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by
Devon Price
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April 25 - August 21, 2023
People had little to no understanding of Autism’s causes, what it felt like to be an Autistic person, or that the disability shares features with other disorders like epilepsy, Social Anxiety Disorder, Attention-Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD), or Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
Autistic people have differences in the development of their anterior cingulate cortex,[14] a part of the brain that helps regulate attention, decision making, impulse control, and emotional processing.
Autism can influence how intensely we focus on an activity, and how we perceive textures, tastes, and sounds.[29] Autism can predispose a person to having fanatical interests (often referred to as special interests)
Many of us watch the same movies over and over or read and compile facts about our favorite subjects far beyond the point that an allistic person would find entertaining.
Some people are also subclinically Autistic, meaning they might not qualify for an official diagnosis, in the eyes of psychiatrists, but share enough struggles and experiences with us that they belong in the community. Relatives of diagnosed Autistic people, for example, frequently are found to exhibit subclinical traits.[47] Of course, what’s considered to be “subclinical” is often more a function of a person’s ability to hold down a job and conform to societal rules than it is a reflection of how much they are suffering.
Autism can appear in any person, regardless of their age, class, gender, race, or other disability status. Despite the incredible diversity of Autism and Autistic people, the average person (and even many mental health professionals) has a singular image of Autism in their minds. You might sometimes hear this called “typically presenting” Autism, though that’s really a misnomer. It’s more like stereotypical Autism.
Crystal suspects that had she been an Autistic boy, her shutdowns would have been viewed differently. Boys are supposed to have agency and confidence, and engage actively with the world. Being nonresponsive and depressed might have inspired early intervention, rather than morphing into an unspeakable family secret. Instead, Crystal’s parents told her to stop being “so weird” and to sit up and “look alive.” When confusion and frustration made her want to break down and cry, she was similarly told to tamp those urges down.
For example, developmental psychology research has repeatedly noted that even small acts of play-aggression in girls are severely discouraged and punished by their teachers and parents as “inappropriate.” A girl might be admonished for slamming a couple of toys into one another, for example. Meanwhile, most boys are allowed to be rough and sometimes violent in their play.[52] Because girls are held to a much more restrictive social standard than boys are, they learn to hide any troublesome, “violent,” or disruptive Autism features much earlier.
The idea that Autism is a “boy’s” disorder goes all the way back to when the condition was first described at the turn of the twentieth century. Hans Asperger and other early Autism researchers did study girls on the spectrum, but generally left them out of their published research reports.[55] Asperger in particular avoided writing about Autistic girls because he wanted to present certain intelligent, “high-functioning” Autistic people as “valuable” to the Nazis who had taken over Austria and were beginning to exterminate disabled people en masse.
However, more recently unearthed documents make it clear that Asperger was far more complicit in Nazi exterminations of disabled children than had been previously believed.[56]
Informed by eugenicist ideals that only granted rights to those who were “valuable” to society, Asperger focused on describing Autism as a disorder for intelligent, yet troubled boys, usually ones from wealthy families. Girls with disabilities were seen as more disposable, so they were left out of the conversation.
In fact, the developer of the first therapeutic “treatment” for Autism, Applied Behavioral Analysis therapy, was Ole Ivar Lovaas, who also invented anti-gay conversion therapy.[58]
This view influenced how all the diagnostic guidelines were written, and created a feedback loop that endured for decades: the Autistics who got diagnosed were primarily wealthy white boys, and those boys continued to set the standard of what Autism was and how it was understood in the studies that followed.[61] The few white girls who were diagnosed had to be very obviously “masculine” in how their Autism presented. Nonwhite Autistics were instead identified as defiant, antisocial, or schizophrenic—all disorders that made it easier to incarcerate them, or forcibly place them in
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In media, nearly every Autistic character is a white man with a monotone voice, rude demeanor, and a penchant for science.
This upward trend shows no sign of stopping, as all evidence suggests the condition is still profoundly underrecognized in women, trans people, Black and brown people, people in poverty, and those without access to screening and therapy.
can come with serious social and legal benefits under the Americans with Disabilities Act (and laws in other countries like it), and other antidiscrimination statutes worldwide. You might hope that people will take your problems more seriously when a psychiatrist has validated them. A formal diagnosis means you can receive disability accommodations at school or work, and you can pursue a legal case if an employer or landlord shows documentable signs of bias against you. In some places a diagnosis can qualify you for a medical marijuana card, or a therapy animal. Family members who have told
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Even those who do specialize in Autism are usually trained primarily in working with Autistic kids, “helping” them to behave in a more agreeable, passive fashion.
For all the reasons outlined above, I firmly support Autistic self-determination. I prefer the terms self-determination or self-realization to self-diagnosis, because I believe it’s more sensible to view Autistic identity through a social lens than a strictly medical one.[75] Diagnosis is a gatekeeping process, and it slams its heavy bars in the face of anyone who is too poor, too busy, too Black, too feminine, too queer, and too gender nonconforming, among others.
In a similar vein, I almost always will use “Autistic” and not “person with Autism.” Many non-disabled parents of Autistic kids prefer what’s called “person first” language rather than “disability first” or “identity first” language.[78] Disability service organizations that are not run by disabled people tend to advocate for person first language as well. I also know many clinicians and social workers who tell me that when they were in school, they were taught to always separate a person’s disability from their identity in this way.
The word bisexual was once a mental illness label,[80] but we don’t tell bisexual people they can’t use it because of its offensive history.
I don’t function “highly” in every single realm of my life, but I am able to get by more easily than many other Autistics. My acceptance in society is conditional on my behaving respectably and being productive. That’s really a deeply ableist reality, but I shouldn’t pretend it isn’t true.
