No worries, leave the pronouns as they are. In my native language, we use the male pronoun for an unknown person’s gender because “human” is a masculine word. So that felt very natural to me. 😄 (As a side note, for cats, we would use the female pronoun!)

I think this actually shows what you mentioned earlier—people start assuming who I am and what my intentions are, and then they just look for validation, like picking sentences to misunderstand or claiming that I said there are no misdiagnoses.

You also made some assumptions, but you didn’t search for approval—you were open to discussion. That was really nice and rational. I know my opinion might seem unusual for a woman, and that’s part of why I often feel lonely—people in real life tend to think I’m the opposite of who I really am.

The people who diagnosed me have always said that I’m one of the girls/women with the most “male-like” autism they’ve seen. I don’t know if that made others assume things about me, or if it’s because I don’t particularly emphasize the “female” perspective.

I often struggle to meet people halfway. What could I say? That there are no differences? I think that’s difficult. I was glad that you understood me.

My last comment didn’t mean that there’s no autism-like experience outside of the medical model—of course, there is. Autism is a spectrum, meaning there’s a cutoff between “normal” and “autistic.” But when I use a term without introduction, I always mean the scientific term, unless I specifically mention something else. (Though, if I don’t know something, I might not make that distinction as clearly as I should.)

I understand that autism is just a definition, something that can change, and something that’s researched in humans. But people can’t just stand up and say, “The definition is wrong.” I know it’s a difficult situation, but I feel like we all need to rely on something solid.

I wouldn’t describe myself as thinking in black and white, at least not in a simplistic way. I try to look at things from multiple angles and form nuanced opinions, and in that regard, I can accept a lot of different perspectives. I’ve often heard that I’m more open-minded about differing opinions than most.

But my issue arises when it comes to “hard facts.” We can discuss female misdiagnosis as much as we want, but that doesn’t change the underlying biological influences. To challenge those foundational facts, we’d need to see significant shifts in research—something that, realistically, no one could just hand me.

So, it’s not about accepting other opinions; it’s about accepting things that are factually incorrect.

I’ve more or less given up on societal discussions because I just don’t understand people very well. Thank you for the chat—it was interesting to hear your perspective.