What makes us social? Autism, mentalising, and the need for new labels

[@avelione]

This is a step forward and glad to see it... but, we're not all a little but autistic ;) That's what people often say to dismiss or diminish unique and often very hard life experiences of autistic people.

[@linden5165]

"A little bit autistic" - still getting autism wrong then I see. While Uta might claim that communication is incredibly intuitive for non-autistic people, this ignores the fact that they often get communication wrong too. The idea promulgated by Uta and colleagues that autistic people can not mentalise has done so much damage to our community. It is good that Uta recognises we no longer use the word disorder and that autistic people do not have the lack of empathy she has previously claimed and publicised. She could do with realising we also no longer use words like suffering, abnormal, fragile, malfunctioning, "superior intelligence", "socially impaired". Autism has always been part of humanity - a natural part of neurological diversity. The 'clinic' has always had limited ability to describe us when that has not been led by us, but by people who are frankly supremacist ableists. There is NO problem with abandoning terms like disorder for researchers and clinicians who are not ableist, and there are plenty working effectively within the neurodiversity paradigm without confusion. The leaders in autistic research today are the researchers who are autistic themselves and working via community co-design. These old narratives are well overdue for retirement and if that takes the retirement of the likes of Uta Firth and Simon Baron Cohen to happen then that can't come soon enough. Enough of this ableism, we've been saying for DECADES we don't want it and it doesn't describe us. Enough.

[@thecreativemastermin]

She ruined it all with "we are all a little bit autistic". Useless video.