This is a great assessment of the real issue-- there needs to be major policy upheaval, which necessitates legislative pushback and political engagement. However, those things are hard, and they take a lot of work. Word choice is easy, and I'm concerned that it's becoming a form of pseudoadvocacy that lets people feel like they're fighting the good fight.

Those of us who need more services will by definition require more allocation of funds, no question. What I'm saying is that facilitating this disbursement via a binary framework (like we might do for diabetes) just isn't a good fit for autism anymore.

Allowing the system to make us clamor over each other to determine who's the most autistic will never translate to any meaningful change.