Autistic Hedgehog

That last one sounds about right.

“Mild” autism, like “high-functioning” autism is an expression of ignorance and at times straight up hatred. It’s an allistic classification of us based on what they assume we’re capable of, and has nothing to do with the realities we face in our day-to-day lives. And sadly, it’s used against us by many of our so-called “allies,” by people like Autism Moms (*gag*) and just assholes who want to dismiss us. 

Some people may come across more high-functioning in your average social situation, but have other struggles. Some may function fairly highly across the board. Some may be able to make their own phone calls but be pretty much unable to speak to someone face-to-face. We’re all different, and we all have our areas where we’re strong, areas where we’re weak, and areas where we succeed sometimes but not all times. “Mild autism” is a completely meaningless term.

It may be that some of these people are trying to compliment you (I don’t know the exact circumstances you’re hearing this in). But even so, that’s patronizing, ignorant and offensive. And worse, these distinctions have been divisive for autistics in general. It pits us against each other, both by encouraging some of us to believe that we’re better than others, and by telling us we should shut up because we don’t have it as bad as others. No matter someone’s intentions, using the term “mild autism” is just wrong.

tl;dr version: If someone uses the term “mild autism,” this can be translated as “I don’t actually know the first thing about how autism really works.” 

Sadly, society encourages “high-functioning” autistics to hate or at least be ignorant about “low-functioning” autistics. Anyone perceived as high-functioning will be praised for their passing ability (“I hope my child is just like you someday”) and told they’re not like “low-functioning” autistics. If they don’t know anyone considered low-functioning, it’s hard to know what the differences are and are not. Like many things, it’s a problem on a deep, societal level.

I still haven’t quite figured out how to deal with people who believe Asperger’s Syndrome isn’t autism. It was never presented to me as anything but autism by the people who diagnosed and treated me, and I can’t understand how the idea got out there in the first place (but would not be the least surprised if Autism Speaks is somehow partially responsible).  

Unfortunately, there may not really be a good way to deal with these individuals. Whatever the reasons they got into that mindset, they need a certain level of insight and introspection to get out of it, and you can’t necessarily give that to a person.

The best you can do is try to explain why these ideas are problematic. Functioning labels have extremely limited meanings. They’re used by allistic people in an attempt to describe and sort us, and thus lack nuance and connection to our reality. As well, “functioning” is defined by what allistic people think is right, so if someone can communicate just fine, but cannot do so by actually speaking aloud, they’re automatically dubbed “low-functioning”. This is regardless of how they feel in their day to day life and how they actually function in society.

As well, there are huge assumptions about what “low-functioning” individuals can and cannot feel, based solely on the fact that the don’t meet an arbitrary definition of “normal” in how they express themselves. Society (and groups like Autism Speaks) works overtime to reaffirm these ideas, to brand them on the minds even of autistic people. Thus comes the assumption that “low-functioning” individuals wouldn’t be able to decide for themselves if they wanted a cure anyway, and that’s unfair. No matter how “high-functioning” anyone might be, they wouldn’t want anyone making those kinds of assumptions about them, and they have no right to do it to others.

Moreover, what would a “cure” even entail? Autism is pretty firmly entangled with our brainmeats. I doubt it would be possible to cure someone who is already autistic, which means things like in-utero detection and extensive gene therapy. Since it would be impossible to determine “functioning” level ahead of time (especially considering the meaninglessness of functioning levels in general) the only possible end result would be that autistic people wouldn’t be allowed to be born. Not even the so-called high-functioning ones. When “high-functioning” autistics support a cure, they think they’re safe because they’re agreeing with allistics, but in the end it’s allistics who have the real power right now. When we agree with them that a cure is necessary for “low-functioning” individuals, all we really do is let them take more power from us. 

The idea of autistic anti-vaxxers is a bit mind-blowing. But in the end, for the most part, there’s no reasoning with anti-vaxxers. They’re anti-science, counter-factual conspiracy theorists. No matter how many times you put the facts right under their nose, they won’t believe them, because those facts don’t support their bias. The Panic Virus by Seth Mnookin is actually pretty useful for understanding how their attitudes have come about (but a warning, Mnookin has his own misconceptions about autism and some of the language he uses is upsetting).

I think this was supposed to have a second half? IDK.

Although allistics (non-autistics) have assigned the classifications “high-functioning” and “low-functioning” autism, those really don’t work very well for what autism actually is. Autism is a spectrum, and no individual sits firmly on one spot of that spectrum. Even people who appear “higher” or “lower” functioning tend to sort of…slide around, I guess you could say. 

It’s all dependent upon the situation. In a normal situation where I’m perfectly comfortable, a lot of people would never tell I’m autistic. Start piling on certain stimuli and the like, though, and that can change. I’m terrified of needles and when I have to get bloodwork, we (my husband and I) usually instruct people to handle me as if they’re handling a small child. I hate that, it’s humiliating, but it seems to be the only thing people understand. (And incidentally, last year I ended up with even worse trauma than before, because something got lost in translation and I ended up surrounded by three people who stuck me with a needle roughly half a dozen times.)

Beyond functioning labels there really aren't levels of autism. There’s a spectrum and symptoms and individuals; that’s it. And a number of actually autistic people don’t care much for functioning labels.

P.S. For any allistics reading this: Absolutely DO NOT go around treating autistics like small children because you think something might be upsetting or overstimulating for them. That is a precaution I choose to take to protect myself, and one I wouldn’t have to take if there wasn’t so much ignorance about autism spread around.