What a time to be alive & on the spectrum
Closing Autism Month
Originally published May 4, 2025
April was Autism Awareness & Acceptance Month. It didn’t go great. Here’s our SECRETARY OF HEALTH & HUMAN SERVICES:
[Video: watch it in the original post on Substack]
The CDC promptly disputed RFK Jr.’s wandering, worm-addled theories (above). Maybe his bafflement at neurological differences makes sense— his family of origin did lobotomize and forget his aunt (whose learning differences resulted from medical misogyny to begin with: mom Rose Kennedy was instructed to hold the baby in the birth canal until male doctors, not ~just lady nurses~ arrived. The baby thus lost oxygen).
But it’s intuitive! Autism diagnoses have increased for the same reason that the number of known planets has increased since we developed telescopes. To use Dr. Andrea Love’s parallel, breast cancer diagnoses rose by 300% between 1973 and 1992. Breast cancer epidemic?! No— screening mammograms were implemented in 1976. Prevalence is directly related to our ability to correctly diagnose. Current autism research has given us new insights on cause, too: ASD is almost certainly genetic. UCLA Health reported on a 2023 study, but you could’ve just asked me, my dad’s uncanny ability to identify planes/trains/rare minerals, and my recent genetic panel from Sequencing.com…
High-Masking Women
RFK Jr.’s tirade focused, as society always does re: autism, on those with “high support needs.” Autists with high support needs are no less worthy of respect and autonomy. Our humanity isn’t determined by whether we can work, play sports, or date (?!).
& For those of us with “low support needs,” this insistent focus/preconception is so draining. Research suggests that autistic brains (perhaps among other things) don’t go through the process that other brains do— in toddlerhood— of ‘paring down’ neurological connections that are unimportant to our safety and survival. The average baby hears the first car door close and cries, then learns (by losing those neural connections) that it’s not cause for systemic alarm. Our brains have a harder time turning off, forgetting, discerning “safety” on a neurological level.
Autistic brain scan courtesy of Temple Grandin
The implicit pressure on women, in particular, to mask these sensitivities and symptoms is killing us (masking is correlated with heightened suicide risks). In a neurological condition that’s pretty much been known to society only by how its sufferers show distress— i.e., we learn about autism primarily as ‘why that little boy is throwing a tantrum,’ which is kind of like knowing cancer only as ‘the thing making him bald and sad’ — those of us socialized to hide distress are screwed. Society doesn’t know how to handle us, so we’re either suppressed or (if we’re lucky?) our autism is. The bias is self-perpetuating: I -saw- the quiet young men, the bright and quirky boys credited as brooding artists or geniuses; weird girls in seventh grade were just downright gross.
Some notable auties: Anthony Hopkins, Questlove, Greta Thunberg,
David Byrne, Courtney Love, Dan Aykroyd
I wasn’t diagnosed until my mid-twenties. As much as we can attribute these gender biases to social pressure and masking, providers and diagnosticians bear some responsibility, too. Social psychologist Dr. Chloe Farahar described how this observer bias is a barrier to us being recognized early— “if we blame girls for ‘hiding their autism,’ observers don’t need to take responsibility for their bias….We need clinicians to take reasonable responsibility for our being denied and dismissed.”
Just very shy and weird and smart and lazy
A note on the BS Autism “Excuse”
Weirdly enough in this moment, it’s also become de rigeur for a-hole famous men to blame autism for their cruelty, bigotry etc.
Elon Musk’s Nazi salute was blamed on autism.
Boris Johnson said being “spectrum-y” made him lack empathy.
Kanye West followed his most recent bout of mania, misogyny, and Naziism by revealing a new “autism diagnosis” (by his girlfriend?) (which may also allow him to eschew treatment for his prior diagnosis of bipolar disorder)
The thing is— autism makes it harder to self-censor. This can be off-putting on its own, but it’s not inherently cruel. The question is, what’s IN your head that you can’t keep from letting out?
When I don’t self-censor, it’s usually most affronting when it means, e.g., questioning social norms or calling out distressing behavior and injustice. What comes out of my uncensored mouth, pen, keyboard isn’t going to be Nazi apologia or hatred of women, because that’s not what’s in my head.
But if that IS what’s in your head, yeah, failing to self-censor means telling on yourself. And for whatever its worth, autism isn’t the only cause of shitty, rich men choosing not to censor their shitty thoughts— so maybe y’all aren’t so much ~spectrumy~ as you are narcissistic, over-indulged ignoramuses whose mommies never told you “no.”
Finally, Autism Registries
RFK Jr. didn’t just tap non-physician conspiracy theorist David Geier to head HHS autism studies (despite Geier’s past sanctions for performing unlicensed experiments on autistic children).
He also capped off the Trump Administration’s Autism Month festivities by announcing their plan to amass health data on autistic Americans— through healthcare databases, health insurance records, even fitness apps— for a national autism registry.
From an administration that has flirted with the idea of “wellness farms” and a President who’s said he’d like to send citizen radicals to El Salvadorean prison camps…this is sobering.
Forced, government-sponsored disability camps don’t tend to go well, especially when they’re, say, prefaced by dehumanizing, othering language about autists not paying their taxes or using the toilet. Involuntary registries feel like a step in a frightening direction.
For more, look into the Nazi term “useless eater” and the Aktion T4 campaign. Nazis are also the reason we don’t use “Asperger’s” anymore!
Anyways. I just hope that my wellness camp roommate is a cool autist, like Greta or Dr. Lector, not a Musky one.
Stay strong through spite— we’re in this together. & as always, enjoy every sandwich (it’s an act of rebellion!)
