Ehh… The autistic and academic communities have been butting heads for a while. Academia has a rich history of marginalising and dehumanising those that they consider “lesser”, and I have no reason to beleive that we’ve moved past that.

Autistic and non-autistic brains work in different ways. And it’s hard for one type to understand the other. Usually called the “double empathy problem” ( https://www.autism.org.uk/advice-and-guidance/professional-practice/double-empathy ). And because neurotypical people have problems reading autistic people, they assume that the person they’re reading must lack “something”.

In addition, all the tools that academics use to measure the worth of a person tend to be tailered to a specific type of person. You can see it with IQ tests; once racism went from being normal to being frowned upon, scientists had to scramble to figure out why Africans suddenly started seeming to be characterised as intellectually deficient.

Being gay also used to be a disability, but now it isn’t. It’s not unreasonable to assume that in 10 years autism will be the same.

Personally, my experiences have been that I have too much empathy. Other people’s suffering hurts me so much more than my neurotypical friends. I think this is a common autistic trait (“hyper-empathy”) other people have. I have theories on how this all relates to their reactions to emotional stimulus, but this post is already too long.

… Of course, there is a group of people who think that Academia is Law and that things aren’t true unless they’re in a journal. If you’re that kind of person, I doubt my hearsay is convincing, but I figure it might interest people travelling this thread.