1. When they think of autism, they think of some famous "said to be autistic" people with very high IQ scores.
2. To make autistics feel better. For the same reason, in my country, we never say "a person with special needs" but "a person with special abilities". Always!
I think the idea that we have superpowers has gained traction because people misconstrued Greta Thunberg’s comment that her autism was ‘in some respects’ a superpower. In fact, all she meant was that certain of her autistic traits give her an advantage in some circumstances.
Can't speak for others, but it gave me a short burst of success troubleshooting IT issues for a few years til I completely burned out. Prior to that it wrecked my childhood, family life and schooling. It's a superpower in some ways I guess. For some people, for varying amounts of time and to varying degrees.
Agreed. I don't think autism gives me any specialist skill, I'm sure I'd be doing much better in life if it did!
Kudos to those people who do have those things, but it probably is nore about them as a complex human being than autism.
For example, I have a great memory for details from a long time go, my autism assessment report pointed that out actually.. except the things I store so well are random things that my mind latched on to; I can't do it at will for things i actually want to remember in detail. So, not a super power lol just sensory overwhelm.
I've heard this from NTs (and even some NDs) trying to put a positive spin on the things we experience as autistic people.
I've no time for toxic positivity and fluff. Meltdowns, shutdowns, memory and brain fog, RSD, PDA, high empathy causing overwhelm and empathy blackouts during meltdown are something I would only wish on people who choose to invalidate me, and only temporarily at that.
