rain man

I think about a word like "autistic" and why I feel the way I do about others thinking I might be, and have to remember, it's just a word. A word that people have different ideas about. A word that means something different to lots of other people. 

It doesn't matter who's right about a definition - all definitions are arbitrary and fluid. They change over time, they change across cultures, they change between individuals, agreeing on the same dictionary definition, due to different correlations and context. The important thing is to understand what others are trying to communicate, when they use their words. We need to understand their version of their words.

When I think about the autistic kids I used to know, they were a lot like Dustin Hoffman in the movie Rain Man. They weren't savants, but similar in affect. These were not people who could mask their condition. These are rarely even people who would think to mask their condition. Nobody would diagnose them with ADHD, instead nor in addition to autism. That would be like diagnosing a blind person with astigmatism.

When people talk about autism these days, that's often not what they're talking about. Especially if they know terms like on the spectrum or neurodivergent. Most people are at least somewhat familiar with the Rain Man type, and this is where things get very fuzzy. Different people will factor in severe autism with spectrum autism to substantially different degrees such that they aren't necessarily talking about the same thing at all.

Is an autistic person competent to drive a car, hold a job, or fight in a boxing match? This depends on which version of autism you have in your head, and how much you factor that in, when considering someone you understand to be autistic. It's further complicated by the fact that most autistics develop their mental faculties late, such that by the time they're adults, they are capable of driving cars and holding jobs, even if not entirely independently. Generally, this type still does not mask their autism. They don't seem to have that sort of mindset or capacity.

If someone is doing any kind of masking such that they're passing themselves off as normal, that's somewhere else on the spectrum. It is a whole other way of thinking that is in itself more neurotypical. I'm trying to make this differentiation clear, to show how broad the meaning of this word can be, and the confusion that can cause. If someone thinks I might be on the spectrum, are they thinking of Rain Main or are they thinking of zoomers on Tik Tok? 

If the latter, yeah sure, maybe. 

If the former, what, no, are you stupid.

Take another word, a different sort of word, "woman," and again, people mean different things when they use it. They argue about who is and who isn't, but this depends entirely on how you define the word and what you're really talking about. 

This is the nature of words. People are prone to assuming they mean the same things, especially when a simple dictionary definition can be agreed upon, but get into the details and they're really talking about different things, talking past each other, failing to understand the array of divergent conclusions we come to from different starting points.