When you read about autism, you
typically read about it as a pathology. Autistic people are viewed as being
normal people with pathological deviations from the norm. Every so often you
will come across an article that delineates a few of the special abilities of
people on the spectrum, but even in doing so, it comes across as “well, at
least there are a few positive things that come out of this tragedy.”
Autism is a structural variation in
the brain’s architecture that gives rise to differences in processing and in
different abilities. One may even argue that it gives rise to a different kind
of mind. The vast majority of those people are in the “mild” end of the
spectrum, though a great deal of focus is on the “extreme” end, with those who
often cannot speak and seem to be particularly mentally disabled. This focus
further pathologizes the spectrum precisely because it does not fully or even
properly represent the reality for most people with autism.
To fully understand my point, I want
to treat those not on the spectrum as though autism were the norm and what we
now call neurotypical behavior were the minority. That is, I want to treat
neurotypical people the way they treat people on the autism spectrum, from the
perspective of someone on the spectrum. Because, from our point of view, you
are full of deficits.
The Pathology
Irrational behaviors are one of the
primary aspects of neurotypical people. Very often decisions are made without a
great deal of thought or, certainly, research. This is especially true of their
opinions. Whereas a sensible autistic person will do a great deal of research
before developing an opinion or coming up with a proposed solution,
neurotypicals have been observed to have an immediate opinion on things
without, apparently, knowing the first thing about the topic. This is different
from the kinds of errors autistics made from managing to miss something in
their extensive research; rather, the neurotypicals carelessly won’t do any
research at all before making a decision. And if they do any research, it will
be at best a truncated version, as if they are impatient to come up with any
answer at all rather than to make sure they have the right one.
It seems that a strong reliance on
emotions is a typical reason for this immediate, almost knee-jerk, way of
making a decision. As a result, it is not uncommon for them to agree with a
solution that sounds good, sometimes regardless of the overwhelming evidence
against the proposal, rather than something that has a track record of actually
working. This seems to especially be the case in the areas of economics, the
social sciences, and government. While this same tendency does allow them to
respond more quickly to others, sometimes that is done at the expense of
properly assessing the social situation. Fortunately, they do seem to have a
particularly strong ability to make that proper assessment, so we must admit
that in this particular case their pathological tendency toward immediate
conclusions is often beneficial.
Having said that, there are some
very strong negatives of that ability that seem to be combined with a kind of
empathy that makes them more likely to identify more with people like
themselves than with different people. While we autistics have a tendency to
not be judgmental or biased, neurotypicals are terribly judgmental and biased.
They judge people on things like race, sex, gender, deviations from the way
they themselves think, culture, religion, and pretty much any difference one
could possibly imagine, often to the point of hating members of other groups.
Some autistics who have been raised with these people have learned these behaviors
themselves, even though they are not typical to us. This makes associating with
neurotypicals potentially dangerous, unless we remain on our guard against
their biases.
This note on this particular moral
deficit brings me to the topic of the large number of moral deficits commonly
associated with neurotypicals. They have an under-developed sense of loyalty,
and many do not seem to show any degree of loyalty at all. Further, they seem
willing to lie about just about everything. The primary use of language for
them seems to be to lie to each other. They will tell each other they look nice
when they don’t; they will say one thing to one person, and another to another;
they will backstab; they will tell their friends they are right when they know
their friends are wrong. I could go on and on with the ways they lie to
everyone. They will also exaggerate and say things they don’t really mean. They
will sometimes use words to mean completely different things. For example, I
recently heard one of them say, “Give me a smack.” Which seems an odd request.
But then I saw their neurotypical partner give them a kiss in response. How
strange to ask for the opposite of a kiss and then to get a kiss! As a result,
it can be very frustrating to deal with neurotypicals. You never know if they
really mean what they are saying, you do not know if you can ever really trust
them, and if you make the mistake of thinking they think the way you think, you
will too often find yourself screwed over without your understanding what just
happened.
Another odd behavior neurotypicals
exhibit is their habit of “small talk.” From what we can tell, small talk
appears to be talking just for the sake of talking. A “how are you doing”
results in the same non-answer of “fine.” It seems unlikely everyone everywhere
at all times is truly “fine,” so it seems that that is a non-answer to what is
in fact a non-question. It has been observed that if you give an actual answer
to the question, the questioner gets frustrated and impatient, as though they
are annoyed that you would actually answer them. A whole conversation can
actually go on like that, with general questions giving rise to pat answers so
that you could actually change out any pair of people and you would end up with
the same conversations each time. The vast majority of their conversations are
not about anything of any substance, and, again, they seem positively annoyed
if you try to engage them in such a conversation. As a group neurotypicals seem
positively frivolous most of the time.
This frivolity extends to their
work. They treat work as a social experience rather than as work. They don’t
seem to treat work seriously or to engage in it with the kind of attention we
autistics do. How any of them can keep a job is a mystery. Perhaps their
ability to lie to their bosses and to pretend deference to them is what keeps
them employed despite their inherent laziness. They also do have a tendency to
do things exactly as they are told to do them rather than to find new ways of
doing things. While one could view this as a lack of creativity on their part,
in many cases it is useful to have a group of people who will unquestioningly
do what they are told. If you can keep them from wasting their time
socializing, businesses could make good use of this tendency to conform and
engage in groupthink.
How It Feels to Be Made a Problem
I’m guessing you didn’t like the
above description of yourself. You no doubt agree with many of the things
listed, that they are all-too-often traits of the typical person. And no doubt
many of you have made positive efforts to overcome those things—especially such
things as racism and sexism. Indeed, we on the autism spectrum also make an
effort to overcome what are perceived to be deficits. And yet, there are no doubt
things I discussed above that you would argue are unusual, to say the least,
interpretations of your behaviors. Well, guess what? That’s how we feel about
many of the things we read about people with autism.
For example, we read that we do not
have empathy or a theory of mind. That’s utterly ridiculous to us. We fully
understand you have a mind—we just treat you like you have a mind like our
minds, which results in a number of errors on our part. But guess what? You do
exactly the same thing. You treat us as though we ought to have your mind, and
when we obviously do not, you actually go so far as to declare that we don’t
have a theory of mind! In the past people used to dehumanize others from other
races and cultures using exactly this same logic. Since the person from the
other culture does not act like us, they must not be human like us. We now know
this to be untrue—and to be outright racist—but this way of thinking still
manages to creep into studies of people with autism.
Yes, there are studies of young
children involving hiding a toy, removing the child who saw where the toy was
hidden, then moving the toy elsewhere and bringing the child back in where the
young autistic children do not properly recognize who knows what, but where are
the studies of older children and even adults? Why is it that we autistic
adults don’t make this mistake? Could it be that the development of this
ability is simply delayed rather than absent? Indeed, I see a great deal of
evidence that people with autism have a tendency to have to learn through
direct instruction many more things than do neurotypical people, who seem to
have a large number of instincts that allow them to learn certain things more
quickly. This is a difference in learning, not necessarily a disability or
pathology. It is slower, but more accurate. As with anything, there are
tradeoffs.
Finally, I want you to consider
something else we autistic are always hearing. Given the negative aspects of
neurotypicals listed above, what would you think of calls to fix you? From an
autistic’s perspective, you would be much better people if you were more
autistic. You would lie less, be less biased and judgmental, and be less
frivolous. You would waste less time at work and get more work done. You would
say what you mean and mean what you say. From our perspective, life would be
much better for you if you were more like us. Now how does that make you feel?
I can describe you as a pathology, as a problem that needs to be fixed. I am
certain you didn’t like it one bit. Well guess what? Neither do we. If people
would spend more time talking to us rather than studying us as some sort of
black box that can only be understood by external observation of our behaviors,
you may have known that by now.
Different Isn’t Worse
People with autism aren’t broken
normal people. We are different. Our brains have different architectures,
different biochemistry. It is driven by differences in our genes. All of which
give rise to a different way of thinking and thus to different minds. Some of
our minds are closer to neurotypical minds than others. It is a spectrum, after
all. And some people with autism are definitely disabled when it comes to
living in the neurotypical world. But then, there are extreme examples of the
neurotypical mind as well—people who are pathological liars, people without
morals, people who cannot seem to tell the difference between themselves and
the external world. The difference is that they are closer to you, and thus
seem more normal to you. To me, a man whose autism would be considered “mild,”
those with severe autism see more normal. I get how they are thinking. It is
different, not wrong. And if people were more accepting of those differences, I
would predict that many of our extreme negative traits would lessen
considerably. We are frustrated, and that frustration comes out in a variety of
negative ways. But then, consider what would happen if everyone treated you as
a disease needing to be cured and not truly understood in the least?
Coming to this understanding between
autistics and neurotypicals matters. Given the negative social consequences
felt by pretty much everyone on the autism spectrum, we can only conclude that
autism is one of the last ways of being human for which it is still completely
acceptable to discriminate against. We are punished in the schools,
discriminated against there, with the result that only around half graduate
high school. Those who go to college don’t do much better. And even if, like
me, one not only graduates from college but gets graduate degrees, one finds
upon graduation that the work world is almost completely hostile to you. Not
because we can’t do the work—because not only can we do the work, we will
likely do it better than the average neurotypical person—but because we don’t
interview well, we don’t acknowledge hierarchies, we are blunt, we come across
as arrogant, and we aren’t social in typical ways.
I wrote this piece in order to help
the average person understand what it’s like to be treated as a pathology. It
can just as easily be done to you as it has been done to us. Does that mean you
are a problem that needs to be fixed? Or does that mean we ought to be
considered fellow human beings whose minds are part of the natural variation
among human beings, whose contributions to society are vital for social health?
We correctly recognize that acceptance of cultural, ethnic, racial, and sexual
diversity results in a healthy society. Perhaps we can one day soon include
different ways of thinking, different kinds of mind as well.
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