And some of us CAN'T stop moving. Because that is also autism. To be unable to stop, unable to be small, unable to be quiet, unable to not talk to people, unable to stop socialising with other people, unable to LEARN, because it's a disability a large part of which centres on social function.
The autism in movies and shows is so often centered on how autism is ALLOWED to manifest in specifically white men who are of a certain culture and upbringing. And so is the autism depicted in the DSM.
But the autism in the tags above is also a privileged autism that is from a certain upbringing and demographic, and has a certain level of social function that not all autistic people have, and it's important to note that.
Autism has many different aspects. None of them are palatable by the allistic society of any culture. That's kind of the whole THING about autism. Even the mildest form of it you are still stuck in a minefield. Some people have the ability to learn enough to feel their way through it more or less without blowing up. Some people cannot stop running no matter how many mines they step on.
Some people aren't even aware it's a minefield at all, and always blame the other person. That's where that "unshakeable confidence" comes from. Those features mentioned in the screenshot outlined as the media depiction are not entirely wrong; I have met people like that! They were all white men. There's a reason for that. It's because society LETS white men break a LOT more social rules than anyone else is allowed to break. So they don't ever learn the mines are there, because whenever one blows up they think someone else stepped on it, and are never ever corrected.
But that shouldn't be the only kind of autistic person we see in stories. They are overrepresented just like white men are overrepresented in everything else.
