Excellent thought and terrific point. As an autistic adult, I can say there’s probably not much risk in people not listening to me, since I’m pretty outspoken, but I get exactly what you mean. I’ve had people tell me point blank that I can’t be autistic because I’m articulate and well spoken. I think that’s a form of infantilizing the hypothetical autistic person.

I don’t have any problem with expressing myself, but I do have other challenges and it’s interesting that people don’t tend to acknowledge those challenges. Probably because they’re too caught up in the infantilizing stereotype.