Absolutely. If you've met one autistic person you've met one autistic person. Basically any reference to autism has the problem of overgeneralizing, especiall

Absolutely. If you've met one autistic person you've met one autistic person. Basically any reference to autism has the problem of overgeneralizing, especially now that we expanded the spectrum to cover several percent of the population, and started using "autism" for the whole spectrum colloquially instead of a particular subset of the spectrum. But even so - we do on occasion need to talk about autism generically. Referring to a classical profile[1] of autistic symptoms, an abstract-concept-of-autism, is simply a necessary shorthand, because the changes in perception & diagnosis of autism have stolen the language I was taught growing up to describe and classify, and sprayed them over a broad swath of behavioral and cognitive problems. It's also quite a bit more appropriate to use the stereotype (while remaining conscious that it's a stereotype, usually correct but not always) when referring specifically to low-functioning minimally-verbal autistics, I suspect. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_mind#Autism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_mind#Autism