A Particularly Brutal "Autism Acceptance" Month

We deserve better.

April is autism “awareness”/acceptance month. This is already usually a difficult month for autistic people. We see people post puzzle pieces that imply we are “incomplete,” people proudly support and donate to Autism Speaks, people make posts that either treat us like tragedies or inspirational. Despite how far we have come, autism is still highly stigmatized. People want to talk about the ways we should change to “become more normal” instead of accommodating us more and letting us be ourselves. When other people talk about us, I rarely see them mention the bullying that frequently happens to autistic people in schools or workplaces or other social settings, or the higher rates of violence, abuse, and sexual assault against autistic people. To non-autistic people we are often just tragic burdens, infantilizing statements, or stories that make them feel better about themselves.

My fears over RFK Jr being HHS secretary had to do with something most marginalized people are very familiar with: having to watch discussions about our lives, our very existence, dominate political discourse. I knew RFK Jr had an obsession with three groups I am a part of: autistic people, people with chronic illnesses, people with mental illnesses (especially ones who take psychiatric medications). His interest in us stems from his eugenic beliefs about autism and about all chronic illnesses being caused by dietary choices, as well as his anti-vaccine and anti-pharmaceutical agenda. I watched his hearing because I had to know what to expect. And I kept hearing myself and my community being talked about as if our own needs and perspectives didn't matter, as if we were a problem to be solved. This has always been something Americans do with marginalized people. On any given day, you will find politicians and people on social media talking about transgender people, immigrants, Palestinians, people of color, disabled people, homeless people, poor people, queer people, the list goes on. If there's a school shooting, suddenly people with mental illness become a topic of conversation. These “culture war” conversations are almost never out of genuine concern. It's always “what do we do about these people?” which leads to fascist, eugenic “solutions” really quickly.

It isn't like autism has never been a topic of conversation before. We've had to watch non-autistic people use ableist rhetoric to devalue, infantilize, scapegoat, and demonize us time and time again. We've had to listen to our existence be used as a reason not to vaccinate kids against deadly infectious diseases. The headlines say we're tragedies, outcasts, inspirations, cautionary tales. Non-autistic people have felt threatened by the ways we have started to change the narrative ourselves in the last few decades, especially now that finding others like us is so much easier thanks to social media.

But now we're hearing about something new that RFK Jr, the secretary of Health & Human Services, has said about us every week. More people are watching the ways we're being dehumanized by these conversations about the “autism epidemic” (a term invented to make our existence sound dangerous). More of those people will decide to weigh in, some because they're outraged by these comments, but others because they feel emboldened. Some who never gave it much thought before might start to agree with RFK Jr’s “quest for a cause,” because it seems harmless enough at first, and then they will find themselves agreeing with the idea of “curing” autism and preventing more autistic people from being born. This is how eugenic propaganda works. Eugenics never went away, able-bodied people just stopped acknowledging all the ways it's still with us, and gaslighting us if we dare to point them out.

It's frustrating having to repeat the same things about autism over and over again because people won't listen to us. We shouldn't have to keep repeating that the increase is due to more awareness about the ways it impacts marginalized people. We shouldn't have to keep repeating that autistic people need more understanding and support instead of a cure, that it's just a different neurotype someone is born with. We shouldn't have to keep repeating that vaccines don't cause autism, that anti-vaccine myth was due to a fraudulent and retracted study by a disgraced doctor. We shouldn't have to keep saying that statements like “autism is worse than a child dying of a preventable illness” are the rhetoric that the anti-vaccine movement uses to tap into the ableist fear our society has of having autistic children. Nothing RFK Jr or the rest of the anti-vaccine movement says about autism benefits the families of autistic children, and it actively harms both autistic children and non-autistic children who remain unvaccinated due to this ableism. He doesn't want to help your child, he hates your child, and you deserve actual support, not eugenic promises to find “the cause” of autism.

There's nothing wrong with us for processing information differently, for not being able to do certain things, for needing accommodations, for experiencing sensory overload and stimming, for having special interests, or for struggling in social situations. We aren't failures just because this world was set up for non-autistic, able-bodied people. Needing support or accommodations doesn't make us inferior. Not being able to do things, like any of the things RFK Jr listed when trying to paint autism as a tragic burden, doesn't make us inferior. If a non-disabled person truly believes our abilities and level of independence are the only things that determine someone's value, they are in for a rude awakening as they age and lose the level of independence they had before. Autistic people often feel alienated and inadequate as we grow up and compare ourselves to others, receive ableist messages from society, and experience rejection from our peers. Having those feelings of inadequacy and inferiority reinforced by ableist politicians, public figures, and their followers is a terrible feeling, and I worry the most about younger autistic people who are particularly vulnerable to these messages as they learn to accept themselves. So even if repeating that there's nothing wrong with us gets exhausting, I'll keep doing it for those young people who haven't heard it enough yet.

Lastly, when talking about the ways this particular “Autism Acceptance/Awareness Month” has been brutal for us, of course I have to mention Victor Perez. Victor, an autistic teenager with Cerebral Palsy, was shot nine times by police after his neighbors called the police while he was having a meltdown. People of color and disabled people face higher rates of police violence, so disabled people of color are especially vulnerable. The neighbors calling the police instead of finding out what the family actually needed was an act of racist, ableist violence. Victor Perez was killed because we live in a racist, ableist society that devalues the lives of people of color and disabled people. He will never get to be an adult because his life was taken by police while he was still a child. People need to stop calling the police on their neighbors, especially if they're a person of color and/or disabled or part of another vulnerable population. So many lives have been taken this way. I don't know what else to say besides Victor Perez should still be here.