“Poor Autistic Behavior”

I just watched a video of the young child pictured above, who screamed and threw a fit, hitting things, and jumping on the seats, on a plane for 8 hours because there was no wifi for the ipad his mom brought. Even though the mother, nor the video made absolutely zero mention of autism, I braced myself for the comments. Sure enough, one after another rolled out their “he is autistic, stop judging” commentary.

This is armchair diagnosing with entirely baseless claims. Neither them, nor I, nor anyone else except the people directly involved with that child, has any idea if he is autistic.

I get these people mean well, but they do harm. Anyone can just have a gander at any post about anyone of any age being ill behaved, and the ignorant weaponization of our neurodifference is all over the comments. So much so, the word ‘autistic’ has now replaced the word ‘r*tarded’ as an insult for the bad and even downright wicked behaviors of all types of humans. As highlighted in another post about an article that Medium Staff have still not removed despite the crystal clear hate the man is disgustingly spreading (I guess Medium hates autistics, too). These people have made things harder for us with their armchair diagnosing, not raised awareness and eased things.

The worst are the autistics who loudly and wrongfully also proclaim any poor behavior as autism. That…