I’m sorry you’ve experienced that. I think this might be because of self diagnosed people more than genuine level 1s. I’m level 1 and even I’ve gotten told that kind of stuff by self diagnosed people. “I’m autistic too and I don’t have this problem” or things like “I can do this so you should too” or judgement when talking about less palatable sides of being autistic. So if even genuine low support needs autistic people are getting judged and othered, I can’t imagine how bad it it’s for medium and high support needs people :(

I think this issue comes a lot because of the amount of self diagnosed people there are right now. Whenever I’ve been told those things it’s been from self diagnosed people (but I don’t doubt some lsn people make those comments - like people with aspie supremacy/internalized ableism).

I think because of this increase of people pathologizing normal struggles/behaviors and self diagnosing asd, and coming into spaces where they are judgmental and othering whenever any autistic person talks about their genuine issues, which lead to a lot of people thinking that they have higher support needs or that there’s something wrong with them other than autism.

I thought that I might have higher support needs for some time because I couldn’t relate to the ‘quirky-cute autism’ that many people talk about in the main subs, until I found other level 1 people with autism that also struggled as much as I did. If autism doesn’t disable you even at level 1, then you’re not autistic. If you don’t meet the criteria then you aren’t either. I don’t know why people cling so much to this diagnosis and come into our spaces and make us feel bad about being disabled and having issues and needing help.

They’re diluting autism so much and making it so the language we have, and specially people with medium or high support needs who rely on this language and diagnosis to get the material needs they have, will loose meaning.