@pathfinder @MOULE @autistics The importance of appreciating that variety is hard to overstate. Believing autistics have to be as similar to each other as neurotypicals are, can inhibit self-diagnosis. I used to think I couldn't be autistic because I didn't think I was particularly similar to Temple Grandin. But someone on here pointed out that even though we are far fewer in number than neurotypicals, we are MORE diverse than they are. That was a critical insight for me. And C.L. Lynch's '"Autism is a spectrum" doesn't mean what you think' gave examples of how the diversity can work.

I now believe that neurotypicals have a certain minimum level of similarity because they are all #ecotropic: bound to the social environment, and to socially relevant portions of the physical environment, by their built-in neurological #EnvironmentalYoke. #Allism is #ecotropy. We are #autotropic: we lack a functioning yoke, and our focus of attention is determined autonomously, by whatever internal mechanisms of attentional focus are unmasked by the absence of the yoke. And what are those internal mechanisms? Anything! Some of us are #monotropic, others #kaleidotropic / #hyperverbal, and still others will need other descriptive terms yet to be invented. We are more diverse because we lack the lowest common denominator of the #EnvironmentalYoke.

Incidentally, that does NOT mean we are somehow less complete than neurotypicals (although they may see it that way). The yoke does help in interacting with the environment in socially expected ways, but it subtracts as well as adds: in them, it suppresses a great deal of underlying neurological machinery that we have access to.