I will preface this thread by saying that I am not autistic (at least not that I know of, I never have had a psychological assessment done to me in my life so I do not know if I'm neurotypical or not). From what I understand, autism has one caracteristic which is a lack of theory of the mind (I am aware that basing the whole definition of autism on this is very carricatural and incorrect). I also want to preface that I personally do not think that all autists lack empathy, I think it is harmful to the discussion to think only this. When I mention theory of mind, by that I mean something more like "Autistic people cannot lie", "Autistic people cannot recognise a lie", "Autistic people do not understand irony or sarcasm" (although as I have said before, it is incredibly caricatural, and I'd even go as far and say that it is quite infantilising on my part.)
The reasons I am explaining this (or at least how I have viewed autism up to this point) is because I need some insight on a situation I have been through, and I hope some autistic anons could maybe help me understand a bit better: did I have the wrong assumptions to begin with? was I the asshole from the start?

I will explain now. I became friends with a moid (I believe that him being a moid definitely impacted the situation). This moid has confided in me that he was autistic, I did not see it as a problem as I have talked to autistic people before and have had autistic friends (all female). I remember when he told me about his autism it was incredibly hard for him to accept this part of his diagnosis and I tried to tell him that it is okay and that he wasn't any less "normal" to other people and that my feelings of friendships will not change towards him simply because I learned he was autistic. (I do have to say, "friendships" with moids lol).
The reason we were friends was because we shared a common interest, which involved creativity and lots and lots of work. We were both involved in a project together and I enjoyed working with him, we have created a lot of things together and it was very fun. He did always try to claim that it was all "his" stuff but I did not mind at the time because I was too caught up in having fun creating. The friendship was bumpy though, he talked to me everyday and it did end up being exhausting for me. He forced me to voice call him everyday, and when I told him I did not want to, he said he needed it because he is autistic and that it is was part of his routine (and if you distrupt the routine of an autistic person it can make them extremely anxious and even give them panic attacks). And I did not want to cause him pain so I forced myself to carry on and keeping on interacting with him (maybe I should have standed up for myself a little? but he kept blaming everything on his autism…). One day I had to go on vacation, and I couldn't always be available to keep participating in the project. I remember he demanded me to keep creating, and I ended up promising him I will do "one creation a day" so that he wouldn't get angry or something like that. So I took time out of my vacations to keep doing these for him. I feel a bit stupid about this now to be honest. He also wanted to keep voice chatting with me, even when other people were present in my room, he kept insisting and I told him I simply can't but he would keep on insisting. He knew my sleeping pattern. He would text me exactly around when I would wake up. Sometimes I told him I went to sleep earlier so that I could have the night for myself which made me wake up later in the morning. He'd pick up on that and ask me if I lied about going to sleep early. He kept demanding me to do things. When I had enough I straight up told him I want to stop and that it isn't fun anymore, etc etc. He'd use very sad discord emojis and start blaming himself. This made me feel so guilty for even speaking up. I know he was trying to guilt trip me but he kept saying he was autistic and that he did not understand. I really believed this guy wouldn't hurt me, because I genuinely thought he simply did not realise he was being toxic because of his autism. I have completely cut contacts with him thankfully. Another thing about this man, that I should have prefaced again is that he has been pretending to be female to get closer to women (and still does to this day). He even has a female voice actress for him so that he can fool more people. I'm just too sad and exhausted. He tries so hard to get pity points. For example: I have a friend that vented to him about a situation she has. And a few days later he'd start telling everyone that he has a situation that is oddly similar to my friend's to gain pity points. He tries so hard to be a "not like the other guys". He is like a typical male feminist, and says that "at least I do not hate women" or "all my friends are female" which is tiring and disgusting because he himself pretends to be female to others. But as I said, I have cut ties with this guy completely, so did my friend. We have also told some other people about him pretending to be female in hopes others will start to be cautious too and that the word will spread among the community. At least so that it becomes a rumor or something…
I also want to say. This man has a following, he has a fandom (almost). If I would reveal who he is he would know who made the post. He has used me to get himself a following. A lot of the things he has posted were created by me (by his request, but still). I never wanted to be credited honestly since I always wanted to stay anonymous but seeing him gain popularity on things which were basically made by me, or my ideas or stuff like that sort of makes me a bit frustrated and angry. At the begining of the project we were BOTH anonymous, this is also why I never wanted a credit. But then for some reason he started to want to "own' everything so now everything done by me is technically his now. Sometimes I am credited and sometimes I am not, he simply claims stuff as his. Thankfully not all of his posts are my things (or things of mine he has recycled) but he has still used it to push himself to somewhat of a level of popularity. Do I even have the rights to complain? No only does he use my work to get popular, he pretty much used the work of some other artist, I tried really hard to convince him to credit the artist (and he did thankfully even though he now burried the credit on some other website and not on his main page) + now he has tweaked the art a little bit and considers it to "not be the artists art anymore because the lineart does not fully align anymore" even though it still obviously fucking is. I wish I could show you exactly what I'm talking about but I can't without him knowing who this post comes from.

Considering how much he blamed his toxicity on autism. It makes me wonder: can autistic people manipulate? No actually; can autistic moids manipulate? is he manipulative because he is a moid? can autistic women be manipulative too? is his toxicity simply toxic masculinity? or honestly… is he even autistic to begin with?! I'm sorry for this long ass post.