In case you missed it, there has been quite a discussion in the autistic community this week around an article Why I no longer think autism is a spectrum, in the TES, by Uta Frith. In her article, the author of the 1989 book, Autism: Explaining the Enigma, claims that the definition of autism has become too broad, there is no such thing as masking, and if you were not diagnosed as autistic by the age of five, the label does not apply to you.

This is a relatively lighthearted blog, so I will not be repeating here some of the comments I have made in response, on various posts and forums. Needless to say, I think a non-autistic person writing something like this in a publication aimed at teachers, in a time when the UK government is trying to reduce legal protections for SEND children in education, is beyond dangerous.

Deep breath.

Anyway, what I’d like to say here is that there is much more that unites us than divides us.

If you’re not entitled to the autistic label unless you’re also high-need and possibly cognitively challenged (and who doesn’t want a label that comes with so much judgement and misinformation 🙄), then why do so many of us feel such a sense of belonging to a tribe when we discover other neurodivergent people? Particularly for adult women, who according to Frith are just ‘hypersensitive’. 😬

Interestingly, my journey to diagnosis started with HSP (Highly Sensitive Person 🙄) which I personally think only came about as a label because the medical diagnosis model for autism wasn’t designed for us, but for boys.

(If you do want a great discussion on this, read Leanne Maskell’s International Women’s Day LinkedIn post here.)

Anyway. 😂 I will get to the point. It’s all about being autistic and spoon theory. Not the energy management meaning coined by Christine Miserandino, but actual spoons.

You quite often see the post go round social media, showing a picture of spoons (or forks) asking which is the only one you would use. You only have to look at the strength of the responses to know how important the right cutlery (or plate/cup/bowl) is to an autistic person with a sensory profile.

I have a hierarchy of cutlery, mugs and bowls, and I will go out of my way to select the top of that hierarchy for my first cup of tea in the morning or for my breakfast, because it sets me off for the day with a lower sensory overload.

When I make breakfast for my kids or husband, I select the right bowl and spoon, and on the rare times we manage a holiday, at least one bowl and spoon will come with us. Incidentally, I am spoon B, my daughter a C or E and son/husband are both D or E.

Okay, so allistic people probably also have a preference. But do they die on that hill? Can they eat with a different implement without distress? Does it make their mouth feel weird just looking at the wrong spoon? Would they eat toast (or nothing) rather than use poor spoon F (which I would argue is a tablespoon, despite coming in a set!)

Before anyone gets offended, I know that being autistic isn’t just about sensory reactions to metal utensils. But when I attended the Autistic Awareness four-week course run by Problem Shared, post diagnosis, I was on a webinar with 50+ newly-diagnosed adults. Often parents who only realised they might be autistic when they fought for their children to get diagnosed. Or peri and post-menopausal women, for whom the mask fell off when the hormones did a flip.

A wide array of humans who spent four sessions going, oh goodness I thought that was just me, I was just weird or wrong or broken. Who found a tribe.

(Menopause is a great parallel, actually. We all experience it differently. The advice often comes from male medical professionals with no lived experience, and it’s often fucking hard. But we’re talking about it more. That doesn’t mean women didn’t suffer before, they were just dismissed as hypersensitive).

Finding out I was autistic – that I wasn’t broken just because I could only eat with a favourite spoon – was life altering.

Life saving even.

And I won’t let anyone tell me otherwise.

Claim your favourite spoon in the comments ❤️🥄