Backlash doesn’t mean you’re wrong — it means you touched a nerve

The problem with black-and-white thinking

Most backlash doesn’t come from people engaging with nuance. It comes from people stuck in a black-and-white framework — right/wrong, good/bad, ally/enemy.

I used to think that kind of dichotomous thinking was an autism trait, because that’s what we’re told. But the more I observe, the more I think it’s conditioning. Cultural. Maybe even encouraged.

It’s the dominant mindset. And when autistic people try to express ideas that fall outside those binaries, we’re pathologized — or attacked for being “confusing” or “contradictory”.

The irony is, our attempt at nuance are often more honest — more critical. But society doesn’t reward complexity; it punishes it.

So because society penalizes those who boldly share their more nuanced perspectives, so do members of niche neurodivergent communities.

That’s why we’re still having the same autism identity discourse we had ten years ago. What are considered autism “support levels” now were once functioning labels.

The concept originates from the same place. Claiming it’s different is like saying, “The new ABA isn’t abuse!” despite its origins.

Harm — repackaged as advocacy

That same black-and-white mindset shows up when autistic people with platforms, credentials and social capital punch down on other autistics with less of it.

I’ve seen autistic psychology and research students wielding their “authority”. discredit and shame autistic people who speak from raw lived experience.

And when they do that — when they use their reach to humiliate or cancel someone for not being perfect under pressure — they’re repeating the same harm we all fought against from anti-autism advocates.

I’ve spoken about being someone who would qualify as high support needs (HSN) — and also someone who wants autonomy, agency and as much independence as society will let me have.

That’s not a contradiction. That’s reality. But people don’t want to hear that. They want a checklist. They want caricatures.

They want all the messy, co-occurring conditions like epilepsy or physical disability to be blamed on “autism”, because that’s easier than thinking critically.

That’s not care — it’s erasure. And it’s not new. It’s the same exact mindset Autism Speaks and other harmful institutions pushed — now repackaged as internal community concern.

Which feels like, from my perspective, those anti-autism advocates won. Their rhetoric infiltrated the autistic community and is perpetuated by our own.

Which is more isolating than ordering mashed potatoes with gravy on the side.

Platform ≠ privilege

During one wave of backlash, people told me I couldn’t be “that autistic” because I have a platform online. As if that somehow disqualifies me.

What they don’t see is that I fought for this. I bled for it. I scratched my way to the surface after being stifled by my family because my perspective didn’t fit the narrative they told everyone else.

I spent years advocating — when I had no community, no diagnoses, no language. When people labeled me weird or broken. I built this space before I even found other autistic people online. Before it was trendy to be autistic on the internet.

To take that hard-won space and twist it into evidence that I don’t “count”? That’s not justice or allyship — it’s harm.

It’s the same kind of harm non-autistic people used against us for decades. And I’m done pretending it’s different just because it comes from someone with a rainbow infinity symbol in their bio.

You don’t owe anyone your pain

What they forget most — or maybe what they never understood — is that no one owes their entire life to the internet.

I am entitled to privacy. So are you. There is so much no one sees, and they’re not supposed to.

There are parts of my disability, my trauma, my everyday life that I’ve never shared online and never will. There are things I will take to my grave before I ever let strangers dissect them for validation points.

You do not have to bleed publicly to be believed.

You do not have to explain every piece of you to deserve care.

And if someone demands that from you, they were never listening — they were measuring.

If romanticizing high-support needs autistic people as something pitiable and voiceless — something that can’t speak back or want things — sounds familiar, it’s because it is.

It’s no different from how Republicans claim to protect unborn babies — but stop caring the second those babies are born.

It’s easy to advocate for that which cannot counter your advocacy, challenge your worldview or hold you accountable.