Gina-Marie An & Rosemary Pauley
Dr. Foss
April 30, 2020
ENGL 384
Autism and Identity: The Cure is Repressive
Throughout our Autism unit, we have discussed the ways in which autism has been devalued. Specifically, we have read instances of how medicine and medical research impacts the quality of life of an autistic person. Part 1 of Stuart Murray’s Autism begins with a contrast between stress on medical research versus improved education and which of the two is more beneficial for the autistic community. Murray suggests that “An improvement in the quality of people’s lives will come more quickly not with high level medical science, but rather with improved education or with increased public spending on disability programs…” (Murray, 9-10). He suggests that through an emphasis on medical solutions and a cure, autistic characteristics begin to be viewed through an ableist society as a negative characteristic that needs to be changed (Murray, 10). This reinforces ableist stereotypes that autism is problematic, undesirable, and in need of change and even full erasure. Through this reinforcement, autistic persons are stripped of their identities and they are isolated in their experiences with their disability. Erasure of the disability acts as an erasure of a part of their identity, which is associated with pity and negativity and makes the value of what is so key to their personhood worthless to society.
Medical emphasis on a cure is just another way of creating a social divide between neurotypical people and autistic people. They are cast out and ostracized because they don’t fit the definition of what our ableist society sees as conventional. For many researchers working towards a cure, curing is meant to take away autistic traits and get as close to neurotypical as possible. This notion of essentially taking away a key part of an autistic person’s identity devalues their personhood and separates them further from neurotypical people. Murray sums up this problem in pushing for a cure in saying that “the word ‘cure’ is a threat, a barely disguised attempt to define difference as something inherently negative and unwanted” (Murray, 90). Curing autism insinuates that autistic people are inferior to nondisabled people, and by that standard, they should be fixed to better fit into ableist society. A cure would be selling the lie that getting rid of autism is better for those who have it when really it would be beneficial for neurotypical people who do not understand the disability to make an effort in better understanding autism and disability itself. This push for the cure can be misleading and it doesn’t target improvement for the life and environment of autistic persons, it is targeted towards erasing the disability for the benefit of nondisabled people.
Lack of consideration for actual autistic experience further stretches the divide between abled and disabled. Personal freedom and independence are lost at the cost of misguided stereotypes on the autistic community. Autistic persons are deemed as unpredictable, even dangerous, and are not given equal opportunities to be independent individuals in society. For example, in Braddock and Parish’s An Institutional History of Disability, they discuss the ways in which history has revealed wrongful treatment of disabled persons in the medical realm. The medical world is described as impersonal and sterile; case studies and primary texts ignore the personal experiences of autistic people. As political activism came to a rise with the availability of more service programs, autistic lives are further socialized and infantilized through ableist social construction. These constructions ultimately try to decide what autism is and what the label of autism means for autistic people themselves. Braddock and Parish discuss this categorization and construction, saying, “The process of categorizing persons with disabilities into the minutiae of their impairments resulted in the development of specialized treatments and residential and educational services, but also established and reinforced notions of the boundaries between normalcy and aberrance in Western society” (Braddock and Parish, 13). The autistic label is not a label that others outside of the disability deserve to construct and define for their own benefit. It is even more offensive that they push these ideas onto autistic persons themselves and tell them who they are, without listening to autistic voices and wants. Abled persons who want to have ownership of this word are minimizing autistic people’s personal ability to have choice and demeaning them to be insufficient enough to be self-determinant. Creating more restrictions for the autistic community is only silencing their voices and limiting their opportunities for personal growth. Autistic persons are a part of this world as equally as any other person and deserve to create and dictate their own narratives and experiences.
Murray describes autism as being “built into the fabric of the person who has it… it is not an illness” (Murray, 90). Ableist standards expect people with autism to want to break away from their disability and strive for a neurotypical life as a default, not taking into account how valuable their disability actually is. Autism is such a prevalent and essential piece of who they are that attempting to take away their disability is like taking away their identity. Erasing part of someone’s existence because it doesn’t match the ableist viewpoints of our society is dehumanizing and insulting to autistic people and punishes them for not aligning with nondisabled experiences.
Ableist views dictate that autism is the problem rather than admitting that the way our society treats autistic people is unacceptable, and extend this lack of respect further by pushing for a cure that erases autism altogether. It is important to recognize how this might impact autistic lives. We should strive for more representation of their everyday experiences as well as their experiences with a society that stereotypes what autistic persons are capable of. This type of prejudice continues to limit autistic experience and growth; it is dehumanizing and covertly assumes the notion that having a disability is a negative characteristic that needs to be mended. Abled people have to recognize that their disability is a major part of who they are as a person and trying to fully erase that part of their identity is insensitive. Looking inward towards ableist society and perspective can mend this awful misrepresentation of the autistic community and close the gap between neurotypical people and autistic people.
Word count: 1029
I pledge. Rosemary Pauley and Gina-Marie An
Works Cited
Braddock, David, and Susan Parish. “An Institutional History of Disability.” Disability at the Dawn of the 21st Century and the State of the States, 2002, pp. 11–68.
Murray, Stuart. Autism. Routledge, 2012.
