I’ll watch this later. I’m suspicious of defining ourselves as a broader ND community by the diagnostic criteria of the institutions that have historically abused and oppressed us. Autism is a word we, as a western culture, came up with, it’s a concept some soviet lady articulated and then some nazi collaborator independently articulated to decide which children to murder (sparing some autistics he liked is still deciding to kill others for not being that). All human cultures have had to deal with us since forever, well before psychology decided to start categorizing personalities as diseases. The medical lens is not the only lens with which to understand ourselves, and cultures that didn’t or don’t have a medical understanding of autism don’t necessarily have an inferior understanding.

Even within the supposedly strict criteria of the DSM, what is and isn’t autism will fluctuate between editions and between individual professionals. It only has importance as a gatekeeper of care, and we often don’t even get that - or worse, kids get kicked into ABA.

As a community, we shouldn’t give a fuck. Don’t take medicine based on light google searching, sure, but if you’re facing ableism you’re likely going to have enough in common to stand in solidarity in autistic and ND spaces. I half want to abandon autism as a community label and just use ND, so BCBA’s will finally shut the fuck up about us needing to have allistic professionals be the gatekeeors to the autistic community. They can’t control a word they didn’t make, neurodivergent is our word so we can do whatever we want with it and pursue our own goals, no matter how much that pisses off the ABA industry.