Is autism rights movement associated with left-wing politics

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lispyfolk
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25 Dec 2025, 9:22 pm

Is autism rights movement associated with left-wing politics? Do autistic people tend to have leftist political views more often than neurotypical? Is rainbow in the symbol used to represent autistic people chosen not accidentally so that the symbol used by self-advocates have similar connotation as minorities or LGBT rights movement?

Do exist self-advocates who are on the right wing side?

I don't want to say in this post I'm on the left or right side, I just want to know facts about neurodiversity movement.



Texasmoneyman300
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25 Dec 2025, 10:56 pm

lispyfolk wrote:
Is autism rights movement associated with left-wing politics? Do autistic people tend to have leftist political views more often than neurotypical? Is rainbow in the symbol used to represent autistic people chosen not accidentally so that the symbol used by self-advocates have similar connotation as minorities or LGBT rights movement?

Do exist self-advocates who are on the right wing side?

I don't want to say in this post I'm on the left or right side, I just want to know facts about neurodiversity movement.

I am a self-advocate on the right. I believe our right to own guns should be protected as disabled people. I think we should have the right to marry without losing our benefits. I think we should be allowed to have more than 2,000 dollars. I think we should get paid as much as Disabled Veterans and be exempt from property taxes. I also believe we should get paid the same amount of money as non-disabled people. I have always been a self-advocate on the right.



Last edited by Texasmoneyman300 on 26 Dec 2025, 1:56 am, edited 1 time in total.

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26 Dec 2025, 12:46 am

Considering we have a right wing president who would mock you to your face and call you names - what do you think???


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MartineRomy
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26 Dec 2025, 3:50 am

Texasmoneyman300 wrote:
I am a self-advocate on the right. I believe our right to own guns should be protected as disabled people. I think we should have the right to marry without losing our benefits. I think we should be allowed to have more than 2,000 dollars. I think we should get paid as much as Disabled Veterans and be exempt from property taxes. I also believe we should get paid the same amount of money as non-disabled people. I have always been a self-advocate on the right.

Quite a lot of left views to be on the right...



Texasmoneyman300
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26 Dec 2025, 4:58 am

MartineRomy wrote:
Texasmoneyman300 wrote:
I am a self-advocate on the right. I believe our right to own guns should be protected as disabled people. I think we should have the right to marry without losing our benefits. I think we should be allowed to have more than 2,000 dollars. I think we should get paid as much as Disabled Veterans and be exempt from property taxes. I also believe we should get paid the same amount of money as non-disabled people. I have always been a self-advocate on the right.

Quite a lot of left views to be on the right...

I have a lot of other right leaning views. I have a far-left views on some things and far right-right views on some others. I am a Libertarian Republican.



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26 Dec 2025, 5:27 am

Yes. Advocacy groups in general are progressive. They are asking for government for help.

As for autistics in general a dozen years reading opinions by autistics here and elsewhere I am confident in saying there is no such thing as an Autistic world view.

There is no polling of general political outlook of autistics that I am aware of. That leaves us stuck with forums and social media which is probably not a representative sample.

On Wrong Planet right of center world views are much less then when I started here in 2013. This is a combination of being banned because they ran afoul of “politically correct” forum rules and seeing they are minority quitting because they have concluded Wrong Planet is just another place they can’t fit in.

Autistic threads on X are a lot of “woke” cancel culture/language policing.


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Texasmoneyman300
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26 Dec 2025, 5:38 am

ASPartOfMe wrote:
Yes. Advocacy groups in general are progressive. They are asking for government for help.

As for autistics in general a dozen years reading opinions by autistics here and elsewhere I am confident in saying there is no such thing as an Autistic world view.

There is no polling of general political outlook of autistics that I am aware of. That leaves us stuck with forums and social media which is probably not a representative sample.

On Wrong Planet right of center world views are much less then when I started here in 2013. This is a combination of being banned because they ran afoul of “politically correct” forum rules and seeing they are minority quitting because they have concluded Wrong Planet is just another place they can’t fit in.

Autistic threads on X are a lot of “woke” cancel culture/language policing.

Ya I am the only conservative on this site that I know of thats active. There might be more.



Fishyfisherton
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26 Dec 2025, 8:25 am

There is nothing inherently left wing about autism self advocacy or disability rights per se but the far left have made themselves at home and ideologically captured much of it. So we get sucked into the all-encompassing intersectional Omnicause. Liberal and progressive types are more likely to join causes anyway but there is less diversity of thought now than there used to be.


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BillyTree
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26 Dec 2025, 9:52 am

In my experience autistics with average or above intelligence are generally less likely to fall for the rhetorics of snake oil salesmen. They see through that kind of BS. The US is a country with a lot of poor or semi-poor people. If a right-wing politician wants to win a major election like running for President then he/she will have to pretend to be a regular guy, a man/woman of the people fighting "the elite".


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Arabian_Ivy
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26 Dec 2025, 11:47 am

DataRepublican on X leans right.

From what I can see (and I might be wrong), most autistics in the West lean left. They struggle to distinguish noble causes from political motives.



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26 Dec 2025, 12:23 pm

I tend to be more on the libertarian end of things, say small l libertarian. I've found many on the spectrum tend to be idealists and tend to be attracted to things that have a clear set of beliefs, I tend to be a black and white thinker so I can be this way. Although back in 20s, I was like a solder in war when it came to politics, I would go off on long tirades and good luck stopping me. These days, I've mellowed quite a bit.

I'd say a large part of the Autistic community tend to be left wing, as many are on things like government benefits, struggle with living on their own, and need special accommodations. So said person is likely looking out for their interests as a disabled person.

As far as the autism ribbon or puzzle piece being rainbow colored, it may be just a coincidence, but the colors are a bit different.

I do agree with Billy Tree, Many people with ASD can see through BS at times that some others cannot see. Myself, I called out a manager at work because I knew he was lying and gas lighting. Everyone else couldn't seem to get it, turns out I was right. With the current political situation in The USA there are a lot of gullible people but IMO that's by design but I digress. For me, I can be daft and gullible about some things, but I usually know if someone is lying.


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26 Dec 2025, 6:10 pm

Any kind of advocacy for anyone who isn't an in-group is pretty much inherently left-wing, since conservatism is all about preserving traditional hierarchies and making sure the in-groups are taken care of while the out-groups are further and further disenfranchised.


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28 Dec 2025, 6:40 pm

Yeah, I think it’s got a bit of a lefty feel to it. Most disability-rights advocacy does, and there’s a strain of antipsychiatry on parts of the right that tends to view mental-health conditions (which autism gets lumped into) as signs of weak character.

None of that means, of course, that it’s inherently left-wing or that there aren’t conservatives who are on the spectrum or otherwise autism-positive (though they may be reluctant to use the phrase, which at least sounds a bit “woke”).



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29 Dec 2025, 8:00 am

I share your concerns about this. This whole notion of redefining this from being a nuisance the affected person wants to minimize as much as possible (or fully eliminate if it was possible) to being a “difference”, an “alternative norm”, or whatever they want to call it, that the person should embrace with pride as part of his identity, it’s clearly the leftist style of looking at things. Unlike LGBT, which is in a direct confrontation with the Divine directive and, therefore, resented by pious Jews, Christians and Muslims alike, autism doesn’t have this problem. However, given that the society has established certain norms of interpersonal communication, which ASD people have harder time to comply to, endorsing autism as an “alternative norm” seems like an attempt to pressure the general society to redefine its norms to accommodate the slim minority better than the majority itself - clearly a left-wing tactic. Even if this new “norm” is somehow forced on the society on the political or legal level (like the LGBT thing), most of it would still likely consider lack of eye contact as impolite, or certain ways the ASD people communicate as “weird”.
Another problem I have with this movement is that it discourages the medical community from doing research on a possibility to cure autism, effectively closing the door to recovery to millions of ASD people who want it. For one thing, I refuse to consider autism as part of my identity; it’s not. As far as I’m concerned, I want to be able to understand social cues and fit in the neurotypical society, at least for the purpose of keeping my marriage intact and my kids emotionally healthy. If it was medically possible to safely eliminate this condition, I would go for that with no doubt. Meanwhile, I’m shooting for the best available option - to learn the neurotypical ways intellectually and practically.



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29 Dec 2025, 9:23 am

I've found that if I wear women's clothes I find it much easier to interact socially with other people.
When I'm on the phone I'm always gendered as female. I've had conversations where I'd identify with a male name and be gendered as female fifteen minutes later! No medical intervention required!



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29 Dec 2025, 2:17 pm

Fishyfisherton wrote:
There is nothing inherently left wing about autism self advocacy or disability rights per se but the far left have made themselves at home and ideologically captured much of it. So we get sucked into the all-encompassing intersectional Omnicause. Liberal and progressive types are more likely to join causes anyway but there is less diversity of thought now than there used to be.

I very much like the way you phrased this. I can't see how any young person who grew up in the UK would be a leftist, but then the Left seems to own the anti-Zionist cause which is today's cause célèbre, perhaps that's where the recruiting would get done.

In the US, I believe many autistics including YouTubers and SM influencers are so right wing they'll turn your hair white, and vice-versa. Can't prove it though.

I am not a right winger but I feel sorry that so many who were here before got run off.


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