“Everyone Is a Bit Autistic” – Except When That’s Not Supposed to Be Said

This post continues a critical analysis of a list of memes titled What Not to Say to an Autistic Person. The first “not to” – “You don’t look autistic” – was examined in the previous post. Here, we turn to two further entries on that list: “We’re all on the spectrum” and “Everyone is a bit autistic.”

Both statements are routinely dismissed as ignorant and/or offensive. Yet their persistence suggests that something more than simple misunderstanding is at work. These phrases emerged as a consequence of how autism has been conceptualised over recent decades – and when its distinctions were explicitly rejected along the way.

A Spectrum That Kept Expanding

Autism Spectrum Disorder is, by definition, broad. Over time, it has become broader still - comprising several domains of characteristics widely distributed in the general population. Lai et al. (2020) note that the expansion of autism into an increasingly inclusive spectrum is associated with reduced neurocognitive differences between people with and without a diagnosis – a development that risks undermining our ability to identify autism-specific mechanisms. The implication is not that autism does not exist, but that its boundaries have become progressively less distinct.

Once autism is framed primarily as a dimensional construct rather than a qualitatively distinct condition, continuum-based reasoning becomes unavoidable. If there are no clear internal divisions, then difference can be described only in terms of degree.

Autistic Traits and the General Population

Within this framework, the existence of autistic traits outside of diagnosed autism is neither surprising nor controversial. Autism has long been conceptualised as occupying one end of a continuum, with typical development at the other (Baron-Cohen et al. 2001; Ruzich et al. 2015). From this perspective, autistic traits are expected to appear – to varying extents – throughout the general population.

Empirical research supports this view. Autistic traits are widely and continuously distributed across autistic and non-autistic groups, and are associated with measurable behavioural, cognitive, and neural differences even in typically developed adults. For example, autistic traits have been shown to impede gaze following and social initiation in neurotypical adults (Xie et al. 2023), and to correlate with neural markers such as frontal alpha asymmetry (Yoon et al. 2023). Structural and functional brain variations associated with autistic-like traits show overlap with findings in ASD, suggesting a neurobiological continuum rather than a categorical divide (Nenadić et al. 2024).

The scope of this research has expanded substantially. Studies of autistic traits now span behavioural, genetic, cognitive, neural, environmental, and hormonal domains, and increasingly focus on non-autistic and psychiatric populations. Autistic traits are no longer marginal to autism research; they are central to it (Qiao et al. 2025). At this point, the claim that non-autistic individuals may share autistic traits is empirically unremarkable.

How Distinctions Were Lost

The difficulty arises not from recognising continuity and spectral features, but from what followed. As autism came to be understood as a single, heterogeneous spectrum, internal distinctions were increasingly treated as illegitimate. Labels such as classic autism, Asperger syndrome, or informal distinctions based on severity or functional impact (low-functional, high-functional) rejected – not primarily on empirical grounds, but because differentiation itself came to be viewed as problematic.

Once distinctions were dismantled, autism could be discussed only in the most general terms. Heterogeneity was acknowledged rhetorically, while tools for articulating it were quietly removed. This reconceptualisation had predictable consequences. If autism is a spectrum without meaningful internal boundaries, and if autistic traits are widely distributed, then explaining who is autistic and who is not becomes increasingly difficult without appealing to distinctions that are no longer permitted.

At that point, statements such as “we’re all on the spectrum” cease to be misunderstandings. They become straightforward summaries of the model.

The Broad Autism Phenotype: An Inconvenient Reminder

The Broad Autism Phenotype (BAP) was originally introduced as a research construct to describe sub-clinical autistic traits commonly observed in family members of autistic individuals who may experience mild versions of the following traits, often without them significantly disrupting their daily lives:

-          social communication difficulties, including challenges with understanding social cues, limited eye contact, difficulty forming relationships or a preference for solitary activities;

-          pragmatic language deficits: difficulty with the social use of language, such as understanding sarcasm, humour, or starting and participation in conversations;

-          rigidity and restricted interests: a strong preference for routine and predictability situations, difficulty with change, or having intense, focused interests

-          aloofness: a tendency to avoid social interactions, a preference for solitary activities

Besides, adults with BAP may be more likely to experience anxiety, depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder. 

Crucially, BAP existed precisely because boundaries mattered. It allowed researchers to investigate genetic liability without collapsing autism into a universal condition. Gerdts and Bernier (2011) document that such traits are well established in undiagnosed relatives, consistent with autism’s high heritability.

In practice, BAP complicates contemporary autism discourse. Many parents of autistic children either meet diagnostic criteria for autism themselves, display clear BAP characteristics, or acknowledge autistic traits without identifying as autistic or disabled. For some, this reluctance is interpreted as stigma. However, a simpler explanation is comparison. When one’s child requires constant supervision or lifelong support, describing one’s own social rigidity or sensory sensitivity as a disability can feel conceptually inappropriate.

BAP thus highlights an uncomfortable reality: autistic traits can be inherited, measurable, and biologically meaningful without necessarily constituting autism as a clinical condition. This distinction is scientifically useful, but socially inconvenient.

When the Framework Speaks Too Clearly

Once autistic traits are recognised as continuous, diagnostic thresholds broadened, and internal distinctions rejected, the extension of autism-like characteristics to the general population becomes conceptually inevitable. The objection to phrases such as “everyone is a bit autistic” is therefore not that they are false, but that they state – with unfortunate clarity – what the prevailing framework already implies.

The tension, then, is not linguistic but structural. A model that emphasises continuity and spectral character while discouraging differentiation leaves little room to object when others adopt spectrum/continuum-based language. Having insisted that dividing lines are artificial, it becomes difficult to protest when those lines are ignored.

A Quiet Conclusion

The persistence of these phrases does not reflect widespread ignorance about autism. Rather, it reflects unresolved contradictions within contemporary conceptualisations of the spectrum. Autistic traits are continuous, familial liability is well established, and diagnostic boundaries have expanded. At the same time, meaningful distinctions remain essential — even when they are uncomfortable.

The challenge is not to police language more aggressively, but to rethink how coherent a conception is that makes such claims simultaneously true and seemingly unacceptable.