Why everything you know about autism is wrong!

She explains the social vs medical models of disability very well. I can certainly relate,  as Plastic said, to the fact that most of the problems I've ever faced are caused by interacting with more typical people, and I certainly communicate much less anxiously and with lower stress (even enjoyment) with autistic people than others.

However, I wonder how far the "paradigm shift" can be regarded as absolute? For instance, I have some difficulties that probably trace to my autism, and which don't involve other people or society generally. The examples are quite trivial (e.g. I hate touching emery paper or dry wooden spoons, I believe I have aphantasia and I definitely have alexithymia) but I can't say that these would disappear if people would accommodate me better.

On balance though, I very much agree that I feel simply different rather than faulty, and wish that I had not had five decades of thinking I was out of step, weird, depressed, misanthropic, unsociable, unlikable, and underachieving in things that others seem to do with ease (I went all the way academically, but I found this easy so I tend not to count it as success).

So on balance, I support the Neurodiversity paradigm, but I'm wary of associating too much with the Neurodiversity movement *only* because there are those who attack it and I don't wish to be attacked. [Edit - actually, on reflection, it's more than this. See my reply to Flint below]

I can 'really' relate to us being disabled by our environment as opposed to us having a disability per se!

I 'like' the idea of Autistic people simply having a different neurotype, we're not broken, we can communicate perfectly well with other members of our own tribe, it's just the same as having two groups of people who speak different languages, right? Autistic not Weird :-)

I can 'really' relate to us being disabled by our environment as opposed to us having a disability per se!

I 'like' the idea of Autistic people simply having a different neurotype, we're not broken, we can communicate perfectly well with other members of our own tribe, it's just the same as having two groups of people who speak different languages, right? Autistic not Weird :-)