Today’s conventional wisdom is that both are spectrums. That means one person’s experience with autism isn’t another person’s experience with autism, and one person’s experience as a member of the LGBT can differ from another’s.
However, that’s what the whole point of the letters in the LGBT is. You could be a lesbian, asexual, aromantic, a lesbian who is aromantic, an asexual who is trans, and so on. Someone I know (who inspired me to ask this) has said they began to question why this isn’t done regarding people with autism due to constantly seeing multiple people fight over things people do due to their autism because the people in the conflict don’t understand each others’ experiences but continue to use the label “autism”.
One side would say “sorry, it’s an autism habit.”
“I have autism too, but you don’t see me doing that.”
“Maybe your autism isn’t my autism.”
“No, you’re just using it as a crutch.”
My friend responded to this by making a prototype for an autism equivalent to the LGBT system and says they no longer encourage the “umbrella term” in places like their servers because it has become a constant point of contention, with them maintaining their system is better even if it’s currently faulty in some way.
But what’s being asked is, why isn’t this how it’s done mainstream? Is there some kind of benefit to using the umbrella term “autism” that makes it superior/preferred to deconstructing it? Or has society just not thought too much about it?
This has the problem of being both overly simplified and overly complicated.
On the simplification front, it has the same issues as aspergers/autism or the three levels system that the US uses. By simplifying it to several axises you lose a lot of nuance. Someone could have a lot of difficulties, but not even appear autistic if they happen to miss whatever is being measured. Every autistic person is different and has specific needs and desires. Making a simple “political compass” style thing is going to miss that.
As a comparison to lgbt people, consider a woman who doesn’t feel sexual attraction to anyone, but derives sexual satisfaction from a big burly guy choking her. Where does she lie on the lgbt spectrum?
However, you’re also overcomplicating things. Instead of people just saying that they’re autistic, they have to list all the symptoms they have in some kind of grid decided by some person who is never getting a consensus.
We should normalise “hey, could you stop whistling? I’m a bit sensitive to high pitched noises”. Rather than pushing for “Hey, I’m diagnosed as a high-sensitive-hearer, here’s my diagnosis”.
And as well as all that, people are almost certainly use this as a way to gatekeep. Happens a lot in lgbt circles; gay people saying bisexuality isn’t a thing, bi people saying homosexuality isn’t a thing, people denying the existence of ace, trans or intersex people. If you create a criteria for liking routine, then there’s going to be people that say only autistic people that meet that criteria are REALY autistic.
Honestly, this whole idea feels like it comes fron the academic desire to categorize and study rather than a desire to help.
LGBT+ are the values of a nominal variable sexuality. (maybe not the T tho). Ls are almost only going to sex with other women. If they go both ways, then they’re B, not L. If they go all ways, then they’re P(ansexual). So it seems like less of a spectrum, and more of a single variable. I may be wrong since Im not up on the latest in sexual identities.
While autism is a variable (levels 1-3), it’s ordered, not nominal. The autism spectrum is made up of many variables that are also continuous, not discreet. And they are positively correlated. If one variable is high, it’s likely others would be too. So, you can’t say someone is a kind of autism anymore than levels 1-3. Beyond that, the spectrum varies way to much to typify.
That’s a good question. I still struggle with the whole concept of identifying with some exact definitions and labels for oneself. I mean it’s super useful to have words and labels for things. At times. Other times I’m not so sure. Is it really that important to disclose to other people whether you’re into men, women, or mainly attracted to some, or how you fit into gender? Isn’t it enough to be… yourself? (Genuine question.) I mean that’s obviously important to you. And to (close) friends. But I sometimes don’t see the reason why people are set on the exact subdivision of “queer” when talking to other people. Especially to people who aren’t queer themselves.
And I mean the next question is whether that’s useful in a conversation. I doubt people will know how to treat a sensory … autist. They probably don’t know how to handle any autist. So it might be of no use to tell them some exact term. You’re just confusing them and you probably might have to start a short lecture anyways.
Additionally, it’s complicated to add exact terms to a spectrum. I mean that’s the point of a spectrum. It’s blurry and not discrete and hard to tell whether a yellowish-green fits into yellow or green.
Disclaimer: I’m not on the spectrum. I don’t really know what I’m talking about or how life is for other people. I just know how it is to be me.
And with that said, I think it’d be useful to tell people about different aspects of autism. Maybe that helps to get a better picture. Just knowing it’s different for everyone doesn’t get you all the way. We could certainly try with some terms and letters and see if it helps people to memorize details about autism.
