I Like Being Autistic
Recently, US Eugenicist in Chief and conspiracy theory trafficker RFK Jr. held an unsurprising, yet somehow still shocking, news conference in which he reduced humanity’s existence to economic utility and normative behavior. RFK has promised to find the cause of the “autism epidemic” - which doesn’t exist - by September, and has added David Geier, a hack previously fined for practicing medicine without a license, to the clown convention in D.C.
RFK stated that autistic people will “never pay taxes”, “never hold a job”, “never play baseball”, “never write a poem” and “never go out on a date”. Speaking only for myself, the IRS and git would disagree with the first couple of quotes, and while I’ve never played baseball, I enjoyed being a soccer keep back in the day. And I play a mean game of Rocket League these days. Holy cow!
I can also write poems. As an example, here’s how I feel right now:
The path we beat erased by lies,
the scars they carved now hiding.
The art we made unseen by eyes,
whose masters caused their blinding.
The good we did destroyed by bluffs,
so they could have it all.
The love we gave not good enough,
our most to you too small.
Let’s call it “Unseen, Too Small”. Maybe I’ll pop it into a future song, because autistic people can also be composers and musicians.
I’ve even gone out on dates! Am I awkward? Sure, I might have to look away from you to pay better attention to you. Am I interesting? Yep, as long as you love deep dives into how mechanical watchmaking was the demoscene of the 1800s. Do I own a blazer? Two.
Within the broader context of the regime erasing diversity mentions from… everywhere, RFK’s intentionally dehumanizing language makes perfect sense. As with virtually all other disadvantaged groups and minorities, RFK and his co-conspirators are unambiguously signaling to autistic people that we’re not welcome. (Elon, that goes for you, too, so let’s get you to Mars on a super fast rocket real soon.)
Just a few weeks after the regime came to power, I wrote an article called “Autism, Algorithms and Authoritarianism”, in which I touched on Nazi Germany’s Aktion T4 euthanasia program and Hans Asperger’s role in the murder of autistic people. Now, here we are in 2025 America, being told by unqualified lunatics in our government that we are life unworthy of life. That autism needs to be cured. That it needs to go away. That the autistic mind needs to disappear.
We’re not going away. We were here since the dawn of humanity, before the word “vaccine” had been uttered once.
An autistic person’s brain is inseparable from its autistic, naturally occurring and literally physical wiring. I am who I am in part due to my brain being autistic, and I like being me. Autism is core to my identity, lived reality and existence. You can’t remove autism and still have me.
Go cure cancer; it kills people and brings actual sorrow.
Does autism bring its own challenges? Absolutely, and it’s different for everyone, just like how there exists a variety of challenges for every human being of every configuration. I have my own difficulties in human relations, and severe problems in the sensory realm. It’s classified as a disability for good reason, and some autistic people have higher support needs than others. That doesn’t make them a burden, less valuable or not worthy of living the way they were made.
Some days are tough, but if you’re the parent of an autistic child and you feel they’re a burden, or that autism is destroying your family (another comment made by RFK), you need to redirect your blame and attention elsewhere entirely.
RFK’s elimination rhetoric is stunningly ableist, and we’re in the middle of a dangerous escalation of eugenics-driven anti-science conspiracy theories, anti-vaccine propaganda and anti-neurodiversity sentiment from government and others.
We’re at a moment in history where everyone gets to pick a side, right now, on this subject and many other related, clustered ones. There are two sides. You can pick a side by taking action. You can pick a side by not taking action. You can pick a side by waiting too long. But you, like me and everyone else, are unequivocally being forced to choose a side.
Let us not be unseen, too small. Do not be unseen. Do not be too small.