Autistic Hedgehog

No, I haven’t. I don’t tend to read a lot of non-fiction about autism. I got a fair bit thrown at me when I was younger, and I’ve been diagnosed since I was 9 so like…sometimes I feel like a walking Complete Guide to Asperger’s Syndrome, if that makes sense.

I do think I’ve seen some complaints about Attwood in the autism community here. Or maybe I’m thinking of someone else. Hedgies?

My opinion is that this doctor is ignorant, ought to be fired, and you should definitely seek a second opinion, preferably from someone who doesn’t need both hands and a road map to find his own ass. 

In point of fact, people with Aspergers are very often diagnosed later in life, specifically because it’s perceived by allistic people as being a higher-functioning form of autism. Far from being “so severe that it’s obvious,” it won’t necessarily express as strongly at a young age; the signs can be more subtle and easily missed, especially in children designated female at birth, because autism “science” is a hotbed of cissexism and gender essentialism. 

I was diagnosed when I was nine. There are a number of people on Tumblr with an AS diagnosis that were diagnosed around that age or even later, sometimes much later—especially since AS only went down in the DSM in 1994. I couldn’t have been diagnosed AS at one because the diagnosis didn’t officially exist when I was one, and that goes for many, many Aspies or just those with some form of autism considered “high-functioning.”

It’s really sad and frightening to me that I feel like I, someone without training or even a complete college education, could do this job better than the people supposedly trained to do it. 

I actually watched that season, and I did like Heather (the model in question).

But that sort of situation is always such a double-edged sword for us. It would be nice if allistics saw that and took from it that autistic people are people, we’re all different, we have different strengths and weaknesses, different goals and dreams. 

Instead the majority of them seem to have one of two reactions. Either they do what your friends and relatives did, because for some reason they have to compare autistic people to other autistics like Rain Man (who was based on an actual autistic) or Temple Grandin or Heather herself.

Or they’re all “She can do that, why can’t you?” 

It’s great when autistic people make inroads in careers that aren’t the acceptable, stereotyped ones, but that sort of reaction to it really bites.