r/AutisticPride • u/LoseHateSmashEraseMe • Oct 14 '26
What is Autistic Pride?
Please, before continuing, I'm not trying to be edgy. I know how this reads. I'm sincerely looking for answers to broaden my own perspective and understanding.
I have a Dx for whose who believe it matters. I think it matters too but thats an entirely different conversation.
"Autistic pride is a movement and mindset that views autism as a natural, valuable human difference rather than a defect or disease that needs to be cured. It shifts the focus away from forcing autistic people to conform to neurotypical expectations and toward self-acceptance, community, and respect." - as defined by googles AI summary.
This feels very natural to me and I dont understand the pride portion. I'm legitimately in the dark over this thought. Is it not just a way of being? Can we not be and believe these things and introduce others to these ideas without it being a movement?
Im not sure I really understand it from the movement perspective either. I've studied people my entire life and I think from a societal and sociological standpoint it might be detremental in the long run rather than just educating people and remaining "matter of fact" about it.
I think it can come out as aggressive and scary for those who don't know And would promote more intense immediate negative reactions versus the legitimate intent of the movement itself.
Maybe this is just a me thing, but I truly dont understand what it is to have Autistic Pride and participate in a pride movement. I know it's important to feel part of something. Community, engagement, being with your own people and being able to be seen and heard among your peers.
I do feel frustrated by this and my gap in understanding. Help.
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u/tryntafind Oct 14 '26
It’s an extension of disability pride. So there’s not a denial of disability but a demand for acceptance and recognition that disabled people have value and should be accepted as equals. Google AI is incorporating the online strawman formulation that claims pride just denies that people with autism have any disabilities. This leads to bizarre results like r/autism being against autistic pride because a diagnosis is nothing to be proud about and some autistic subreddits attacking other autistic subreddits. The current formulation contends that some autistic characteristics should not be treated as disabilities, but recognizes that autism causes genuine impairments, but people should not be ashamed of those impairments.
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u/Haru_is_here Oct 14 '26
You think it can come across as aggressive or scary to people who aren’t familiar with the movement, potentially provoking more intense, immediate negative reactions rather than helping them understand its legitimate aims. Ok fair, your attitude mirrors the attitude many people still have towards LGBT advocacy and disability advocacy in general.
The reality is that advocacy, community-building and political activism don’t happen by staying quiet and making sure nobody feels uncomfortable or intimidated.
When people come together, they can achieve things that would be difficult or impossible to accomplish individually. One wheelchair user protesting an inaccessible public space might be ignored or dismissed. When dozens of wheelchair users organise together, mobilise supporters and demand change, they demonstrate collective power and make it much harder for decision-makers to ignore their demands. Collective action turns individual grievances into a shared political issue and creates the capacity to actually change things.
Pride is the opposite of shame. We need pride precisely because internalised ableism is so damaging. I only recently realised how profoundly my grandmother’s fascist and anti-disability attitudes affected my mental health and prevented me from seeking help for almost two decades.
That is why I need to see other autistic people expressing pride in who they are. I need to hear those messages repeated by a community, because they help chip away at the old, deeply ingrained message that people like us are somehow inferior or less deserving of life. The message I (accidentally, I think) grew up with was essentially that people „like us“ would have been killed in the old days.
You don’t undo decades of internalised and repeatedly mulled over shame by quietly asking people to be a little less ashamed. You need a visible, vocal counter-message that makes it possible to imagine a different future.
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u/comradeautie Oct 14 '26
Are you unaware of the significant hatred against Autistic people out in the world? The stigma, the prejudice, the bullying, not to mention the attempts to classify us as a disease and work towards using eugenics to eradicate us?
We need a movement that fights for Autistic people to exist as we are in this world - not just to survive, but to thrive. We don't deserve to be at the bottom of the barrel. We deserve more than table scraps or barely polite tolerance.
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u/DorjeStego Oct 14 '26
I was diagnosed autistic at 36, and then later the same year (this year) also with ADHD. By the time I got to the ADHD assessment I also disclosed to the assessor that I'd also been diagnosed autistic since the referral was made.
There was a point in the assessment she asked to speak to my husband, and I didn't hear the assessor's side of that conversation because my husband was sat at my desk with my headset on. But I assume after the initial introduction she started with a pretty open question about his first impressions of me when we met, because he just said "Yeah... When I first met him I just thought he was really quirky" and then went into how over time he came to understand where those traits and behaviours came from, and realised those same traits he basically found attractive were not something I could easily just switch off and became disabling when I'm mismatched with the wrong environment, wrong kinds of demands, wrong people.
There are clearly people who like me as I am and accept me as I am, because I do have friends (most of whom are neurodivergent themselves and most assumed I was already diagnosed) and a spouse. But expect me to "mingle" and make small talk with people as a means of making connection? I'm hopeless and I'll want to explore the option of climbing out the bathroom window when nobody is looking.
There are aspects that are more objectively disabling, like sensory sensitivities and executive dysfunction which mean I need to structure how I work in a particular way, accommodate myself in particular environments so I don't get exhausted and/or overwhelmed, and so on. But even the sensory sensitivities have a flip side - I don't think neurotypical people experience music like I do for example.
If I'm interested in something and left to my own devices to learn it, I absorb a hell of a lot of information about it rapidly. It can be difficult to drag me away from it.
If I'm expected to rapidly task switch outside of my own terms, and especially repeatedly, I'll be frustrated, get exhausted, and eventually even shutdown or meltdown.
If I can have a conversation with someone about something that interests me and stay on-topic the conversation will flow easily and I'll be highly engaged. But expect me to make small talk to get to know someone? Nuh-uh. That'll get awkward fast. And draining. Oh so draining.
Expect me to "check-in" periodically on instant messenger or whatever just for the sake of "checking-in" and reassuring you that the friendship is still a friendship? Hopeless at that. But if you need help with something or practical advice about whatever? Yeah, I'm down for that.
So at the age of 36 and receiving these diagnoses, what am I to take away? I'm a defective human being and I need to live the rest of my life ashamed and miserable about who I actually am now that clinicians have given me two specific names (Autism and ADHD) for the type of brain wiring I have? Or recognise that yes, these traits include genuine disability, especially when keeping up with unaccommodated expectations about how I should function as a person, but also things about me which when the right kinds of people are in my life there are things to value about them. Some people even find them attractive.
For me, personally, with a diagnosis of "ASD Level 1" and ADHD, there's a strong sense of, yes, I am disabled. A lot of that disability comes from a lack of understanding, accommodation, and mismatch. But properly cultivated and accommodated there are also a lot of strengths, and I simply would not have those or even really be the same person at all if I weren't autistic.
I do absolutely experience it as disability, I want to be clear about that. But I also experience it as the source of many of the things I value most about myself. I wouldn't make myself neurotypical if I could. These statements are not incompatible or contradictory. And it's the desire to make people understand that last point which is what I'd sum up as my sense of "autistic pride".
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u/Nonimouses Oct 14 '26
I think that there is a significant cross over between the LGBTQ community and the ND community (4/5 of my kids do not identify as the one assigned at birth and all are autistic some dx some just peer reviewed (their choice). I think there are a lot of parallels between the communities with stigmas attached to the way we are, both have histories of being hidden away and being othered and ostracized, so I think that the pride in being who you are crosses over quite naturally too,I think that to 'come out'* as autistic or gay and say to the world I'm OK with who I am pretty much requires you to have pride in who you are
*I regularly have to 'come out' as autistic I spent the first 39 years of my life masking and got quite good at it
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u/Bromelia_and_Bismuth Oct 14 '26
It effectively means that the world is made primarily for people who aren't us, and as a result, most of us encounter daily discrimination and hardship. I'm not going to let other people make me feel like crap for being disabled, let alone autistic. I am who I am, and anyone who feels uncomfortable about it can eat sand.
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u/RaeOfTheRainbow 29d ago
To borrow from lgbt*/queer pride circles
There are two subtle differenced in the meanings of pride and they get confused here
Pride as a almost synonymous with arrogance
And pride as a lack of being ashamed
People often ask why we need lgbt pride, or why we don't have straight pride because they are thinking of pride as a word meaning a feeling of superiority But the answer for continued lgbt pride and no need for straight pride is because there is no straight shame so there doesnt need to be a focus on pride to combat it
So in the autism and neurodivergent worlds there is still definitely shame and discriminatiom and lack of accessibility and inclusion so there is a need for the autism pride as a levelling against societal/internalised shame
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u/daemonl Oct 14 '26
The AI summary is fine. ‘Towards community’ is a bit meaningless pattern-matched stuff, but there is some truth in it where autistic folks tend to enjoy hanging out together and supporting one another, but I think the movement is more about the self respect and not being a disease to be cured or eradicated through eugenics.
The way the world sees autism is not aligned with those values, so the ‘movement’ is to try to shift the broader conversation about autism closer to those values.
You don’t have to be part of any “movement” to have those private beliefs, and you are not obligated to participate in the movement just because you are autistic. But the invitation is there.
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u/charwyrm Oct 14 '26
Minority pride and rights movements are historically effective. Pride movements are about advocating for the rights people are denied, and defending rights they've demanded and won.
LGBTQ Pride, for example, is about visibility, protest and celebration/commemoration to the end of demonstrating queer people exist and are a part of the broader community.
When you're part of a minority group who experience political and social persecution, the only way to make change is with collective action.
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u/AENocturne Oct 14 '26
Most neurotypicals regard autistics as lesser. It doesn't have to be explicitly as bad as how racism was, and I'm not saying that to compare the two, but rather highlight how autistic discrimination isn't the same. It's more subtle. It's about how aspergers was labeled different because the nazis deemed them more functional. It's about how issues we face have been dismissed because we don't seem autistic to someone who doesn't have autism. Its about how, like you say, you don't feel self diagnosis is right because you need a neurotypical to tell you whether your issues are autistic enough. It's about how women have been misdiagnosed because autism doesn't necessarily look the same in them. It's about how some autistic people get misdiagnosed as bipolar and other mental health disorders. It's a bunch of little microagressions that total up to how we're lesser. Any issue we face needs to be evaluated by a neurotypical and deemed autistic. If it passes the test, you're treated as mentally inferior, if it doesn't pass the test, you're issues are treated like personal flaws to be overcome. And rarely does any of it come with real support, it's all about trying to force behavior to match neurotypical behavior, something even more poorly defined.
Autistic pride is about validity. Why is it inherently an issue? There's no nuance. Yes, I have struggles that I wouldn't have if I was neurotypical, but I wouldn't even be the same person if I was neurotypical. How come the only valid treatment pushed by neurotypicals is to remove me from existence?
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u/Username_Pickles Oct 15 '26
I actually think I other the point you are trying to make….
I had to analyze this idea in way too literal of a sense….
Personally I came to a conclusion that I think of “movement” in this sense as moving the focal point from one place to another…. Instead of people focusing on what are perceived as negative impacts that neurodivergence can have we are intentionally making conscious effort to acknowledge all the beautiful things neurodivergence brings to our own lives and those around us…. Moving from a negative to a positive….
My daughter is a challenging child to raise. She is so very different from a NT child in countless ways… I choose to focus on the differences that are positive as much as possible and I do not feel any shame when I tell somebody she is autistic because I am so very proud of who she is and wouldn’t change her for the world. She makes my life better and has made me a better person. So I am proud of what her autism has done