This week, the New York Times published a piece entitled ‘Why I Am More And More Ambivalent About My Autism Diagnosis’. It was, for want of a more articulate phrase - utter trash. Arguably, it should never have been commissioned, let alone got through the editorial process, for reasons that will become apparent.
Whilst I am frustrated with the author of the piece, I’m not going to dispute her experiences and understanding of her own autism because that would not be fair. Still, her article is not only full of inaccuracies asserted as statements of facts and dismissive of other people’s lived experience, but it glosses over anything which undermines her arguments.
So, without further ado, let’s look at everything that the New York Times got wrong.
Autism is not a mental illness
Firstly, autism is not a mental illness. Whilst mental illnesses also sit under the neurodivergent umbrella, autism is not a mental illness. It's a developmental disability. It’s also not, as the author later describes it, a ‘psychological or neurological disorder’. It’s a difference, it doesn’t mean it’s a disorder.
An autism diagnosis is still highly stigmatised
The stigma around autism goes far beyond people treating autistic people differently in social situations or a bit of mild bullying.
Did you know having an autism diagnosis can prevent you from emigrating to countries such as Australia and New Zealand? Or that in the UK during the pandemic, young autistic people with no other conditions had Do Not Resucitate orders placed on them without their consent? Just 16% of autistic adults in the UK are in full-time paid employment. Autistic people continue to be institutionalised in the UK, sometimes for decades. In the US, autism diagnosis or suspicions that a person might be autistic is now being used to deny trans people essential, life-saving healthcare.
There may be less stigma in some circles, but the argument that there is no social stigma is demonstrably false.
We’re not romanticising our lives but so what if we were?
I am someone who talks about neurodivergence online. I’m also someone with bright purple hair, excellent fashion sense and eyeliner so sharp it could reach through the screen and poke the viewer.
I have shown myself stimming, having meltdowns, explaining how my brain works. I do not share these insights because I am trying to aestheticise my life, I do it in part because the reason I never got diagnosed was because autism representation never looked like me. By and large, it still does not.
When autistic people post online, we are just posting online. Just because we do not match up to the narratives of tragedy and pity most people have become accustomed to seeing disabled people as fulfilling does not mean that we are glorifying or aestheticising our lives. And even if we were - what would be the problem with that? We are pretty glorious and some of us are quite aesthetic. What is so terrible of recognising a difference and celebrating that?
What is so wrong with disabled people showing ourselves as happy, beautiful, fun people? Why are you so angry about that?
Formal medical diagnoses are not accessible, nor do they require help
Clinical evaluations for autism are cost prohibitive, have significant ramifications for people (e.g. not getting insurance, being able to emigrate, being denied other healthcare). Cis women, trans people, people of colour, people with other disabilities are all regularly failed by autism assessments which rely on outdated and archaic understandings of autism.
In the UK, we have a backlog of 122,000 people waiting for autism assessment on the NHS. If help is contingent on only ever having a formal diagnosis, then almost no one who might need help is able to access it. It's also untrue that getting care is contingent on a clinical diagnosis (let alone the fact that, again, autism is not a mental illness). Most autistic people find that even after clinical diagnosis, there is no support available from the medical system. Support largely comes in the form of knowledge, learning and solidarity from the community.
Autism is not the new hysteria
It’s difficult to even know where to start with this one. Comparing the rise of autism diagnosis to hysteria reeks of sexism, but moreover, fails to recognise that at no point was hysteria (or arguably, anorexia) an aesthetically acceptable mental illness. Whilst hysteria might have been represented in artwork (largely by male artists), the diagnosis of hysteria was a diagnosis rooted not in medicine but in sexism. Women were diagnosed with hysteria for everything from a headache to depression, with cures ranging from institutionalisation to clitoridectomies (a type of genital mutilation).
Secondly, suggesting that the rise in autism advocates is a white-women thing either wilfully ignores or conveniently erases autistic people of colour, many of whom advocate not only for more diverse representation within autistic spaces but moreover recognition of the ways racism and ableism are deeply intertwined.
Labels - in the current world - are not fundamentally bad
I will never understand the argument that, in the current world, labels which recognise our differences are inherently bad, especially when people are electing to use a label to describe themselves (as opposed to having a label imposed upon them).
Perhaps the reason people feel the need to state their identity is because the world treats people's immutable characteristics differently, impacting the ways we move through the world and impacting every aspect of our lives. Not actively identifying with a label is not going to stop you getting hate-crimes in the street, won’t stop discrimination in the workplace. At least the way I see it, using labels to distinguish between the experiences of people is an acknowledgement of the fact systems of oppression exist and that people go through the world differently.
I'm not going to tell anyone how they should relate to an identity they hold. God knows I've dealt with my own struggles in coming to understand and accept myself.
But likewise, who gave you permission to say that it's disempowering to embrace an identity and make it a core part of who you are?
Fundamentally, everyone has an identity. But, if you conform to a dominant norm, you never have to state that and therefore don't think of it as identifying, you just think of it as being. If you're straight, you never have to 'come out'. If you're neurotypical, you never have to tell anyone that. This is where this thinking is fundamentally flawed; it reinforces the idea that some people are 'other' whilst encouraging people to not acknowledge and find acceptance in their differences.
It’s worth noting that the article itself is an Opinion piece, but we must remember the context; that autistic people are rarely given any opportunity in mainstream media, let alone a platform as significant as the New York Times, and what is said even as the opinion of a single autistic person so often comes to represent us, even if many in the community vehemently oppose what she says.
And on a platform as large as the New York Times, the editorial team has a responsibility to do better. It’s the bare minimum.
Thank you for supporting Eccentricities. If you want to support me as a young autistic writer, you can: