Autistics and Defining 'Autistic'

What is 'Autistic'

Being Autistic is about having a less common neurological architecture and a less common neurosocial Way of Being.

It is whole-of-being in effect, ancient, permanent, natural, valid, purpose-laden, specialist, focused, intense, deep, and divergent in nature.

Less common? Yes, just as:

- Left-handed is a less common Handedness

- Nomadic is a less common Living

- Gay or Lesbian are a less common Orientation

- Athletic is a less common Exertion

- Extroversion is a less common Sociality

- Kinesthetic is a less common Way of Learning.

There have always been a necessary percentage of humans who are mathematically-inclined, relaxed, nurturing, creative, hard-working, protective... and likewise a necessary percentage who are... autistic.  Usually the very percentage of each that is highly needed by society.  Nature seems to have a way of ensuring such proportions.

Being autistic is a natural, needed, healthy, human variation, one that is genetically handed-on by degrees, and likely switched-on or -off in utero - before birth - as a result of natural epigenomics/proteomics operating in a natural way.

While being autistic is a result of valid alternative brain architecture - think Mac OS versus Windows - it can end-up meaning being subtly 'alternative' all-over, impacting one's physical body senses, not just the traditional five senses but perhaps the 27 more senses we think less about (e.g. thermoception, balance, etc.), interoceptively.  It can also impact preferences, diets, interests, choices, avoidances, delights, responses, awkwardnesses, and most other aspects of living and being.

Being autistic is a difference, but it is also a disability if properly understood as being 'societally disabled' by a world that is setup and maintained for the majority who are not autistic, something that would reverse if autistics were the majority.

Like womenism, gayism, and mathism... 'autism' doesn't really exist.  Yet women, gays, mathematicians, and autistic DO exist.  The existence of the word 'autism' is an unfortunate hangover from the decades of it formerly being deemed an illness, defect, poisoning, or disorder, rather than the very human phenomenon it naturally is.

Autistics can expect to have monotropic focus, greater levels of synapse connectivity, more intense senses, reduced interoception and proprioception, more deliberate processing of greater information taken in, and often some degree of synaesthesia that sees information for one sense's processing region go on to bleed into a neighbouring one, or even several.  For many autistics, this is less of the predictability hungered for, and more of the chaos that can lead to anxiety.

There was a time when autism was thought to occur in 1 in 10,000 humans, back in the 1960's, but latest estimates suggest 4.5% of humans are autistic (Northern Ireland 4-16 year old Government study), perhaps a figure kept lower than is true because diagnostic tools are still under development.  Previously it was thought autistics were mostly male - 5 males to 1 female - but having made a start on removing gender-bias from assessments, it has quickly dropped to 3 males to 1 female, and will likely settle at 2 to 1 (due to how genes work), or perhaps to parity, 1 to 1, over the next few decades.

Increased knowledge accounts for almost all the increased recognition of autistics globally, and the increased numbers of female autistics too.  You will often hear from people, extremely well-paid to say it, that the cause is anything from puddles to pollution, from medications to moms on ice, from liberals to lime ticks.  None have been proved right.  None.  It's caused by sex.

Just as a highly-tuned race-horse, as an example, should not be put out also all day long to haul heavy loads, so must an autistic experience goodly amounts of 'downtime' for processing, filing, assimilating, rest, refreshment, and resetting each day.

Autistics are a divergency within human diversity, exceedingly diverse, and oriented to further divergency within their own personhood --- one of many resiliencies, uniquifiers, and overarching strengths in humanity.

Autistics are at least 370,000,000 of all humans alive, and growing in identification, present *equally* in every nation and ethnicity around the globe.

Without autistics, the world would go all wrong, and in many hard-to-define ways that touch upon logicality, sensory protection, categorization and systematization, justice and truth, principled action, defeating excess groupthink, out-of-the box thinking, invention and innovation, learning and creativity, arts and culture, dispassionate administration of civil society, etc. - a breathtaking array of vital progresses.