A family reunion is being held at a Chinese restaurant, for the descendants of Liu Kang Fan, who arrived in north Queensland, Australia, with his four wives. Name cards have been colour-coded according to the wife. Sitting around one table, are four Chinese men, with four Chinese women, some of whom are brothers and some of whom are brothers-in-law. At a second table, you find six women and six men, with names ranging from O'Neill to Schieffelbein, and at the third table, you find a further six men and women, with surnames ranging from Chen to Rosencrantz and a similar situation at table four. Mr Liu's son from his first wife married a Chinese woman and they had children. Mr Liu's daughter from that wife married a Chinese man. Mr Liu's son from his second daughter married an Irishwoman, and they had six children, and they married German Australians, Irish Australians, Mr Liu's daughter from his third wife married a Chinese man, while his son married an Irishwoman, and they had five children, one of whom married a man who was half-Norwegian and half-Scottish, and one of Mr Liu's sons from his fourth wife married an Aboriginal woman. So, some of the people were Chinese, some of the people were Eurasian, and some were a mixture of Aboriginal and Chinese and some a mixture of Aboriginal, Chinese and European. Okay, here you can say, everyone was a bit Asian. But autism doesn't go like that.

My advice to a neurotypical is don't say to an autistic person, "We're all a bit autistic," we're not. Just like, in the above example, if you meet an Irish person, yes, if you say that you have Irish heritage (I do) you can say that "A lot of Australians are part Irish," but you cannot say that "All Australians are a bit Irish." If an autistic person tells you they don't like something, like they say, "I hate thunderstorms," you can reply, "I don't like them either." Or, "I hate the sound of this or that."

It's the same as being able to use chopsticks. Some non-Asians can use chopsticks easily, some can't.