WARNING: This Is Not A Drill

As someone who is Autistic, I often feel like one of the few sane people in a world gone mad.

Earbuds and headphones exist, yet Neurotypicals insist on broadcasting both sides of a very loud phone conversation, or their personal taste in music, throughout a crowded public transport compartment.

Adults watch indulgently as small children snatch things that aren't theirs, and when the owner intervenes - calmly and politely and far more restrained than they need to be - suddenly it's an outrage that parents are supposed to actually supervise their children and teach them how to behave in public.

(Yes, I recognize that children don't learn how to Social In Public overnight, and it is a process, but that process won't start at all if parents are inconsistent with expectations.)

Every other day, there's a news story about someone demanding that someone else give up a prime seat because someone else wants to sit next to their romantic other, or because their precious baby wants a better view, and what do you mean you expect compensation for giving up something you paid for in exchange for their inferior option?

I often have to remind myself that not everyone thinks in Autistic Pattern Recognition, and maybe they don't see that teaching a child to accept someone else's no now will be beneficial in the future, whether as soft-teaching Consent, or in learning how to plan ahead as they grow and become independent. Maybe being briefly embarrassed that you forgot to switch to your headset will prevent being fired for accidentally sharing sensitive information, or a messy break-up when your significant other finds out they were talking dirty to a bus full of strangers.

In the grand scheme of things, however, these are temporary inconveniences that have systems in place to deal with them. Show your ticket to the attendant to prove that yes, this is your seat and you want to sit in it. Wait patiently for a grown adult to stop throwing a public tantrum over being asked to acknowledge that other people exist. Mute JK Rowling and take a day off Social Media.

What converns me very deeply are things like Robert Kennedy, Jr's obsession with Autism Misinformation, and what he plans to do about it. Namely, his plans for a National Autism Registry and 'Wellness Camps' where people on mood stabilisers for ADHD and other disorders will be banned from technology and put to work outdoors for months to years until they're "cured".

I know that saying "this is exactly what the Nazi's did!" sounds like an over-reaction now, but it is. The first people sent to Nazi Labor Camps weren't Jews, but the mentally ill and developmentally dealyed, framed as 'Burdens to Society/the taxpayer'. People with Downs Syndrome, Severe Autism or ADHD, and other High Support Needs.

Moving away from Nazi Germany, in the 1920s and 1930s, there were a lot of people with Special Needs, and LGBTQ+ individuals who were forcibly sterilised without their consent, and often explicitly against their consent, so that they couldn't 'pass it on' to the next generation.

A big cause of the increased number of people with Autism is that more Autistic people, now that they aren't being locked up in asylums, are marrying and having children, and those children are getting diagnosed. The other major reason is the Lost Generation of late-diagnosed Autistic women and girls, because until the early 00s, Autism was a "boy's disease", which excluded the majority of women, and men who didn't fit the traditional criteria to get diagnosed as children, but do fit the expanded 'less obvious' criteria as adults.

Autism isn't a communicable disease. It can't be spread like HIV or Measles. If this had been done optionally, as part of a National Study to see the rate of inherited vs non-inherited Autism, I might be less wary.

Coming from a man who actively spouts misinformation to the point that Autism Speaks has gone on record as disagreeing with him, it's hard to see this as anything but a precursor to the latest attempt to remove Autistic people from society.

Never mind that the majority of Autistic people do have jobs and pay taxes, contribute meaningfully to society whether they have a job or not, and go out of their way to be kind and respectful more than Neurotypical people do... that doesn't make the ones who can't any less worthy of human decency and dignity!

Having a job and paying taxes isn't what defines a human. How they treat other humans is.

We also shouldn't underestimate the damage that is already being done, even if the Autism Registry idea never comes into practice.

People who were in the process of getting an official Diagnosis, or were planning to get one, are actively choosing to delay that indefinitely. Self-diagnosed Autistics are being warned away from trying to get officially diagnosed. People who use health apps to track their health and remind them to take mediations are deleting and uninstalling those apps now that Kennedy announced his plan to use the data as part of the Registry.

All of this WILL have a negative impact on people with disabilities. From lack of diagnoses, to being fearful of disclosing their disability to ask for accommodations, to the Registry being used as a loophole to discriminate. Medical misinformation kills, and misinformation about Autism is NOT an exception.

If this was a novel, RFK Jr would find himself visited by three ghosts of Medical and Scientific Advancement, but I don't think we're that lucky...

If you want to learn more about Autism and how it affects people, reach out to the Autism Self-Advocacy Network, and check out my other stories on this topic.