#I'm so right about the autism thing and you can't even make a valid argument okay

[iwannascreameurekaa]

No name for the trio? Why not make your own

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

AITA for possibly invalidating a self-diagnosed autistic person

I (20sNB) met D (20sM) in an online server for an anime fandom we're both in. I'm a psychology student who was professionally diagnosed with autism in early childhood. D and I developed a friendship based on having similar fandom opinions. I don't remember how me being autistic came up in conversation but when I mentioned it, he described himself as "autistic as f#ck". Sometimes he would get into arguments with other people in the server and bring up his autism if he was called out on how he spoke to people. On his twitter he said his autism was self-diagnosed and he has no interest in getting a professional diagnosis but he could if he wanted to.

I have complicated feelings on self-diagnosis; I think there's pressure in the autistic community to accept every single self-diagnosed person as valid. I personally would never definitively say I had something that I hadn't been professionally diagnosed with. That being said, I understand that there are factors that would prevent someone from getting a diagnosis so some people *have* to only be self-diagnosed. I don't have a problem with it as long as people aren't spreading misinformation or being actively harmful, which is what I (and others) thought D was doing. My issue wasn't him being self-diagnosis, it was that he was using his self-diagnosed autism to justify incorrect (and harmful) claims.

I noticed a few times that he would make comments like "autism isn't a disability" and "some autistics have high support needs because of intellectual disability", which is just flat out wrong. D also claimed that if he was to get a diagnosis, his would be level 3 autism (which would be for someone with high support needs with severe social and communication deficits, generally nonverbal) but he also is a college student who's been in a relationship for over a year and he works part-time in retail. For context, my diagnosis happened when there was different terminology but my psychologist considers me to be somewhere between level 1 or 2 and I am also studying and working part time.

Another person in the server (let's call them P, also 20sM) brought up a different disorder that they'd been diagnosed with (not autism although P is autistic as well) and D immediately said "I probably have that too but I can't be bothered to do anything about it".

P and a few other people in the server expressed some frustration in a separate group chat about D's tendency to (a) say things about autism that just aren't true and (b) say "omg me too" every time one of us brings up things we have. Once D said autism isn't a disability the third or fourth time we'd had enough and I responded "D, that's not right". D took offense to that and claimed as a fellow autistic person I should agree with him. I said "D, I'm autistic and it's a disability, I call myself disabled because my autism is literally disabling". D said he felt like disabled is a bad word and he doesn't like using it about himself. I said "D, no one's forcing you to use it about yourself if you don't want to, but saying autism isn't a disability is just wrong". P pointed out that every time someone in the server talks about being neurodivergent D is like "omg me too" and P also said that D doesn't get to claim to be autistic while also spreading misinformation, especially when the misinformation being spread is ableist. D got mad at P for calling him ableist; he insisted he's autistic and self-diagnosis is valid. I said "I get that, but when the information you're spreading is flat-out wrong, it kind of makes me question your researching skills".

D called P and I both ableist, told us we were so privileged to be diagnosed (which neither of us disputed but also D *could* have been diagnosed but chooses not to be even though he has the resources to access a professional diagnosis) and we're "f#cking assholes" for invalidating self-diagnosed autistics. D's partner (20sF) also got involved and claimed we were bullying D and we both have "pick-me" attitudes. P and I both muted the server and disengaged for a while.

Later on, D messaged P and I both. D claimed his reaction to what was said was because of his autism. P had had enough and said "buddy, you don't get to say that" and D got mad and blocked P. I told D I was going no-contact and D could block me if he wanted. D called me an asshole and I blocked him.

It's probably worth noting that my autism means that I have difficulty interpreting people's messages in text form and tend to take what people say at face value. Sometimes D getting overly confrontational triggered my anxiety and caused me to feel very uneasy around him since it was in text form and there was no vocal tone to decipher (if that makes sense). The thing is, I don't think D is necessarily not autistic, I just think D has some internalized ableism and doesn't really understand the nuances of the autism spectrum enough to make a sound judgement and he should have maybe not made claims about an identity he knows very little about, but maybe P and I might have been a little harsh because we'd been stewing on our feelings for so long.

What are these acronyms?

[some-pers0n]

On a related note to that proship Wikipedia page, there's actually a hilarious instance of a radqueer *giving a college speech about the radqueer community and recording it online* lol. Moons above, some people are just so terminally online lol. Bonus points for the fact that the speech doesn't even make sense unless you're intensely following discourse around radqueers, much less even know what they are.

www.archive.org/details/VriskerFic8onRadqueerSpeech

Listening to it and just. jesus christ what am I even hearing. "Transableism isn't ableist because being disabled isn't a bad thing and wanting to be disabled isn't bad" imagine being a college prof and hearing that.

(More inane ramblings below the cut + live reactions)

Not to also mention it just baffles me the idea of, say for example, neurotypicals identifying as "transautistic" because they feel like they are autistic. You can't be serious with me right now. You cannot look me in the eyes and tell me that you are oppressed because you identify as disabled despite being able-bodied. I get it somewhat if it's a OSDD/DID thing and you've got alters and whatnot, but it's just asinine. It's beyond terminally online. The second hand embarrassment from seeing that this was handed in as a project is so intense. You'd have to be toiling in the darkest, deepest parts of the internet to even understand this.

"It can't be offensive because most of us are minorities" ??? WHAT EVEN IS THAT LOGIC??? Like can you apply that logic to fandom racism? Like imagine people calling somebody out for racism and they went "erm I polled my followers and most of them were queer minorities so it's not offensive" are you kidding me.

Oh my fucking god of course they're a Vriska kinnie. The way they're describing being "transcharacter" makes me nauseous like... Okay, fine, I understand kinning characters. This stuff here sounds like a cult or signs of some sort of dissociative disorder. My sibling in science you need help if you genuinely feel like harming yourself over not being a fictional character.

"I'm trans-half-blind" be serious with me rn. Be fr. Be honest with me here

I do very much agree that harassment and doxing is utterly vile and I feel for these people and how they've been affected, but I don't think suffering immediately makes their identity any more valid. You can't just be. transdisabled. You are either able-bodied and wearing an eyepatch for fun or you're actually disabled.

The thing with these transdisabled people is that they never identify with "gross" disabilities either. Where's the transdisabled people who want feeding tubes. Where's the transdisabled people who claim that they've got dysphoria because they don't have a oxygen tank. What about the disabilities that aren't easy to make you look cool and edgy? Don't got dysphoria for that now, huh?

God I hate fakeclaiming people with mental disorders but I also think that you gotta have at least something with you in order to feel dysphoria about not being a system or not having autism.

Again imagine being a normal well-adjusted person who (at most) has a Snapchat and Instagram account and hearing this. They just talk about this stuff like you're already aware of it. Goodness gracious. The thing here too is that I'd be terrified of giving them a bad mark for being, well, incomprehensible in case they decided to take that as me being a violent bigot and further harm themselves.

What are they even talking about right now

Why are they talking about the Oxford dictionary

"This calls us attention seekers. Well, don't you know that attention seeking is a sign of emotional neglect?" you didn't debunk the argument. You just said: "Well, yeah, maybe we are attention seekers, but don't you know we're also traumatized? Boom, gotcha there. Now you can't criticize us because we're traumatized"

OH MY GOD THEY ACTUALLY WEAR AN EYEPATCH WDHUAIWHAIUA--

Oh how brilliant of a conclusion: people are people and not everyone's emotions and experiences are the same. How ground-breaking. Curious, I wonder what it would be like to ask a person who has a missing or damaged eye their thoughts and opinions on a transcharacter Viriska wearing an eyepatch and telling people they're disabled. I wonder how they'd feel.

God this whole thing is so immature. They call anybody who disagrees with them a child when they themselves have been doing little more than make cheap arguments, curse, and barely formulate even a single coherent thesis statement. It doesn't even sound like they have a script, more like ramblings straight from the heart.

Kid, I don't really care if a person is transID or whatever it's called. I care if they're a decent person more than anything. I'm not going to maul them and drag them into the streets for people to stone to death. Why do you act like you're oppressed in this way? I get that you and your friends have been mistreated, but to be honest it's still like. ridiculous to me.

Please don't...gouge your eye out...

I know I've said it before but GOD imagine being a prof and receiving this. I would be utterly terrified and don't know what to do because it's clear the person is not exactly in. stable condition mentally.