I think it was Fern Brady who said that being autistic is like being pregnant. You either are, or you’re not. Sure, you might experience nausea from time to time. Heck, you might even have back pain and a massive pot belly. You may well empathize with many aspects of being pregnant, but that alone does not make you pregnant.
You are either pregnant, or you’re not. You’re either autistic, or you’re not. You can’t be “a bit” autistic. You just can’t.
In the same vein, not everyone you meet these days is autistic. It may seem there are more autistic people around because we are out in the open. By and large, we are not closeted, cloaked in shame, or hidden away in institutions as in the days of yore. Autistic folks were always among the rest of the population. Those who weren’t institutionalized we were simply deemed eccentrics. We were either loners, or else we were assholes, depending on your perspective.
It’s a bit—and please bear with me here—like homosexuality. Like autism, homosexuals have always, always existed. It’s not like there is something in the water that has suddenly made more and more people gay. Similarly, you either are gay, or you’re not. Yet for the first time (depending on factors like where you live) many people feel safe enough to be “out” and open about their sexuality.
Same with autism. Awareness has spread. Diagnostic criteria has expanded (although it needs to expand more). For the first time, people who are not male and cis and white are being diagnosed, and that makes for a phenomena.
So, the next time someone tells you they are "a bit” autistic too, smile knowingly because perhaps they are a whole lot more autistic than just “a bit.” They just may not realize it.
And the next time someone dismissively says, “everyone’s autistic these days,” resist the urge to roll your eyes and walk away. Take that statement for what it so often is: a misguided, but mostly altruistic, attempt to make you feel less alone in your neurotype. It’s a way of saying, I see you. I know how it feels to puke in the morning and to have stabby pains in the lower back. They may not be pregnant, and despite how patronizing and ignorant their comments, remember: this is them trying to relate to you in their own funny neurotypical way.
So humour them, safe in the knowledge that they will never, metaphorically speaking, experience pregnancy. Never.
I mean, full agreement on the autism part, but as a gay autistic, I don’t think the comparison there holds. You can, in fact, be a little bit gay. You can be primarily and strongly attracted to people of another gender and an occasionally or under certain circumstances attracted to people of your gender or who are outside the gender binary. You can have exclusively cishet relationships are experiences but still feel that you are queer, and I’m happy to welcome you into that tent. :)
And I do wonder sometimes about how we draw the lines delineating autistic and allistic - which is not to say that anyone is “a little bit autistic,” but: who’s getting diagnosed vs. turned away because they’re married/female/humorous/capable of making eye contact/high-masking/not a genius mathematician/not impaired ‘enough’? (These, however, are often the folks protesting that everyone’s a little autistic, because they are in fact a lot autistic and they’ve never seen themselves reflected in portrayal of autistic people.)
Julie, it's interesting you wrote about this, because I was having this conversation with Sarah's RBT last year. I do notice more people with autism, but I wasn't sure if it was because I understand it better than I used to, or if there are more autistic people mingling in the public square than there once was. I hope it's both! Honestly, noticing a person who likely has ASD truly reduces my trepidation with them.
I encountered a young man at our neighborhood park a few weeks ago who I suspected had ASD. He shrieked when he saw my dog, and made these strange (to me) gesticulations. Because I assumed he was autistic, I smiled but kept my distance and told him, "My dog looks scary sometimes but she has never hurt anyone. I promise I won't let her get too close to you when we pass by."
I think it was his mom who stood by his side and reassured him after I said that. The man asked me a few more questions about my dog - what's her name, breed, and oh she's scary! I just kept my distance and answered his questions.
It was the first time I realized I was not instantly uncomfortable with someone's odd (to me) social behavior and that I could be chatting with this person without feeling discomfort myself.
So I hope that is progress in some small way.