Gathering data like this for “curiosity” is understandable, but too vague for medical and personal data.
Without a stated purpose, data can be presented to form any and all kinds of narratives.
Will it be used to form a tabloid piece about “overwhelming majority of people in autism community aren’t actually autistic” fuelling some agenda against the “self-identifying victim mentality epidemic”? Because it can, whether it is the intention or not, and I want less of that.
Or is it used to form an opinion on whether a clinical self-diagnosis is important to people? Or difficult to get? If so, please word the questions differently.
Honestly I’d be very surprised to see an online autism community with a majority of people professionally diagnosed, even more surprised if the majority were diagnosed as children. Even setting aside how underdiagnosed large sections of the autistic population are, the people who need to seek support and validation that they belong to a community are much more likely to be those who didn’t have the right language or support as a child.
Thank you for asking this. If I am being completely honest, I asked this to get a sense of whether I am “valid” because I am self identified too. The internalized imposter syndrome is strong with me. The toxic effect of this is that I project my own insecurity onto other self identified people sometimes and feel like I need to know the composition of the space to decide how “authentic” the expression of autism is there. I am fully aware it is an extremely harmful view to have, but I unfortunately do have it.
If my own autism thought me one thing it is all intelligent consciousness is valid, no matter what species and divergenties.
I prefer a bigger open community where we can all respect each others quirks and differences away from neurotypical biases then a small exclusive group of “real autist” gatekeepers.
Serious question: Why?
Gathering data like this for “curiosity” is understandable, but too vague for medical and personal data.
Without a stated purpose, data can be presented to form any and all kinds of narratives.
Will it be used to form a tabloid piece about “overwhelming majority of people in autism community aren’t actually autistic” fuelling some agenda against the “self-identifying victim mentality epidemic”? Because it can, whether it is the intention or not, and I want less of that.
Or is it used to form an opinion on whether a clinical self-diagnosis is important to people? Or difficult to get? If so, please word the questions differently.
Honestly I’d be very surprised to see an online autism community with a majority of people professionally diagnosed, even more surprised if the majority were diagnosed as children. Even setting aside how underdiagnosed large sections of the autistic population are, the people who need to seek support and validation that they belong to a community are much more likely to be those who didn’t have the right language or support as a child.
Thank you for asking this. If I am being completely honest, I asked this to get a sense of whether I am “valid” because I am self identified too. The internalized imposter syndrome is strong with me. The toxic effect of this is that I project my own insecurity onto other self identified people sometimes and feel like I need to know the composition of the space to decide how “authentic” the expression of autism is there. I am fully aware it is an extremely harmful view to have, but I unfortunately do have it.
If my own autism thought me one thing it is all intelligent consciousness is valid, no matter what species and divergenties.
I prefer a bigger open community where we can all respect each others quirks and differences away from neurotypical biases then a small exclusive group of “real autist” gatekeepers.