Autism is so hot right now

Inconveniently, not everybody with autism gets to be Elon Musk

Photo by Peter Burdon on Unsplash

Take what you want, said God. Take it – and pay for it.
Spanish proverb

Autism is having a moment. In fact, being “neurospicy” seems to have been in vogue for quite some time now.

Inevitably, we’ve reached the stage where a genre of ‘coming out as autistic’ articles has emerged. Most non-Americans won’t have heard of Richard Hanania. All you need to know for the purposes of this article is that he’s a right-wing culture warrior. Conservatives aren’t in the habit of playing the victim card – or perhaps it’s more accurate to say they play different victim cards to progressives – so I was startled when I received his latest newsletter.

In it, he reprints a list of autism symptoms and notes:  

The Asperger’s symptoms read as if they were written by somebody who followed me around as a child and decided to just make a list of the quirks they observed. Whether it’s good to actually diagnose these things is a different matter; I think being labeled with a disorder at a certain age could’ve easily turned into a self-fulfilling prophecy and made overcoming some of the downsides of Asperger’s more challenging, and it’s probably not an accident that greater “mental health awareness” among younger generations has coincided with worsening mental health.

You’ll note Hanania is ambivalent about his diagnosis of autism. Hardarse right-winger that he is, he warns that greater societal awareness around autism – and more accommodations being made for those with autism – does not necessarily constitute progress.     

I agree.

My dog in this fight 
Not long after my daughter started “Big School”, her teacher contacted her mother and me. She informed us that while our daughter was not poorly behaved, she was worried about her. She never put her hand up in class and often sat in the playground eating her lunch alone.

Her mother was concerned, but not overly so, by this revelation.

I was less sanguine. “This is how it begins,” I thought to myself.

About a year later, we got another call from the school. This time our youngest child, who had likewise started kindergarten a few weeks prior, had freaked out at a school assembly. When the assembly ended, he first froze and then made a heroic dash for freedom (he planned to run back home, as he later explained to me). The headmistress captured him and, when my son clammed up, left him to calm down. She assumed he would soon regulate his emotions and then explain his actions. Two hours later, he was still sitting silently in her office with his arms firmly crossed. Not for the last time, one of us had to go and pick him up from school early.

We’ve subsequently spent many, many hours traipsing around GPs, paediatricians, psychologists, occupational therapists etc. Nobody is sure what causes autism. It’s distributed relatively randomly, though females either aren’t as susceptible to autism and/or are more skilled at ‘masking’ it (i.e. pretending to be normal). But it’s at least partly hereditary.

Hello, my name is Nigel, and I’m autistic. At least, like seemingly everyone else nowadays, I think I am. 

The spectrum
The thing about spectrums is that everyone exists somewhere along them. So, when people breezily declare they’re “on the spectrum”, they’re not wrong. But this is equivalent to saying sexuality is a spectrum and that even the most enthusiastic heterosexual might consider other options if, for instance, cooped up in a single-sex environment (a prison, a navy battleship, a monastery).

If you’re straight, you might hypothetically be capable of ‘turning’. But 99.99 per cent of the time that won’t happen. So, it’s a little disingenuous to declare you’re “queer” to signal you are intriguingly bohemian and open-minded. I wouldn’t be surprised to discover those who are genuinely same-sex attracted have mixed feelings about seemingly every progressive under 40 identifying as queer, at least in part to purloin some intersectional status points. (I write purloin because few ‘queers’ have endured any of the drawbacks of being part of a minority group.)

I feel much the same whenever I hear people casually identifying themselves or others as autistic. That noted, I’m not the autism-diagnosis police. If you’re not (significantly) autistic but want to claim to be, go for your life – so long as you’re not using resources meant for people who need them. I regard it as a rum state of affairs there’s now social cachet in having suboptimal social skills. But many aspects of the contemporary world perplex me as I approach senior citzenship.

Before disparaging those who self-diagnose with autism any further, I should point out this is a category I fall into. In my younger years, I asked several healthcare professionals qualified to make a diagnosis if I was autistic. All responded with some variation of, “I’m not into labelling people, maaaan!” (OK, it wasn’t the 1960s, and they might not have actually said “maaaan”. But I’m sure they would of if they could of.)

If you Google or ChatGPT, “Am I autistic?”, you’ll quickly be directed to a list of tell-tale symptoms, such as the ones Hanania referenced:   

·       Difficulty with social interactions and social language

·       Not understanding emotions well or having less facial expression than others

·       Not using or understanding nonverbal communication, such as gestures, body language, and facial expression

·       Conversations that revolve around themselves or a certain topic

·       Speech that sounds unusual, such as flat, high-pitched, quiet, loud, or choppy

·       An intense obsession with one or two specific, narrow subjects

·       Unique mannerisms, repetitive behaviours, or repeated routines

·       Becoming upset at slight changes in routines

·       Memorizing preferred information and facts easily

·       Clumsy, uncoordinated movements, including difficulty with handwriting

·       Difficulty managing emotions, sometimes leading to verbal or behavioural outbursts, self-injurious behaviours, or tantrums

·       Not understanding other peoples’ feelings or perspectives

·       Hypersensitivity to lights, sounds, and textures

Ticking the boxes
Like Hanania, I read lists like that and wonder if someone was following me around in my youth. At 52, I still tick many of the boxes – appalling handwriting, sensitivity to light, noise and textures, a flat affect, repetitive behaviours, a strong preference for routine and an intense obsession with one or two specific, narrow subjects. (‘The changing class structure of Australia/the Anglosphere from the Keynesian to the neoliberal era’, perchance.) My critics could reasonably argue this blog is the digital equivalent of a one-sided conversation that revolves solely around myself and a handful of topics I’m inexplicably and inexhaustibly fascinated by.

It’s not so much that I’ve diagnosed myself as Rain Manish as that countless other people have – euphemistically and usually with no malice in their hearts – done so. Though nobody used terms such as “autistic” or “spectrumy” until relatively recently. Even now, they are not the words most commonly applied to me. Well, within my earshot, at least.

Since I can remember, I’ve been told by others I’m anti-social, arrogant, earnest, introverted, laconic [I kind of like that one], passive, odd, offhand, quiet, sad, shy, socially awkward, standoffish, taciturn [that one is kinda cool too], tightly wound, timid, very direct, very dry [I get that a lot], very honest, weird or withdrawn. My first serious girlfriend used to call me “Aspy Boy”. My own flesh and blood – who, as we’ve established, are in no position to cast stones – periodically declare, “Dad, you are so autistic.” To the extent it’s been feasible, I’ve arranged my life so I can spend the maximum possible time alone in a quiet room reading and writing.

Four years ago, in what I’ve subsequently come to think of as ‘The Great Mumbrella Scandal of 2020’ (it was a bad year for a lot of people), I needlessly antagonised most of my industry by writing an article arguing the print media was in the final stages of its death spiral and the most sensible course of action for journos was to accept that reality and start thinking seriously about a Plan B. The headline – which I’m pretty sure I didn’t write and that I suspect many people didn’t read past – didn’t endear me to my peers: Print journalists: Your current careers are, or soon will be, over. Accept it. (Speaking of bluntly announcing the unvarnished truth, I feel duty-bound to warn any aspiring autistics reading that this does not always end happily, be it in professional, social or romantic situations.)   

In my defence, subsequent events would seem to have proved my argument correct.

In defence of my detractors, I could probably have worded that argument in a way that wasn’t liable to be construed as me dancing on the grave of the newspaper and magazine industries. It’s rather late in the day to try to explain myself, but that wasn’t my intention. If I could wave a wand and bring back the salad days of Truman Capote, Gay Talese, Joan Didion and Hunter S. Thompson, I would. But it’s simply not going to happen.

For the last half-decade, I’ve been a tech journalist/content provider and spent plenty of time dealing – mainly harmoniously – with individuals who aren’t likely to win any gold medals for their people skills. Of course, I’m not going to either and that’s precisely what has appealed to at least some of my clients.

Those with high-functioning autism often demonstrate a rage to master. I don’t recommend anyone follow in my footsteps – the pay is shithouse – but after becoming a voracious reader at a young age, I shortly thereafter decided that I wanted to be a writer. Now, you can say what you like about my writing career – no doubt, opinions will vary – but you can’t tell me I haven’t devoted an outrageous amount of time and effort to it.

So, despite my lack of a formal diagnosis, the weight of evidence would seem to suggest I am indeed autistic. 

I haven’t revealed all of the above to harvest sympathy or make a belated bid to enter the Oppression Olympics.

I’ve shared it because I feel I must put in a good word for the NDIS. And because I’m dismayed about the growing romanticisation of autism, primarily by people who are obviously oblivious to its often life-deranging impacts. And because I believed it would be cowardly not to honestly lay my autism backstory on the table – for the first time ever – before explaining why I’m on a unity ticket with Hanania.

The NDIS represents all that is noble about Australia
I regularly despair over the state of Australian politics. But schemes such as the NDIS keep hope flickering in my breast that the better angels of our nature do exist and can, on occasion, manifest themselves.

The NDIS was a Labor initiative. But the Coalition embraced it and has administered it for much of its existence. Say what you will about Abbott, Turnbull and Morrison, but you can’t accuse them of starving the NDIS of funding. Quite the opposite, which brings me to my main point.

Two things about the NDIS are true at the same time. It’s been both a gargantuan leaky honeypot, and an absolute godsend for families like mine.

I don’t wish to disparage NDIS providers. Most are hard-working, patient, warm, compassionate people who are doing the Lord’s Work. But at this juncture, it’s no secret bad apples have been gaming the system. It also seems likely that plenty of otherwise good apples have been padding their bills, safe in the knowledge nobody will likely notice given the taxpayers are picking the tab.

(When our children were first getting “put on a plan”, at least one person we dealt with warned us not to reveal to service providers what budget they had been allocated. If memory serves, the quote was, “If they know you have $10,000 of funding for the year, their annual bill will come to $9,999.99”.) 

That’s one side of the NDIS.

The other side is the Australian electorate collectively telling families in extremis, “Don’t worry about the money side of things; just concentrate all your attention on getting your loved one the care they urgently need.” Not many societies provide that type of largess to the vulnerable and largely powerless. And I suspect the free care is especially important for parents of children with autism given it can take an autistic child – or an autistic adult – a long, long, long time to warm up. Without the NDIS, lots of low and even middle-income parents/patients would struggle to afford a psychologist. Even high-income ones would be unlikely to keep paying $200 a pop out of their own pocket if the first 5/10/20 sessions were a disaster.   

Barring a strange turn of events, Bill Shorten will never achieve his life’s ambition of being PM. But if he can successfully reboot the NDIS into long-term sustainability, he will have done the nation a great service and rightly be remembered as an important figure in Australian political history.  

I don’t want to trespass against my children’s privacy any further. But I can report the Australian taxpayers have yielded a pleasing return on the not-inconsiderable investment they’ve made in them. Neither of them sits alone in the playground these days. Who knows what the future holds, but both seem on track to become productive members of society. (There’s no cure for autism, but early intervention can work wonders.)       

Glamorous and non-glamorous autism
In his essay, Hanania presents the following horseshoe theory of autism. (Given his line of work, I assume he was inspired by the horseshoe theory of politics.) Here’s Hanania’s diagram: 

This brings us to the whole “autism superpowers” nonsense. As Hanania notes, you are disproportionately likely to succeed – especially in today’s digital economy – if you possess both freakishly high intelligence and a penchant for obsessive behaviour.

There’s a widespread but mistaken assumption the autistic get a double helping of the book learnin’ kind of intelligence as a cosmic compo payout for getting a meagre serving at the emotional intelligence buffet.

Contrary to popular belief, it doesn’t work that way. You can have any kind of IQ and be autistic. If anything, it seems those with autism cluster disproportionately to the left of the bell curve.

I’m not sure combining low intelligence and monomania would end well. But an individual of average intelligence who is obsessive is likely to outcompete a colleague (of similarly average intelligence) who isn’t. But they are hardly going to become the next Einstein.

Even most autistic individuals at the pointy end of the IQ distribution never put much of a dent in the universe. A handful – Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, to name the usual suspects – do. Survivor bias means the public focuses on the tiny cohort of hyper-successful autistic individuals while ignoring the much larger number of less successful, lower-profile ones.

While we’re busting misconceptions, I should also point out that autistic individuals are in no way morally superior to non-autistic individuals. Maybe it’s the case women are morally superior to men, non-Caucasians are morally superior to Caucasians (and those sneaky Caucasian-adjacent social climbers), migrants are morally superior to native-borns, the disabled are morally superior to the able-bodied, and trans individuals are morally superior to, well, everybody. Hundreds of millions of people – almost all better equipped to understand other peoples’ feelings and perspectives than I – now apparently believe they exist within such a Manichean soap opera.        

But I’m here to tell you that the autistic are no more virtuous than the non-autistic. Sharp-eyed readers will have picked up a couple of mentions of Asperger’s. The term Asperger’s has fallen out of fashion in recent times. That’s because Austrian doctor Hans Asperger was a Nazi. Not in the modern sense of the word – that is, someone who has strayed slightly from current year progressive orthodoxy – but in the old-timey sense that he was, you know, an actual Nazi. A eugenicist who may have knowingly sent children to their deaths. BTW, it wasn’t Asperger who popularised the use of ‘Asperger’s’ or ‘Asperger’s Syndrome’; he described the patients he was studying as “autistic psychopaths”. Lending weight to the arguments of the nominative determinists, Asperger had Asperger’s (and was a psychopath).

(Do I realise a not insubstantial proportion of you readers will likely have read that last sentence and immediately recognised the temporal non sequitur? Yes. Was I going to let it ruin the joke? No.)

While we’re on Nazis, you may recall a higher-profile one who was well-known for his lack of close relationships, frequent tantrums, monomaniacal obsessions and long, rambling monologues. 

Of course, it’s not only non-autistics who get caught in neurodiversity’s blast range. Autism sufferers are at significantly greater risk of anxiety, addiction, depression, mood swings and poor impulse control. Many autistic people also have unusual sleep and dietary habits.

That autism exacts a heavy toll makes evolutionary sense. Humans are tribal creatures and exile from the tribe meant near-certain death up until about five minutes ago. Autism involves being repeatedly expunged from the tribe. Or, at the very least, believing you have been expunged from it (and have little chance of ever working out how to rejoin it). That inescapable sensation of imminent social exile is challenging to live with. Even, I’m guessing, for all-powerful tech billionaires who now get invited to the type of parties Jeffrey Epstein used to host, and who now have the money to buy all the sycophants they require.      

What do you expect of a man with autism?  
As many high-functioning autistics do, I spent a lot of time reading psychology books when I was younger to try to work myself (and the rest of humanity) out. The best – and best-written – one was Games People Play (1964). You may have seen it on Boomers’ bookshelves – it was a bestseller, mainly because Berne is such an engaging, perceptive and funny author.

I wouldn’t be surprised to learn Berne was a (very) high-functioning autistic. He writes about human interactions (‘transactions’ to use his terminology) as if he’s observing them from the perspective of a Martian anthropologist. And despite his many dazzling insights into relationships, he was divorced no fewer than three times before he died aged 60.

Like it says on the tin, Berne’s most famous work examines the games people play, one of which is ‘Wooden Leg’. This, belatedly, brings me back to the introduction of this article.

I grew up in the 1980s. My parents grew up in the 1950s. Neither they nor I knew much about autism until I was well into adulthood. Up until a couple of decades ago, most people thought of the severe, non-verbal kind of autism whenever autism was mentioned. (The whole “on the spectrum” thing is a recent development.)

Despite all those psychology books I read, I somehow made it well into my twenties before even starting to notice I might exhibit some of the behaviours associated with autism. As those who read psychology books are wont to, I diagnosed myself with many, many conditions, but I’m not even sure if autism was ever one of them. (It’s not just soon-to-be-made-redundant legacy media workers who can live in denial for prolonged periods.)

One fortunate aspect of the archaic ignorance, if not outright prejudice, I’ve described is being autistic never became central to my identity. I never believed it entitled me to any special treatment. Fortunately, neither did anyone else. As intimated above, I didn’t even recognise I might be autistic myself – and not just be someone who coincidentally happened to share a few quirky traits with autistic people – until well after my children were diagnosed. When I was in my mid-forties.

As a result, I suspect my autism has been less debilitating than if accommodations had been made for me from kindergarten onwards. Hanania also believes the lack of accommodations afforded to him, combined with his desperate desire to find a girlfriend, forced him to put the effort in to develop passable social skills.    

I realise this Musing has now stretched to Tolstoyan length. But please bear with me as I briefly make my last point. Here’s Berne explaining the downside of playing the victim:

The thesis of “Wooden Leg” is, “What do you expect of a man with a wooden leg?” Put that way, of course, no one would expect anything of a man with a wooden leg except that he should steer his own wheelchair. On the other hand, during World War II there was a man with a wooden leg who used to give demonstrations of jitterbug dancing, and very competent jitterbug dancing, at Army Hospital amputation centers... As long as someone with a real, exaggerated or even imaginary disability is content with his lot, perhaps no one should interfere. But the moment he presents himself for psychiatric treatment, the question arises if he is using his life to his own best advantage, and if he can rise above his disability.

All of us – including those of us with high-functioning autism – can choose to focus on the bad cards we’ve been dealt. And almost all of us have been dealt at least one life-deforming card. But we are also likely to have been dealt some good cards. (I’m fully aware I was.)

As you get older, you start to wonder if any card is intrinsically good or bad, or if it’s context-dependent. If I hadn’t spent so long trying to decipher the mysteries of the school playground status hierarchy as a child, I might never have developed an abiding interest in how societies are structured as an adult. In that case, this humble Substack newsletter would not today be celebrating its 100^th edition. 

I am deeply thankful my children have received so much support from so many quarters and that they will, fingers crossed, be spared going through much of what I did. But I also sometimes wonder if they are growing up in an identity-politics-addled society that is encouraging them to play Wooden Leg rather than compelling them to do the painstaking and often painful work required to attain the solid social skills they will need to thrive.

I don’t mean to suggest I’m deaf to the siren song of self-pity – far from it. But my inner Spock has always concluded it’s far better – both for the individuals in question and the wider society – for people to be one-legged jitterbug dancers than aggrieved wheelchair-sitters.