So I think the reason the "autistic strong sense of justice" discourse is bugging me is because it's taking this characteristic as a Discrete Autistic Trait that we can talk about within the confines of that conceit. Even the posts criticizing it have accepted at face value that this "trait" is a thing, even if they want to label it something else.
And the thing is... that framework was always on thin fucking ice. First off, I don't agree with making sweeping statements about autistic people even when they're positive. But secondly, when you decide to pivot toward talking about it as a negative, suddenly we're veering dangerously close to anti-autistic ableism again. "Oh, autistic people don't have a 'strong sense of justice', they have inflexible moral values!" Cool so we're right back to blaming autistic people for Uniquely Doing Morality Wrong again.
Here's the thing: Autistic people do, in fact, have a heightened sensitivity toward perceived injustice. There's no special magical reason for this. In fact, I would question how much of it is uniquely due to our autism at all! Because what's being left out of the conversation here is that we are fucking traumatized.
Being autistic is an experience of having a dozen coexisting disabilities - sometimes minor, sometimes very impactful. Motor issues, memory issues, social issues, sensory issues, you name it. And when you navigate the world like that, you are essentially experiencing ableist microaggressions on a daily fucking basis. Sounds are too loud. Lights are too bright. People constantly expect you to have certain skills and get offended when you fail to demonstrate them, but when you ask for help attaining those skills, accuse you of feigning incompetence just to cause problems.
Here's something that autistic people actually struggle with: picking things up subconsciously. Reading subtle or unspoken cues, especially social cues. Learning without explicitly being instructed. But you know what we do pick up on? Being mistreated over and over for problems that are entirely out of our control. Figuring out that there are invisible rules EVERYWHERE, like the fucking Jurassic Park electric fences, that will hurt us every time we brush up against them.
And that causes hypervigilance. A state of being constantly on the alert for situations where you're being harmed, or led toward harm. Now here's the problem: as I've already said, autistic people are REALLY bad at picking up social cues. And even when benevolent allistics try to explain things to us, they often do so from such a fundamentally allistic perspective that they assume things that are directly harmful to autistic people are actually helpful and good, and tell us as much.
Now of course, autistic people do still have an ability to perceive and examine our own moral beliefs. We are, after all, human. But when you spend your whole life knowing that other people's minor slipups often happen at someone else's expense - specifically yours - it becomes very easy to assume that minor slipups are unforgivable, that people just need to be trying harder, after all, isn't that what they demanded from you all those years? You can do it, you just need to apply yourself!!!
"Rigid and inflexible" my ass. "Strong sense of justice my ass". It is hypervigilance. It is a constant state of feeling like we can't trust ourselves to make compromises in our own beliefs because the second we do, some allistic person will swooce in to tell us that we made the wrong compromise, and we should have known better. And then being rightfully pissed off that they let themselves get away with all kinds of other slippages, even though those slippages often cause us immense hurt, because "it's not that big of a deal" and "we're too sensitive".
So let's have the fucking conversation. No, autism doesn't give you a "strong sense of justice". But growing up autistic does give you trauma, and it does give you hypervigilance, up to and including moral scrupulosity OCD. Autistic people have a heightened awareness of the double standards that the people around us hold themselves to, excusing their own mistakes while disproportionately punishing ours, and develop maladaptive strategies for trying to avoid that pain and assert our place in society.
Also? We are, in fact, disabled. A decent chunk of the shit y'all try to pass off as "~autistic stubbornness~" is literally us trying to set ground rules that make it possible to navigate life within the constraints of what we're actually capable of. I won't pretend that all of these rules are actually as helpful as we think they are, but that's because we're imperfect human beings, not because the conventional way is innately superior.
When you have problems trying to do certain things, and people around you routinely deny those problems even exist and insist that you just have to "do it the normal way", you don't have a lot of options when it comes to finding real solutions. But you do have incentive to double down on your own dodgy alternatives, because the "fix" that everyone is trying to push on you would in reality just make things worse.
So yeah, by all means, let's have this conversation. But we can do it without the armchair psych definitions of autism as Terminally Stubborn Disorder. We can have it without constantly echoing the ableist idea that Actually, Autistic People Are The Problem. Not because we can never be the problem, but because our capacity to be the problem is caused by our existing as plain old imperfect people, not our autism.
One final note: Obviously, the main reason autistic people like to cling to the "strong sense of justice" narrative is that, within the context of a narrative that constantly assigns us intrinsic personality flaws, this particular claim gives us something to like about ourselves. It's a way of feeling like "no, actually, being autistic DOESN'T make you a bad person! It makes you a GOOD one!"
This is obviously, and deeply, problematic. If you want to feel good about yourself, and really, truly hold good moral values, then you've got to do the work. This is a process that can be extremely difficult, since it requires you to open yourself to the same kind of criticism that has traumatized you your whole life, but that doesn't mean you're free to avoid it. Ultimately, we cannot keep living our lives within the constraints our trauma has created for us. We have to teach ourselves how to accept criticism without internalizing blame or guilt. To set and enforce boundaries without making other people into "the bad guy". And to take accountability without lashing out at others or wallowing in self-pity. (There are online resources that can help with all of this! Plenty of therapists have put up information online that people can make use of. You can look up something like "how to avoid internalizing guilt" and find functional advice from qualified people.)
I will not pretend that these things are easy, but they are necessary. Autism is not a shortcut to being a good person - there are no shortcuts to that. If you feel strongly about justice, and take pride in that aspect of yourself, then the best thing you can do to honor that trait is to put it into practice, rather than demanding that the world fit itself into your existing sense of rightness.
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