So, everyone is on the Autism Spectrum?

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I think introverts fill in much of the middle ground between AS and NT on the spectrum.

I've also met people who have few or NO visible signs of any autism. They have great social reasoning skills, are very aware of themselves and can process what's going on very quickly. These are not the absolute majority though so there's room for lots in the middle.

I've heard this theory before, and personally, I don't agree with it at all. To claim that a "typical NT extrovert" sort of person is, to some degree, Autistic is totally incorrect.

Of course, NT introverts and "geeks" display many Autistic traits. I've seen them refered to as Halfspies.

Lets apply this logic to other things.

Everyone is a little flexible, so everyone has Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome.
Wrong.

Everyone is a little schizophrenic, so command hallucinations are normal.
Wrong.

Everyone has a little cancer, so you probably don't need chemo.
Wrong.

Everyone gets depressed sometimes, you don't need medication.
Wrong.

Everyone is a little gay.
Wrong.

Why would this logic ever be acceptable?

I find it makes me angrier each time I think about how being told we're "normal" is supposed to make us feel all happy and relieved. Hearing that is supposed to make us not see our concerns and struggles. It's supposed to make us not think there's anything deeper to understand about ourselves. It's supposed to make us feel connected to others by being like them in ways in which we're not. It's supposed to distance us from those who are "other" by not being "normal", which really just means they're unacceptable to society. It's supposed to drive apart people who are at different places on the spectrum, so that we don't dare see what we have in common, and so that the people whose functioning abilities are more apparent don't dare to acknowledge any ability or inclination to relate better, in any way, to those whose functioning difficulties are more obvious to the NT world than we can to to NTs.

Saying everyone is somewhere on the spectrum is ignorant, dismissive, and insulting. It will not make me just "get over" my traits. It will not make me stop having associated difficulties. It will not make me think like everyone else, have the same needs and capabilities, catch up when I fall behind, or suffer the failings of being neurotypical, which definitely has its shortcomings, in my opinion.

Why should I get all excited when someone tells me I belong to a world that largely rejected me until I learned to mimic it? What's so great about being a member of a club that only accepts me as one of them for as long as I behave and "pass" as one? Why would I want to identify with a group that asks me to reject the notion of belonging with others who are like me? And where's the value in only considering that which makes you just like everybody else to be a mark of acceptability, so that we have to think the NTs most gifted in the areas in which we commonly have deficits are somehow in the same group with those of us who struggle most before it's okay to acknowledge anyone as autistic and still see that individual as a worthwhile person?

Okay, that was a rather involved rant, I guess. Am I making sense here?

No, everyone is not on the autistic spectrum. I've heard comments like this, too, mostly from well-meaning NTs that "we're all a bit autistic." If we were all autistic, than autism would have no meaning. In the last few years, autism, particularly Asperger's Syndrome, has become kind of cool in certain media circles. The popular view of someone with Asperger's is that of an eccentric genius --and who wouldn't want to be an eccentric genius, at least in theory? Of course, the suicide rate among actual eccentric geniuses is quite high, although if you are living a comfortable, but boring NT life, being a quirky genius may seem to be sort of fun.The social isolation, the loneliness, the bullying, the feeling of being a stranger everywhere you go, the very real possibility of being overeducated and underemployed, the susceptibility to the co-morbidities of depression and anxiet, that's all glossed over. There's a lot of real pain and suffering that comes from being atistic, and, in my opinion, people who so flippantly say that we're all a bit autistic are just fooling themselves.

I guess you can technically expand the autism spectrum beyond what is considered autistic so all people can be included on it. There is no fine line between "autistic" and "NT".

I'll still never forget how someone told me, back when I first realized I might be on the spectrum, that everyone's on it, as her way of essentially telling me I couldn't be on it in any meaningful way. That's the reason for NTs (and undiagnosed people who think they're NTs) saying it to people they think are also NT but "just weird" or "worrying over nothing", like a mental hypochondriac. When people think of themselves as normal, they're highly invested in believing everyone else is, too, until they're given good enough reason to think otherwise. Then, at that point, they'd rather think of the other person as undesirably abnormal than as legitimately variant and, perhaps, in need of, and deserving of, any kind of help or extra consideration/accommodation. So, anyone claiming to be outside the norm is either dismissed as delusional or deliberately deceitful, or they're believed and then pushed aside or attacked. Nobody's supposed to have any special needs, even in order to simply do the same things as everyone else. It makes the people who don't have those needs jealous, I guess, to see anyone treated differently in a good way.

It depends how one defines the spectrum.

Some people very narrowly define it as those who are diagnosable. Which seems to me to be a silly way to define it. Just say have autism. Spectrum implies something wider.

There are those of us who have distinct autistic traits (past or present) but don't have a diagosable disorder. We are real. We are out here. And we are part of the spectrum.

Even if it can seem that way from looking at people, no, the world isn't neatly divided between autistic and NT, with everyone being definitively one or the other. It's not that neat and simple. Not having enough autistic traits for diagnosis doesn't automatically make one normal.

What ''spectrum'' are people with Down's Syndome on, or Mental Retardation, or ADHD, or Schitzephrenia, or Alzheimer's, or Parkingsons, or Fragile-X, or Soto's, or other disorders that affect the person's behaviour of thinking in a noticeably different way to the norm? There aren't only two groups of people 1 percent Autistic and 99 percent all typical. How could you use a scale or a spectrum for neurodiversity?

(oops, looks like I cropped the "NT" label off of the top, but it applies to the top line.)

The problem is that Autism is treated as a spectrum to the point where a lot of people have ASD that is not diagnosed, not to say that everyone has ASD per say. But this is where the theory comes from, because the word "Spectrum" sounds so broad, it comes from being very disabled to being in almost normal state of mind. I don't know how else to explain it though.

I hope my explanation is good.

It's just people who are not medical professionals can even ask themselves if they are normal or not and when they hear the word "Spectrum", it to them must be that everyone has it just a little bit of the trats, while only 1% of the general population have actual mental health and developmental disorders.

I hope that I am correct, I am trying to be accurate about the problems of the word "Spectrum" and why it sounds too broad, because symptoms of ASD can go from very severe to very mild that it reaches to normalcy.

I am sorry, I didn't mean to say that everyone has ASD, I just have problems with the word "Spectrum" and how too broad and confusing it sounds to non-educational professionals.