Blackness x Neurodiversity VIII: How Autism Being in the DSM and ICD Harms Both Autistic People and Non-Autistic People
If allistic (non-autistic) people’s social and communication skills are so “normal,” “inherent,” and “superior,” why do they need to violently police society to ensure all people socialize and communicate like they say they do?
“Each of us contains inherent prejudice, passed down from the old society. If we wish to move through this liminal place, and emerge into the light of a new world for all, we must dismantle the thinking of yesteryear. Dismantle the egotistical side of ourselves that centres all conversation around the ‘me’, and extend our viewpoint and attention to include every voice. We all have something to say, but we don’t all have the privilege of a platform.” — David Gray-Hammond
In hindsight, ever since it was brought to my attention that I may be autistic in the weeks preceding the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, I’ve been helplessly careening towards this opinion. Even when I came up with a deeply flawed and wildly incorrect theory to make sense of what I was learning, I had a nagging feeling that I was wrong and needed to keep searching until I actually figured it out.
It took me learning about critical psychology and critical psychiatry (along with some Marxism, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, and all the observations I made about myself and those around me since I was four years old) to finally realize how much I didn’t know about “mental illnesses/disorders,” and how much we’ve all been misled (intentionally and unintentionally) about the role that psychology and psychiatry play in society.
And that is how I came to the conclusion that we must, as a society and global community, commit to abandoning the concept of autism entirely.
It is the only way to show a genuine commitment to doing the work to support and care for all autistic people and all the allistic (non-autistic) people who were wrongly “diagnosed with autism” and incorrectly self-identify as autistic because autism is a fundamentally and intentionally incorrect description of autistic people created by allistic people to pathologize and dehumanize us (autistic people) and perpetuate the lie that they (allistic people) are “normal” and that autistic people “have”/“suffer from” a medical condition called autism that makes us “act autistic” and that we can, should, and need to be “fixed”/“cured” for the sake of humanity.
I. Critical Psychology, Critical Psychiatry, and “Mental Illness”
To explain what I mean and how I came to this conclusion, I’ll begin with address the issues with “mental illness” and our allegiance to that concept.
To put it plainly, “mental illnesses/disorders” are not medical illness.
This does not mean that the emotional and mental distress we experience are not real; however, treating them as if they are “illnesses” no different than cancer or the flu or pneumonia has no scientific basis.
In “Critical psychiatry: a brief overview,” Hugh Middleton and Joanna Moncrieff explain:
Despite decades of intensive research, there is still no conclusive evidence that enables any of the major categories of mental disorder, including schizophrenia, depression,anxiety and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), to be considered a neurological condition in this way. The fact that there are some subtle group differences between people with some diagnoses and ‘normal controls’ in aspects of brain structure or function does not demonstrate the presence of a neurological disease. None of the findings are sufficiently specific or capable of differentiating between a person who is thought to have a particular mental disorder and one who is not.
Diagnosis is still made on the basis of behaviour, thoughts and feelings that are reported by the individual or those around them and that depend, of course, on judgements about what is ‘normal’ and what is not.
To further explain this point, Robert Whitaker, in an interview with Scientific American, says:
More and more research tells of how the conventional narrative, in all its particulars, has failed to pan out. The diagnoses in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) have not been validated as discrete illnesses; the genetics of mental disorders remain in doubt; MRI scans have not proven to be useful; long-term outcomes are poor; and the notion that psychiatric drugs fix chemical imbalances has been abandoned. Ronald Pies, the former editor in chief of Psychiatric Times, has even sought to distance psychiatry, as an institution, from ever having made such a claim.
In an interview with The Atlantic, Gary Greenberg further drives this point home:
You’re a practicing psychotherapist. Can you define “mental illness”?
No. Nobody can.
The DSM lists “disorders.” How are disorders different from diseases or illnesses?
The difference between disease and disorder is an attempt on the part of psychiatry to evade the problem they’re presented with. Disease is a kind of suffering that’s caused by a bio-chemical pathology. Something that can be discovered and targeted with magic bullets. But in many cases our suffering can’t be diagnosed that way. Psychiatry was in a crisis in the 1970s over questions like “what is a mental illness?” and “what mental illnesses exist?” One of the first things they did was try to finesse the problem that no mental illness met that definition of a disease. They had yet to identify what the pathogen was, what the disease process consisted of, and how to cure it. So they created a category called “disorder.” It’s a rhetorical device. It’s saying “it’s sort of like a disease,” but not calling it a disease because all the other doctors will jump down their throats asking, “where’s your blood test?” The reason there haven’t been any sensible findings tying genetics or any kind of molecular biology to DSM categories is not only that our instruments are crude, but also that the DSM categories aren’t real. It’s like using a map of the moon to find your way around Russia.
So would you say that these terms — disorder, disease, illness — are just different names for the same concept?
I would. Psychiatrists wouldn’t. Well, psychiatrists would say it sometimes but wouldn’t say it other times. They will say it when it comes to claiming that they belong squarely in the field of medicine. But if you press them and ask if these disorders exist in the same way that cancer and diabetes exist, they’ll say no. It’s not that there are no biological correlates to any mental suffering — of course there are. But the specificity and sensitivity that we require to distinguish pneumonia from lung cancer, even that kind of distinction, it just doesn’t exist. [. . .]
In 1850, doctor Samuel Cartwright invented “drapetomania” — a disease causing slaves to run away. How do social and historical context affect our understanding of mental illness?
Cartwright was a slaveholder’s doctor from New Orleans — he believed in the inferiority of what he called the “African races.” He believed that abolitionism was based on a misguided notion that black people and white people were essentially equal. He thought that the desire for freedom in a black person was pathological because black people were born to be enslaved. To aspire to freedom was a betrayal of their nature, a disease. He invented “drapetomania,” the impulse to run away from slavery. Assuming there wasn’t horrible cruelty being inflicted on the slaves, they were “sick.” He came up with a few diagnostic criteria and presented it to his colleagues.
So we corrected our notion of what counts as a “disease.” Is there a modern equivalent?
Homosexuality is the most obvious example. Until 1973, it was listed as a disease. It’s very easy to see what’s wrong with “drapetomania,” but it’s easier to see the balancing act involved in saying homosexuality is or isn’t a disease — how something has to shift in society. The people who called homosexuality a disease weren’t necessarily bigots or homophobes — they were just trying to understand people who wanted to love people of their own sex. Disease is a way to understand difference that includes compassion. What has to shift is the idea that same-sex love is acceptable. Once that idea is there, it doesn’t make sense to call homosexuality a disease.
Who was involved in the creation of the DSM-5?
The American Psychiatric Association owns the DSM. They aren’t only responsible for it: they own it, sell it, and license it. The DSM is created by a group of committees. It’s a bureaucratic process. In place of scientific findings, the DSM uses expert consensus to determine what mental disorders exist and how you can recognize them. Disorders come into the book the same way a law becomes part of the book of statutes. People suggest it, discuss it, and vote on it. Homosexuality was deleted from the DSM by a referendum. A straight up vote: yes or no. It’s not always that explicit, and the votes are not public. In the case of the DSM-5, committee members were forbidden to talk about it, so we’ll never really know what the deliberations were. They all signed non-disclosure agreements. [. . .]
Al Frances chaired the task force for the DSM-IV and has become one of the biggest critics of the DSM-5. What do you think of his arguments?
We agree that the DSM does not capture real illnesses, that it’s a set of constructs. We disagree over what that means. He believes that that doesn’t matter to the overall enterprise of psychiatry and its authority to diagnose and treat our mental illnesses. I believe it constitutes a flaw at the foundation of psychiatry. If they don’t have real diseases, they don’t belong in real medicine. Al’s attack is overdone. I think he’s really trying to keep scrutiny off of the whole DSM enterprise. That’s why he’s been so adamant that you don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater — he believes that the DSM-IV, for all of its flaws, its still worthwhile. I disagree.
Frances also worries that your criticisms are anti-psychiatry.
It’s the universal paranoia of psychiatry that everybody who disagrees with them is pathological. You can’t disagree with a psychiatrist without getting a diagnosis. I’ve been writing critically about psychiatry for ten years and I’ve always encountered that. Psychiatry is a defensive profession. They have a lot to protect and they know their weakness. To repel criticism in the strongest way possible, from their point of view, you diagnose the critic.
In short, “mental illnesses/disorders” are social constructs invented by psychiatrists to validate psychiatry as a medical science without having to prove that “mental illnesses/disorders” were discrete biological illnesses like pneumonia, the flu, HIV/AIDS, etc. It’s a fact known by psychiatrists and anyone with a deep understanding of the DSM; however, the general public is not told this.
Why?
Well, part of it is, as Greenberg states, because psychiatrists want to keep as many people from finding this out because if everyone suddenly becomes aware of this fact it threatens the power psychiatrists have and the existence of psychiatry as an institution. The other part of why we’re not told this is because it would make people realize that mental health professionals primary goal isn’t to “heal” a person for their own sake; it’s to ensure the maintenance of the status quo and social control.
According to Middleton and Moncrieff:
Historical analyses also reveal how psychiatry has evolved out of institutions developed to manage troubling behaviour or ‘deviance’. Productive interactions between people depend on the maintenance of social order. Confusion, despair, misunderstanding and dependency are all disruptive, though not necessarily unlawful. How they are understood and responded to is determined by prevailing social and political structures. Critical psychiatrists have highlighted how contemporary psychiatry is a current embodiment of the need to contain disruptions of social order, a perspective articulated by French philosopher Michel Foucault (Foucault 1965) and historian Andrew Scull (Scull 2015), as well as by Szasz. [. . . .] The growth of psychiatry in the 19th century legitimated this system by presenting it as a medical and therapeutic endeavour. From Foucault’s perspective, ‘psychiatry is a moral practice, overlaid by the myths of positivism’ (Foucault 1965: p. 276). In the 20th century the medical framework became more strongly cemented, so that the social functions of mental institutions and services were further obscured. [. . .] Anti-psychiatrists highlighted that when behaviour is designated as disease, individuals’ rights and liberties can be overridden in the name of acting in their own interests. The fact that this can be presented as an objective, scientific endeavour means it is easily open to abuse, and powerful groups can define any socially repudiated behaviour as ‘mental illness’ in order to eradicate or control it. Generally agreed examples of this include the designation of male homosexuality as a mental disorder up until the 1970s, and the application of a ‘diagnosis’ of drapetomania to African American slaves intent on escaping.
In Critical Psychology: An Introduction by Dennis Fox, Isaac Prilleltensky, and Stephanie Austin, they explain the role psychology plays in this:
Dominant cultural, economic, and political institutions exhibit two fundamental problems especially relevant to psychology: they misdirect efforts to live a fulfilling life and they foster inequality and oppression. What concerns us as psychologists is that these institutions routinely use psychological knowledge and techniques to maintain an unacceptable status quo. Instead of exposing and opposing this use, however, mainstream psychology strengthens it. Its prevailing conceptions of human needs and values and its image of scientific objectivity too readily accommodate harmful institutional power. Furthermore, as a powerful institution in its own right, psychology generates its own harmful consequences that fall particularly hard on those who are oppressed and vulnerable. Instead of tinkering with the edges, thus, critical psychologists from a variety of critical traditions advocate not just minor reform but fundamentally different social structures more likely to lead to social justice and human well-being. We imagine and explore alternatives. We think psychology can do better. [. . .]
Mainstream psychology courses typically do not scrutinize in any serious way the social, moral, and political implications of research, theory, and practice. Partly because critical psychology rejects the underlying perspectives taught in those courses, our critique might strike you as ‘too political’ or ‘ideological’. Unfortunately, psychology’s fragmentation and overspecialization reduce exposure to fields such as political theory, sociology, and anthropology that more often explore critiques of the status quo. [. . .]
Knowing that our values reflect our own cultural assumptions, critical psychologists pay particular attention to dominant institutions in Westernized societies — the societies within which most psychologists live and work and mainstream psychology developed. From child-rearing advice and school curricula, to work and consumption, to media coverage and political decision making, these institutions encourage people to seek identity and meaning through individual and competitive pursuits instead of through collaborative or community endeavours. Watching television and surfing the Internet, advancing in careers, keeping the lawn green, and shopping for fun are only some of the things many people do that divert attention and energy from constructing more meaningful friendships, participating in community life, or recognizing and working to end injustice. It is no coincidence that a self-focused mindset offers more benefits to those who control corporate capitalism and other members of relatively privileged groups than to the vast numbers who congregate in shopping malls and football stadiums or search for anonymous on-line community.
That mainstream psychology’s Westernized, individualistic worldview
accepts and even endorses isolating, self-focused endeavours has not gone
unnoticed.A surprisingly large literature explores the serious consequences (for a sampling of perspectives in the psychological literature, see Bakan, 1966; Prilleltensky, 1994; Sarason, 1981; Teo, 2005). Of particular concern is that an individualistic worldview hinders mutuality, connectedness, and psychological sense of community, partly by leading people to believe that these are either unattainable or unimportant (Fox, 1985; Sarason, 1974). It also blinds people to the impact of their actions and lifestyles on others who remain oppressed, on the environment, and even on families and friends. Overall, psychologists fit too comfortably within a capitalist democratic system that gives lip service to both individual freedom and political equality but in practice prefers political apathy and the freedom of the market over participatory democracy and distributive justice (Baritz, 1974; Fox, 1985, 1996; Pilgrim, 1992).
In Critical Psychology: What It Is and What It Isn’t, Ian Parker adds on to this by saying:
[P]sychology is not only at work in the universities and the clinics. It is not only the body of men and women armed with instruments for testing and enforcement in the training institutions and the hospitals. We need to go beyond that academic and professional psychology to study the way in which psychology has recruited thousands upon thousands of academics and professionals who use its ideas and appeal to its theories to back up their own programmes of normalisation and pathologisation. The problem here not only concerns the particular images of the human being that are purveyed in the media (in which maladaptive behaviours are explained with reference to neurological factors, for example), but also the invitation for people to believe that the sources of the problem are hidden inside themselves and must be released as they are spoken about to others (as in radio and television shows that demand the individuals own up to their emotional shortcomings and aim to change themselves for the better). And, hence, we need to study the way in which psychology recruits all of the people who read and believe its theories of individual personality differences and happy healthy behaviour. This critical research would focus on the way it recruits all of us in psychological culture (see, for example, Blackman & Walkerdine, 2001; Gordo López & Cleminson, 2004; Rose, 1996). [. . .]
[T]he discipline of psychology pretends that it is a science, but it draws its images of the human being from culture and from everyday life to construct its object. And part of the de-construction of psychology is the study of the way ideology in society is the ‘condition of possibility’ or psychology to exist. Psychological theories do not come out of nowhere. They do not fall from the sky. And we can draw upon the variety of different theories about our own different psychologies to interrupt and subvert the dominant stories that are told by the academics and the professional psychologists, whether those are clinical, educational, forensic or organisational personnel (see, for example, Hansen, McHoul, & Rapley, 2003; Hook, 2007; Parker, Georgaca, Harper, McLaughlin, & Stowell-Smith, 1995).
II. Autism =/= Autistic: The Intentionally Ignored Dividing Line
For a while — some years before I started the beginning of my deep dive into neurodiversity, psychology, and psychiatry — it felt incorrect to consider anxiety, depression, ADHD, OCD, etc. “illnesses/disorders.”
I’m not exactly sure what inspired the feeling; however, the more I started researching autism and different “mental illnesses/disorders,” the more the feeling grew in my mind that there was a mismatch between what I was reading and everything I’ve learned about and observed in other people and myself. I didn’t find critical psychology and critical psychiatry until after I created a theory (whose existence I hope can never be resurrected; though, should that ever happen, I want to make clear: I vehemently condemn everything I wrote, I fully agree that all my ideas were misguided and completely incorrect, and I take responsibility for any harm I caused because of it) that I spent months trying to perfect in order to explain everything.
The more time I spent with it, however, the more I felt haunted by the feeling that I was missing something crucial about “mental illnesses/disorders” that made it impossible for me to prove that I was right.
After a month of distance from it, I found critical psychiatry and critical psychology, and scrapped my theory because I had finally confirmed the feeling that haunted me: that “mental illnesses/disorders” are not, in fact, medical illnesses; and actually were behaviors, thoughts, emotions, etc. that were arbitrarily labeled as “disordered” and incorrectly explained the relationship between those behaviors, thoughts, emotions, etc. and emotional and mental distress.
All the aforementioned things— as well as my intensive research into autism and autistic people, and immersion into the online autistic community and the neurodiversity movement — made me realize that nothing considered to be a “sign/symptom of autism” or an “autistic trait” — such as social communication difficulties, echolalia, rigid and black-and-white thinking, “sensitivity to injustice”/”strong sense of justice,” hyperfixations, special interests— are unique to autistic people (and, no, the “severity” or intensity and having a number of these “signs/symptoms” or traits of these things does not an autistic person make otherwise autistic people (especially autistic people who are queer, trans, PoC, and poor) wouldn’t fail to get a diagnosis).
And that it’s impossible for all autistic people— regardless of race, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, nationality, etc. — to behave, think, talk, etc. in exactly the same ways or in incredibly common ways, and enough so that it could be noticeable enough to be compiled into a definitive list of “signs”/“symptoms”/“traits” to be used to “diagnose autism.”
And that is the core issue of autism — especially because, contrary to popular belief, professional “diagnoses” are not inherently more credible than self-diagnoses.
Robert Chapman Ph.D addresses this in his article “Is Psychiatric Self-Diagnosis Valid?” for Psychology Today:
While it’s true that misdiagnosis can be harmful, my issue with this argument is that is little evidence that accredited professionals are more accurate at diagnosing psychiatric labels than patients are. The authors of a 2006 literature review concluded that “The unreliability of psychiatric diagnosis… is a major problem in psychiatry, especially at the clinician level.” Other studies, like this one from 2018, have found that self-diagnosis is pretty consistent with professional diagnosis if the same screening tools are used.
Part of the issue here may be that in psychiatric settings, the testimonies of patients are routinely overlooked due to prejudiced beliefs found in both medical professionals and the wider population. As Crichton et al (2017) found, in psychiatry, not listening to patients is often driven by prejudices regarding disability or mental health issues that “go unchecked because they operate below the radar of the conscious scrutiny of our own beliefs.”
Other prejudices that hinder medical diagnosis relate to gender and race. For instance, autism has often misleadingly been portrayed as a white and male condition. Even though this depiction has no proven scientific basis, clinicians routinely internalise such beliefs which can then reemerge as biases that can exclude women and people of colour in clinical settings.
Given all of this, there seems to be good reason for many people to rely on self-diagnosis. Even though I agree that a medical professional should be consulted when possible, it is far from clear that professionals should be accredited with significantly higher epistemic authority than those who self-diagnose.
III. The Autistic Civil War
Because of the unreliability and inaccessibility of “official autism diagnoses” both because of how racist, white supremacist, anti-Black, misogynistic, queerphobic, and transphobic the concept of autism is (since research on autism — as with psychology research as a whole — focuses on white people (especially young white boys) from Westernized, educated, industrialized, rich, and Democratic backgrounds, which leads to the invisibility and dearth of Black autistic people and voices in the Autistic Self-Advocacy Movement and the Neurodiversity Movement) and the fact that nothing considered a “sign/symptom of autism”/an “autistic trait” are unique to autistic people, there are two outcomes that necessitates autism both being removed from the DSM and ICD and entirely abandoned as a concept and useful way to understand autistic people:
- Most autistic people — especially if they’re women, people of color, Black specifically, poor, queer, and/or trans — don’t learn that they’re autistic until adulthood and are often denied an “official autism diagnosis” because they “don’t look autistic,” can do something autistic people are allegedly unable to do, “don’t act autistic” (i.e. they don’t perform being autistic the same way that white autistic boys and men do), etc.
- A lot of people who have an “official autism diagnosis” and self-diagnose as autistic — primarily/solely based on how many “autistic traits” they have, and how well they can explain that they check all the boxes of the diagnostic criteria — are allistic (non-autistic) people who are seen as or think they’re autistic because of the idea that there’s a way to “act autistic.”
Even though the first outcome plays a more explicit role in autism and mainstream neurodiversity (aka neurodiversity lite) discourse on social media, it’s the second conclusion that fascinates me because of how rarely it’s acknowledged, and the implications it has on both the Autistic Self-Advocacy Movement and the Neurodiversity Movement.
Most psychologists and psychiatrists, pro-“cure” anti-autism advocates, and anti-autistic hate organizations like Autism Speaks are resistant to engaging with any narrative about autistic people that seeks to de-pathologize autistic people because their goals will only be achieved if autism continues to exist since maintaining the oppression of autistic people is the business they deal in.
Because of that, there’s been a lot of pushback in response to the Neurodiversity Movement and the concept of neurodiversity overall, and there has also been a lot of confusion about what neurodiversity is and what the aims of the movement are that has led to the proliferation of what Shain. M. Neumeier describes in their article “‘To Siri With Love’ and the Problem With Neurodiversity Lite” as ‘Neurodiversity Lite: when neurotypical people, who either use the language of the movement in good faith or intentionally co-opt it, undermine its work by overlooking or outright contradicting its core concepts, including bodily autonomy and basic dignity. If anything, such inauthentic trappings of neurodiversity can allow charities, service providers, and caregivers to effectively disguise ableist stereotypes and harmful practices for audiences that aren’t aware of or attuned to them.’
Within the autistic community, there’s a civil war of sorts between people with “official autism diagnoses” and people who self-diagnose: the former group — like most psychologists and psychiatrists, pro-“cure” anti-autism advocates, and anti-autistic hate organizations like Autism Speaks — believes that they are the Real Autistics and see the latter group as “de-legitimizing” / “invalidating” their diagnoses and “trivializes” autism; the latter understands, to an extent, that the diagnostic criteria is an issue and an “official diagnosis” is inaccessible to most people, so self-diagnosis is necessary.
“Neurodiversity Lite” allows for a compromise of sorts: the acceptance that there is an issue with how autism is “diagnosed” that doesn’t require anyone to think critically about the issues with autism as a “diagnosis”— especially with regards to having to consider and reconcile the fact that it’s highly likely that a lot of people are “misdiagnosed with autism” and incorrectly self-identify as autistic if it’s also incredibly common for autistic women, autistic PoC, queer autistic people, and trans autistic people to be “misdiagnosed” with every “mental illness/disorder” known to man before they’re recognized as autistic.
As Neumeier states, “advocacy that relies on the neurodiversity framework requires challenging basic assumptions and upending entire systems, including ones that even many people in the broader autism advocacy world believe are inherently worthwhile.” And I think the single most important reason why the actual understanding of neurodiversity and the radical politics of the movement are actively not engaged with and intentionally engaged with in bad faith is that critically de-constructing the autistic identity under the pathology paragim and radically re-defining the autistic identity within the context of neurodiversity challenges the power white autistic people and white allistic people who are “officially diagnosed with autism” and self-diagnose as autistic have in the community because of the pathology paradigm (since it’s inherently racist, white supremacist, and anti-Black and white people (especially white boys and men) have better and easier access to a diagnosis, and can control the narrative about autistic people). And more than that, it would take a significant amount of power away from cis het white men.
IV. Allistic (Non-Autistic) People vs. Autistic People: What’s so different?
All of this does beg the question: if both allistic people and autistic people can both be “diagnosed with autism” and the concept of autism has nothing to do with who autistic people actually are (and has everything to do with allistic people needing autistic people to “have”/“suffer from” a disorder in the public consciousness for reasons they need to figure out in themselves), what exactly is the difference between allistic people and autistic people?
Autistic people have different social and communication skills and rules than allistic people — you know, the ones that are pathologized as “disordered” because allistic people spent little to no time trying to understand them, and determined that we were the ones with inferior and “disordered” social skills.
In the article “Investigating Markers of Rapport in Autistic and Nonautistic Interactions” by Sue Fletcher-Watson, Lorena Jiménez-Sánchez, and Catherine J. Crompton, they write:
When someone is autistic, society generally assumes they have difficulty interacting with others. Social difficulties between autistic and nonautistic people are thought to be due to the autistic person not being able to interact using nonautistic social behaviors. This belief can lead to many autistic people feeling alienated. However, recent research supports what autistic people have been saying for a long time: that autistic people are capable of having successful and rewarding interactions with other autistic people. This suggests that social difficulties between autistic and nonautistic people may be due to a mismatch in social norms leading to difficulty for both people, not just the autistic person. [. . .]
We found that when one autistic and one nonautistic person were interacting, they looked at each other and backchanneled less than two nonautistic people. This seemed to be linked with a less enjoyable interaction for them. However, backchanneling seemed to matter less in interactions between two autistic people. They backchanneled less while still having enjoyable interactions.
Incredible, right?
Autistic people have to endure “therapies” and “interventions” like ABA that amount to abusing and torturing autistic people, having anything we do or say or feel be pathologized as “disordered,” constantly being told or reminded that we have “bad/poor” social skills, being seen as and treated as if we’re “disordered,” not being able to understand that we’re autistic because of the negative stereotypes of autistic people that makes us invisible to everyone and ourselves, not being able to have our needs met and supported in ways that are healthy for us because what works for allistic people is supposed to work for us also (even though it doesn’t ), having autistic people with multiple disabilities and high support needs be used as a fear-mongering tactic to support all eugenicist efforts to “fix”/“cure” people into being “normal,” being bullied and abused and gaslit in the workplace when ableist employers figure out we’re autistic, and so many other instances of autistic people being oppressed, abused, and killed all because allistic people don’t realize how absolutely illogical it is to claim that we (autistic people) are the ones with inherent social and communication issues due to a “disorder” called autism when they (allistic people) literally invented a nonexistent “neurodevelopmental condition” (aka a “mental illness/disorder”) that harms autistic people and non-autistic people for “acting autistic” because they needed “people with/who have/that suffer from autism” to exist.
But autistic people (aka introverts) are not “people with/who have/that suffer from autism.”
And you, allistic people (aka extroverts), invented “people with/who have/that suffer from autism” did.
And you have to figure out why.
Because autistic people exist in society, and have done so alongside you for eons. And a lot of people are figuring out they’re autistic nowadays, including many people you previously thought were allistic like you.
So you can’t continue to claim to find it difficult and, often, outright refuse to understand and navigate our social and communication skills and rules to communicate with us while demanding that we offer that kindness, understanding, respect, patience, etc. to you.
Refusing to engage with us in a way that isn’t disrespectful, dehumanizing, harmful, abusive, alienating, one-sided, etc. until we perform being social to your liking; violently policing all social settings to ensure that people only socialize in a ways center allistic people’s wants and needs; and arguing that autistic people “have/suffer from” a “neurodevelopmental condition” that causes us to have “poor social skills” in order to justify never having to engage with us as humans is destroying our ability to communicate, understand, and connect with each other.
However, now that you have all this information, maybe you (the allistic community) can begin to do the necessary work to reverse course and do better. Because society is crumbling in large part due to the racist, white supremacist, anti-Black, misogynistic, queerphobic, transphobic, fatphobic, classist, etc. allistic social and communication rules and norms that govern how society functions on a fundamental level that we’re all expected to learn, perform, and navigate perfectly at all times in every singl situation or else we risk being bullied, abused, or ostracized until we get it right.
To answer the questions Rise Against asks in the chorus of “Chamber the Cartridge”: You can be saved, all the damage hasn’t been done, and it isn’t too late to reverse what society has become.
But maybe like white people with white supremacy, men with misogyny, non-Black people and anti-Blackness, straight people with queerphobia, and cis people with transphobia, you don’t find it valuable to learn to empathize and communicate with autistic people as human beings because whatever being able to oppress us gives you is more important than your humanity and the safety of this planet, to which I say:
If this belief from heaven be sent,
If such be Nature’s holy plan,
Have I not reason to lament
What man has made of man?
