I don't know how to phrase this, but I feel like autism acceptance in the public eye is less about actually accepting all autistic people and more about creating this image of autism that's like funky quirky hand flappy disorder. Like everyone wants an autistic friend who can rattle off cool facts about random subjects or an uwu soft bean who they must protect! And so many people put emphasis on hyper empathy and "so many of us are actually really empathetic uwu".
But what all of that completely ignores is there are negative sides to autism and we will sometimes do things that piss you off. No one wants to deal with the meltdowns or the complete and utter lack of empathy or the anger and the depression. What about those of us who self injure when we stim and have angry explosive meltdowns? Who are occassionally too blunt and too withdrawn and rude and offputting?
I'm not saying it's your job to deal with all of that. It is also on us to try to manage and control our own behavior. But it just seems to me like everyone wants nuerodivergent pride until we do something you don't like. Until we start acting "scary".
Autism acceptance means you accept all of us. Those of us who are non verbal, semi verbal, have high support needs or "inconvenient" symptoms. Those of us who aren't palatable.
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