The autistic community has it's own rules and language, just as any community does, and if we attack autistics who are just finding the community for not knowing those rules or that language, all we're doing is replicating every autistic's experience with neurotypical society.

Every single one of us came from a place where we had internalized society's ableism and anti-autistic sentiment, as well as the medical community's terminology around us, and we all had to unlearn that to some degree. We don't shut people out of our community for that.

For example, people who refer to themselves as aspies or as having 'high functioning autism' because that's literally what they were diagnosed with, are not automatically aspie supremacists and shouldn't be treated as such.

This shit is hard, folks. We've all been through the process of trying to find pride in who we are, in our diagnosis, in the face of a medical system that doesn't facilitate that, and often figuring that out on our own. This community needs to be a safe place for that to happen.

To add, I know that for many, we have trauma linked to certain words and phrasing, and seeing those words used by people can be severely triggering. But we need to balance this with supporting newcomers to the community. We can't drive people away from their own community.