The thing about monotropic, single-channel thinking is that it is a neutral and natural variation—neither inherently better or worse than any other modes of being in the world.
“If the dynamic of autistic burnout really is related to spending more resources coping than one has, I’m not sure the real leverage in avoiding burnout resides with the autistic person alone.”
I believe that the best way to understand autistic minds is in terms of a thinking style which tends to concentrate resources in a few interests and concerns at any time, rather than distributing them widely.
Over-valuing certain abilities means looking down on people who don’t share them. Aspie supremacy is the ideology that follows from taking this to an extreme: ‘aspies’ have extraordinary powers which not only make their existence worthwhile, but make them better than other people.
There are dangers to assuming autistic people need routines, without understanding why. Routines imposed by other people are likely to do more harm than good.
Full normalisation of autism would require a substantially broader concept of ‘normality.’ It would mean acceptance of autistic people who are non-speaking, an understanding of meltdowns, and general awareness of the dangers of sensory overload.
Wikipedia’s editing is nominally consensus-based, so when a subject is objectively contentious—as is the case with autism—that editing gets tricky.
A full list of the contributors to Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism, with short biographies.
These are autism resources—books, movies, series, websites—that we think our community members will find useful.
We need to be careful about pro-vaccine arguments when autism is involved—because when we say “there is NO evidence linking vaccines to autism” without adding “and fear of autism hurts autistic people,” then we’re actually contributing to negative stereotypes about autistic people.
