TW: venting, community dynamics/conflicts, bullying, identity policing, gaslighting, curebies, counter-aggression, racism, ableism, police shootings, violent assault and murder of autistic people, “bad autie” stereotype

Fair warning: this is a much harsher tone than what I usually post here.

Every community has their self-appointed identity police, that constantly ride people for not being <thing> enough. I’ve been carefully considering the situation around this, at times in detriment to my own health and well-being. Given that I appear to be far from alone in this unfortunate outcome, here’s my carefully considered summation:

Fuck off, you abusive curebie dungnuggets. I don’t care what you think.

I know that there’s people who think the opposite: that there should be far more gatekeeping of who is and isn’t Autistic, not less, but frankly, again: I don’t care. You don’t get to control the rest of us like that, it’s cruel, if not sadistic. I refuse to even entertain this sort of assimilationist, supremacist, gaslighting as fuck garbage thoughts past that. If every once in a blue moon, someone sincerely questions if they’re autistic, then finds out that they’re something else, that’s *COMPLETELY FINE AND HAPPENS IN ALL COMMUNITIES*. A few very annoying VOCAL members of our community act as if there’s never been a single straight person who was “lesbian in college”, and *SOMEHOW*, the LGBTQIA+ community is doing just fine, despite this. (Don’t assume that coming out as LGBTQIA+ is less life-changing and critical than “coming out” as Autistic, either. They’re both significant life decisions, with their own benefits and costs.) Autistic-questioning people aren’t flooding the gates, that’s some terf-like nonsense, settle the hell down, please.

I’ve seen this happen in the LGBTQIA+ community as well. “Who gets to belong? Who is really trans? Do you have to have surgery to *really* be trans? Are enbies valid? Is “autism is a gender” valid?” Sometimes, it can feel as if Tumblr has taken over the whole damn planet.

That said, I got this sort of thing cleared up for myself years ago, when I read this article. (Fair warning: it’s long. 6,000 words long.) We may or may not be past the point of having to guardedly form ourselves as a (figurative) nation, but I’m very certain that policing who gets to be Autistic is toxic, and benefits nobody, including the people insisting on trying to do so. (If this is you: think of all the times you could’ve been stimming or happily enjoying interests instead of obsessing over who does or doesn’t belong.) I much prefer Amy Sequenzia’s approach, which is also the position that ASAN takes, and that many members of our community (and researchers) share as well. *This* is how we learn how to share and grow together as a community – and in turn, increase the probability of being able to shift public opinion of us in our favor, by fostering a mutually supportive and beneficial community for *all* of us. What policing who is or isn’t autistic does is reinforce the idea that being Autistic is something undesirable, because <sarcasm>after all, we’re made up of sufferers and Potentially Dangerous Visual Clickbait, erm, Persons™</sarcasm>,  not a vibrant community of individuals, each with our own unique life experiences.

“But really, what if someone’s just faking because they think autism is a fad?” Are you kidding me? Autism has never been a fad. (I swear, if you compare this to white people appropriating Black or brown experiences, my mixed-race ass is personally going to stuff a smelly tube sock in your “stfu, racist” mouth.) Every group of marginalized and oppressed people has their “what if we’re all like you, a little?” moment in the media spotlight, and that moment has mostly passed for us (and was barely a moment – a mostly shitty moment – to begin with). I’m a *lot* more concerned over the tendency to frame us all as dangerous or even murderous (cliff’s notes version: we’re not only not dangerous, we’re far more likely to be violently assaulted or murdered than the other way around). This is patently obvious to anybody who uses their preferred search engine to find out.

There is a standing bias against people self-dxing. This shows up in subtle ways as well as obnxiously obvious ones (as noted above). “Really, being clinically diagnosed was the best thing that ever happened to me. It’s the way forward.” No, *informed self-awareness and acceptance* is the way forward, how that happens depends on someone’s life situation. Not everybody gets “caught” (word choice deliberate) by the school system, not everybody can afford diagnosis, not everybody sees a reason to “confirm” what they’ve come to on their own, and who knows how many of us are in some sort of liminally autistic void between the societal goalposts. It shouldn’t be anybody’s job to decide that someone isn’t Autistic, “officially” or not. That ultimately is a personal choice, even if there are differences of opinion, clinically or on a community level. Go live your own life, we already have way too many people trying to control (or end) ours. Priorities.

What if we talked about being Autistic as a self-affirmation process, rather than diagnosis? By which I mean, whatever community-based tools and *actually supportive* community processes we have in place to figure out if you’re autistic, that’s fine, as is encouraging autistic-questioning people to take their time and do their research, and from that, choose whatever diagnostic pathway is best for them, including not getting clinically diagnosed (or even, depending on the person’s situation, even letting other people know that they’re Autistic, on the basis of *their* needs, not someone else’s). (BTW, this is no different than the process for people who come out as trans. Again: life-altering choice.)

Self-acceptance is where the actual healing happens, regardless of age or background. Whether that’s by doing a well-researched self-diagnosis, via a clinician, or both — no matter if you’re six, or 16, or 36, or 60, or 100, your life is yours, you Know Why, that’s enough. Welcome to our community.