Autism: Do We Have It All Wrong?

I’ll be honest. I didn’t pay much attention to autistic kids until I was recently diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (or, more specifically, HFA which is high-functioning autism; used to be called Asperger’s).

Now I’m forced to look at it more closely. Like the autistic I am, it’s a puzzle to solve. I need to understand it. To disassemble it. But in doing so, a seedy underbelly is exposed: how we perceive autistics and their “disabilities.” I’m not disabled. In fact, quite the opposite. I...