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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 27, 2023

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I don't doubt that you have good reasons for believing that you have autism, but I am not persuaded by your argument. If someone has a mental illness or disorder, we make various accommodations for that person and take their diagnosis into account when interacting with them. We don't make special accommodations for neurotypical people because by definition they don't need them, by virtue of being "typical". This arrangement depends on an assumption of good faith: if someone tells me that they have a mental disorder and expect me to make accommodations for them on that basis, I assume that they were formally diagnosed with that disorder by someone qualified to do so. If someone is often rude or inconsiderate, I will treat them with a great deal more forbearance and forgiveness if they have been diagnosed with autism (and hence find it harder to read social cues than a neurotypical person) than if they are neurotypical.

If you think you're autistic, but don't intend to mention this to anyone and don't expect anyone to make special accommodations for you, then fair enough. But if you do intend to mention this belief about yourself to other people and for other people to treat you accordingly (as seems to be the case, given that you've just brought it up to me), I think that's dishonest when you've never been formally diagnosed with this medical condition by someone qualified to make that assessment. It sounds like stolen valour.

I think the phrasing "the stigma around self-diagnosis" is a bit weaselly and disingenuous as well. It's not that self-diagnosis is stigmatized, it's just that most people aren't qualified to do it. If anyone could accurately diagnose themselves with medical conditions, people wouldn't spend years and small fortunes training to become doctors or psychiatrists.

If I said that lay people with no medical training shouldn't be performing neurosurgery, I don't think this position could be reasonably characterized as me trying to "stigmatize neurosurgery".