this was something that i was thinking after reading some post here about incels and autistic men, i wont be here to debunk the papers that correlate incel behavior and ideology with symptoms of autism (i don't have a lot of trust in the researchers or the institutions that publish them but thats another topic), my big problem with this is the weaponized "diagnosis" from random people towards men on the internet.

it often seems to me that whatever (often awkward) male behavior that is irking for women is very quickly "diagnosed" by random people, especially in communities about mental health, its the equivalent of incel in some places, and is often times used as a term to invalidate problems that some men have, particularly regarding relationships with women: from how to talk to them, how to meet more and god forbid you post something about an awkward situation or a cringe thing that you did while doing those, cause the comments will be filled with arm-chair psychologist coming out of the woodworks, case on point, a post from a guy saying that communicating with women was very confusing and exhausting for him, that it was very different from the "rules" that were in place when communicating with men, and the most liked response was someone "without offending" calling out neurodivergence and recommending a diagnosis.

it seems strangely similar to the hysteria thing that early psychologists diagnosed women with ages ago, it semed like a catch-it-all term for women who were being inconvenient at the time, who weren't playing their role in society, in the same way that men who are way into a subject that is not mainstream, men who ramble about their subject of interest, men who don't want to play social games, men who dont talk about their feelings in the way they are supposed to, men who struggle with relationships etc.

im not saying that autism doesn't exist, not even that a lot of men with the characteristics that i just listed above are definitely not autistic, I can't be sure of that, but neither can be the people diagnosing everyone as they see fit, it can be that these men moved around a lot, had experiences that led them to isolation early in life, lived in environments that demanded certain behaviors (like stoicism at best or lack of emotion) at the expense of others (emotional intelligence), or that they are not native English speakers (which is the case with me, adding the fact that im not exactly smooth with words in my native language and have had a lot of names thrown around for that, so sorry for the awkward phrasing).

this all could be just something that I'm making up, but i was also curious if you guys have seen the stuff that i have just mentioned in the corners of the internet that you frequent, or even in real life. thanks for reading the post.