Revisiting An Old Blog Post · 7:25am Jan 8th, 2023

So, I was looking through my old blog posts when I ran into this: https://www.fimfiction.net/blog/724502/sesame-streets-newest-muppet-and-autism-in-childrens-shows

So, in the last paragraph, I mentioned comparing Twilight, Pinkie, and Maud to the DSM-5 diagnostic criteria for ASD and concluding that only Maud was able to fit the criteria to my satisfaction. Well, people, that paragraph made me realize how much my conclusion was influenced by my biases about ASD at the time. For starters, I assumed Twilight was neurotypical because, well, I related to her a lot. Back then, I thought I was neurotypical, and since I considered Twilight's behavior and characteristics to be within the limits of neurotypicality, I assumed she was also neurotypical. Ever since getting (and eventually accepting) my ASD diagnosis, I'm starting to think maybe she could have been autistic the whole time. I just assumed she wasn't because I didn't think autistic people could do the things she did.

Also, I had the false assumption that people with ASD naturally got along with and understood other people with ASD. I thought Maud fit the diagnostic criteria for ASD, so I assumed that if Twilight also had ASD, the two of them would click, and they didn't. Yeah, that was a pretty horrible, overly narrow, and naively simplistic assumption to make.

While we're on the topic of bad, ASD-related assumptions, I also assumed that people with ASD came with some sort of special ASD radar. Yeah, when I was in college, I took a sales job one summer, and a lady with an autistic kid asked me if I was autistic because she thought I seemed autistic. Of course, I told her no. When I relayed this to a casual acquaintance, who had autism, I ended the story by asking him if I seemed autistic to him. He said no. Guess who was right. I probably should have known there was no such thing as an ASD radar. If there was, we wouldn't need diagnostic criteria.