Why is talking about autism America's new favorite pastime?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’ve brought this up before, but something has been bothering me a lot about the explosion of references in our culture to autism recently. I feel like I can’t do anything without someone bringing up autism, the genius of someone with asperger’s syndrome, some scientist who has made some revolutionary insight into the causes of autism, a book written by a high-functioning autistic, or some such. In the recent past, I can think of all the Jenny McCarthy talk, all the Temple Grandin stuff, the John Robison, this story from today on NPR– but this is just a small showing of all the crap that’s been printed about autism; over the past 2 years, I feel like I’ve seen literally hundreds of newspaper and magazine articles about autism, dozens of television specials, countless radio stories, etc, etc. And they’re not all about the same controversies, either. There genuinely seems to be a cottage industry revolving around autism. I almost sense that there is some kind of public fixation founded on some premise of exoticism and fetishization that kind of parallels other recent trends like folksy bluegrass music, bacon, yoga, and other topics that seem to repeatedly come up in discussions with upper-middle class white people.

Why is America suddenly dedicating so much television and radio airtime and written words to autism? Why is autism such an attractive disease for people to take note of? And why now? Why autism and why not some other disease? Why are autistic people so often depicted, not as people with serious diseases, but as superhumans with genius powers that should never be questioned? And how come the public image of autism is almost entirely depicted as a white people disease? Is fascination with autism some kind of upper-middle class status symbol? If not, why is autism such a prominent presence on upper-middle class outlets like NPR, the New York Times, and Hulu (on which at least one company has been showing commercials prominently showing a family with an autistic child)? Does “talking about autism” belong on Stuff White People Like?

2

A possibility that comes to mind is that autistic people may not have been out in society as much before. Certainly in the last few years I’ve met two or three autistic people online, where I’d never met a single one in all the time before that.

Perhaps there was some advance in medication that made a significant number of them able to function independently?

3

Because it 1) is more recently becoming diagnosable 2) anyone can develop it in childhood (more often boys) 3) has had lots of serious (and crazy) research showing causal links, yet we are still nowhere near close to finding a cause 4) occasionally includes cool savantism results 5) has a lot of prominent dipshits espousing aforementioned crazy research causes.

Self-diagnosing Asperger’s seems like a new “nerdy-cool” thing to do. AS and high-functioning autism are ways to have an explanation for quirky behavior and people gravitate towards it for that. I don’t know about any ethnic links but think it’s just a matter of perception; I do know a few prominent black autistic people out there, but yes, it seems like white soccer moms are the ones talking about it.

Or behavioral therapy at a younger age due to earlier and more accurate diagnosis.

4

Or maybe a bunch of people who are just stupid are nowadays diagnosed as autistic, so it looks like there’s more of them around. Not being stupid is one of the things important to middle class people; their kids are never just ignorant little assholes, they’re autistic, have ADD, or just happen to be Indigo Children… or they have “emotional intelligence”. You pick… did you mess up raising your kid, or is your little angel a victim of a terrible disease called autism? I’m guessing the latter is more popular, hence gets way more airtime.

5

Autism is pretty distinguishable from stupidity. I don’t think it’s very likely that you would diagnose a kid who was performing poorly in school as being autistic.

6

I haven’t seen this surge in autism references the OP is talking about.

7

Doing a Google News Advanced Archive search they put up a graph of ghits. An archive search for “autism” shows a peak about 2007-2008 and ghits are down a bit in the last two years but are much higher than 1990-2000. (1940-1960 has about 0.2% of what we are seeing today.)

8

Look at the characteristics of autism:

Some of them are the same as what might be referred to as “acting like a jerk.” Self-diagnosing oneself as autistic thus allows one to say, “Oh, I only act that way because I’m autistic. I haven’t been diagnosed by a professional, but the symptoms fit me.” Now, it’s possible that most people who are thought of as jerks really do have some very low-level form of autism, but it’s also possible that jerks have now found a good way to explain away their behavior.

9

Google Trends show a big surge of autism references in news stories in the last couple years (see the lower line in the pic).

http://www.google.com/trends?q=autism&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0

10

I thought talking about sports was Americas favorite pastime. Should I try to start a fantasy autism league?

11

The number of diagnoses has steadily increased and it’s now estimated that 1% of the population (or maybe 1% of children, I don’t recall which) has autism. If you have a disorder with no clear cause and no definitive treatment that might at some point become alarming. We can’t even be sure how much of the rise is due to the ability to diagnose it or if there is actually some other factor causing more cases to appear.

As for the sudden spike in awareness that is almost sure to happen at some point - once the story spreads to a certain level, it’s going to spread much more quickly after that, like any news item. What is perhaps interesting is that it’s remained at such an elevated level, although I think the general trend has increased at an expected rate. The Google news trend shows more spikes in the last few years, but the ‘baseline’ rate hasn’t changed by a huge amount.

12

There has been an increase in the diagnoses of autism because of a change in the definition. That was coupled with the phony claim by a doctor that autism was caused by vaccines. Now that autism is no longer considered a result of bad parenting, parents can assume the role of victims, you know, ‘How dare you expect me to do my fair share, I have an autistic child’. Add to that the situtation of using autism spectrum as an excuse for bad behavior. Some people have speculated that I might have something like asperger’s, but I’m pretty sure I’m just an asshole.

13

Autism (the most severe form of it) is a devastating illness that has a profound impact on the affected person and their family. Because we don’t have, really, any idea of why it occurs or what contributes to it, people are frightened.

Couple that with the supposed “explosion” of autism (which can be explained by three factors - the expanded definition mentioned above, the re-diagnosis or differential diagnosis of people who in prior decades would have been diagnosed as mentally retarded and are instead being diagnosed with autism, and more awareness at earlier stages).

Throw in the fact that Andrew Wakefield (who is an evil fucking bastard that I would gladly watch melt to death in a vat of acid) tapped into every anti-intellectual American’s lack of understanding of basic science.

Couple those with the idea that if vaccines or neurotoxins or something CAN be identified as contributing to the disorder, then we’d have a handle on reducing the likelihood of the disorder.

Mix with a hefty dose of parents’ desperate need to blame something, ANYTHING, other than random chance or not-understood genetic contributions.

Bake at 350 for 15 years.

You’ve got a “sexy,” intriguing story - “Big Pharma is harming America’s children: film at 11!”

It’s a very real disorder, with very severe consequences for parents and children, that still is not understood, and (for some idiots) might be related to those evil scientists always mucking about with things they don’t understand - so it’s not hard to figure out why it’s a focus of both scientific inquiry and media coverage.

14

On the other hand, it doesn’t seem like the percentage of " dead on" autism has risen.
Meaning a kid who meets ALL the criteria for having it. It does seem like a lot of soccer moms and doctors have fixtated on the social delay part of autism, and assumed that ANY kid with a significent social emotional delay has Asperger’s/HFA.
It doesn’t seem like the number of kids sitting around telling other people about how the skin on their arms is stretchy ( an obession a kid I knew in college, who had PROFOUND HFA had) hasn’t increased. It really does seem like a lot of it is people being kind of elastic with the defintions… " oh they have weird nereological issues…They’re “autistic”
Kids with learning disabilites or even regular disabilties can have social emotional issues without it being Aspergers.
I also think that the change in the criertia was not a good idea. Asperger’s seems to be more like the learning disabled version of autism. Like it’s related to autism, but its not full blown autism. Like the way someone can be “slow learner” LD but not have full blown MR.

15

Paranoia is driving a lot of this thing. If Jimmy doesn’t speak or socialize “normally” at exactly 2 years old, people start to freak out and seek early intervention. Then at five years old, people pronounce him “well” enough to be mainstreamed, citing the benefits of early intervention. Well, I didn’t really start speaking intelligently until I was five and I still don’t socialize “normally”. As far as I know, I do not have autism, though I wouldn’t exclude other neurological impairments that I have done a pretty good job handling on my own.

It doesn’t help that autism/Asperger’s have significant symptom overlap with other neurological conditions, such as childhood schizophrenia, early-onset OCD, Tourette’s, ADD, and even bipolar disorder. So if you’re a kid who shows either of the above and you don’t have the best of social skills, people will immediately wonder about autism rather than those individual conditions (and it doesn’t help that autism/AS are often co-morbid with the above. So no wonder people are confused).

There’s research showing that autism and Asperger’s Syndrome are not really on the same spectrum. Sure, there’s some overlap, but autism seems to be an impairment of the left brain, while Asperger’s may be the result of more right brain abnormality. People with AS also tend to have more motor problems than people with autism, believe it or not. So there are a lot of things people just do not understand about these disorders, so there’s probably a lot of “comparing of notes” amongst parents who have kids who have received diagnoses.

As far as white people go, there is some evidence (sorry, don’t have time to look for cites, but I’ll return later) that whites tend to have more developmental neurological problems like autism than blacks do. Personally, I’m skeptical of this for reasons that are hard for me to articulate. But it wouldn’t shock me if it turned out to be true either. There are some black celebrities that have autistic/Aspie children. Holly Robinson and DL Hughley both have kids who are autistic and have AS, respectively.

16

Autism is the new gay, dont you know?

Its probably a good indication for the lgbt movement because you know, once you are accepted, nobody pays any attention.

Ok, thats just my terrible sense of humor. Take a pound of flesh and get out. I could stand to lose some weight anyway.

There is that joke that its straight peoples fault because they keep having gay babies. Likewise Autism rears its head from (un)fortuitous combinations of genetics from the general population. So it makes sense that a certain portion of people sit on that cusp of full-blown autism. The bi-autists, if I may continue my atrocious sense of propriety.

Where that critical line lies is being resolved. Many of the autism traits are highly positive in moderation, such as narrow and prolonged focus, indifference to petty social concerns, etc. As for the negatives, they are mostly forgivable in an average person. Dislike of physical contact, sensitivity to noise/light come to mind as well as OCD and nervous tics and a host of other possibilities.

It is only when you exhibit these traits strongly and compounded with others that a person stops being capable of proper social functioning. Thats about where Aspergers lies.

When it becomes profound, you end up with the severe autists who are significantly disconnected, unable to interface with regular people. They are unable even to interface with each other. Some of them are mentally handicapped, but a good portion are simply unable to communicate and do not grok a connection between their mind and other people.

For instance, one autistic had a clear memory of her dad pointing at clouds and making noises. In a burst, she realized that the finger pointing connected the noises to the clouds, and that noises she made could refer to things as well.

So she learned to speak, but not all make those connections at the right times in life. Most seem to learn to speak however. That is very critical to opening your world to learning.

If you havent guessed, I was diagnosed with Aspergers, though as a mature adult.

Like that person learning that noise=communication, in first grade my teacher had to sit me down and explain that C-O-W was an alternate version of a picture of a cow and that written words were a compact way to express speech and illustration.

I didnt lack the capability to read, I just didnt learn until I saw the point of it. After that I had no trouble and was always well ahead of my peers. Except socially.

Thats how I understand Autists anyway. They are capable enough, they just keep missing the point. If they miss too many points, they do not experience full neurological development.

Maybe you never got the point of calculus. Maybe you even suck at algebra. In autism, its just like that, but with people.

17

Elite media like NPR and the NYT are driven by upper class urban parents, one of whose major goals is to get little Johnny into a good private kindergarten so he won’t have to deal with the urban public school kids (and later on an ivy league school). Autism is an important part of it because it allows them to claim a learning disability and more time on standardized tests. (If this sounds crazy, and it is, consider the trend of keeping little Johnny out of kindergarten for a year so he has another year to develop to score better on those same tests.)

I do suspect that the rise of the importance of nerds in the computer age has something to do with it, but a large part of the uptick is because of the excitement of the private-kindergarten class.

18

The OP said something that really caught my eye - autism really is depicted as a white person’s disease. I have never heard of it in any other race, but it is present, yes?

19

Can you be more specific, Wagner? I’ve seen autistic behaviors that might come off as being jerkish, but I didn’t really see any mentioned in the link, except the aggressiveness, which is remarkably different in autistic individuals. If you’ve ever seen an autistic tantrum, you’ll know the difference between that and someone in a rage.

The behaviors I’ve most seen mistaken as jerkish are those that involve saying something that comes off as harsh or cold in what a socially aware individual would realize is a sensitive situation. But I’ve never known anyone with the disorder to recognize when they are doing this in order to offer an excuse.

I personally think discussing autism on the rise because discussing all mental disorders is on the rise. It’s become acceptable to talk about this stuff. No longer is it required that everything be covered up. Some inroads are being made against the bigotry displayed in the past against people who think differently.

I hope that all made sense: I’m really tired.

20

Not just white, but rich white.