The NHS calculates the ratio of men and boys to women and girls at ten-to-one. The National Autistic Society says it’s more like three-to-one, while a large-scale Norwegian study put it at two-and-a-half males to one female.

However, thinking on this is changing all the time, and the true figure may be closer to two-to-one or even one-to-one.

The underdiagnosis of women is down to two main factors. One is male bias in the diagnostic process – if you expect to find mainly men, and design tests and systems accordingly, men is what you’ll mainly find. The other is females’ tendency to hide their difference to conform to socially-imposed norms. This is known as masking.

Being autistic doesn’t make you some kind of savant: Rain Man was just a film. According to research charity Autistica, around forty per cent of autistics do have a learning disability, but that isn’t caused by autism; it’s a related, but separate, condition, possibly linked to our genetic difference.

Many autistic people have learning difficulties, such as dyslexia (trouble with reading and spelling) or dyscalculia (trouble with numbers), but that’s not the same as being intellectually disabled. The majority of us are of average intelligence.

Most autistic people don’t like making eye contact. It feels too intense for our sensitive and often overloaded brains. But that doesn’t mean we aren’t able to do it. Some of us can, although we may not like it and it’s likely to be harder – if not impossible – when we’re stressed or upset.

Because we’re so sensitive, many of us actually suffer from an excess of empathy, which can make other people’s emotions quite overwhelming.

Most autistic people are perfectly capable of working, yet our employment rate is just twenty-two per cent, the worst for any form of disability.

The National Autistic Society says three-quarters of unemployed autistic people would like to have a paid job. The problem isn’t us, but a neurotypical workplace culture that doesn’t allow for our differences.

If employers were more autism aware, it would reduce the burden on the welfare state, increase our standard of living, possibly improve our physical and mental health – taking pressure off the NHS – and, not least, allow more of us to use our considerable skills, knowledge and creativity to benefit everyone.

Some autistic people don’t feel the need for close relationships and prefer to live alone, but many of us have successful marriages or other types of long-term partnerships.

Many of us are drawn by a kind of A-dar (autistic radar) to team up with other neurodivergent people, but others happily spend their lives with members of the neurotypical population.

These demeaning labels, designed by non-autistic ‘experts’, categorise us by how like or unlike neurotypical people we seem.

Just because someone makes involuntary noises in public, or doesn’t speak at all, doesn’t mean they’re ‘low’ functioning: they may be perfectly happy as they are. Equally, teaching ourselves to hide our difference – as many autistic women do, consciously or unconsciously – doesn’t mean we’re not struggling in all sorts of ways.

If you really need to categorise us, it’s less insulting and more useful to do it by our (low or high) support needs.

No, no, no and no! This is like saying we’re all a little bit pregnant. Just like pregnancy, autism is a clear medical diagnosis – you either are or you aren’t; there’s no halfway house, no grey areas.