Is autism becoming infantalised?

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The whole point of the original post and thread has nothing to do with people who are genuinely unable to do certain tasks being expected to all of a sudden do them.

The whole point of the thread is people who CAN do the tasks being assumed incapable of doing them through excessive pandering to their autism which ultimately makes the sufferer doubt their own abilities and gives autistic people as a whole a negative stigma which further hinders them. Like I said in my very first post, not all autistic people are the same. I still believe a massive proportion are far more capable than they give themselves credit for though.

Being genuinely deaf and in a wheelchair is literally the polar opposite to the point I'm trying to make and isn't applicable.

I mean ableism is baked into society. Even you just said "sufferers" which implies that we all suffer. I think society has a long way before disabled people are not treated as less than. It's a lot of times seen as showing empathy to pity a disabled person who actually doesn't even want your pity.

With mechanization, employers don't need all available workers. They only want those who are little more trouble than a machine. However, doing useful work is usually part of feeling like a mature adult, and the attitudes around and programs for general welfare are still problematic. It would be nice if we had a guaranteed annual wage, and no stigma about working for less than the usual minimum wage or just doing art or general helping people.

There are always some parents who don't grow into the job and are content with their children as permanent dependents, but it leaves them vulnerable to changes. I am quite dismayed at the focus of aspie education, trying to make us blend in, rather than develop our special abilities. There should be courses for NTs in how to find and collaborate with an asocial technical genius. It is far better to be dependent on a productive partnership than on charity.

I got kicked out of home at 17 because what I was studying was not usually on my exams. Academically, I went right from high-school dropout to guest lecturing to graduating engineers, via the library. I was never able to find a good business partner, though. Without Rolls, we would never have heard of Royce. Seymour Cray was peerless at computer architecture, but he needed John Rollwagen to handle the money for his work. I am sure that far more great work has just been lost. There was a probable Aspie in the Royal Society in the 1700s who had trouble with conversation, but when people re-read his notes in the 1800s, they recognized that he had anticipated about half of the coming "discoveries," but not been understood at the time. If someone had taken the time to get to know him, they might have co-authored some major history.

Having read through this whole thread it's interesting the directions it has taken. A lot of people have definately had an exposed nerve tweaked for sure. The way I've read it is that the OP was wondering if too much accomodation could be a bad thing?

That's something I've often thought about, and have had discussions with my partner who is also on the spectrum. We had a friend who was also diagnosed around the same time as we were. They took that diagnosis to mean they didn't have to try anymore, and consequently became a huge jerk. They decided that as they were autistic, they had carte blanch to basically drop all the social niceties. We tried to speak to them about it, but they wouldn't listen and continued to be a jerk. Hence ex-friend.

So I do wonder how much being over-accommodated as a child will stop someone from actually achieving their true potential. If having large allowances made rather than encouraging coping mechanisms and gaining knowledge about how to function in a world full of people who dont think like us could actually be damaging and setting those folks up to fail. I'm not talking about everyone here. It's a spectrum, and some people simply aren't capable of learning those things so should certainly be supported by society.

I was in my late 30s when I was diagnosed. I was fortunate in that I had a mum who was very patient and would at least pretend (pretty convincingly) to be interested when I was yakking away about my current obsession, and a large a rambling extended family meant I always had someone to play with, even if the kids at school thought I was weird and didn't like me. That said, I've had regular issues connected to aspie traits both at work and socially. I've ended up in meetings with HR on many occasions- though less since I was diagnosed.

I think that maybe the public focus is so much on autistic kids, because of "aww look at that poor wee guy, of course i will donate to your charity" and also maybe because NT parents of ASD kids are more successful at socially supporting one another and shouting for what they need?

I reckon there's also a psychological factor at work- if someone feels superior to someone else, they may be condescending which then reads to us as being treated like children.

Sorry, this has turned into a bit of a ramble.

TL;DR
Yes I think autistic people are being increasingly infantilised as an unintended byproduct of increased advocacy and awareness, and that many people still believe that if you are autistic, you are broken. Which is not true.

I think it would be better for autistic adults as well as for NT workload if workplaces returned to what they used to be in terms of formality.

I'm no fan of Britishness but - it used to be seen as American to be as cheesy & glib & superficial as modern day workplaces expect.

Reserved Brits and dour Scots, wouldn't be hugging colleagues, obsessed over constant smiles, gossiping and not getting on with thier work.

And there was a place for a 'quirky' workmate in certain professions. My stepdad has more stereotypically autistic personality traits than me, despite not being diagnosed. He worked in the same workplace as a lecturer since the 80s and was always known as 'harmlessly eccentric'. As he didn't know the social cues etc and was pretending to play cricket in the hallways and doing voices to himself and really getting into character whenever he read a character in a novel The modern lecturer isn't allowed to act like that, it wouldn't be seen as socially acceptable anymore and they'd likely get in trouble despite doing nothing wrong. He's been working in that job since the 80s and between that and his strictness on students is seen as a bit of a 'remnant'.

Ironically one thing I found hard about volunteering in a job that was once a paid job (librarian's assistant) was not working. The amount of breaks, the amount of gossiping during working hours, the pressure to be cool and normal. The expectation that you would hate the work and that talking was not only great for a library but something the assistants themselves should do. The dismissive hate of books, within a library, if they were too high brow. Since I've been on ESA, I've been able to work hard on my 'projects' without dealing with such distractions & nonsense.

I think the idea that if someone doesn't work they'll goof off and watch TV/search SM and do nothing else is based on experience of NTs. NTs need external pressure to work or they socialise, goof off and lounge about. In fact, they still do that when they're 'working'.

We don't do that. We have our interests & some of them are academic or artistic or worthwhile etc. Only reason we need to work professional jobs is to get cash.

One thing that would be good is if the government could figure out some autistic people who have specialist interests & hire them for research etc. Maybe in museums, behind the scenes type work.

Autistic people are very different to NTs and just because we're a minority doesn't mean we're worthless or should be expected to mask and fit in. Doing that is bad for our mental health.

I think in modern years, over the last half century, there has been increasing focus on making careers easier for extrovert, socially intelligent, academically less intelligent NTs and we should really be just trying to shift towards the centre a bit more. I think there's NTs who'd find that shift in focus useful, too.