Real Talk: Autism

April 16th, 2025

There is a lot going on in the world, and it’s difficult for me to pick up a single thread and follow it through in a meaningful way, especially when the people in charge insist on tangling every wire we own.

I’m not about to start targeting every person on my feed who is suddenly very cool with both authoritarian rule and Nazi beliefs for reasons any sane person can’t grasp, because that would be like shooting fish in a barrel that is obvious to everyone but them, and I’m trying to keep my social space free of stink.

But I do want to write about something today that could not be closer to my heart: autism, or ASD (autism spectrum disorder).

Specifically, let’s talk about the recent CDC study that suggests approximately 1 in 31 U.S. children will be diagnosed as on the spectrum.

My kid, one of the best humans I have ever met, is one of them.

The English version of the word “autism,” according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, did not enter the human lexicon until 1943, in a paper by Leo Kanner. The oldest known remains of a homo sapien dates back about 300,000 years (but we as a species may have been here as long as 550,000 to 750,000 years ago).

This means, if I’m doing my math right, that the first case of autism, as we define and call it, was found in 1943, after at least 301,943 years of absolutely no cases.

Well, damn. It sure has grown since. Crazy how there was no autism back then.

Humans are obsessed with boxes. Obsessed. We need our things to be organized, we need to name them, we need to recognize patterns, we need life to be binary or, you guys, we’re totally going to lose our shit. The thing about nature that is so mysterious and wonderful and perfect is that it does not give any fucks about our ideas. It does what it does and we struggle to keep up.

But we insist. We make smaller and smaller boxes and more specific labels and sometimes it helps and sometimes it hurts. In the case of ASD, I would say that the increased labeling helps; recognizing specific differences in thinking and behavior will help an individual get the care and resources they need.

But it will also increase the cases, just like inventing the first box of autism did.

We are more informed as a species now than we have ever been. We don’t live in the dark when it comes to the process of diagnosis; we know how to find shit out.

There was no way we were not going to find so many more neurodivergent people. With it being such a wide spectrum, I’m not sure I know many neurotypicals. Do you think every social expectation is natural and all human interaction feels good? As we get to know a person, they reveal the way they think to us more, and who doesn’t have divergent qualities? I’ve long argued that more of us (myself included) do, and the boxes will find us.

Now let’s talk about RFK Jr., one of the worst possible people in general but especially to have the job that he has. He is anti-science, through and through; if anyone writes in a comment “But he just wants us to eat healthy food!”, get the fuck out of here. He is not a single sound bite. None of us are. Saying the most obvious thing that anyone can say reveals nothing about your character; constantly denying and even lying about science says everything about who he actually is.

Let’s play a game where we explore what happens whether RFK Jr. is telling the truth or not about the causes of autism; today he claims autism is a disease caused by environmental factors, specifically toxins.

If what he’s saying is false, then every scientific study we’ve conducted on autism so far is correct, because none of the credible studies even suggest this. I am all for continuing research to see if any of this could be true, but right now, it’s not.

Ah, but what if he’s telling the truth? Well, explain it to me like I’m dumb: if this is all about caring for the environment and living healthier, then why has his president rolled back countless environmental protections and taken us out of the Paris Agreement while giving oil companies (who donated $445 million to his last campaign, per The Guardian) even more room (and tax breaks) to annihilate this planet and its people? That’s how RFK Jr. and Trump think we’re going to get healthy? Like, mind, body, and soul healthy? With… more toxins?

Come on, conspiracy theorists: I’m sure you got a good reason buried somewhere in that polluted swamp of cognitive dissonance.

As researched so far, autism is not a disease. It doesn’t come from vaccines. It is not preventable. It’s a part of who a person is. It’s not who my son is, but it’s a part of him, too.

I love him like crazy. I love so many people on the spectrum and I won’t stand for those who lie about them, or lie for those who lie.

I mentioned how informed we are earlier; we have more access to good information than any humans before us. It’s amazing! And yet so many of us continue to consume trash and speak trash and type trash, cycling infinite garbage in and garbage out to cover for our ignorance and biases that are apparent to everyone but ourselves.

Stop it.

For real. Just knock it the fuck off.

If you don’t know something, admit it! It’s okay! There’s so much I don’t know! Let’s learn together!

But what I cannot do is listen to this disorder of knowingness anymore. That’s the actual disease. I can’t keep seeing people mistake confidence for truth or decency. And I think it’s past time to have to convince adults that you don’t just educate yourself once in childhood and then you’re done; real adults know that learning is a lifelong process, and it takes real talk and real work to get there.

But then again: what the fuck do I know?