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Notes -
AUTISTS: THE LAST OPPRESSED CLASS
(For the purposes of this post, I am defining an autistic person as someone who has been diagnosed with an autism spectrum condition, or could qualify for an autism spectrum condition diagnosis should they given access to the correct services. The disaster spiral trainwreck that is the self diagnosis movement and the widening of the definition of autism to be completely meaningless, I might write about at another time.)
The modern anglospheric society operates off the belief that there are oppressed groups and oppressor groups. It is stated that oppressor groups have high rates of economic and social success, while the reverse is true for oppressed groups. This is often referred to as the progressive stack, with some oppressed groups being more oppressed than others. To alleviate this disparity, oppressed groups are allowed to seek reparations from their oppressor and demean their oppressor in public spheres, while the reverse is not tolerated. There are many examples of these groups: Women are oppressed by Men, Non-white People are oppressed by White People, Gay people are oppressed by Straight people, Non-english speakers are oppressed by English speakers, and so on. However, there is one group to whom this opressed definition might apply, but receive no recognition, appreciation or restitution from society bottom text.
Autistic people have utterly awful life outcomes. They have very poor employment rates, with many being unemployed or undermployed, even if they are level 1 autists in possession of college degrees. The suicide rate is abysmal, with rates being 9 times in excess of neurotypicals and over half of autistic people having considered suicide throughout their lives. Autistic people also experience heightened rates of social and even sexual abuse.
Despite this very strong case for a place on the progressive stack autists have no place whatsoever on it, or indeed recognition that they even exist in wider society. I do not recall the last time there was a front page article on my country's news outlet about anyone with my condition. I do not recall there being any support or preferential treatment for autists in regards to accquiring economic and social capital during the time when I was seeking employment, in comparison to programs that fast track and support women and ethnic minorities, for example. Support for autistic people is very limited, and only meaningfully exists in the early stages of childhood. This support is not provided to allow the child to feel comfortable in their skin, but to minimise friction both with neurotypicals and with the school and work systems. Even behaviours that are not directly harmful to the autistic person themselves or to neurotypicals, such as stimming, are heavily discouraged.
For most opressed groups, the responsibility for the easing the disparity is put upon the oppressor group. For example, men are expected to validate the fear that women feel due to the difference in physical strength in situations such as being in an elevator, or walking alone at night, and adjust their behaviour accordingly. It may depress an individual man to feel that he is and can only ever be a threat, but this feeling is not validated and he is told to Get Over It. In comparison, the autist is expected to adapt to social norms and behaviours that they do not innately pick up and instead learn manually, in the same way that Sideshow Bob learned that there was a rake there by walking into it except this time the rakes are invisible. It is the autist that has to mask, the autist that has to conceal their interests, the autist that has to pretend to be someone other than who they are.
Obviously, this is terrible. How then, are autists to get onto the progressive stack and get the sweet government funding necessary to improve these awful outcomes? The first task is to create an original sin for neurotypicals that devalues their accomplishments whilst providing avenues to redistribute their social and economic capital to autistic people. White privilege, male privilege and so on are all forms of this and it would not be difficult to create a similar privilege checklist for neurotypicals, but to get into a position to enforce this belief on the rest of society would be far more difficult. Autists, estimated, make up roughly only 2% of the global population against a neurotypical 98%, compared to the 13% of African Americans vs White Americans and the roughly 50%/50% sex split among men and women. Moreover, autists are not naturally grouped or forcibly segregated into one place in a way that men, women and ethnic groups are, so they cannot easily band together and overcome oppression they face.
If we were able to overcome both of these issues, there is another large problem: NTs innately do not like autists, finding them to be offputting and thus wishing to interact with them less based on thin slice judgements. You can argue that there are similar innate dislikes against other oppressed groups, however these groups usually have something that endears them to their perceived oppressor in some form, whether these are biological urges or moral spooks about kindness and human unity, or contributions to society in the form of food or entertainment and so on. There are no moral spooks that encourage being nice to the weird asshole in the corner, even if they haven't done you any real harm. Obligations to do the neurotypical social dance run much deeper than any other aspect a human being is othered by.
Lastly, autism is still seen as a male coded thing, and oppressor/oppressed heirarchy is the strongest where it relates to men and women. There are some autistic people who are able to hyperfocus on useful things, and thus can channel their abilities into a lucrative career. However, these careers are usually in something like software developement, research or other high value STEM careers due to their innate rigidity, which are currently the target for cooption by various diversity movements due to their high status and outsized influence on the world we live in. These positions are likely the only place that a neurotypical will not only encounter an autistic person, but an autistic person in their element who may not be masking (and I suspect this lack of masking is one of the reasons that autists in these roles are being targeted.)
Meanwhile, female autists are more heavily socialised into following neurotypical norms and thus present in a neurotypical manner, so they do not register as being autistic. Hence autists are either invisible or irritating to the oppressed/oppressor sensibility and general notions of social status, and must be removed. Where NTs have not met neurotypicals, their perception of the condition is usually influenced by piece of shit media like Rain Main or the Big Bang Theory, where most depictions in the vein of "Guy who punches himself in the head" or Sheldon Cooper."
We live in a neurotypical society.
Autism's a weird subject since the diagnosis gets thrown around super liberally for any sort of 'does not play nice with others' psychological diagnosis, and it's such a wide spectrum.
My mom used to work at a private school dedicated to let's say 5th-10th percentile intelligences. Not the absolute lowest rung, but the one above it. The vast majority of her students had diagnoses for Autism (along with whatever myriad difficulties they had) and were essentially incapable of functioning above a 4th-grade level. When that bloc is contributing to the statistics, it's very hard to be successful on the aggregate. Without going into the amount of criminals or ne'er-do-wells hit the psychological diagnosis arena and get 7 different things assigned, one of which is invariably ASD. These people are already on an atrocious course and further drag down averages. It is my belief that if diagnosis was a firmer line and was universal, that the gap would be a lot smaller.
The most 'successful'/able-to-cope Autistics are also unlikely to ever pick up a formal diagnosis, especially if they're presently older than mid thirties. I'm diagnosed with what was Aspergers. My dad is a very successful engineer who is 99% to also get diagnosed (and indeed self-diagnosed after I received the diagnosis) if he ever had occasion to pursue it, but as he's now in his mid 70s, retired and in no need of psychological assistance he's unlikely to ever get his autism certificate.
I feel like you are picturing the 'average autistic person' as a FANG developer who struggles with dating/social contact but is otherwise able to get some benefits out of the quirk in their brain chemistry. This is a person who's like 85th percentile.
One my (deeply unpopular) autism related views are that the elimination of Aspergers as a diagnosis and the folding of all similar conditions into vague levels has been an absolute disaster. Normies have a slightly less uninformed idea of what Aspergers is, even if their idea gravitates towards Sheldon Cooper. Meanwhile, if you say the world Autism they will automatically assume "Guy who punches himself in the head and screams", regardless of any attempts by the establishment to reband Autism away from this thought.
I agree with this, but the Aspergers diagnosis got banded about willy-nilly so it kind of had to be hauled back (plus the culture war tones, I guess)
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Agreement on this. None of us in my paternal family have (so far as I know, it may be different for the current generation of children) formal diagnoses of at least Aspergers (before that was folded into the Autism Spectrum) but there are undeniable signs of something like that scattered all through, going back generations. I've done online "test yourself" quizzes and come out as "probably autistic", so while self-diagnosis is no diagnosis, I think I probably have something.
I'm nowhere near as high functioning in a FANG job because I have no maths skills. I can get by with literacy skills (and the slight obsessiveness over details that comes with the package), but I have no social skills (and hence can't 'network' my way into anything), and while support would be nice, it's way too late in the day for that to make a meaningful difference to me now (back from the age of six? oh yes, but no use crying over spilled milk). I'm not a success by any metric of any area; 'but at least you have friends, you have this, you have that' - nope, no, none of it. I liked the Covid lockdown in my country because you want me to stay indoors, don't go out, don't gather in groups, don't socialise? I do none of that already, I am not suffering the deprivations other people complain about. For once, the world was running the way I liked it (no noise! no crowds! no having to pretend to care about chit-chat and small talk! no interacting with people for more than the tasks we need to do! stay in my shell? bliss!). Which brings me on to:
Yes, we do, and that's just a fact of life. While there should be support and accommodation, autistic people also have to learn how to adapt to the wider world, as best they can. If the majority of people are right-handed, things are set up for the right-handed. If over-exposure to sunlight gives you sunburn and skin cancer, you can't demand the right to walk about naked for twelve hours a day under the desert sun. Learn to cover up and put on sunscreen.
Ironically, in view of everything, I've ended up working in a place that deals with children with additional/special needs, and that includes autism. They're pre-school aged, and part of the care is helping them pick up the skills that will help them integrate when they go on to kindergarten and primary school. It is about helping those kids feel comfortable in their skin, because they do suffer otherwise, either locked in their own isolated little world or rigidly sticking to a set routine that cannot deviate in the slightest or else the child has a full-blown meltdown. It's not about turning them neurotypical, it's about doing as much as can be done. Maybe that's not a lot, maybe they'll never be able to integrate and function, but leaving them be is the worst thing you can do and it's a disservice (as I said, I wish there had been something when I was six, maybe my life would not have been such a failure if I learned better how to pretend to be normie). And some are severely disabled, like the cases of "will literally beat his brains out against a wall so has to wear a helmet 24/7" teenager encountered in another job. It's not one-size-fits-all, Hollywood Crazy (which just means quirky) nice view of "smart, high IQ, maths nerds autistics who work the big paying jobs in software engineering that give you normies the high economic value society you enjoy".
This is the way it is. Fire burns, water is wet, society is neurotypical, and that shouldn't be changed. Accommodation and support yes, "I'm (self-diagnosed with, or even officially diagnosed with) Such-And-Such, I get to do what I like and no consequences and you have to cater to my every whim!" no.
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Mmhmm.
I spent a couple years at a private school which was designed for autistic integration. Maybe 10% of the students had a pretty severe disability. Some of them worked through the social skills, the emotional development, and so on. Presumably they get to engage with society. Others...they will spend their whole lives with significant reliance on their caretakers. These were all kids with loving parents and enough of a support network to pay private-school tuition. Not everyone has that.
Exactly. That's essentially the environment my mom worked at (albeit essentially purely aimed at the bottom 10% of your cohort), and a positive outcome of a 12 year education at that school was 'capable of holding a shelf stacking job or consistently contributing on government subsidized work for the lesser-abled and moderate sociability'.
I had a friend like that at high school. Basically stuck at an 11 year old's level of mental development, though he was more like a 5 year old at the start of high school. (Adolesence seems to have done him a lot of good.) With a ridiculously good family and presumably some government help, he's been able to hold a steady job through all of his adult life, a very happy long-term romantic relationship with an autistic woman, and enjoy a diverse range of interests (biking, video games, anime). Many non-disabled young men don't do so well.
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