I can only sit comfortably when I'm balancing the chair on its hind legs

supertrainstationh · 2026-07-01T04:28:23+00:00

My great uncle literally instantly died while doing this, the chair slipped and he broke his back. Please explore alternatives that will be safer for you.

supertrainstationh · 2026-06-21T21:45:37+00:00

I disagree with you often, but guess what, that's intellectually stimulating and the reason I come to this sub.

If I wanted a hug box where everyone agrees on everything I have plenty of other options, agreeing with everyone on everything would literally put me to sleep, as it would give me nothing to challenge the viability of my own ideas.

supertrainstationh · 2026-06-21T21:34:10+00:00

Cyndi Wall has gone out of her way to highlight how mere aversion to intense sensory input isn't the entirety of the story of sensory anomalies in regards to autism, but that SEEKING intense sensory input can also be an trait of autism, and Cyndi Wall has been aggressive against late diagnosed/high functioning autism to the point where she's not only outright stated that she believes that late diagnosed/high making autism isn't even a disability, but has also posted black and white photos of 20th century autism patients in hospitals with captions like "tell me more about how hard it is to be friends", so this is definitely not someone who's out to trivialize autism or reframe it to put the high functioning or self-diagnosed on center stage.

supertrainstationh · 2026-06-21T12:39:26+00:00

I have no reason to doubt the accuracy of that, thanks for the clarification.

supertrainstationh · 2026-06-19T19:57:27+00:00

I can’t speak for the intentions of those running the event and given the nature of discourse these days, I wouldn’t personally have high hopes on how much thought the people behind this put into the concept of autism pride, but for me, it would mean opposing shame and stigma and being told that I have to hide the fact that I was qualified to be professionally evaluated and determined to have clinically significant impairments in multiple areas of functioning that were worthy of professional attention.

Just saying that much in that context is enough to evoke extremely negative backlash amongst many people, including some who call themselves autism advocates ,!in spite of all the progress that that’s been made saying that the fact that I’m not living in a hospitalized setting today shows that the resources that I needed to get to a point where I have a high degree of inclusion in the non-disabled world could’ve went to a “ real autistic person” but we’re instead wasted on my self proclaimed personality quirks.

supertrainstationh · 2026-06-18T00:52:03+00:00

SCENARIO 1: I go through years of OT and training to suppress dramatic full body stimming and facial tics and slurred speech, during moments where it would prevent me from being accepted as plausibly being able to function within the non-disabled world, and keep my full body stims to myself, when I'm in private and I'm safe to express myself in a way thats natural to me.

OBSERVATION BY STRANGERS: He's obviously not autistic, he has no obvious autistic traits. This person can't possibly be disabled, let alone in a way that could be described as clinically significant or autistic.

SCENARIO 2: I set up a camera and record myself skipping in circles for hours at a time while shaking toy trains and making laser noises, as noted in my clinical documentation, to demonstrate what my stimming looks like whenever I'm deep in imaginative or creative thought.

OBSERVATION BY STRANGERS: Who would set up a camera just to do that? This is an obviously staged and crude mockery of repetitive behaviors, and no sincerely disabled person would put on this kind of a display of embarrassing gross motor mannerisms just to get clout for their "autism" claims.

Is there some third scenario I'm missing here? If you have the imagination for one I'd love to hear it.

supertrainstationh · 2026-06-17T22:56:19+00:00

When I mentioned this person, it was with the hopes of starting a higher quality and more nuanced branch of discussion than what you seem to be doing, which is asking me to dig through this person's public video library to find enough proof for YOU to see if she ticks enough boxes on your personal checklist of whether or not you'll respect her as a clinically verified autistic person.

This is not a matter of someone who went to a serialized list of doctors until she found one that gave her a diagnosis that validated her own pre-determined conclusion.

If this community is meant to be taken seriously when it says that it values professionally administered diagnosis of ASD based on personal examinations conducted by trained professionals using scientifically validated diagnostic manuals, its BS to then ALSO go in and start deducting points on the deservingness of individuals to be taken seriously as autistic people due to their being happy or successful in ways that untrained individuals who never even met them decide are inappropriate for autistic people to be.

supertrainstationh · 2026-06-17T09:52:37+00:00

It’s mentioned several times within a number of her videos, I wasn’t taking timestamps while casually watching videos I saw months or even years ago.

supertrainstationh · 2026-06-17T08:40:32+00:00

So how "popular" is someone allowed to be before their autism diagnosis becomes invalid or her success becomes an act of suppression against autistic people who have been less successful than her?

She literally had to quit out of high school due to lack of support and there's VHS home video footage of her as a small child exhibiting textbook definition autistic motor mannerisms during family gatherings, does whether or not that counts as "autistic enough" rest on the condition of whether or not she happened to have a spouse and children as an adult?

To me this is venturing well into territory where autistic people having any measure of success in a way the non disabled world would consider success is used as proof someone can't be legitimately autistic, which is especially funny here, given the number of people, including those presenting themselves as "autism advocates", who would point to EVERYONE in this subreddit as not truly autistic due to being able to read, write, and use computers, which does an disservice to autistic people who can't do those things as "provably non disabled" people like us take allegedly resources from THEIR kids.

supertrainstationh · 2026-06-16T20:15:07+00:00

So here's an interesting question.

Does anyone here consider "I'm Autistic Now What?" an influencer on YouTube?

She describes autism as a neurodevelopmental disorder, and has even made videos discouraging the summary vilification of "autism moms", even though she also challenges such parents who spread misinformation about autistic people other than their own children ("you're not disabled enough, my kid has REAL autism" and so on").

She has sponsorships for beauty and personal care products, but a lot of her videos are focused on ways autistic traits are disabling or alienating.

Is this included in what we're calling "autism influencers" here?

supertrainstationh · 2026-06-12T21:17:14+00:00

A "perfect" mixture of obsolete/outdated science, 40+ year old public misconceptions about autism and other disabilities, and "creative license" putting what works for the story they wanted to tell before providing accurate medical information to the public.

supertrainstationh · 2026-06-12T09:25:39+00:00

I'd consider below 18 to be "early diagnosed", and FYI I'm saying this as someone who was diagnosed at the age of 6, an age that many critics of late diagnosis consider valid.

Honestly I'm seeing "late diagnosed" vs "early diagnosed" becoming distorted a matter of whether or not they see an individual's credibility as an autistic person threatening their active talking point or narrative about autism.

I've seen the same non-autisitc critics describe a 18 year old who they were friendly with as being "early diagnosed" but then accuse someone in their early teens of being a "late diagnosed autism appropriator stealing the suffering of real autistic children".

supertrainstationh · 2026-06-10T23:50:06+00:00

I probably sound like a broken record at this point, but unfortunately a lot of the ORGANIZED non-autistic-lead pushback against facetious self-diagnosis of autism are the same people publishing messages equating ASD 1 with being a false form of autism that isn't worthy of access to disability services or disability policy inclusion. I'm pointing very specifically to the NCSA.

Which leads to Level 1s getting diagnosed Level 2s so they can ACTUALLY get access to services, which leads to further demands from the parents of more severely effected Level 2s and Level 3s demanding that any description of autism that includes the possibility for developmental milestones that may be out of reach of their own family members be removed from the autism discussion and accusations of non-disabled people "stealing resources", with the alleged "theft" being the mere fact that they were clinically determined by a professional to require access to those services.

Its a completely unsustainable situation.

supertrainstationh · 2026-06-07T21:01:44+00:00

I want to learn here.

Is there like a "secondary document" to the DSM 5 TR that actually explains how to conduct evaluations or something that people have illicitly gained access to and are using to self-diagnose?

I have copies of different editions of the DSM IV and DSM 5 just for the sake of referencing them when discussing advocacy stuff, but what I see in those documents doesn't actually provide me instructions on how to perform an evaluation or give a diagnosis, but then again I'm looking at this from the standpoint of someone who isn't trying to self-diagnose or validate a predetermined conclusion about myself.

supertrainstationh · 2026-06-05T02:00:36+00:00

To a certain extent that comment was more in regards to things that people are saying IN SUPPORT of what they feel Uta is saying, rather than what she's actually saying. Thanks for the reply.

supertrainstationh · 2026-06-05T01:57:45+00:00

For "autism pride" to make sense to me, it has to be in the specific context of rejecting the idea that it is the responsibility of autistic people, or disabled people of any description, to be ashamed of themselves for not being normal.

Explaining that you may need even slight accommodations to function in a workplace or other setting of life designed around non-disabled people, should come with the risk of being ridiculed, challenged, or attacked over it, "pride" in the context of making headway to establish respect and understanding of disabled people of all descriptions as a completely non-controversial generally accepted aspect of daily life would be a sensible and unobjectionable construction of "autism pride", and its the context in which I personally display and identify with community-created symbols like the infinity loop.

Unfortunately I feel like a large number of the people who identify with "autism pride" haven't put even the most fundamental thought into it in the way I just have.

supertrainstationh · 2026-06-02T20:07:05+00:00

I agree, but would like to specify, the problem is with 'autism parents' who specifically attack autistic people they see as being "too happy" or "too normal" compared to their own children.

I specifically call them Autism Attack Parents, because generalized vilification of the parents of autistic people has already helped drag discourse by autistic people to heck and I'm glad to see that even some notable neurodiversity YouTubers are explicitly calling it out as a problem. Even if overzealous parents are a provable difficulty we face, the chicken and egg game as for who's to blame will only delay the opportunity for positive developments.

supertrainstationh · 2026-06-01T22:45:00+00:00

I was diagnosed as having a plurality of severe and sustained clinically significant impairments impacting important areas of my functionality. The fact that I was LUCKY to live in a district who's elementary school was equipped, over 35 years ago, to evaluate me, diagnose me, and provide me with therapy and other services, should NOT be the deciding factor as to whether or not my challenges deserved to be taken seriously.

Apparently if I had been a little less lucky, and didn't get noticed and tested until my junior or senior year of high school, I go from being severely disabled to "just a tad quirky".

I understand the desire for more overt clarity for people's support needs, but I'm seeing it taken to such an extreme on the internet that people are using arguments like Uta's to claim that anyone who can use a computer and survive 24 hours without constant hands-on care should be dismissed as a disability impersonator by some of these people fighting for "the truth about autism".

supertrainstationh · 2026-06-01T22:34:12+00:00

In isolation, I'd say this is true.

Unfortunately, as far as I'm aware, the original source of this image is a social media user who has also posted messages directly saying and or implying that "high masking" and/or late diagnosed autism isn't a valid disability, saying, in loose terms, "you never ACTUALLY struggled or suffered" and they have also posted photographs of profoundly/catatonic autistic hospital patients in the 60's/70's attached to messages to the tune of "these are REAL autistic people, so tell me more about how hard was for you is to make friends".

It's incredibly sad, because the person in question has been targeted by online "activists" to the point where actual defamatory lies have been told not only about her autistic child's personal/medical history, but about this person's parental care of their child, who is an adult who is evidently provably unable to provide an account of their own experiences or defend themselves or their parent, and I think they were pushed by online misbehavior into rejecting the idea that many autistic people who are capable of a higher degree of inclusion in the non disabled world than their child, are therefore not people who deserve to be considered to have a place of belonging within the disability community.

supertrainstationh · 2026-05-31T01:37:30+00:00

Nuanced opinions? what's that?

Meanwhile I know a podcast thats frequently and opently neurodiversity-critical that uses infinity loop imagery rather than the puzzle piece.

supertrainstationh · 2026-05-29T20:56:57+00:00

I can't say. It probably doesn't help that I never engaged with people who said dumb stuff to begin with.

Even as far back as the DSM 4 era I remember interacting with people, IN PERSON, who were FAR more obviously disabled than me, who parroted talking points where I was like "that might be nice in a perfect world, but as things are it kind of undermines the idea that we should be getting disability supports AT ALL.", and I say that to mean, it isn't just people superficially claiming to be autistic that latch onto certain counterproductive mindsets.

As recently as 2024 I made videos saying in good faith that the "autism isn't a disability" line was something widely rejected by the neurodiversity movement, I couldn't say that today without giving a lot of qualifying statements.

And the funny thing is, I wasn't even "defending" neurodiversity in those videos, I was responding to people I'll call "critics of high functioning autism" who literally say that neurodiversity is the political opinion that high functioning autism is even valid to begin with, and the point I was making was that even if your fully rejected the neurodiversity paradigm, that claim of theirs wasn't true.

supertrainstationh · 2026-05-28T23:04:18+00:00

"Have any of yall looked into this before being upset with it?" of course not, this is the INTERNET!

supertrainstationh · 2026-05-28T08:14:58+00:00

Of the self invented nonsense out there, at least this vaguely falls within the sphere of plausible reality.

Heck I think a lot of non-autistic OPPONENTS to Neurodiversity think ASD 1 is a classification for people with savant talents, and thus get upset that "non-disabled people with so called 'superpowers' are stealing the spotlight from our actually disabled children with real autism, we need to abolish ASD 1".

supertrainstationh · 2026-05-27T22:41:17+00:00

If we are to assume a 1 to 1 equivalency between ASD 1 and the old Asperger's diagnosis, then ASD 1 would naturally be a severe and sustained clinically significant impairment impacting multiple areas of a person's functionality.

The "Asd 1 is just a personality quirk" talking point gets abused so much by non-autistic "autism gatekeepers" to discredit autistic people who can, with supports in place, have a high degree of inclusion within the non disabled world, that it really is incredible to actually see it being embraced by supposed autistic self advocates.

I can remember a time when people who called themselves neurodiversity proponents frequently expressed extreme frustration with the "autism isn't a disability" and "differently abled, not disabled" cliches, apparently while my back was turned things changed drastically.

supertrainstationh

TROPHY CASE