@olympus I was, in fact, being entirely unfascetious. My work is peer-reviewed by two psychologists who specialize in autism and have written books on the topic of autism diagnosis.

The research is pretty conclusive, self-diagnosis *is* valid.

When you read my paper, did you notice the cited resources from the UW Autism Center (or any of the other references)?

I'll drop a relevant excerpt for you:

"In our experience at the University of Washington Autism Center, many professionals are not informed about the variety of ways that autism can appear, and often doubt an autistic person's accurate self-diagnosis. In contrast, inaccurate self-diagnosis of autism appears to be uncommon. We believe that if you have carefully researched the topic and strongly resonate with the experience of the autistic community, you are probably autistic"

@actuallyautistic