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Do you believe autistic people are capable of self-identification?
(Sometimes referred to as "self-diagnosis")

Welcome to the polling community on imzy - for all your polling and public opinion purposes!
(Sometimes referred to as "self-diagnosis")
Welcome to the polling community on imzy - for all your polling and public opinion purposes!
There needs to be an 'i don't know' answer.
I think if a person suspected they were autistic, did some in-depth reading and talked to other autistic people and thought, 'yeah, this sounds like me,' then probably.
It's hard for me to say because I don't have a great knowledge of autism, or the autistic community.
What do you hope to get from these polls?
Anecdotes, at best. I was aiming for data but the only data I got is that ppl refuse to answer this question.
It has a similar vibe to trolling polls that aim to poke fun at certain groups of people, so I'm hardly surprised that people are wary.
The other poll was fine.
Being aware of one's identity in that way is pretty common, and it is even arguable that the only person who can truly know your own gender is yourself, so it was an easier question to answer. Often people are given the "autistic" diagnosis as children, and I'm guessing that many imzy users are less familiar with people self-diagnosing autism as teenagers/adults, so it's possible that a lack of certainty led people to hesitate when responding, too.
I don't understand this question
Sometimes referred to as "self-diagnosis".
Edit: How is this any different from the other poll?
I didn't see the other poll. Are you asking if we think sometimes people on the internet incorrectly self-diagnose themselves as autistic?
No. I'm asking if you allow autistic ppl to self-diagnose.
I think "allow" is a dodgy word here. Whose business is it if someone comes to the independent realisation that they are autistic? What has it got to do with anybody else? Many /polls members are wary of that kind of question as it seems like a lead-in to something that would spark an argument.
That's not true!!!
I said "many", not all! :)
Some ppl will invalidate self-identified autistic ppl for the sake of invalidating self-identified autistic ppl, because they don't believe autistic ppl are capable of self-identification. They also invalidate professionally diagnosed autistic ppl, for some reason.
(Same thing if you replace "autistic" with "trans"...)
I'm not a medical professional and don't have any power to "allow" someone to self-diagnose or not. Beyond that, this question seems like a setup.
If this is a setup, why do I keep implying this poll is no different from the trans poll?
Same wording, same idea, same OP, different group of ppl. Also both are tagged "serious".
There have been polls that have caused problems in the past and I guess people are just wary. :) It's a shame that there are so many instances of trolling on the internet in general that many people are automatically made suspicious when it comes to certain topics, even if the OP never had anything untoward in mind.
They're not the same, because autism isn't something you can "identify as" in the same way - my understanding is that self-diagnosis wrt autism involves reading diagnostic criteria and figuring out whether you fit those criteria, rather than basing diagnosis off of an internal sense of identity (and/or dysphoria). I suppose there's some overlap in that both trans and autistic people will read about the experiences of other trans and autistic people to see whether they can relate to them - but it's not the same thing. And conflating the two here does make it sound like you're devaluing self-diagnosis in a way that trolls are wont to do. I absolutely think that self-diagnosis can be valid, but that's not the question you asked.
They are the same, because autism is something you can identify as if you know what it is.
You can't identify as "trans" specifically without knowing about it, you can only identify as "I'm not the gender ppl think I am".
You can't identify as "autistic" specifically without knowing about it, you can only identify as "I make ppl annoyed when I talk about the things I like, and talking to ppl is uncomfortable, they never seem to fully understand me". Like I did until I learned about autism on my own. (I was actually professionally diagnosed for a while before that, but nobody ever told me what autism was so I never understood it.)
There's a difference between labelling yourself as something and identifying as something. I knew that I sometimes identified as a boy or as "something else" (that is, I had the internal experience of being those genders) long before I learned about terms like transgender, genderfluid, etc. and labelled myself as such. But my understanding is that autism doesn't come with that kind of internal identity in the same way.
Edit: that said, I am allistic (as far as I know), so like... I could be wrong about that.
As I said,
You can definitely notice you're different and ppl treat you differently. Just like an AMAB trans girl can notice she's different from boys and ppl treat her differently (read: bully her) because she acts differently from boys and more like girls.
I still think we're both describing different concepts, but I'm not sure how else to explain it =/ sorry.