Permit me a rant. I need to make my position clear and get something off my chest, so as to allow me to get back and focus on more productive issues.
I keep seeing autism getting dragged into all the identitarian nonsense. I keep biting my tongue. But if an autistic person doesn't call it out, then who will.
Just as I go public with a big push on autism, there is controversy all over the press involving a political crank on the autism spectrum, someone who presents this description: "non-binary, asexual, polyamorous relationship anarchist who is on the autism spectrum."
Christ alive! That's just what autistic people struggling to obtain the most minimal help need! All of these creeps causing trouble are comfortably off and comfortably placed with some organisation or institution or other, furthering their interests, extending their power. And its pillocks to autistic people struggling to survive.
Of course, as a "straight white male," I am not allowed a view. Until recently, autism was largely associated with males, with the ratio of male to female considered to be 7:1. Try and speak as an autistic male now! We all have it easy! (Right!) There are many fine female voices on autism, I follow quite a few. Then there are the cranks pushing an identitarian agenda.
The cranks and fruitloops are now taking hold of autism and using it as their political plaything, to be used and abused in furtherance of whatever doollally causes they favour, causing outrage and derision. Of course, the people outraged heap a whole load of abuse onto autism and autistic people. That is grossly unfair. This has got squat to do with autism and everything to do with loud, active, and vocal minorities whose crankiness chimes with the fashionable nonsense.
Amazingly, having been an outsider my entire life, I am still an outsider as an autist confronted by the dominant public face of autism. I can speak as an autistic person, but my voice is drowned out by the cranks and the reaction to them. I now find myself explaining that said crankiness is not the view of all autistic people. As ever, it is minority positions being sponsored by who knows what in the dominant culture. I have a view - if something is in the dominant institutions and organisations and is mainstream, it is garbage. I'm on the outside.
This does untold damage to thecause of autism awareness and acceptance. There are times when I think it really is hopeless. Identity politics is an absolute scourge, a pernicious virus. And the fact that it is cannibalising autism is something I deeply resent. The only way of fighting backis to cleave to reality and advance a grounded understanding and trust that people have the good sense to distinguish the cranks and the fruitloops from the sane and the sober. But that's not the way politics and culture is going at the moment.
I'm calling this autism chic out. It's nothing to do with autism and everything to do with favoured cultural and political positions and values. They are NOT favoured by me!
There really are times when you do start to think it's all hopeless. I spend a long time promoting autism awareness and acceptance. The problem is that autism seems to be the 'in' thing. It's constantly trending on social media. And why? Because it's caught up in the insanity of identity politics as well as in climate politics (Thunberg as "autistic climate justice campaigner" on her Twitter account, weaponising autism as sword and shield). It all invites the criticism of people outraged at the lunacy, with their political criticisms coming to rain down heavily on autism, as in a condition of cranks and fruitloops.
It is reported that the "Roald Dahl books were neutered by woke consultants aged eight to 30 - led
by 'non-binary, asexual, polyamorous relationship anarchist who is on the autism spectrum'" That's a revelation which has provoked atorrent of abuse sent in the direction of autistic people. As hard as
you try to explain autism to the great public, cranks, fruitloops, and dodgepots are doing their damnedest to connect autism with lunacy in the public mind.
Take it as read that I am vehemently opposed to these culturalist loons crawling all over a decadent,
degenerate, and decaying culture. As an autistic person, I have no compunction at all in rudely, bluntly, forthrightly, and accurately calling them out.
I've noticed something for a couple of years now. The long-standing identification of autism with males is being challenged and broken. Until recently, the ratio of male autists to female autists was said to be something like 7:1. Check social media, though, and by far and away the most vocal autists are female. A lot of them are perfectly sane, I follow a few of them. A lot of them are complete and utter cranks, riding the identitarian wave, and doing the cause of autism awareness and acceptance untold damage. I wouldn't want to be associated with such cranks, so don't blame the general public from expressing their animosity. But these vocal minorites are not representative at all, and are more concerned with promoting themselves and their idiot causes.
These people area positive menace to autism and the cause of autism acceptance, and need to be called out.
But, of course, as "straight white males" are no longer allowed to have a view. In an age of identitarian nonsense, "straight white male" is a term of abuse. I don't give a damn. These people are cranks and lunatics. Most of all, they are mediocrities.
Read the comments on these reports, read the abuse of autism and autistic people. This has got squat to do with autism and everything to do with ... I hate even using the stupid word - 'woke.' Here's another issue that 'progressive' 'enlightened' 'be kind' 'liberals' have managed to make a travesty of.
As ever, I shall carry on in my own special way, in the hope of the day that people will be back on nodding terms with reality. As every day passes, that hope fades further and further into the distance.
