Well, if it leaves one unable to function effectively in society, or seriously hampered in that, it does make sense to differentiate from a less strong case.
If a person can't e.g. talk to someone to buy food, and the huge majority of people can, then they have a problem. That's not severe - it might be not perfectly accomondating, but it's reasonable. And of cource society does try to help in many ways (consulting, people being understanding, parents, school experts, medicine, etc)
Alright, well I can't agree to that part. It all depends on your goals and some people are less able to accomplish their own goals than others due to those traits from the spectrum. There's no need for conceiving of utility to others to speak of grades of functionality.
Sure, but the point is that the thing that is ‘severe’ isn’t ‘autism’. An autistic person can be severely disabled, but the disability is itself a trait they only some autistic people have, so it doesn’t make sense to call the disability ‘autism’.
That doesn't seem like a useful place to draw the distinction. If someone has more autistic traits, they can be considered to be more autistic but not necessarily more disabled.
well you can have a benign tumor or one that is killing you, by that theory we should say the one that is killing you shouldn't really be called a tumor.
I think you are showing bias, there is nothing in that comment to suggest the point of the comment is calling autism a disease. I see it as juxtaposing the same condition to different outcomes.
The commenter uses cancer as an analog for autism. That implies disease. It’s not a neutral comparison, and it’s not my bias that introduced the concept of disease.
If you think it’s possible to make the same point without reference to a disease, then by all means do so.