Is WP attracting too many of the wrong people

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That should be "now that I KNOW I am autistic......"

Regardless, who's not entitled to take a stab at their own condition?

I think if the desire is to suggest to those engaging in self diagnosis that they should be wary of getting their diagnosis wrong then that's all that need have been said.

Something like "Hey, if you're self diagnosing, watch out that you don't misdiagnose" would have sufficed. Of course stating such a warning would beg the question of why anyone would assume such a potential for oversight on behalf of people engaging in self diagnosis. It is, in fact, peoples' brains and lives that are at stake. Some have been having difficulties for decades. While it is possible that some will accept the first explanation that crosses their path, that behavior would be lazy and problematic, a conclusion that is likely to occur to most that might entertain such a shortcut, especially when it fails to explain their problems.

League Girl, I take it you are saying 'what is wrong with individuals with mild conditions participating on this site'? Is that correct? I'm only guessing because your comments could be interpreted several different ways.

I have trouble leaving my apartment. And when I mean "trouble," I mean that it's so stressful to me that I can rarely do it more than a couple times a week, and only for a couple hours (though it also depends on if I take the bus or not). Keep in mind that this is not an issue of agoraphobia. This is an issue of being out and about and interacting with other people.

Should I take from this that anyone who can leave their apartment/house regularly or hold down a typical job is not really autistic, or is mild? Comparatively... maybe. I'm not going to make assumptions about how difficult things are for people that can leave their house/apartment every day.

It seems like there's this idea that the more difficulties you have, the more autistic you are. As if there's some sort of hierarchy here on WP based on how difficult a normal daily routine is/how different your routine is from the norm. I'm not going to dance around what I think of it: It's stupid.

People are different than you are. Autistics are different from other autistics. Get over it. It's not an issue of "mild."

Might I suggest that if some of us are "wrong", in the sense that we don't simply show signs of being somewhere on the autistic spectrum, but also differ from the general social norm in some other ways (which might not be good ways), nevertheless, a place like WP might well be where we have the best chance (maybe even our only chance) to find out exactly what is "wrong", by judging ourselves not against the norm for people in general, but the "norm" for people who are on the AS/HFA part of the autistic spectrum?

If so, then turning us away would be like trying to preserve an idealised, purified AS/HFA "norm" against contamination by the likes of us deviant types, in much the same way as society in general tends to expel and deliberately misrepresent certain deviant categories of people, in order to defend itself against the threat it perceives (or misperceives) them to be.

It's not as if there are only two alternatives, either (1) expelling the "wrongness" (treating it like mere waste), or else (2) ignoring it (allowing it to blur the focus of the forum). There is also (3) containing it and trying to understand it, assuming that it has at least some relevance to the main purpose of the forum, e.g. at least some of the "wrong" people might be manifesting specific ways in which AS/HFA people react to certain adverse life events, and how else are we to know this, unless we have something like WP as a baseline to measure ourselves against?

I love the summer nights we get here (as long as they're not too hot), and I love walking by the river. I would have a couple of problems with going for a walk at night. I'm not going to go into all of them (they're practical reasons), but I am rather afraid of getting mugged... or serial killers (I get mistaken for a woman a lot, so I have more reason to fear them than most guys).

Re-edit: Removed edit