Why the "you're just one autistic person" rebuttal is not ever made in good faith:

When an autistic person speaks up to a non-autistic person and tells them they're being harmful, their first retort is often "Well you don't speak for the autistic community." 1/7

But neurotypical people do that to autistic people Every. Single. Day. And they get away with it because they "have an autistic sibling/child" or "had good intentions."

People act like suddenly when an autistic person speaks up that every word has to be scrutinized 2/7

but when abled people couch their words in the guise of "speaking for people without a voice" they are lauded for it. This type of comment is never made in good faith. It is always used to derail a conversation or dismiss an autistic person who is speaking up. 3/7

Do autistic people have different opinions to each other? Of course we do. That doesn't mean you can write off an autistic person who has a problem with what you are doing as a non-autistic person. That's not how that works. If it was, I could use the same strategy for NTs! 4/7

If an autistic person brings up an issue with how a non-autistic person is talking about autistic people, or what kind of research they're doing, the important thing is to listen to them and take them seriously. 5/7

It's the same argument as "well, 1 woman said this wasn't sexist, so it can't be sexist! Your argument's moot!"

& it's really not okay. When non-autistic people use this argument, I can tell they don't really want a dialogue. They just want to dismiss you as "just 1 person" 6/7

Reminder to non-autistic people:
You're just 1 person too. So what are you doing speaking for autistic people? Choosing language and research projects that we don't necessarily agree with?

You're just 1 person too.

Autistic people's opinions matter, 1 person or not. 7/7