I was debating with Autism speaks. Is autism really that bad

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I don't believe there's no way he could have volunteered with autistic children and not seen any who went naked and threw things around. There are easily over a dozen autistic children in the world who do not do that, and it's clearly that he was referring to.

However, I think it's pretty arrogant for any person, autistic or not, to say "I have worked with over a dozen autistic children and therefore I know what all autistic people will and won't look like and will and won't act like."

There are way over a dozen ways that autistic children, or for that matter adults, can behave. And I don't mean two dozen, I mean at least hundreds of variations on autistic behavior exist depending on how exact you want to get.

And working with over a dozen people doesn't turn you into an expert on all those different ways we can look, behave, think, etc.

I get so fed up with people who think that "working with autistic children" (which by the way I've technically done, and which can mean nearly anything) means they know everything there is to know about autism and autistic people and can make pronouncements right and left about what we are like and are not like.

I've heard people say that I don't move like whatever number of autistic people they've seen, therefore I'm not autistic, or something. Thing is, I do move like a fair of autistic people I know, some so much like them that we can mutually read each other's body language without even trying. These people just don't know that, because they haven't known the amount of autistic people necessary to start really looking for patterns in our behavior and seeing who does and doesn't move like who else.

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, especially combined with a lot of arrogance.

And it's bad no matter who you direct your arrogance at. It doesn't matter whose "side" you're on, or if you're on a side at all. Once you start throwing around that you've "worked with autistic people" and therefore know what real autistic people are and are not like, in some kind of total absolute way like that, you're essentially throwing status symbols around but not proclaiming any actual knowledge. It might impress people "on your side" (if there are sides) as meaning something, but other people, especially people with enough actual knowledge about autism, will just see you as arrogant and disrespectful.

For the record, I didn't strip naked and then throw things, but I did have to be taught not to take all my clothes off around people, and I do still have trouble remembering that rule.

Another two people I know, know that rule, but have trouble implementing it even when they remember it. Their autopilot routine when it comes to clothing is to take it all off even if they are just trying to adjust one part of it, and that gets in the way.

I know many parents who describe their children as "little nudists", and I know many autistic adults who, like me, were "little nudists".

This might be because I've actually known and read about enough autistic people and parents to get a sense of how wide our behavior ranges far beyond a little over a dozen ways we can behave. And because of that, I know not to say just about anything is something "an autistic person would never do" or "an autistic person would never look like", no matter if I've ever heard of it before or not, because I've learned that even after hundreds of people (known offline, online, through books, through their parents, etc.) there's always something new I haven't heard of or wouldn't have expected, when the next person shows up.

Agreed completely with NewportBeachDude and littlebopeep on this one. I don't read that board, but I really don't like the idea that people there could be forming the idea in their heads that all autistic people are that unaware of the range of what autism can look like, it only confirms stereotypes that we only hold the views we do (whatever those are) because we don't know how bad, or weird, or difficult, it can be. And I don't think that just because the board is run by an organization I don't like, suddenly means most of the people who frequent it, who are just ordinary parents, deserve that degree of disrespect. The autistic community isn't some kind of game where you have to score points for your team all the time or something.