The history of the autism diagnosis,
an unscientific thread -

Researchers look at white cis boys who don't mask and base autism diagnostic criteria off of them and describe their behavior without asking about their experience.

Autism is known as a white boy's "disorder."

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Anyone who displays "autistic traits" who isn't a cis white boy doesn't get referred for an autism assessment because it's a white boy's disorder. Any white cis boy who doesn't "look severe enough" is not referred for an autism assessment.

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Autism research continues to use only an official autism diagnosis and the Autism Quotient as the standard screening tool to determine eligible research participants.

Sample sizes in autism research papers are 1:4 girls to boys because autism is a cis white boy disorder.

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Autistic adults of all genders start learning about autism through the internet and writing about it. Many autistic women write books about it. Some awareness of autistic cis women/girls shows up among "autism experts."

Cue the research into "camouflaging" or "masking."

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The narrative goes that autistic AFAB people and women were "hiding their autism." That's why those researchers haven't found it yet! Of course!

Cue SBC doing a documentary on BBC, putting out the AQ online, shocked when a large percentage of women score above threshold.

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Cue the response from SBC - "Are we missing autistic girls and women?"

Hundreds of accounts of AFAB people not being able to get referred for an autism assessment because their GP thinks they "don't need a label" or they "made eye contact for this whole conversation."

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Research starts including autistic (white) cis women and girls, but only after they do the first study with majority autistic white cis men. "It's hard to find women with autism" the researchers say, as there's not many women in the standard databases they use to recruit.
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New diagnostic assessments are getting created, now with the term "Female Autism" or the "Female Autism Phenotype." When pointed out by autistic people that a new assessment would be helpful for all genders, we're told it's beyond the scope of the current project.

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Researchers created a box to put all autistic people in based on research of white cis boys who didn't mask.

Researchers are now creating another box to put autistic (white cis) women in based on research of white cis girls and women.

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We don't need more boxes to put people in.

We need to recognize that the boxes are inherently flawed to begin with. That human beings don't fit into boxes.

Not every autistic person would rather go to a museum than a theater, or likes to collect things.

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Not to mention, this new "Female Autism" box leaves out autistic trans/nonbinary people and autistic BIPOC. Most research on autism is based on white people. Most resources about autism are based on white people.

Diagnostic criteria is based on white people.

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Let's not keep adding these boxes, gendering autism and expecting every autistic person to have the same cultural background, class, or religion and therefore answer, understand, and interpret all of these questions the same way.

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Autistic people are human beings. Not acknowledging our different life experiences is harmful, especially to marginalized groups, and even to white cis boys/men who don't tick the traditional checklist that autism assessments are based on.

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This assessment bias and difficulty for referral based on race/gender/class/religion prevents autistic people from accessing a diagnosis and accessing validation, resources and accommodations in both school and the workplace.

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Adding more boxes isn't going to help anything.

Acknowledging this, and including marginalized groups and their experiences, is the first step towards creating a true potential autism assessment.

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If you want to know more about the flawed narrative of masking in research, I highly recommend reading @KieranRose7 's and @DrAmyPearson 's research article, which is linked in this post and elaborated on here:

https://theautisticadvocate.com/2021/02/one-day-they-will-join-us-in-the-sun/

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