How would you describe the spectrum....

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To some one that doesn't know about it?

I was talking with this girl, let's call her Velma

I disclosed my autism and she rebutted that I can't be autistic, because I have a job, because I can talk. Her relative has a low functioning type and is non verbal.
I believe she thinks that every autistic person is like her relative.
I want to kindly but accurately inform her that other forms of autism exist

instead of seeing the spectrum like a flat image of a rainbow,
consider it as a sphere, with strengths and weaknesses in almost every part of a person's neurology.
No two individuals represented will be the same, and the strengths and weaknesses may go way off in several directions at a time... https://www.sarahnannery.com/post/sphere-vs-spectrum

You could try mentioning famous people who have publicly spoken about being autistic, like Greta Thunberg, and the actors Anthony Hopkins and Daryl Hannah, as examples of how broadly autism can manifest. (There are a lot of online lists of supposedly autistic famous people, but they are not always reliable.)

A big part of what sets me as a "spectrumer" apart from most people is that I don-t tell people what they want to hear but what I think they need to hear. Telling the truth and giving the correct facts are more important to me than nursing my relation to other people. It can make me criticize the behaviour of someone I like or praise the behaviour of someone I dislike. I think autistic people in general have a greater sense of honesty and follow a code of honour to a higher degree than the average population.

Try mentioning the cause.

Autism is basically said to be missing brain connectins in the frontal part of the brain.

Tell her to think of a computer. If one opens up a computer and randomly scores through a single circuit on the computer internals without knowing what it does, and puts the computer back together again, and does the same to several other identical computers but cuts through a different circuit on each one, and then goes to try to run them, some computers would not even start. Others will run but severly impared in even doing anything! Still others will appear to fu ction and run normally until one day one goes to try to do a certain task....

This is the best analogy I can think of which will explain why some can be severely dissabled and others are not through having the same condition.

A symptom rather than a whole condition in itself.

Rather like the term “sight loss” from short sightedness to complete blindness with different causes , eye symptoms and levels of severity.