LGBT+ hitching their cause to autism and neurodiversity

Thank you @Sickoffamilydrama she was an amazing woman and put her long life (died at 98) down to never having married 😆.
@Elephantsparade I was told similar as you about ASD and anxiety but they also linked his ASD with his ADHD, Tourettes, dyslexia and hypermobility saying that they are a family of conditions that are linked and that if you have any of them then you were more likely to have a 2nd the average person and if you had 2 you're more likely to have a 3rd etc. Though noone can explain why it's almost like they discovered a correlation between this group of conditions and then stopped all research into whether there is a causal link and or what any link might be.
I would love to see some proper research done into it and the way these things run in families, though if they did find an ASD gene I'm sure that the it's an identity brigade would be extremely put out

As well as stigma attached to mental illness, I think the issue is illness suggests something that should be cured or treated. And that is where the online autism community will come down on you like a ton of bricks. There is nothing wrong, nothing to change, they are perfect. To the extent that even speech and language therapy for children would be considered heretical. And asking for ways to cope with a work situation is met with screams of ablism rather than tips or support. Like with TRAs there is no room for nuance or accepting that others may feel differently about their own autism and associated conditions.

I see the perpetuation of a divide between psychiatric disorders and neuro disorders as the stigma attached to the psychiatric. People still think you can use force of will to cure depression and other mental illnesses because people think the mind is not wholly controlled by the brain somehow. I don't believe in spiritual souls.

Schizophrenia is one of the most well known psychiatric illnesses but there is clear evidence of its neurobiological origin. Please tell me why else disorders in the function of the brain should be categorized as not neurological if not for the stigma. The most legitimate reason is that they are specialized disciplines for doctors. One will deal with physical and motor defecits, the other with behavior and mood. Otherwise I do not think its useful to insist mental illness is no connected to neurology. Why else do neuroscientists research the neurobiology of psychiatric disease?

This link even lists autism as a mental illness. I was diagnosed over 20 years ago and I have never heard this arguement before about it being "this not that" because it is essentially BOTH. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6258037/

I think its very interesting the link between autism and other issues like learning difficulties or anxiety. When my son was diagnosed with asd the team said 'anxiety was a sister diagnosis and the two go hand in hand" and his anxiety impacts him so much, but three of my blood relativrs have extreme anxiety that affects their day to day life but no ASD.
Id love to know why. I did see any study about seratonin receptors and autistuc brains but i dont know how to read scientific studies as i am only gcse level so apart from getting there was a measurable difference i didnt get what the difference was or why.
As for trans the language is the same. Its all on a spectrum and self-id is valid etc. I can see why a child learning about their diagnosis would be naturally drawn in. Even rainbow colours have been associated with asd for a long time.

cabin that sounds awful I'm glad your aunt supported you she sounds amazing.

My daughter could well have been like you she slips under the radar so to speak and certainly when she was younger I just thought she was very stubborn & awkward. I still adapted for her but sometimes especially with well meaning comments from family I thought I was being to soft. I'm so glad that because we have other family members with autism that one day an incident happened and a light bulb went off in my head. Then we pursued a diagnosis.

Funnily enough NiceGerbil I have Aphantasia I am also in the bottom 4% for auditory processing which means I can't even see the words I've just heard and am trying to get into or out of my brain... it's very frustrating at times luckily I was diagnosed as an adult and now I deliberately don't put myself in situations were I would struggle to function. But if I hadn't and I had a job where that kind of processing was inherent My MH would massively suffer.

I agree with Tibtom we should study and understand all aspects of human physiology more then problem comes when people do it to validate their person beliefs I'm thinking of the pink brain 🧠 blue brain 🧠 type studies.

Like many things It's a really complex multifaceted thing especially as it involves real people and their lives, it's particularly emotive when you start talking about Normal and abnormal most people don't want to be called abnormal.

NiceGerbil I think I get what you are getting at about norms. 1 in 20 is obviously not the norm - the 19 in 20 would be. But that 19/20 would only be in the norm for that particular measure. For other measures they may be outwith the norm. 'Neurodiversity' means the diversity of everyone and when we start to look at different measures everyone is likely to fall outwith the norm for some aspect or other.

The other issue is which population is involved? Wider society adopts these norms and cater to them so if you buy a Chinese dress off Amazon you might find it too short. Equally if you look at autistic groups on social media many are furiously promoting their own norm and sidelining those who are 'divergent' from their populations.

With grassroots orgs, I think size becomes a factor. Smaller community based organisations can change direction, but aren't as likely to be of interest from those outside, or outsiders are recognized. Change from within the community isn't always negative, if it reflects the needs of the community. Although - small community politics can be brutal, so there's that.

I think the bigger risk of grassroots organisations are people. On the positive side they can be led by a individual(s) with a lot of drive to improve their community who have huge amounts of knowledge of how their community works. The risk there is they leave and the whole group flounders. On a more negative side they can be led or captured by people with a very personal agenda who are resistent to listening to others and who can not only undermine that service but also other services in the area and put a block on other activities.

Ok haven't rtft yet but am posting ruffly what I posted on another thread about this
Both my ds and I are diagnosed with ASD and other co-morbidities.
When I was a child in the 80s I struggled at school and was sent to many psychologists and psychiatrists who misdiagnosed ASD as BPD (as girls can't have ASD🤬) I was blamed for my asd, belittled and abused by teachers, students and family all because I have ASD and I'm gender non conforming (like most autistic people) only I was lucky to be part of genX rather than Y or Z I got several lovely and caring psychiatric professionals who used watchful waiting and a 4×great aunt who was an actual suffragette (went to jail and endured force feeding before the cat&mouse act) who taught me the truth about gendered stereotypes and how dangerous they are before I was truly able to understand their words and I see exactly what is going on in the ASD "support groups " especially amongst the parents groups (you know the same type who blame the MMR for their dcs ASD and those who would rather had a dead child than 1 with ASD).
You see its a multi pronged attack
1st, ASD is no longer a psychiatric disorder (which technically it shouldn't be as its a neurological diversity ie abnormal brain structures).
2nd, ASD becomes another type of identity that anyone can id into
3rd, ASD becomes the same as being trans (ie a subjective sense of being)
4th, Actual science about the visible differences between an ASD brain vs a neurotypical brain on an FMRI ( functional magnetic resonance imaging) can be twisted and used to bolster the (defunct in the 90s how is it back) lady/man brain theory, as if asd and trans are just a feeling and are the same and you can actually see an ASD brain it's only time until the incompetent/transphobic cis neurotypical het normative drs prove it.
5th, you get a particularly susceptible/vulnerable group of teenagers to bolster your claim and fight your corner.
6th, ASD becomes the new intersex gotcha against all the neurotypical cis hetro-normative White bigots (ignoring the fact that trans and ASD should be kept as far apart as possible)
7th ASD joins the qwerty alphabet soup (just like the I did) and more evidence of the T being everything.

1 massive problem with the plan those of us who actually have ASD and do our own research are immovable in our logic and reasoning as my DS's school learned when they tried to teach my ds the new scot gov approved RMPIE (religious moral philosophical?education) sex and DNA are immutable and the knowledge of such is protected (thank you miya) and ds.
The long and short of this is yet another power grab for predatory men.

This one:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4350896-Autism-society

I'm very relieved to have found this and the other thread on autism here

What’s the other autism thread @theaccidentaleconomist ?

Not being nosy but would like to understand whether those posters have experience of that situation themselves.

Sexuality and heteornormativity / changes in orientation during life most commonly older women starting to date women. It's a really interesting discussion. To do with social pressures, are more people bisexual but behave and see themselves as straight. If it was a totally equal society with no risks/ social stuff around pregnancy, same sex sexual activity, sexual violence etc etc what would things look like.

That's by the by though.

For an awful lot of people their sexuality is clear to them and is from a young age.

There is no suggestion that homosexuality is a medical condition. And so it's a poor parallel to draw to autism.

It's exactally what you think of in terms of a grass roots org, a church that provides food for in an underprivileged urban community. A lot of what makes it possible is the buildings and the volunteers who give their time. But to get the big food donors involves, like supermarkes, the ones that can reliably provide large amounts, you have to follow their donation policies. And they want to know they are getting results for their charitable dollars.

Which means the one part time paid worker has to spend a lot of time following up with paperwork. And also meeting their standards for other things which means telling the grass roots volunteers that they can't prepare food in their home kitchens any more.

And then the national body regulating soup kitchens wants us to offer mindfulness meditation.

It's good to be really clear about the science and what psychologists understand.

They do not know that depression, for example, is caused by a chemical imbalance, or some sort of biodiversity. To some extent the chemical imbalance idea as the origin has been discredited.

We don't know what causes homosexuality, from a purely biological POV, nor whether it's inborn or inherent in some way. People have theories on this, but none have won the day. It's not at all clear that it's the same in every individual and some good reasons to think it's not. It's also not clear that the way we define these categories is really the way that best reflects their structure, in any case our way of thinking of them as types of people is unusual historically.

Psychologically, it's not at all clear or even all that likely that a sexual orientation toward men, women, or both, is part of the same psychological structures or biological capacities or spectrum as any other categories that get added on like demisexual or asexual etc. These probably represent completely different phenomena with different causes.

People tend to assume that we know a lot more definite information about these things than science really has.

Agree with all that lobster.

Would add-

Small local orgs are very vulnerable to fluctuations in income

The contracts from various sources esp govt and in the past Europe acted to dictate what should be delivered and to who, and how to measure results and meet targets and the funding was reliant on those things being met and results proved in a certain format.

While obv if you're giving funding it makes sense to understand what will be done with and and make sure it delivers change on the ground.

In practice this can mean changes in focus or even parts of the orgs core beliefs.

And I have experience with the resource spent on getting the paperwork done, a small org. 3 people full time calling those who had received assistance to follow up and find outcomes and if positive get paperwork filled in that many people can't be arsed with obviously. Outcomes 3 6 and 12 months.

The evidence was wanted from those who had got a job but of course they had moved on and getting a long form filled in by them was like getting blood from a stone understandably. But to get the higher levels of funding for that person the paperwork had to be done and with nothing missing etc.

Incentives like vouchers were used to try and encourage obv money spent on order to get the funding money. And not spent on the service.

But the link between the charitable sector and state funding being routed through them has created a lot of problems. A similar problem can come from having a very wealthy patron that an organisation becomes dependent on.

And the professionalization of the charitable sector has not really been good for it either.

With grassroots orgs, I think size becomes a factor. Smaller community based organisations can change direction, but aren't as likely to be of interest from those outside, or outsiders are recognized. Change from within the community isn't always negative, if it reflects the needs of the community. Although - small community politics can be brutal, so there's that.

Wtf a statement that a person has a disability (and yes it's often autism) on social media is often deployed when a person is losing an argument...

'As for who decides the norm? This is the mean and standard deviation. 95% of the population fall within 2 standard deviations either side of the mean where there is a normal distribution. So someone who falls outwith this range would be considered to fall outwith the norm.'

Well that's all well and good but in real life not how things work.

When it comes to things that are easy to measure across the population eg height then it's fairly straightforward.

When it comes to things that have many different factors, are not well understood, and are not generally measured across the population. And the things to be measured are very difficult to measure in any consistent/ reliable way. Then that falls apart a bit.

There's also bias. Eg

Aphantasia is they think experienced by 1 in 20 people. Little is known about it at all. Maybe it's more people. Maybe there's a spectrum or even other ways that people's brains work in that area. We don't know.

And yet the 1 in 20 get a word that means something is missing.

What they don't know is how those people process things without the visuals. Maybe it's something more efficient. Maybe they have something the other people don't.

Much of our teaching methods are unsuitable for people with this. 1 in 20.

But there are probably other things too. Who knows? Who knows what it's like inside anyone else's head? Each person's individual experience is their 'norm'.

There's the fact that male has been default, the 'norm' in so many things for so long with big consequences for women.

Bias and who decides the norm should never be dismissed.

Trying to function in a world that is not designed for you, in whatever way. Ranges from a sense of not being quite comfy to a real inability to negotiate some or lots of it.

Which can lead to MH problems. Obviously.

Women and girls are commonly diagnosed with and treated for depression when they have any number of issues. It's a massive feminist issue.

People latch on to them, or start wanting to spend the money on not so useful ways, in some cases they become a political tool, people start to self diagnose.

I've been noticing this rapid onset of self-diagnosis and self-identifying with ADHD and "the community" (rightly or wrongly) blames tiktok.

I feel like it's a culmination of different factors creating an environment that is ripe for [whatever it is we're calling this phenomenon].

On one hand, you have the people who actually have 'the thing' who are being lured (or dragged) into these activist groups. Wether it's girls with ASD who don't fit in and are being told this is the answer, or lesbians who said they don't like certain genitals being aggressively re-educated until 'they do'.

On the other, you have the ones who've realised that self-identifying as demigender with a pinch of masc-femme isn't really unique enough or special enough these days, and they need more, so they throw in another label. Another 'issue' for them to lecture their followers on. To fight for. To police. And once everyone has been 'educated' on the tics, or the adhd, or the PTSD, or the ASD, it will be added to this all encompassing 'identifying and expressing as' community, and now it's a tool you can pull out when you need to feel validated.

It's actually quite fascinating to watch it play out (or it would be if it wasn't so concerning).

OSDD is one I've seen people explaining to the great uneducated (in a 30 second clip, naturally). I'm not a psychiatrist, but their explanations (which justify either the behaviours they present on social media or a new change of identity) don't seem to be DMV criteria type stuff. It looks like... cosplay to me?

And all of this is happening against a backdrop of identity politics, extreme left and right wings, and the invisible ones pulling the strings who know exactly how to use all of this for money and power.

I have also seen frequent proclamations that autism and learning disability are not linked too. They are - approx 40% of people with learning disabilities are autistic.

As for who decides the norm? This is the mean and standard deviation. 95% of the population fall within 2 standard deviations either side of the mean where there is a normal distribution. So someone who falls outwith this range would be considered to fall outwith the norm.

@Franca123 Can anyone enlighten me on ADHD? A friend recently told me he had been diagnosed with it. He's around 40years old. I've always felt he was mildly depressed.

Could he have been diagnosed with PI (primarily inattentive) type? (As opposed to PH - primarily hyperactive type).

one of the courses features a woman who was diagnosed with ADHD in her 30s after years of ineffective medication for depression and anxiety so there’s possible a link there

So this is probably not so much a link and more that a person with depression or anxiety can look a lot like a person struggling to keep their adhd symptoms under control. They will both go to the doctor with the same symptoms, and doctors can't diagnose ADHD so they attempt to treat the depression. But it's really common to find that with ADHD, the symptoms which look like depression or anxiety will disappear completely (often on day 1 of finding the right type of medication).

To understand it in the simplest terms, it helps if you forget what the letters mean because they're misleading. There's not a deficit in attention - there is an inability to regulate it.

The PH and PI (or combined) types are there to signify how that inability 'presents' itself.

It's still quite misunderstood but at the root it is caused by an imbalance of chemicals in the brain. We rely on these chemicals for 'standard' functioning like working memory, controlling impulses and urges, or planning and organising.

How that actually impacts an individual's life varies with how severe it is and how well you (or the systems in place) can control it.

For me (PH) when I'm unmedicated it's like having too many thoughts to keep them straight. Like having 400 tabs open on Safari that you definitely want to come back to but holy shit this looks interesting. It's having intense but fleeting obsessions with everything from Viking invasions to personal finance to quantum mechanics to the guy who works three floors up. It's feeling like boredom would be worse than death, and showering is boring, and going to bed is especially boring, and keeping that £80 I need to pay for [really important thing next week] is stupidly boring when I could definitely go blonde like that Pinterest model or get dangerously drunk in a field (teen me). As an adult it's more like redecorating the living room 30 seconds after the thought popped into your head, or ditching the kids bedtime because doesn't a Dominos and a movie sound way more fun than washing the school clothes you need for the morning.

Despite all of that, there are ways you learn to hide it or force yourself to control it (and again this varies by person). Urgent things help. Important things help. Interesting things help. Getting a job where things are urgent and interesting (like... a paramedic, or a manager where your constantly fighting fires) is a good example of how you can sort of trick yourself into thriving.

But the reason this can end up looking like depression or anxiety is because... despite the above thoughts and actions sounding reckless, stupid, uninformed, irrational, immature -- I am not actually any of those things. People know it's fucking them up but without the controls (which medication usually helps with massively) they do it anyway.

It can be extremely overwhelming, which can present like anxiety, and the shame of not being able to control your thoughts and behaviours can spiral into self-loathing, which can look and feel a lot like depression.

That's just my two cents, hope it helps in some way

Sexual orientation is something that is a basic human characteristic.

Are you framing being hetrosexualiy as being 'normal' and being homosexual or bisexual as 'other'?

Neurodiversity started as a neutral term related to differences in how people think experience the world etc. Now it's generally suggestive of neurodiversity that comes with challenges around interacting socially. Sorry if not put that well.

If homosexuality/ bisexuality are neurodiversities then so is heterosexuality.

In many mammals different sexual behaviour is seen in terms of preferring same sex, opposite sex partners or showing no preference. Sexual orientation is accepted to come from the brain and so this is an example of neurodiversity.

???

Another example would be. Neurodiversity in humans gives rise to the majority of people having one dominated 'hand'. Favouring their left or right side.

'Other signs of autism
You may also have other signs, like:

not understanding social "rules", such as not talking over people
avoiding eye contact
getting too close to other people, or getting very upset if someone touches or gets too close to you
noticing small details, patterns, smells or sounds that others do not
having a very keen interest in certain subjects or activities
liking to plan things carefully before doing them'

5 of those.

It's so so broad. And I would dispute that some of those things in fact a lot of them are not essentially a part of the diversity of humans.

I also think this really trivialises the issues for those who are seriously impacted (and their families).

NHS:

'Main signs of autism
Common signs of autism in adults include:

finding it hard to understand what others are thinking or feeling
getting very anxious about social situations
finding it hard to make friends or preferring to be on your own
seeming blunt, rude or not interested in others without meaning to
finding it hard to say how you feel
taking things very literally – for example, you may not understand sarcasm or phrases like "break a leg"
having the same routine every day and getting very anxious if it changes'

I tick plenty of them.