Autistic People are not “Childlike”. People just treat us this way.
I’ve written movies, I’ve gone to school for film and media, I have a degree in political science (the ultimate form of theater), I’ve worked numerous low level jobs of movie sets. Low level is often where I find myself. Not from a lack of talent. Not from a lack of work ethic (I haven’t missed a day of work in years). Not from a lack of dedication or skill. No, it’s something else.
Being a Autist I am only allowed to spectate on the world of “Neurotypicals” and make inferences about how they see me. In some ways, this is true for all of us. Since most people are not blunt like us, and expect us to nicely ask, and then ask them to be honest after they give obvious sugar coated answers — usually leading to invectives about how we are “strange”, “odd”, “obsessive [over certain topics]”, and my favorite “immature”. As if all these things somehow invalidate our intelligence or abilities. “See, you like Transformers and My Little Pony too much so clearly you aren’t Smith & Smith material, now excuse my while I hired this guy I go drinking with who is on his second marriage and is getting really into DraftKings…why yes, he does vote Republican.”
It amuses me how overlooked we are, because when I look at the world Allistics have created for themselves, I really have to wonder: how bad can we really be?
33% of Autistic people experience asexuality. This does not mean we don’t reproduce, or have partners, or have sex. It usually just means we have less, or it is far, far lower a priority than it obviously is for most people. It also gives the ones that are a weird outsider perspective. For me, I see sexuality as this beautiful thing that exists on a spectrum, and isn’t cut and dry, for anyone. Many men call themselves straight, but have had sex with men. Many women call themselves bisexual, because they kissed a woman at a bar that one time. Many gay people have never had sex with anyone, ever. Many gay people deliberately avoid sex due to certain inherent dangers. The point is, we have these labels for things, that at best only roughly approximate certain sexual behaviors and sexualities, and yet if you talk to most people this is the core fixture of their identity. I’ve loved Transformers since before I even understood people had sex, and yet for all the people I met who swore they knew their sexuality at age 3, no one has ever accused me of being a “robosexual”.
A large percentage of Autistic people are irreligious and atheist, a number that has only rapidly increased in the modern era in that cohort specifically. Autistic people just aren’t smitten with religion, and don’t appear to ever have been. Among the more famous [assumed] historical Autists, it’s pretty clear Thomas Jefferson had much disdain for religion and the Bible in a time and place when for most people that was unthinkable. Ripping out all the pages of the Bible save for the few passages you think are good, and do not include any mysticism is the most Autistic thing I can think of someone doing in 1776 outside of writing a “fuck you” letter to a king (which he also did).
I don’t think I have to explain all the things religion has done that are bad, or the positions it takes that are retrograde, and while I’m sure someone might point to the good aspect, we can at least say religion *might not* exist in a world run by Autists.
Autistics are over-represented in creative fields (and some sports). Many will assume I bring this up to highlight the creativity and imagination often associated with Autistics — often linked to a trait called “hyper-intelligence” frequently associated with the “disorder”. But I am going to take a different track. That’s not the reason we are over-represented in creative fields. The reason is the same reason black people and women are often found over-represented in “non-traditional” fields: discrimination.
We’re forced into non-traditional work, because much the traditional working world rejects us. Again, not because of “qualifications” but because we refuse to do the little song and dance everyone else seems eager and ready to perform. I often say the reason I was passed over for promotion at my bartending gigs despite being quote “the fastest bartender my manager had ever seen” is because I refused to hang out and do coke or binge drink with them. I refused to “play the game”. Not show up to work. I did that. Not to do an exemplary job, and lead in every metric by which you could judge a bartender. Not even complain and bitch about my job — which is apparently the fast track to upper management, everywhere. If a computer was just looking at numbers, outside of some of my more buxom co-workers, I was the clear frontrunner. When a “neurotypical” human is the judge suddenly the numbers don’t matter because of all these “intangibles” you see in the third manager you’ve hired this year…it’s March, by the way.
Which I guess is what has always bothered me. My entire life is me being forced to play by the Allistic rulebook. To act less autistic, and to be “more normal”, with a whole host of social, financial, and sometimes even legal penalties if I don’t. “You won’t get a wife with that hobby/interest”. “You just have to be more social”. “School is more about the social opportunities, than the educational ones”. “It’s not what you know it’s who you know.”
Yeah, we know.
Nobody ever suggests “Neurotypicals” be less “Neurotypie”. “Hey, check out that Neurotypie over there asking that man for directions when his phone has a GPS on it”. “Hey Neurotypie, I don’t care what Shandra said to Nicole at the office mixer. It was dumb the last time you brought it up, it’s still dumb now”. “Just like a Neurotypie to back a Conservative in the last election”. “Could you stop being so Neurotypie and bringing up Jesus all the time? We get it. You’re afraid to die and slip into a void of nothingness where nothing ever was or is.”
I’m suggesting it.
Because I’m tired of it. I’m tired of living not just in a country, but in a world that discounts us, and in many ways, at every turn attempts to kneecap us.
I can’t prove this, but I bet many primitive Autistics were probably the ones with the photographic memories to do things like “catalogue which berries are and aren’t poisonous” or give us some of our first insights into the heavens and earth unto which we live. Frankly, I just can’t see Neurotypies wasting the time when they weren’t eating bugs out of their fur or sniffing each other’s butts. I just can’t see anyone but an Autist being so fixated on the things around them at a time in the past where it seemed like to ourselves that we were the only sentient beings worth caring about.
It’s not that Autists hate people, with just don’t have to have to always, always deal with Allistics on their terms and their terms alone. You call us childlike, so we are. Nevermind that so, so many Neurotypies are into the same things we are, sometimes in ways that seem childlike to us. When we teach about famous autists in school like Thomas Jefferson, or Socrates, or Charles Darwin, we don’t teach them as autistic. We actually tend to regard that as a fun piece of maybe pop trivia, not worth analyzing much beyond that.
Even today: Dan Ackroyd, comedian and writer of the movie Ghostbusters (1984), is autistic. Anthony Hopkins, one of world history’s most venerated Academy award winning actors, is autistic. Jerry Seinfeld, one of the world’s most successful stand up comedians, is autistic, and turned his very literal interpretations, and unique perspective on the world on Allistic people in perhaps the greatest sitcom of all time. These people, however, are not treated as such. No, they’re success shows they overcame being Autistic. It’s in spite of Autism they were successful, not because of it. Now that they are successful they might as well be as neurotypical as the rest of us.
Lest anyone think this piece is political, let me assure you, Autistics have no allies and never have. Republicans mock us as a misbegotten side effect of vaccines, or ridicule our ranks through hate monger channels like LibsofTikTok. Democrats treat us as a disorder, or disease, that hopefully could be cured through sensible public policy.
But we’re not a “side-effect” and we aren’t a disease to be cured.
We’re not chronic outsiders because we choose to be. We’re chronic outsiders because everyone else wants us to be. Especially now. When everything is social. Social media. Social clubs. Therapy to help you be more social. Everything is run by extroverts under Capitalism. It’s all about getting out there, and faking it until you make it, and hustle and grind culture.
Not all socializing is good. Not all social people and extroverts are good people; in fact a great many of them are not. There’s a quote about the Holocaust to the effect of the Nazi’s and their sympathizers were always kind, open, and generous, and the resisters, not so much.
Do I believe Autistic people deserve to be your overlords, at least for a few decades so you can feel the boot for a change? Yes, yes I do. Do I honestly think we’d be better; probably not. We are only human, I’m afraid.
With that in mind, if we are no different then we shouldn’t be treated differently. We shouldn’t be left with limited options, fighting for recognition in a world that fears and mistrusts us. In a world that forgets our heroes and our contributions, and even pretends that they are their own. In a world that constantly sets up pitfalls for us because they refuse to see us as much as they claim we refuse to see them.
We see you just fine. We’re just sick of being made to feel lesser, because we’re not, and never were.