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I will argue that the mild part of the autism spectrum, what we call functional autism, is not a mental illness, not a disorder.
It’s like being left handed, not the most common thing, it can cause troubles in a world made for right handed people, specially if being left handed is not accepted. But by itself is just another way of being just as “healthy” and “normal” as being right handed.
I think this is an open debate. Some folks prefer it being considered an illness because they want diagnosis and treatment. Others, like me, just love to be this way, and there’s nothing I think is wrong with me. The only problem is that the world is not accommodated for people like me, just like it wasn’t accommodated for left-handed people not so long ago. But as soon as it’s 100% accepted as something normal I don’t see it causing any trouble, so if there’s no harm there’s no illness we can talk about.
Wholeheartedly agree with this! IMO our societies have a big problem with people being different.
That’s my opinion, but I attribute this liberalism: when the society’s philosophy is to attribute 5he responsibility of anyone’s success on each self person, it means the responsability to fit in is on the person itself and not on the society. This removes the burden of inclusion from the society, the group, and make it a burden of adaptation on the person. It is a toxic societal environment.
As an argument to this point of view: making it an illness provide a justification for the person to be different, and a responsability for the society to accommodate disabled people. But the need to go to this extreme instead of simply being tolerant and accommodating any difference is both stupid (because it is a burden for both the victims and the society to hold discussions about basic needs) and a inhuman way of treating people.
Another argument to my thesis is that the “epidemic” is coincidental with societal individualism (pushed by liberalism and that rose since the end of ww2) and the decline of social structures like church and government help (because liberalism was about fighting government involvement in people’s lives).
The spectrum of autism isn’t mild to disabling.
It’s a spectrum of presenting symptoms. What “functional autism” is, is a constellation of symptoms that means you can just about navigate the world as expected by neurotypical people. “Non-functioning” autism or “profound” autism are where the constellation of symptoms makes you unable to function in the world. This is more often than not inclusive of non-verbal autisms and poor motor control autisms.
“Functional” autism can be disabling for the individual in certain conditions - they may be completely unable to read social cues, or be severely impacted by certain stimulatory environments.
Absolutely! In fact, I’d argue that this is true for many conditions that we treat as disabilities, like dyslexia (which is rarely disabling) and the aforementioned autism. Both of these conditions have disadvantages and advantages. The situation is not black and white; simply because society was designed one way, does not mean that everyone who does not perfectly fit in is disabled or has a illness.
Hell, I’d even go so far as to say it might not be worth a specific categorization, that everyone is a bit different and we don’t need to pigeonhole every state of reasonably normal into little categories. Ever since Asperger’s was popularized, we had a big chunk of people that are not especially far from normal latching onto this.
If it doesn’t need particularly special treatment/accommodation, then it’s not really worth a category. If someone feels like not dealing with people, needing a bit of a break from it, then that shouldn’t need to be correlated to a condition. By the same token, it can’t be an excuse for being unreasonable to others when you are perfectly capable of being reasonable, you just don’t like doing so. If you misread someone’s non-verbal cues, whether or not you have a “condition”, people should understand that’s just a possibility of everyday life.
