I thought I was autistic. I was wrong. I was 30 in 2019 when stories of women discovering they were autistic all along began appearing everywhere. They popularized a newer understanding of autism, with its own “female presentation.” It was framed as a scientific correction to a historical wrong against women, the kind of narrative the press finds irresistible. Like so many women, I felt immense relief when I was formally diagnosed. It offered an explanation for the mental health crises of my youth and the daily realities of my adult life. Then I spent a year in the online autism community. What I saw there, especially the way activists treated parents of severely impaired children, turned me into a critic of neurodiversity. But it was becoming a journalist in 2022, after discovering detransitioners’ stories, that forced me to question narratives about identity and diagnosis, including my own. Journalism also required the social skills autism says I should have lacked. From there, the rest unraveled: many traits I had come to associate with autism are not uncommon in the general population, but through the “female autism” framework, they looked like a meaningful pattern. I don’t think my story is unique. The same incentives that kept my diagnosis intact may also help explain why so many women are entering the autism category in adulthood. Read my first article for @thefp: thefp.com/p/i-thought-i-…
