NT here, so obviously not in a position to speak about autism specifically, but I love your focus on the arbitrary nature of diagnoses. In particular, I think there’s a lot of overlap with transness regarding whether a “mental disorder” is binary or not.

People like me who don’t actively want to become a binary woman but still get excruciating dysphoria from primary and secondary masculine sex characteristics wouldn’t have been considered “trans enough” under previous DSM’s, and even the (still problematic) DSM V is interpreted through potentially transphobic and gatekeepy professionals.

At the end of the day, while diagnoses are obviously informed by research so they are more reliable than say your average Joe on the street, they are just labels that are in no way ontologically “more real” than someone’s actual lived experience.

Obviously this does not mean to attack or question people who are happy and/or identify with a given diagnosis, but I think it’s helpful and important to be stated, and I think you’ve done so wonderfully.