Weaponizing Harm: How the Autistic Community is Hurting Itself

When Harm Becomes a Weapon, Justice is Lost.

I’ve been called a lot of things in my life, but "harmful" for questioning whether the DSM should be the gatekeeper of autistic identity? That one hit different.

It happened in an online Autistic space. I expressed that I thought it was exclusionary to say that an autistic person must meet DSM criteria in order to identify as autistic.

I didn’t say autism isn’t real.
I didn’t say diagnoses don’t matter.
I simply pointed out that the DSM is a colonized, medicalized framework—one that has historically failed to capture the full spectrum of neurodivergent experience.

And the reactions were intense.

I wasn’t just called harmful—I was called an Aspie Supremacist.
I was called naive.
I was called racist for apparently "speaking over" a Black autistic woman who said she was harmed by me questioning the DSM as an authority.
I was dogpiled by autistic people, each with their own reasons why I was, in their eyes, a harmful human being.

It was intense. But here’s the thing—I govern myself. I know who I am.