. Rather than wondering what the hell has happened at scale that the world is so problematic for so many people to navigate, we hand out diagnoses to those having the most trouble. It is a form of washing our hands of responsibility for shitting on people (at the societal level). There is an autism "epidemic." So, either something has happened at scale to cause a sudden and dramatic increase in basically birth defects (which appears to be true, actually) or society is less people friendly in critical ways or both. Yet, we don't say "Shit! We have poisoned the environment and it is causing our babies to be defective! We need to fix this!" And we also don't say "Shit! What the fuck is wrong with the world that so many perfectly normal people cannot function in it?" No, we say "You, as an individual, are defective and you, as an individual, needs to try harder to fit in. Don't expect the world to be too accommodating." Which must be some new record for politely telling people "Fuck you and the horse you road in on" with plausible deniability.

Mz 9y ago

A tldr of what I think is that the world has radically changed in the last 100 years and society has become openly hostile to people in ways that are more problematic for some people than others. Rather than wondering what the hell has happened at scale that the world is so problematic for so many people to navigate, we hand out diagnoses to those having the most trouble. It is a form of washing our hands of responsibility for shitting on people (at the societal level). There is an autism "epidemic." So, either something has happened at scale to cause a sudden and dramatic increase in basically birth defects (which appears to be true, actually) or society is less people friendly in critical ways or both. Yet, we don't say "Shit! We have poisoned the environment and it is causing our babies to be defective! We need to fix this!" And we also don't say "Shit! What the fuck is wrong with the world that so many perfectly normal people cannot function in it?" No, we say "You, as an individual, are defective and you, as an individual, needs to try harder to fit in. Don't expect the world to be too accommodating." Which must be some new record for politely telling people "Fuck you and the horse you road in on" with plausible deniability.