A sentiment I see sometimes, mostly in the high masking level 1 LSN autistic community, is the disdain for all labels about how impaired you are, especially the autism levels and support needs.
A lot of what I see is people saying they're bad, there's no need for them and that they have no use, that they're basically functioning labels and ableist, that we shouldn't be comparing ourselves and each other, and that they somehow don't include high masking people.
None of these things are true, they ignore the fact that often these labels are self-identifiers, and honestly, I think when having discussions on terminology like autism levels and support needs, the voices of levels 2-3 and HrSN people need to be centred. We're the people who need these terms, we're the people who often depend on them to actually communicate our needs, so when people go around saying these terms are bad without having so much as an afterthought about us it is really upsetting and hurtful.
I've seen people say we don't need the terms because we can just explain the supports we need as if it was so easy to do so. Many of us have such complex needs that trying to explain them all the time isn't possible.
