Myth #1: All autistic people can’t speak

The experiences of autistic people with regards to speech are varied and complex. There is no single answer.

Some autistic people can’t speak. Some can. Some autistic people lose speech under distress. Some autistic people can only speak when copying others’ speech, like lines from a movie or things people around them have said. Some autistic people are nonverbal at different times of their life. Some can speak under no circumstances; some choose not to speak because speaking is extremely unpleasant to them because of the sensation of speaking. Some autistic people don’t speak due to difficulty in organizing thoughts in words following the rules of syntax. 

Some autistic people who don’t speak use sign language. Some use augmentative and alternative communication (AAC), which takes forms such as a computer like Stephen Hawking had, or a board with pictures to point to. Some write. Some type.

It’s important to note that not being able to speak should not equal not being able to communicate. Even if they don’t speak, autistic people still have thoughts they may want to communicate, but the environment they are in, dominated by allistic (non-autistic) people is not designed for them.

Myth #2: Autistic people are all children

We never grow up. Or, conversely, when we turn 18, we get allism.

Autistic children grow up to be autistic adults. Yes, they exist too. Believe it or not, I’m one of them. The person who finally pushed me to recognize I’m autistic is about 30.

Autism is a neurotype, and it cannot be ‘cured’. People diagnosed with autism in childhood may grow up to mask their symptoms and appear more allistic to others, but they are still autistic regardless.

Myth #3: Autism is more common in cis boys

Autism is more commonly diagnosed in cis boys.

Historically there has been medical bias in studies of autism, meaning the symptoms psychiatrists are trained to recognise are those that appear most commonly in boys (and men). While current research is significantly increasing knowledge of differing presentations of autism, many girls, women, transgender and gender non-conforming people have not been diagnosed while their cis-male counterparts have been.

In addition, female socialization often entails learning not to take up too much space, for example not being “too loud” or sharing too much about our “restrictive interests of abnormal intensity”. Many cis girls learn to mask autistic traits much younger than boys.

People perceived as boys are diagnosed with autism, while the rest of us, if we somewhat pass as allistic, have ‘quirks’.

Myth #4: You can always tell if someone is autistic

Some autistic people pass as allistic. If they do, they are probably masking.

Masking means hiding autistic traits to appear allistic. Sometimes, autistic people don’t fully know we’re masking. When I was younger, I didn’t think things to myself like “ah, now time to mask my autistic traits and appear allistic,” I would think things to myself like “I didn’t get the joke, but if I ask someone to explain, they’re going to make fun of me” and “no-one will believe me if I tell them I can still hear that very high pitched sound no-one else can hear so I better just ignore it and pretend it’s not really bothering me”. Some of us have been masking for so long the mask has fused into our skin.

Even now, knowing that I’m autistic and that most of my friends at university are too, I find myself trying to make eye contact, because I don’t know what else to do with myself, even though I don’t particularly like mimicking allistic eye contact.

Some people incorrectly think the ability to mask autistic traits is a good thing, as it makes people appear ‘normal’. This is wrong. Masking autistic traits can be very difficult for some and it should not be expected for an autistic person to be respected. Allistic allies should try to learn how an autistic person’s experience may differ from theirs, and consider how they can be more inclusive of this in their own life.

Myth #5: All autistic people have severe gross motor difficulties

This is not true. Some autistic people do have severe gross motor difficulties and cannot walk. Some autistic people’s bodies move without them telling them to move. Some autistic people, like me, have no gross motor difficulties.

Most autistic people do have some motor difficulties, but this varies between people. Some autistic people have no difficulty with gross motor but have difficulty with fine motor. This can look like some of my autistic friends who can walk but have difficulty writing legibly.

Myth #6: All autistic people can’t/don’t make eye contact

For some autistic people, eye contact is painful. For some of us, it’s not.

Personally, I don’t find eye contact painful. It’s just a learned behavior, and it’s not one allistic people are good at teaching since they expect us to figure it out as easily as they do.

This is to say that one of the ways at least one other autistic person “clocked” me (spotted I was autistic) is that I break eye contact every two to three seconds and lock on again. One of my autistic friends has asked me to please not look them in the eye so much. One of them was told as a kid that they didn’t make eye contact enough, so they overcompensated by making direct eye contact all the time, which made people uncomfortable, so now they’re back to not looking people in the eye. They’re fine with eye contact with people they’re close with, but still break eye contact when it becomes overwhelming. Some autistic people have no difficulty making their eye contact match allistic people’s.

It's worth noting that eye gaze is learned, not innate, even for allistic people. In some cultures, eye contact is rude. It doesn’t make sense to consider lack of eye contact a diagnostic criteria within these cultures, because that’s the social norm there. It is a myth that allistic people make eye contact in a ‘normal’, universal way.

Myth #7: All autistic people have low/no empathy

Some autistic people have low or no empathy, which is called hypoempathy.

Hypoempathy can look like not being able to “read the room” and tell that people are upset. It can also look like reading horrible news, knowing it’s horrible, but not viscerally feeling the feelings of those involved. One of my autistic friends finds the maxim that “one death is a tragedy; a million is a statistic” very confusing.

However, some autistic people have a lot more empathy than most people, which is called hyperempathy. Hyperempathy can look like crying over throwing out underripe apricots, as one of my friends did, because they had bonded with the apricots.

Some autistic people swing between or experience a mix of hypoempathy and hyperempathy. This can look like me, unable to pick up on the mood of people around me, but brought to tears by some of my readings on politics or screaming when someone threatens to drop a plushie I’ve bonded with. Some autistic people experience empathy the way most neurotypical people do.

It is important not to confuse empathy with sympathy or compassion. Affective empathy is the experience of feeling others’ emotions. Sympathy is feeling pity or wishing to console someone for the feelings they’re experiencing. Compassion is acting to make the world better for someone other than yourself. You can express sympathy and/or be compassionate without being empathetic.

Myth #8: All autistic people don’t have feelings, or if we do, they’re less intense/meaningful

This is untrue. Many autistic people have difficulty identifying and describing their feelings, but that doesn’t mean they’re not experiencing feelings.

Some autistic people describe that they feel a smaller number of emotions than allistic people. An autistic person I know has described being able to feel a handful of feelings like anger, happiness, sadness, confusion, tiredness, and hunger, but not much nuance among those feelings. Experiencing fewer emotions, or identifying emotions in narrower categories than most neurotypical people, doesn’t make any autistic person’s feelings less real or less important.

Some autistic people don’t experience emotion as intensely as neurotypical people do. This is more common in people with intense alexithymia. Alexithymia is difficulty identifying and describing one’s own as well as others’ emotions. I know of some autistic people who feel “nothing” as their default and experience emotion very rarely. For some autistic people, the rare experiences of emotion are very intense.

Regardless of how often or how intensely an autistic person experiences emotion, or how many emotions they feel and how they can identify and describe those emotions, we still deserve to have our feelings or lack thereof respected. We shouldn’t have to hide our true emotions with those expected of us by allistic people to have our wants and needs taken seriously.

Myth #9: All autistic people are ‘Aroace’ (aromantic and asexual)

Some autistic people aroace. Some autistic people aren’t. Some allistic people are aroace. Some allistic people aren’t.

Assuming autistic people are aroace is ableist, and rooted not just in ableism but in arophobia and acephobia as well. The assumption that autistic people are aroace is rooted in the idea that autistic people can’t love because we can’t feel feelings deeply and don’t care about people, and we can’t want sex.

Firstly, romantic love is not the only kind of love. If you think that autistic people can’t love because we can’t feel feelings deeply and don’t care about other people, please reread sections 6 and 7.

Some autistic people, particularly those who have difficulty identifying their feelings, might not be able to tell when a feeling is romantic and might see their aromanticism as linked to their autism. Some autistic people might not like connecting with people in general as part of their autism, so might not like connecting with people romantically. That doesn’t mean it’s OK to assume that all autistic people are aromantic.

The perception that autistic people are too uncaring to feel romance, and that aromantic people are uncaring is dangerous and stigmatizing. Some think autistic people are too ‘undesirable’ to date, perpetuated by stereotypes in the media. If you think you wouldn’t date an autistic person, seriously consider why this is; usually it’s rooted in prejudice and stigma.

Secondly, autistic people can want sex. If you think we can’t…why?

It is common for people to incorrectly perceive autistic people as perpetual children, and infantilization is common for both autistic and asexual people.

 If you think it would be a tragedy for autistic people to experience sexual attraction because no-one would want to have sex with us, this is probably part of why you’ve never had sex with an openly autistic person.

If you’re wondering how autistic people who have sex have sex, my short, cheeky answer is “better than you!”

The longer answer is that sex involving an autistic person may be more likely to include nonverbal ways of giving and revoking consent, engaging with sensation differently than allistic people do, and more direct communication than what allistic people may be used to.

If you’re romancing or having sex with an autistic person, you’re going to have to figure out what they want and if it’s compatible with what you want, just like you would have to for romancing or having sex with an allistic person.

Myth #10: Autistic people can’t/don’t have friends

This is not true. Some autistic people have friends. Some may struggle to make friends, due to their peers not accommodating their communication needs, dismissing visibly autistic people as too disabled to be friends with, and not being interested in connecting with “weird” people. Some autistic people may not want to make friends.

For a while in kindergarten and early primary school, I just didn’t have an interest in having friends. I wasn’t lonely until people made me feel that I should have friends. For the record, I do have friends now, and I’m glad to have them now, I just didn’t particularly want them when I was younger.

If you’re someone who thought that no-one would want to be friends with an autistic person, maybe that’s why you don’t have autistic friends.

All my closest friends are autistic. We do tend to find and befriend each other, because our communication styles are similar. We tend to be more direct, be fine with clarifying tone, be uninterested in performing body language, and tend to take longer turns in expressive communication. We may also tend to bond over our shared interests, or how intensely we care about our interests.

Myth #11: Vaccines cause autism; milk causes autism; car exhaust fumes cause autism

 I hate that I even have to write this.

Vaccines do not cause autism. There is no link between vaccines and autism. The study that supposedly showed evidence that vaccines cause autism had a very small sample size, and the researcher cooked the data. He lost his license due to this incorrect study. The correlation between vaccines and being autistic is as strong as the correlation between wearing a seatbelt and being autistic.

Also, being autistic is not worse than being dead! I can confirm this for you as an alive autistic person. Often people can act as though being autistic is worse than the pandemic that could arise by not vaccinating. Even if vaccines did cause autism, this should not be a reason to not vaccinate, and instead people should examine why they fear a child being autistic.

Milk does not cause autism. An incorrect PETA campaign claimed this many years ago with no evidence in order to further a campaign against dairy. There is no evidence of this whatsoever.

Car exhaust fumes do not cause autism. Multiple studies have been published claiming a significant correlation between the two so strong it suggested causation. A doctor who defended this, Dr. Hayley Pinto, at, ironically, a workshop on inclusivity I happened to attend with her, said that the studies controlled for things like access to psychiatrists being greater in urban areas. However, it is unlikely that this was done sufficiently.

Car exhaust fumes are correlated with being in an urban area with more psychiatrists to provide diagnosis, easier access to appointments, more libraries to learn about autism if you’re questioning, and more progressive social attitudes with less stigma towards autistic people. This discussion is far more complex that these simplistic studies consider.

Autism is a neurodevelopmental condition. My brain would be how it is regardless of how many car exhaust fumes I’ve been exposed to. Autistic people have existed throughout history, well before the invention of the car.

Autistic people should not be used as ammunition in the debate against cars. If you are campaigning to reduce emissions from car use, talk about climate change or respiratory diseases. The existence of autistic people should not be considered a bad thing, and therefore this argument is rooted in prejudice and ableism.

Myth #12: Applied behavioral analysis (ABA) is an effective and safe treatment for autism

ABA is dangerous, harmful and has caused damage to millions of autistic people. ABA is essentially conversion therapy for autistic people. It teaches autistic kids to hide their autistic traits or be punished.

There are lots of ways autistic people might need more health care support than neurotypical people. Some autistic people might need a sign language interpreter with them so they can communicate with others. Some autistic people might need more talk therapy to cope with the ableism we face throughout our lives. Some autistic people might want physical therapy to increase their motor control. No autistic person wants ABA. No autistic person wants to be punished for being autistic.

Myth #13: Autism is a disease and one day we will find a cure

Autism is not a disease. You can’t catch it. It’s a neurodevelopmental condition, a less common neurotype; our brains are just wired this way.

Autism can be severely disabling. For example, in a world that relies so heavily on speech, being unable to speak does severely restrict one’s ability to communicate. However, if everyone learned a sign language in school and resources were freely available, it would not be so disabling anymore.

Even autistic people with lower support needs like myself can sometimes be disabled by our environments (as opposed to our autism). For example, I have a hard time grocery shopping because it’s too loud and too bright in the store and there’s too much sensory input for me to filter. I have to focus really hard on the individual items to make them look like individual items instead of just colors. It also helps me to wear earplugs while I grocery shop. Last year I paid 70 pounds out of pocket for custom fit earplugs and I took them to the grocery store with me. I found I could spend way longer in the grocery store without wanting to cry when I had them in! I then realized this is probably not normal for people without a sensory processing disorder like mine.

This isn’t because of my autism; this is because the environment was designed to suit neurotypical people. If the lights were dimmer and the beeps of the till weren’t so loud, I probably wouldn’t struggle so much.

I’m sure there’s a word for wanting a group of people not to exist. And advocating for things like not vaccinating your kids, which is child abuse and can kill them, instead of “risking” the existence of those people… Right! There is! It’s eugenics! If you’re uncomfortable being called a eugenicist for holding beliefs like that, just wait until I break the news to you regarding how you’re making autistic people feel!

Myth #14: Autism Speaks is a charity which supports autistic people

Unfortunately, Autism Speaks is a really awful organization. No autistic people are on its executive staff. Autism Speaks advocates for finding a cure for autism and advocates for ABA. They also perpetuate the myth that autism is more common in boys, which makes it harder for women and non-binary autistic people to have their autism taken seriously. They sympathize with parents of autistic children who went on to kill their autistic children because of how hard having an autistic child is. I can’t imagine how hard it was for those autistic children to have parents unwilling to learn to understand them.

Extremely little of the money they raise goes to actually supporting autistic people, and instead lines executive staff’s pockets. Don’t donate to Autism Speaks or support them.

If you want to donate to an autistic organization, consider donating to the Autistic Self Advocacy Network, or the Autistic Women & Nonbinary Network. Both are run by and for autistic people.

Myth #15: “Autism is a spectrum” means that everyone is at least little bit autistic, and some autistic people are more autistic than other autistic people

“Autism is a spectrum” does not mean that there is a line with “no autism” on one end and “all the autism” on the other end. Some autistic traits are contradictory! A lot of autistic people who can speak are described as “hyperverbal” because we want to talk on and on about our interests and we don’t realize that some others might be impatient for a turn to speak. I was described as “such a chatterbox” when I was little. On the flipside, most people’s idea of an autistic person is a nonverbal autistic person. Which one of us scored more autism points to push us one way on the spectrum?

Everyone has a given number of autistic traits. Some of us have more autistic traits than most people do. This is when we decide a person is autistic. Some people who have a lot of autistic traits but don’t meet diagnostic criteria may find looking at resources for autistic people helpful. Strategies that help autistic people can help others too, and by utilizing these things you may help normalize products and strategies that can make life easier for many.

Conceiving of “autism as a spectrum” as in a line can be useful. Under the diagnostic criteria of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) IV, I might not have been diagnosably autistic. Under the DSM V, I do have enough autistic traits.

I still wish my parents had noticed all the things I was struggling with due to my autistic traits, and that someone had pointed me towards resources for autistic people and told me they might be helpful for my specific autistic traits, even if not all the resources were relevant to me. I wish that when I was dealing very badly with the change of moving house, my mom had realized I was having a harder time than most people. I wish she had told me that even if I wasn’t technically autistic, I was dealing with the move in a very autistic way, and I needed support to regulate my emotions during that time.

Recognizing experiences more typically seen in autistic people and providing resources to mitigate stress they cause can improve someone’s wellbeing and quality of life, regardless of a diagnosis.

That said, when an allistic person says something like “I’m a bit autistic myself!” this tends to be a red flag. Allistic people who say this seem to think that having autism is just having a collection of different traits, as opposed to being autistic being a different way of being. I don’t just have some autistic traits. Every single part of me is autistic. I do not say “I’m a little allistic myself! The other day I said something that had a subtextual meaning. And sometimes, I like to go to parties with lots of people and have conversations with lots of crosstalk!” If I said that to an allistic person, they probably wouldn’t think “ah, she gets it”.