Someone on Mastodon shared this link with me, and I thought you might find it as interesting as I do.
I really hate the misconception of the spectrum. It enables nasty people like Ellen degeneres to justify being a bully (in case you missed it, she tried to get diagnosed autistic. When that didn’t work, she said, well it’s a spectrum so we’re all a little autistic, so I’m not a bully). And enables others to dismiss our struggles, cos hey, we’re all on the spectrum!
Back to the article, I feel like I’m a mix of the three examples. I can see some that match from each example. How about you? When I stop feeling so lazy, I might do my own custom one.
I always liked the idea of a Venn diagram as a metaphor better. The central circle is you and then the autism traits are the circles overlapping with you (and sometimes each other!). How much your autism affects you is related to how much those circles overlap with you in the middle. Probably not perfect either, but I always liked it better than the oft-misunderstood “spectrum” metaphor.
Or even something like this works.