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Is it cool to be autistic now?
That seems to be a question a lot of folks are exploring in online discourse, particularly on TikTok. And, honestly, a part of me gets why it has become a “hot topic”. Now more than ever, autistic people are visible on mainstream platforms, and their discussions of being neurodivergent have shattered preconceived notions on what autism is. Quinni, the autistic queer teen of the 2022 reboot of Heartbreak High, is the show’s breakout character. Chloé Hayden, the actress and disability rights activist who plays her, has been making waves by advocating for representation of autistic people. While some of the discourse I’ve seen is innocuous at best, most of it is harmful, even dangerous.
I first want to stress that no health matter is a trend, nor should anything health-related should ever be described as a trend. Sure, certain things get more exposure during certain times, and the exposure of those things reflect wider cultural concerns and processes of their respective eras. I’m definitely no expert, but I think the increased visibility of autistic people reveals how, generally, the pandemic has caused people to care less about how they’re perceived, how social norms are finally being reckoned with after shutdown has forced us to rethink how we move in the world. Even so, health conditions and disabilities are more than how many views a 20-second clip gets or the number of comments under a post. It’s real-life shit that can affect the core of who somebody is. To call autism a trend is disrespectful and downright ableist.
Honestly, as I type this, I’m scared shitless for when this gets published. I’ve always avoided internet debates; they stress the hell out of me, and I prefer to just observe and think to myself. Moreover, I’m still struggling to accept being autistic myself. My parents knew I was autistic since I was a child, and they were encouraged to seek an evaluation for me by doctors. I had all the signs: delayed and limited speech, lack of facial expressions or interest in playing with others, repetitive movements like rocking back and forth and shaking my head side to side, meltdowns, you name it. Ultimately, my parents never took me to a neuropsychologist because they didn’t want me in special education or be “different”. They wanted to raise me as if I was “just like everyone else”.
But I’ve always felt different. I never knew why. It was incredibly fucking isolating.
Long story short, my therapist clocked my autism from the very moment we met. It took me a year to book an appointment for an evaluation. On October 20, 2022, I was officially diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. I’ve written about it before on here, and I’ve been able to do so because I’ve been able to learn how to separate my “writer” persona from my true self. I can pour my heart out online, but also maintain some level of distance. Of course, they still bleed into each other and inform one another. And I still experience soul-crushing anxiety when an article of mine is published because I am being perceived.
In “the real world”, I rarely talk about being autistic. Not at work, not in grad school. I barely talk about it with family and my only two real friends. My partner is the one I’m most comfortable sharing my autism with, but even that’s hard sometimes. Letting go years of shame is hard. Most of the time, I’d rather be invisible and unknown. April is Autism Acceptance Month, and now more than ever these thoughts weigh heavy on my mind. Visibility is important, but it puts us at risk in a world that is not built for neurodivergent people. Even though an entire month is dedicated to honor autistic people, neurotypical voices still dominate the conversation because they believe that we can’t speak about our own experiences.
Autism isn’t new, but the way it’s perceived and researched is constantly changing. The concept of it was coined in 1911 by German psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler to describe a symptom of schizophrenia. Those with the “most severe” cases of the mental illness embodied an “autistic thinking” in which they had the infantile desire to avoid reality and indulge in fantasy and hallucinations. Bleuler credits Sigmund Freud and Havelock Ellis for the term’s etymological roots, both of whom employed the concept of “autoeroticism” in 1905 to explain hallucinations joined with self-soothing that preceded an infant’s interactions with their environment. This particularly sheds light on how, to this day, autistic adults are relentlessly infantilized.
Leo Kanner, Austrian-American psychiatrist and physician, is credited as the first person to acknowledge autism as we (somewhat) know it today. In 1943, he examined children, mostly boys and all of them white, with “extraordinary intelligence”, delayed speech, and an inclination towards routine. Kanner published an article claiming that autism was its own psychiatric disorder, and this eventually made its way to the second edition of the DSM. Bruno Bettelheim, Austrian psychologist, expands on this understanding and adds that autism was caused by unemotional mothers.
It won’t be until the 1960s to 70s when autism would be considered a developmental disorder with biological roots. However, the DSM III noted that an autism diagnosis can only happen if there is a “lack of interest in people, severe impairments in communication and bizarre responses to the environment, all developing in the first 30 months of life”. The revised version of the third edition, released in 1987, began to recognize autism as a spectrum even though it doesn’t actually use the term; it also dropped the “first 30 months” requirement. DSM IV breaks autism off into sections like Aspergers Syndrome and Childhood Disintegrative Disorder, while DSM V collapses all of these categories into a single label: autism spectrum disorder.
For the sake of getting to the point, I’ll stop here. The history of autism research and diagnosis is so expansive and nuanced, they can be the focal points of a series of articles. But it’s important to consider because, again, we’re continuously rethinking and re-evaluating what it means to navigate the world autistic, what it means to be born autistic. It’s also important because you can not only trace the dehumanization of autistic people as a whole, but also gender and race bias in autism studies and assessments. White children and cis boys are among the most diagnosed, with scientists claiming that it’s due to genetics. Autism in women and BIPOC are drastically underdiagnosed, or worse, misdiagnosed. When I was hospitalized for nearly killing myself at 15 years old, I was told by a white nurse that I’m a “bomb” that can “explode at any moment”. A white doctor diagnosed me with clinical depression and generalized anxiety disorder. Autism in Latinas is considered, to this day, “rare”. Now I realize that my depression and anxiety are real, but they stem from my autism.
Things are slowly improving. More women are getting diagnosed with autism than ever before, which means more autistic people are getting the help they need. Also, with increased awareness, people are now able to self-diagnose and seek the resources they need if a formal diagnosis is inaccessible to them. (Side note about self-diagnosis: our healthcare system sucks ass. Self-diagnosis is literally the only option for so many folks. I am privileged to have a formal diagnosis because of my father’s insurance and access to resources in New York City. Don’t be an asshole about people who self-diagnose.)
Why is all this important? According to some research, more than 66% of autistic adults are unemployed. Demographics reveal that 9 out of 10 autistic women have been sexually assaulted. Autistic people frequently have co-occurring physical and mental illnesses/disabilities; for example, 25% to 40% of autistic people experience epilepsy or seizures. 56% of autistic children in the U.S. live in low-income households. Finally, autistic people are 2.5 times more likely to have an early death.
And people still want to call it just a trend.
Intrinsically, there is nothing wrong with autistic visibility. If anything, there should be more of it. I want a world where autistic people can freely take up space, space that is free from ableism and accommodates us. It is the world that disables us, defines what types of bodies and thought processes are privileged, and makes us “other”.
We need to be more precise. Issues lie in white people wanting to deflect their whiteness by exploiting other marginalized identities and the sensationalization of mental illnesses and neurodivergent conditions that has flourished on social media for far too long.
On TikTok, @fazolibreadsticks eloquently illustrates that “whiteness gives us access to everything but oppression. That’s the only thing we can’t colonize. So, what do we do? We turn oppression into social currency.” They comment on the obsession with “uniqueness” the internet has; white people get “extra points” for belonging to identities that are marginalized like queer, trans, neurodivergent. A lot of white folks are blind to their white privilege and will do everything in their power to remove themselves from it. Obviously, any disabled person can be oppressed regardless of their race. However, because these identities are being claimed, they are being linked to radical politics. It’s as if white people become exempt from critique or are no longer privileged once they bring up what makes them “different”. They make themselves “less white”.
The worst part of it all is that, in my experience, it’s often the same “white neurodivergent LGBTQ+” individuals that will be the most performative or make spaces unsafe for BIPOC. I once flirted with a white girl whose mental illness was the subject of 90% of her online presence — she called me “exotic” and “spicy” upon learning my Puerto Rican ethnicity. There are countless stories in which this specific group of people will exacerbate their othered identities to casually be racist. Their obsession with labels and being discriminated against is a colonial desire to center whiteness.
Colonial power over difference and oppression coincides with how psychological and neuropsychological disorders become social media aesthetics. During the prime years of Tumblr, it was cool to be a “sad girl”. There were blogs dedicated to fetishistic images of self-harm. Pro-eating disorder posts utilizing “thinspiration” hashtags would get thousands of likes and reblogs. Gifs from Skins or Lana del Rey music videos were pillars of online circles. It was horrifying; young people with easy internet access absorbed these images and internalized them. Also, the meaning of what it meant to have a mental illness became diluted.
Similar things are happening on social media today concerning autism, particularly on TikTok. Autism has become memeified — there are a plethora of TikToks joking about having “autizzy” or a “touch of the ’tism”. Traits of autism like struggles with socializing or experiencing overstimulation are associated with cute or quirky aesthetics. There are videos of neurotypical people saying they’re “so autistic” for acting a certain way or that everyone’s “a little autistic”. Autistic girls are the new manic pixie dream girls. Altogether, medical misinformation can easily spread, and numerous young people are exposed to autism solely through these bite-sized clips or Instagram stories.
If you scroll through hashtags on TikTok like #actuallyautistic, you’d see mostly white content creators.
Accounts by autistic people that show the realistic intricacies of autism, and are actually funny, exist. @kaelynn_vp is an autistic therapist and advocate, who debunks myths about autism and was just recently the keynote speaker at a Gala for Project Hope Foundation, the largest autism-service provider in South Carolina. @asapskrr420 is a Black and trans autistic content creator, often sharing his special interests like Adventure Time and using hilarious audio clips to make jokes for autistic folks. @saranne_wrap is a Puerto Rican autistic TikToker who draws you in with her story time and get-ready-with-me videos. All of these creators are just a few of many.
I am still coming to terms with who I am. My therapist reassures me that this is okay. Despite toxic positivity and love yourself mantras on social media, I don’t have to be totally okay with myself right now. One thing that inspires me is seeing how many brave autistic people talk publicly about their traits, favorite stims, hyperfixations, things that cause them to shut down, and strengths that come from their autism.
Say it with me: Autism is not a trend. There’s this popular saying I’ve seen circulated in autistic circles: if you meet one autistic person, you’ve only met one autistic person. Not every autistic person has the same traits; embodiments of autism vary and intersect with race, gender, class, and more. Autism, however, is being exploited by certain white folks wanting to center themselves in oppression and is being subjected to sensationalization. The internet’s a fucked up place. That won’t change.
There are things we can change and work towards. We need to give adequate resources to autistics so we can not just survive, but succeed. We need to have autistics lead autism studies and conversations. We need to empower the voices of different autistic groups and people.
If you’re complaining that “everyone’s autistic now” and it’s just the latest internet trend, you’re missing the mark. What you’re probably really saying is that you don’t want to see autistic people on your screen because it bursts the bubble that societal values have cultivated. What you’re actually saying is that you refuse to see autistic people in a complex, multi-faceted way because it doesn’t align with the monolithic, stereotypical image you have in your mind. Autism has always been around, and it will continue to be around even as new research and ideas on it come to light. For now, I just want every autistic person, despite everything, to have a person they can rely on, give themselves grace, and be safe.