No more natural than an earthquake
The radicalization is accelerated by advocates’ stringent adherence to the neurodiversity tenet that autism is “natural” and “normal.” This argument constitutes a logical fallacy and immediately crumples upon close examination, as autism is no more natural than earthquakes, syphilis, wildfires, or dementia.
Those are all very natural things. So autism is very natural? But it’s not?
I shouldn’t feed the trolls, but every argument in this essay falls apart the second you try to touch it.
The “natural” argument is much easier to make for those with milder autism, where it may indeed be the case that stigma overshadows intrinsic impairments. For instance, there is substantial evidence to suggest that when high-functioning autistic girls “camouflage” and attempt to fit in with their peers, they run the risk of developing mental illness. This predicament highlights the importance of acceptance, rather than attempting to “fix” autism, for some people on the spectrum. It would be erroneous to overgeneralize this conclusion, but this is precisely what neurodiversity advocates do.
Getting past the list of natural things, just because something is abnormal doesn’t make it unnatural. Also, it turns out that this group's main talking point is that autism is caused by de novo mutations by outside influences, and is trying to drive money into research to prove this. When you look into the research literature, and you'll have to go looking because it's not cited, you'll find that said literature doesn't strongly suggest this. It does suggest it, but inconclusively.
And then we get into severe autism being actual autism. And then we get into the dangers of masking, which seems to prove neurodiversity’s point, only to say that it’s wrong.
I think my mistake was thinking that they were coming from a place of good faith, that they were earnestly trying to make a valid point, but they’re not. This is a poorly written piece of propaganda.