Has the autistic community become exclusionary?

In the last few years, there has been a shift in the neurodiversity movement and the autistic community as a whole. Originally, the neurodiversity movement was meant to give autistic people a seat at the table in a time where the conversation around autism was dominated by parents and professionals. It focused on removing stigmas and improving access to supports and services to make the lives of autistic people easier. However, there has been an explosion of late realized white low support needs autistic content creators who capitalize on their experience. Slowly, the autistic community became less focused on societal changes with the focus on the most marginalized members of our community and became more validation focused and centers those with the most privilege.

As an early diagnosed autistic female with medium support needs who has been involved in the community for a long time, I no longer relate to the autistic community. I feel a lot of the things that made the neurodiversity movement more inclusive have been slowly co-opted and white-washed where I now feel that autism is getting watered down. I see many white low support needs autistic content creators overgeneralizing their experiences, spreading misinformation and excluding higher support needs autistic people. When other autistics, who are usually people of color and/or medium and high support needs, call out these big accounts about the invalidation and inaccuracies of their statements, we get accused of being “ableist” and “gatekeepy” etc.

This is why I started my Instagram account “The Jumpy Autist” to give my perspective as a medium support needs autistic as well as add more nuance to the autistic and neurodiversity movement. Connecting with other higher support needs autistics made me realize that I was not alone in my thinking that the overall narrative is dominated by predominantly white late realized low support needs autistic people. Some of us got bullied by other autistic people for outwardly displaying autistic traits or needing extensive accommodations and supports. Creating an online community and connecting with other like minded people has given me purpose and shows that the voices of more marginalized autistic people matter.

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