To be clear I wasn’t calling autism a mental illness, although reading back it’s a little confusing due to the wording. The dialogue above was between one person who is autistic and another person who has a mental illness, both which I categorized as conditions (I suppose if we’re splitting hairs maybe this word could be problematic, but I think you get my point) which one may identify with to a greater or lesser extent (“being” versus “having”).

In the above discussion it is apparent that there is no universally correct attitude to have for everyone, i.e. it’s not correct to assume that every autistic person wants to identify with their autism the way @autismdragon@hexbear.net does, so my point was to give space for that person to decide, rather than for others to decide for them whether they “are” autistic or they “have” autism. Otherwise you run the risk of either belittling the person by identifying them with their condition when they feel separate from it, or belittling their experience by implying the real person is being suppressed by a condition which that person in fact strongly identifies with.