If I can add my two cents in answer to another of anon's questions:
Do you think autism is a discrete category (you're either autistic or you're not) or a spectrum that we're all on (everyone's a little bit autistic)?
First of all, anon, like a lot of people do, you've gotten the idea of spectrum wrong - it's not a line we're all on from a little autistic to very autistic, but a grab bag of traits on a colour wheel, where some autistics have more of some traits and less of others. But to answer your question, I personally don't think either is strictly true (like most things, it's not a strict binary).
Essentially, autism a label for a wide variety of traits, usually including traits from two extremes (e.g. hypersensitivity or hyposensitivity, high vs low empathy etc), and if you're autistic you have a large amount and variety of these traits (obviously if you're getting medically diagnosed there's a few specific areas your traits have to fit into), but regardless, if you identify as or are diagnosed as autistic, you have a wide variety and number of so-called autistic traits.
So that's being autistic. But how do you quantify how many traits you have to have, or how severe they have to be, or which areas of your life they have to affect in order for you to have enough, or be affected enough, to be autistic?
The psychiatric establishment tries to do this - Aspergers, ASD and PDD-NOS (pervasive developmental disorder not otherwise specified) were once three separate diagnoses, now they all come under autism spectrum disorder. The diagnostic manuals for ASD specify specific areas where autistic traits must have a (negative) impact on your life in order to qualify for diagnosis (for my diagnosis process in the UK I believe they looked at three different areas, in the DSM I think it's slightly different - there might still be 3 main areas but I think there are subcategories within those?). All this is based off information shared with the diagnostician by the autistic person being diagnosed and their family, and ultimately it's based off the diagnostician's opinion on whether this information fits under ASD. It will never, can never, be objective, no matter how well-informed a medical professional is about autism and how it presents.
This doesn't just affect medical diagnosis, it also affects self diagnosis, because while self diagnosis has the benefit of you, the actual person who the diagnosis is about, actually knowing why you behave in certain ways and can relate them to autism criteria, you also can't ever be fully objective about yourself or your view of the world. This isn't me being anti self dx AT ALL, by the way - this also applies to people who would never even consider themselves autistic even though they definitely are, whether that's because of their view of autism or the view of themselves and their (lack of?) struggles.
And therein lies the problem. Autism is a group of traits, a certain amount and severity (for want of a better word) of these traits makes someone autistic. But that can never be objectively quantified (unless, God forbid, they somehow invent a brain scan that can detect autistic brains. It hasn't happened yet).
So then you have autistics, but you also have autistic cousins - people who also have autistic traits (and might have a separate diagnosis or identify with a separate label) but for whatever reason, never identify with or are never diagnosed as autistic. Those who would have previously been diagnosed with PDD NOS but don't quite qualify for ASD, the ADHDers who maybe have something else going on but maybe ADHD explains it all, people with anxiety disorders which may or may not be partially/better explained by autism, older adults who would never have been diagnosed as children and probably won't be seeking a diagnosis in their old age, people who have an autistic neurotype but have been accommodated for well enough that there life isn't adversely affected by their autistic traits and so never seek a diagnose or self diagnose, and even people who have a few autistic traits (i.e. human traits) but would otherwise be considered neurotypical.
This last group are usually the people painted as saying "everyone's a little autistic" and the autistic community usually counters that by saying, essentially, that autism is a discrete category, a spectrum of traits, yes, but one that only includes Actual Autistics. I get this, it's a very tempting argument to make and to neurotypicals learning Autism 101, it's a good albeit simplified way of explaining why not everyone is "a little autistic". But I think we do a disservice to all of the people mentioned above, including those who might only have one or two autistic traits, by discounting it excluding their experiences. Autistic traits are human traits, and anyone at some point in their lives might need support or accommodation for a particular trait of their brain/personality.
Autism is a useful way to label a certain neurotype and find community with other people that identify with that neurotype, but that's all. It doesn't inherently include ("everyone's a little autistic") or exclude ("you're either autistic or you're not") anyone. It's just a neurotype/label that you may or may not identify with (and perhaps to a greater or lesser degree).
Sorry I didn't mean to write a whole essay haha, I hope any of this makes sense.
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