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"Everyone is on the Autism Scale!" - is this right?

Mweekie

Hi.

I don't often post on here, but I have been getting very frustrated by some people who I know...

The other day, I was talking to someone in particular and about my (currently undiagnosed) autism and she turns round and I quote... "Well...everyone is on the autistic scale on one end or the other. No one is a 'normal' person. Everyone has some autistic trait...". She continued on this track for well over an hour and I felt myself getting more and more upset by her.

So my question is - is everyone in the world on the scale in one sense or another.

I know what I feel about it and I know that yes some people are on the scale (whether diagnosed or not) but I don't feel every single person is on it.

Thank you for letting me a) rant and b) ask this question.

Mweekie xx

  • If there is such a thing as autism, then definitionally, not everyone has autism. We wouldn't need the word 'tall' if everyone was tall. The word 'scale' complicates things somewhat, as if autism is diagnosed as having a certain amount of traits, then there needs to be a cut off somewhere in a way that leaves grey areas. But even if we can't quantify 'autism', or, indeed, 'tallness' with absolute precision, the categories are meaningful.

    Perhaps you should tell your friend that everyone is tall because everyone possesses a certain amount of height.

  • No, that's BS. It's like saying every woman is a little bit pregnant.

    Sometimes it can be well-meaning, but equally it can be used as a way of belittling the challenges that autistic people face, or as a way of avoiding making needed changes to accommodate our needs.

  • Mweekie said:

    So my question is - is everyone in the world on the scale in one sense or another.

    The autism spectrum goes from having no traits to however many traits ~ so as far as that goes everyone is on that spectrum.

    Then there is the autism diagnostic spectrum ~ which only applies to those who are or can be diagnosed on that spectrum as having enough traits.

  • No, we are not all on "the scale!"  Anyway autism isn't a scale, I hope you put her right, LOL

    I think that is sometimes said by people who want to minimise our problems, probably so they don't have to take our needs into account.

    However, there is a ven diagram in my head.  Our autism is largely or entirely genetic. Those genes come from somewhere.  Some people in our family are quite NT, but may have a trait or two without it amounting to autism, a few may only narrowly miss the mark for a diagnosis, but yet share some, but perhaps not all our experiences.  I do think most of the population is NT, but likewise there are some folk on the fuzzy line around the boundary of the spectrum.

    In my ven diagram I  see us in the middle, with it's fuzzy boundary, but intersected by other groups with other sometimes co-occuring characteristics, some of which are neurodivergent, which you don't have to be autistic to have, but are statistically much more common if you are:  for instance, being dyslexic, or having ADHD, being ambidextrous, having synaesthesia or an eidetic memory, identifying as LGBTQ+ and a whole lot more... all seem to be statistically way more likely if you are also autistic.  Furthermore, a lot of these characteristics are common to a lot of my friends. This makes me wonder whether there are like ways of thinking in this corner of humanity (even if the individuals aren't all autistic) which attracts me to them.

    It takes all sorts to make a world, but I am left to wonder that whether rather than a simple NT/ND divide there aren't cluster types of neurological make up, some of which are closer together than others and prone to intersect.  Of course, I've nothing really to back that up with.  It's just the pondering of my mind.

  • I think that in some cases people are trying to be reassuring, kind of like saying "you're not as different as you might feel you are", however most of the time I do see it as dismissive of people's struggles due to actually being autistic. 

    To me it's like going up to a person in a wheelchair and telling them we're all a bit disabled because I twisted my ankle the other day. My wife has a friend who has OCD and gets furious when people talk about how OCD they are because they line their pens up on the desk nice and straight. 

    What I try to point out to people (sometimes more diplomatically than others) is that there is a vast difference between the outwardly observable traits associated with autism (which yes, I agree, lots of people do display to varying degrees) and the impact on their lives.  

  • in reply to Martin

    Hi Martin,
    Thank you for your reply Slight smile
    Mweekie xx

  • Many people who are not clinically diagnosable as autistic have traits that are characteristic of autism. However, this is not an excuse for dismissing or minimising the problems of people who are clinically diagnosed or diagnosable as autistic.

    So it is basically true that autistics clinally trend into the general population. However, this fact does not invalidate the truth that autistic people have very real problems that the majority of human beings do not have.