Honestly, there are others I've met who prefer to actually use "autistic" as a noun, like they might say "fellow autistics" or something, and more power to them — but for me it has to be "autist", so I'm glad to see that there are other people here who also prefer that term.

I think I probably first started saying "autist" as an influence from Norwegian, actually — that I'd basically hear about or talk about autism less in English-language spaces (i.e. with my family, who already understood me and my needs etc), compared to in Norwegian-language spaces (i.e. with friends, at school, in health settings, etc), and so "autist" being a perfectly innocuous and common word for an autistic person in Norwegian, I just started using "autist" in English as well. And so it was then only much later that I found out about how the word "autist" is misused by channers. Finding out about this misusage of the word didn't really make me want to stop labeling myself as an autist, rather it made me want to double down and tell the chuds to ligma balls, because I'm sure as hell not going to let those bozos decide how I label myself.

It is a bit of an interesting thing, though, that the same word could end up getting such different connotations between English and Norwegian.

Edit: Of course, when allists say "autist" I take this with due skepticism, and I don't call other people "autist" if they don't want to be called this.