How should we speak about autism?

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I have listened a lot to people who call themselves experts in autism. Some of them have an ASD diagnosis. Many of them mention what I call stereotypes. They sometimes say that "people with ASD have a special interest" and "people with ASD cannot automatize a behvaiour".
Sometimes I wonder if people speak like this in order to generalize or overemphasize something in order to make it more clear.
Many people talk about special interests. Then it is usually about people who enter into a specific interest and enjoy it and don't experience any frustration at all. At least as I understand it. But I wonder if you can actually have an interest in something without a lot of frustration.
Automation should work for some of us. Otherwise we would not find people with ASD who are extremely good at something.

My thinking is that a lot that is said about autism can't be that correct. There must be some kind of reason why people speak about eg speacial interests without mention all the frustrations or the ability many of us have when it comes to automatize an action (is that the correct term?). There might be people who only do something for fun or cannot learn to make an action more automatic but many of us are not like that at all. Then we have that thing about us not being good at household chores. Some of us are actually very good at it.
What do you think? How should we speak about autism?

well, we have to be vague because the spectrum is so wide that we can't make statements that all autistic people do "this".
Some will do and some won't.

I think that is one of the really difficult things about defining autism for diagnosis/definition of how to recognize it , since no two of us are alike.
Making standardized rigid statements about autism will most likely be not fitting or correct.
Is that the sort of thing you are thinking???

I suggest more as an umbrella disorder of many unknown causes with some common overlapping symptoms

One indicator is where an individual can be a complete genius in one given area but in another area they are the complete opposite, where allistic people will be more allround and general in whatever intelligence they may be blessed with.
Though this concept in itself may not neccessarily be true with all autistics as autism in itself is where brain signals do not make it to their destination... So some just have certain things they are not able to do due to this, and yet they do not have the genius level. This genius level is due to the brain growth compensating for the missing areas by overdeveloping other areas. (This also accounts for hypersensitivities).

Autism is not always easy to diagnose as well because one person may have certain missing brain connections which effect their speech or their motor control where another may have a totally different set of issues relating to different brain signals which are lacking.

And there are then the situation of brain overload in the forms of meltdowns and shutdowns which though this can also effect allistic people, it tends to effect them if they have mentally overstretched themselves due to pressures or stresses etc, while autistic people will be effected far more often and at times daily depending on how relaxed or stressed they maybe.
Around 60% of those on the spectrum experience meltdowns and 60% experience shutdowns in their various forms, and around 20% who are on the spectrum have never experienced either of them.
So meltdowns and shutdowns are a good indicator as overall 80% on the spectrum will experience one or the other.

We should speak about autism as being a developmental disorder which has many individual presentations. The Spectrum Idea is convenient, but it's imperfect.

It's not "one size fits all."

It's a more complex notion than it was, say, in the 1960s, when only the most severe of us, primarily, would have been diagnosed with autism. There were definite behaviors exhibited within "this" autism, and it was much easier to diagnose back then.

^ That's what i call hyper-focus. I can be very prone to it. I can slip into tunnel vision. Develop obsessions. Be really interested, even addicted to things.. or persons. Yeah, Its why i have such poor time management. If I'm fascinated with a musician for eg. i will watch all their interviews, listen to all their songs, Until i feel I'm familiar with them, know enough. It starts off a casual interest, but i can get caught up in it. Like a snowball effect. Eventually the intensity burns out, and i drift towards a new interest. I figured I've learned everything i can. Yeah,satiated, that's the word. Not that I'm fickle. I'll revisit older interests I had. Almost rotate them. But my interest always expands. I guess this is an aspect of my personality that proves my diagnosis wasn't no fluke.

We should speak about it the way it is. Most people with autism are adults with a mild form of autism.

The stereotype of autism is that it's a childs disorder and usually low functioning. Parents of kids like this are the ones that need the most support so not surprisingly they're the most vocal but in doing so drown out the voices of the more "typical" autistic.