There are two different things going on here.
The first one is about community vs. communities. IME there are multiple communities of Autistic people and of Disabled people in general.
The second thing the difference between "the topic" vs. "the identity".
I know from years of experience that if you talk about "autism community", non-Autistic people who are interested in the topic of autism will assume that includes them.
I've seen similar things with "disability community".
So I prefer saying Autistic communities and Disabled communities.
Also I want to clarify something.
WRT "Autistic communities", it's not because there are "different types" of Autistic people.
It's because there are literally different communities of Autistic people.
Different ways of connecting, different languages, different priorities, etc.
There are two different things going on here.
The first one is about community vs. communities. IME there are multiple communities of Autistic people and of Disabled people in general.
The second thing the difference between "the topic" vs. "the identity".
Like, Autistic Twitter is not Autistic Bluesky is not Autistic Facebook is not Autistic Mastodon is not Autistic Tumblr and none of them are your local Autistic people meetup group.
And then even on Autistic Twitter, there were different groups.
Same goes for Disabled communities, only with hugely more variation.
Some communities are diagnosis-specific and some are cross-Disability inclusive and some are overwhelmingly white.
For example.
At work I'm not allowed to say "autistic" and MUST say "the autism community" bc allistic parents and families are considered more important to the autism charity (run by all allistics) and we "can't afford to alienate them".
Literally one venue that we were trying to host an autistic group at told us that if we use the word they would stop allowing us to meet there bc the allistic Christian owner prefers euphemisms only. It's fucked out there.
