“Maybe it’s because we associate disorder with non functioning, when’s it more “life on hard mode in the current social/cultural context”.”

If a disorder manifested itself in a limited context then it wouldn’t be a disorder. Disorders are inherently defined by their impacts in multiple contexts. It could be argued that society itself is a social/cultural context but society as a whole cannot be changed in a reasonable period of time to accomodate an individual, so it is impractical to classify society in that way.

“It also implies there’s something wrong with the individuals rather than recognizing that the environment could also be adjusted to help the individual thrive.”

Although this implication is present within society in many ways, the use of (modern) autistic terminology is intended to inform the accommodations a person needs to thrive. The negative stigma of disability is entrenched deep into our society and even affects the discussions we have within our community.

What negative connotations do you see with the word “disability” and what motivates you to distance yourself from it?

I believe that you have good intentions with your post but this line of thinking is alienating to the autistic people who have difficulties that cannot be merely attributed to societal discrimination, but require support for their disability to allow them to live and thrive at all. Using terminology that is only derived from the social model of disability removes the agency from autistic people, particularly people with moderate-to-severe presentations, to communicate their difficulties clearly.

“However, many individuals would function quite well in a setting that was designed to raise, educate, and accommodate autistic brains.”

Environmental accommodations do not eliminate the presence of autism as a disability. A disabled person is still disabled when they receive accommodations. The fact that we need accommodations distinct from allistic people is indicative of its status as a disability.

As you are a leader of an autistic community, I suggest for you to consider the implications of these statements towards autistic people with moderate-to-severe presentations and to be inclusive of them when discussing the social model of disability.

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But it is also good to have the ability to communicate effectively with autistics, yet your framing may contribute to drown that consideration.

I can see where you’re coming from and I appreciate the constructive criticism. My intention was to convey that difficulties will still be present for many autistic people when communicating despite accommodations, but I do not intend to dismiss existing progress made by advocates to educate neurotypical people about autistic communication.

(…) and you may be successful at masking with a communication style that doesn’t come natural to you for a day, a week, a month, years - but all of that is extra effort you’re loading on your back for the sake of not coming off as weird (…)

I find it extremely difficult to fully mask personally and that doing so brings great strain on myself so I avoid doing it as much as possible. It helps that I have recently had the opportunity to be in a supportive environment where I can be fully unmasked without backlash. The possibility of societal acceptance in a wide variety of environments is very foreign to me. I think it’s something I’ll mull over.

There’s a difference between solitude and loneliness.

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There would still be conflict relating to that as there are many autistic people who have the reduced capacity to work or outright cannot work at all.

This is something I tried to take into consideration for my comment as it is difficult to really give a definitive answer. I think people forget that autistic people aren’t guaranteed to cooperate with each other and may even have more conflicts.

I was more interested in the percieved respect, honesty, integrity (e.g. people not nicking your stuff if you drop something somewhere), generally friendly attitudes, tech innovation, appliance design etc.

I like those aspects of Japanese culture as well but I think it’s always good to be wary of accidentally romanticising a culture as no country is perfect.

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It would also be waste of time if the “dumb” person is arguing in bad-faith. I would even argue that it’s smart to value your time and redirect it to something worthwhile, as you’ve said.

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I wouldn’t encourage autistic people to exploit themselves and be exploited, especially as many can suffer from autistic fatigue and burnout.