Content Note: This article discusses school shootings, infanticide, bullying, and suicide.
If autistic people like my teenage son make you feel uncomfortable, you’re wrong—but that may not be entirely your fault. Our media condition their audiences to fear and pity disabled people. And it’s not just sensationalist, clickbait media that undermines the rights and basic humanity of autistic people. Respected, progressive publications and writers can be just as reactionary. But because we tend to trust such “thought leaders” as intellectually exacting and socially just, their ableism often goes unchecked and can therefore be far more hazardous than that of their unapologetically prejudiced counterparts.
This is the preparation of progressive readers and listeners, permission to view autistic people as subhumansexplains so many things: Why all these big-hearted celebrities know no better than to support Autism Speaks and its stigmatizing campaigns than the desperately needed support and services for autistic people who are already here. Why journalists openly mock neurodiversity activists and accuse them of not understanding the plight of the “really” disabled. Why readers share stories of parents murdering their autistic children that present these crimes as “understandable” given the burden autistic people are.
Sometimes the problem is the kind of detached intellectualism that autistic people are often accused of. When journalist Malcolm Gladwell argues that autistic people are more prone to “thresholds of violence“and therefore more likely than the average child to shoot up a school, perhaps he was fascinated by a provocative sociological theory. But he made his case with a single anecdote about autism, despite the fact that his theory was at odds with the evidence on autism and violence—autistic children and adults, like other people with disabilities, are they are much more likely to fall victim to violence than to commit violence. And articles like Gladwell’s have real-world consequences: Every time the media connects autism with mass violence, autistic people—especially students—are treated like ticking time bombs.
Then there is the unconditional acceptance of negative narratives about autism by the media. RadioLab, that sounding board for curious geeks, has chosen sympathize with a parent who he tried to kill her very supportive autistic daughter, failing to adequately remind listeners that the autistic victim, Issa Stapleton, has as much right to life as any other human being. In the same episode, hosts Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich spoke with a newborn autistic man, Owen Suskind, about how easily autistic children can be traumatized and bullied, and how complex it can be for them to communicate that they need lend a hand, or for their families to recognize the kind of lend a hand they need. And yet they failed to explicitly acknowledge Issa Stapleton’s right to safety and survival, nor did they recognize the irony in allowing her to be dehumanized while in the next breath condemning bullying.
It hurts even more when journalists are praised for supporting autistic people when in fact they are betraying them. Cultural and psychological writer Andrew Solomon eloquently criticizes the discrimination that personally affects him (he is gay and depressed) and at the same time reinforces chronic prejudice against autistic people in his award-winning book Far From the Tree. Solomon’s book includes many autistic voices, but presents autistic people who are unable to speak for themselves and have great support needs as a burden. He even allowed parents and carers to broadcast the most vulnerable and private moments of their autistic loved ones, a potentially degrading exercise in the name of “honesty.”
And then there’s the ableism perpetuated by family members of autistic people. Recent Yorker editor David Remnick, like me, is a highly supportive parent of an autistic adult. That doesn’t mean he has to be an activist, but it would be nice if he used his position and influence to lend a hand people see his daughter as a complicated individual who deserves the level of support she needs. Instead, his magazine rarely covers autism, and when it does, it’s to feature articles (like Gladwell’s) that readers’ prejudices against neurodiversityRemnick is eager, as he should be, to lend his considerable platform to other prominent civil rights and disenfranchised groups: He has taken a stand longer conversation with Black Lives Matter founder Alicia Garza about how the head-down approach is not serving the best interests of the black community. Then, a few weeks later, he effusively thanked Caren Zucker and John Donvan for their book “Story of Autism” In A Different Key — which offers an unsympathetic portrait of similarly outspoken autism activist Ari Ne’eman — for daring to keep his head up.
Our progressive thought leaders need to stop treating autism and disabilities as infrequent and tragic exceptions, instead of treating them as something that is common, both now and throughout history. Future parents need to be aware that autism is a possibility that they can prepare for, not a tragedy.
For this mindset to change, the media needs to make sure that the people who know autism best—autistic people—are always part of the conversation. I understand that these conversations can be complex. We haven’t had the tools or the language to talk openly about autism for a very long time—it’s only been a generation since Lorna Wing open autism diagnoses to people with a full spectrum of characteristics and disabilities, not just those who fit the “Rainman” profile, so we’re still arguing who can define what autism means.
We need more forthright, unadulterated stories about the realities of being autistic and the realities of parenting an autistic child. The truth is, it’s really fucking challenging. Families rarely get enough education about autism, and most of the information they do get is about unrealistic, PTSD-inducing techniques to turn autistic children into non-autistic children—which usually spells disaster for everyone involved. Our autistic girls, autistic children of color, and autistic children from lower socioeconomic backgrounds are woefully underdiagnosed and undersupported. That’s a lot of unhappy, anxious adults, children, and families with autism who are coping without the tools they need for communication, safety and self-fulfillment.
We also need a more truthful representation of what neurodiversity means: that it’s okay to have a brain that works the way it does, and that there’s no shame in needing any support your brain needs. We need to condemn stories that characterize neurodiversity as a zero-sum game, where “original” scammers want to take all the resources away from autistic people who need lend a hand with everyday life. In fact, autistic-led organizations like the Autistic Self Advocacy Network advocate on behalf of autistic people with a variety of support needs.
The anti-neurodiversity media perspective makes it harder for autistic people with “transitional” abilities to get the accommodations they need. Reporters were fascinated by stories about autistic author John Elder Robison, who was diagnosed with autism at the last minute and made flame-shooting guitars for Ace Frehley of KISS, but they ignored or glossed over his disabling, autistic traits, such as corrosive anxiety. The idea that autistic people with fewer support needs are not “disabled enough” to need any support at all is largely responsible for the abysmal unemployment rates among autistic adults and skyrocketing stress levels. It is no wonder that autistic people in general have higher than average suicide rateand increased tendencies to co-occurring mental and medical health problems.
If the media wants to properly cover autism and neurodiversity, we need to shift our focus away from horror stories and pity parties and toward the shared humanity, rights, social contracts, and perspectives of https://autisticadvocacy.org/about-asan/what-we-believe/ autistic people. Despite what the media would have you believe, this is a truly damaging failure: not a lack of empathy from autistic people, but a lack of empathy for them.
