[ SECRET POST #5837 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #5837 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.


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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 07 secrets from Secret Submission Post #835.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah. It sucks and it's increasingly too prevalent in fandom for comfort. Related, I just don't understand why so many people feel like they *have* to have a medical diagnosis now. It's one of the worst things about the internet, people either labeling themselves or labeling others without a professional diagnosis. It's okay to have certain personality traits - those personality traits aren't necessarily an indicator of anything neurodivergent with your or someone else's brain. Spicy take, I know, but most people who self identify as autistic probably have never met anyone who is legitimately autistic. It's like night and day; being merely awkward isn't enough to don that crown.

[(Anonymous)]

Spicy take, I know, but most people who self identify as autistic probably have never met anyone who is legitimately autistic.

Asshole take, you mean? Many people who self-identify as autistic do it because they don't have access or don't want a diagnosis. This doesn't make them any less autistic. There is not one "legitimate" way to be autistic and it definitely doen't require a diagnosis. You're an ableist asshole, but we already knew this just by reading your comment.

[(Anonymous)]

"There is not one "legitimate" way to be autistic and it definitely doen't require a diagnosis."

This is a dangerous slippery slope that can be applied to both this topic and too many other things.

[(Anonymous)]

DA

It’s really not a slippery slope, and trying to use the slippery slope fallacy here is disingenuous. It’s true that there’s not one “legitimate” way to be autistic. It’s a spectrum for a reason. And there’s a difference between being skeptical of self-diagnosis and gatekeeping autism.

[(Anonymous)]

It absolutely does require a professional diagnosis. Especially since there are other neurological issues that might be the reason for certain behaviours that never get diagnosed because suddenly everyone and there dog is "on the spectrum" via self-diagnosis for every little quirk they display.

[(Anonymous)]

Spicy take, I know, but most people who self identify as autistic probably have never met anyone who is legitimately autistic.

look, even ignoring all the arguments about different kinds of diagnosis entirely, this is almost certainly untrue just purely on a statistical level

[(Anonymous)]

You got some stats to back it up? No, of course not. Because people who self identify aren't getting diagnosed professionally.

[(Anonymous)]

????

I'm not even talking about self-diagnosis or anything like that. Even if autism prevalence is very low, it's still overwhelmingly likely that most people have met at least one autistic person at some point in their lives. You would have to think that "legitimate" autism is vanishingly rare for that not to be the case. As far as I can tell, most estimates put autism prevalence at somewhere around 1% of the population, and most people meet far more than 100 people during their lifetimes.

[(Anonymous)]

This.

I think AYRT is operating on a kind of visibility bias. Certain autistic traits and behaviors are going to be more overt, visible, and recognizable than others, so of course those are the traits that get noted and associated with "real autism." Until some people start to make the assumption that if those traits and behaviors aren't exhibited, the person must not really have autism, because all the people who actually do have autism but don't exhibit those visible, recognizable traits and behaviors have always flown under their radar and thus, in their mind, don't exist.

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, I have met people who, in retrospect, I think are autistic but masking effectively. Based on other things I know about them. I have OCD and mask pretty well.

But I agree that diagnosing real people and posting publicly about that is wack.

Characters, headcanon what you want.

[(Anonymous)]

AYRT - Oh, yeah, absolutely, I totally agree about that! I kind of forgot about how this sub-thread fit into the broader conversations and forgot to specify that while I disagree with anon's "spicy take" I do actually completely agree with the secret itself.

[(Anonymous)]

+100

[(Anonymous)]

Not a spicy take, a very privileged take. You need that diagnosis to get accommodations in your workplace, but natch being diagnosed is VERY hard. It's especially perverse to make autistic people jump through all these hoops because it's one of the problems used for diagnosis: executive dysfunction. So many roadblocks, especially if you're an adult, especially if you're in the US, ESPECIALLY if you're a woman. Of course I'm going to self diagnose when I exhibit 90% of the symptoms listed, because as an adult american woman I would have to work very hard and spend a lot of money to get a diagnosis. So I just tell people I'm autistic to manage expectations and be done with it.

And yes, I have "met someone who is legitimately autistic", one of my nibblings was professionally diagnosed as a child.

[(Anonymous)]

+1, It's astonishing the number of people who have a relative get diagnosed and then go oh, that's the same as me. Especially kids getting diagnosed then parents realising they're just the same and getting a diagnosis too. ADHD and autism both.

[(Anonymous)]

DA - Sometimes it's correct, but sometimes your perception of yourself and how alike you are to another person is wildly off base. You don't know another person's life like they do or how much they really struggle because you're not them and you can't read their minds or feel their feelings.

[(Anonymous)]

If you self-diagnosis for every symptom list you find online you end up having every illness and every mental disorder and you know why? Because of confirmation bias.

[(Anonymous)]

AYRT

I would like to confirm that as a person who has a degree in philosophy, including having to write a thesis and give an oral defense of said thesis - I know what confirmation bias is. I also know I have autism even though I'm not diagnosed because I understand my own goddamned experience and I'm not an idiot.

[(Anonymous)]

because I understand my own goddamned experience and I'm not an idiot.

This, honestly. I have never understood some people's willful desire to presume other people don't understand their own lived experience. Like, is it possible for a person to be mistaken about themselves? Yes, absolutely. But it makes absolutely no bloody sense to start from the assumption that they don't.

[(Anonymous)]

So you would have no issue with a psychologist explaining your philosophy thesis to you as if they knew better just because they say so right?

[(Anonymous)]

NAYRT but you really think that it's impossible for a psychologist to know anything useful or true about philosophy? I mean, that's not even the case being made here - the correct analogy to how self-diagnosis actually works would be whether it's possible for a psychologist to make sense of their own lived experience in philosophically coherent terms, which is an even lower bar to clear. And in both of those cases, the answer is that it's clearly possible for a psychologist to know true things about philosophy. The correct self-diagnostic equivalent to the situation you've set up here for philosophy would be a situation where someone has self-diagnosed with autism but has been examined by a psychologist who has explicitly said that they do not have autism - but that's not remotely relevant to any actual conversation about self-diagnosis because most of the time self-diagnosis does not work like that.

I get why there's pushback to self-diagnosis bc it's inherently more prone to error and confirmation bias and self-selection. But this kind of blanket rejection of the whole concept is just frankly stupid any which way you slice it, whatever analogies you want to use. I mean, even if you think that self-diagnosis is low-accuracy, it's still possible for it to be right some of the times and it's still going to provide useful information some of the time. Just because a methodology is noisy and lossy and imperfect, that doesn't mean it tells you nothing about the true state of affairs. And the fact that there are people who self-diagnosis and later receive a professional diagnosis should be enough in and of itself to dispense with your whole argument.

I mean are you really taking the position that, if someone self-diagnoses as autistic, that means that they are sharply *less* likely to be autistic? Because that's really fucking dumb.

[(Anonymous)]

Of course a psychologist might very likely know things about philosophy but not having studied it, they very likely don't know enough to write a thesis on the subject.

Self-diagnosis is the same thing: You may have learned things and because of some experiences believe you have a certain condition, that's a good first step. But it isn't as valid as getting a proper diagnosis by a professional, nor is it as well-founded because no matter how much you read on the internet and how much you trust your lived experiences, you have not actually studied the subject in depth and you dont know if you're missing something important that might lead to a different diagnosis.

[(Anonymous)]

But it isn't as valid as getting a proper diagnosis by a professional, nor is it as well-founded because no matter how much you read on the internet and how much you trust your lived experiences, you have not actually studied the subject in depth and you dont know if you're missing something important that might lead to a different diagnosis.

Yes, I more or less agree with this.

The problem is that this does not justify the position being taken, which is that self-diagnosis is bad and people who self-diagnose are definitely not autistic. It doesn't justify the position that people who self-diagnose are just awkward and have never met an autistic person. It doesn't justify that self-diagnosis is purely confirmation bias or wishful thinking. It doesn't justify that self-diagnosis is intrinsically wrong in all cases.

What it means is that you should have somewhat less certainty about whether or not you have autism if you're self-diagnosed, and you shouldn't appoint yourself the expert and sole source of knowledge on the autistic condition. But it's still a fairly reasonable and possible to say "OK based on my lived experience and reasonable research on the subject, I think it's fairly likely that I have autism" and it's reasonable in many cases for people to proceed on that basis. And that's before you get into the fact that access to diagnosis is not universal, and that professional understanding and diagnostic procedures are also deeply imperfect in their own right (although I agree that fundamentally professional diagnosis is better, more valid, and desirable; I'm just saying that we're not at a state where professional diagnosis is 100% accuracy rate).

But, yeah, you can make nuanced points about self-diagnosis, but it doesn't justify the total hostility to self-diagnosis that's displayed throughout this thread.

[(Anonymous)]

I agree with most of this, I'm not saying all self-dianosis must 100% be wrong. Also yes, the hostility us unnecessary. Though to be fair, a lot of self-diagnosed people (not the majority, but also not a small number)like to try to use their self-diagnosed conditions as a get-out-of-jail-free card when they behave badly, so I kinda get where some of the aversion comes from.

[(Anonymous)]

If you self-diagnosis for every symptom list you find online you end up having every illness and every mental disorder

Uh, maybe you do. This has not been my experience at all.

[(Anonymous)]

Nah, you just self-diagnose the convenient stuff.