Autism myth-busting - a thread.

Please read and share widely.

Autistic folk, feel free to add. Non-autistic folk, feel free to ask questions!

#autistic #autism

1. Autism is not only a childhood thing. Autistic children grow to be autistic adults, like me. #autism

2. #autism isn't just a male thing. There are many, many autistic girls and women - possibly as many as there are guys. Then there's the many many autistic non-binary folk too.

3. #autism cannot be 'cured' as it is not an illness or disease. People continue to argue with this - I'm not going to engage here, please do some reading.

4. Attempts to 'cure' or 'treat' autism are usually, in fact, extremely harmful as they force us to mask at great expense. #autism

5. There are #autistic people in every demographic. Though not diagnosed as frequently, mostly due to systemic issues in healthcare, there are just as many autistic BIPOC.

6. #autism is not in itself a learning or intellectual disability. It is sometimes the case that an #autistic person has a comorbid learning disability but this is by no means the norm.

7. #autistic people aren't all magically good at something specific. The idea of the 'savant' causes a lot of harm. The vast majority of autistic people have varied skill sets.

8. Not all #autistic people are good at maths and science. In fact, the autistic population seems to have a huge variety of different skills. There are many autistic artists, writers, dancers, comedians and so on. Many of us don't like maths much.

9. Not all #autistic people love trains. We do tend to have interests that are extremely important and soothing to us, but they can be *anything* from knitting to coastal erosion or Sonic the Hedgehog. But trains *are* fairly popular...

10. The best people to ask about autism are... Autistic people. We're here, and we're unusually eager to share our experiences. Just because we're able to type online, by the way, doesn't disqualify us from being autistic... #autism

I'll leave this here in case anyone wants to help my caffeine needs... https://www.buymeacoffee.com/UfTVnRY