I was wrong about RFK Jr's speech on autism
Recently, I put out an episode of my podcast where I provide my own two cents on Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s recent speech about the impacts of autism on families and young children. This speech, like almost anything else RFK Jr so much as breathes out, was blasted and torn apart by the media. Parents of children on higher functioning levels of the autism spectrum came out to defend their children. There were even high functioning people on the spectrum—like me—that came out and insisted that RFK Jr was wrong.
There’s a lot I can say about those people and what I think of them, but I’m not going to make this about them. This is about me and the fact that I was wrong.
There are still things I said in the podcast that I stand by. I still firmly believe that we must be prepared for the ways in which the cultural perspective on autism and those on the spectrum will go through a drastic shift should a cause of autism in young children be found. This cause may be linked to young children with severe autism, but people have a tendency to generalize. People on other levels of the autism spectrum will be roped into this new perspective. Most likely not by everyone, but certainly by a significant portion of people.
It’s easy to get rattled by RFK Jr’s words. While I still believe he should’ve been a little more specific with his word choice rather than just saying ‘autism destroys families’, his purpose behind his words can’t be ignored or overlooked. It’s easy for us to get emotional when we hear words like these. A lot of us know people who are higher functioning on the autism spectrum and we know that—despite certain weaknesses and struggles they have—they’re still able to live independently like most other people. Because of this, we can get offended easily if it sounds like someone is looking down on those people.
May I make a suggestion? What if neurotypical people choose not to get offended for those people?
And may I make another suggestion? What if us high functioning folk didn’t make these statements about ourselves?
What if we were—as the great, autistic Brant Hansen put it—unoffendable?
Because as a friend put it to me recently, it’s not always about me. It’s not always about my wife. And it’s not always about the other high functioning people I know. Sometimes it’s about the people we don’t see on a daily basis, and one of the reasons why we don’t see them is because their situation is so bad, their parents have to literally hide them from the rest of the world. My opinions on RFK Jr’s pursuits on studying the causes of autism are still mixed, but if there is even a 1% chance that finding these causes could prevent more children in the future from suffering the way others with severe autism are suffering now, why should it not be pursued?
I know this feels like a bit of a 180 from my podcast episode last week (if you have not seen it, definitely still check it out below). I have no plans on taking it down. I don’t regret making it. I’m not going to hide what my thoughts were the other day just because they’re somewhat different now. I was still speaking from the heart, and sometimes the heart is wrong. I just want to be better about really thinking through my thoughts before articulating them for everyone else.
Along with my latest video, below is a video that recently came out about severe autism cases and how the people with those severe cases have impacted the lives of the people who take care of them. It’s not a comfortable watch. It’s brutal in fact. But we can’t pretend they don’t exist. For better or for worse (and we’ll see which one it is soon), this is the section of people on the autism spectrum that RFK Jr is passionate about.
To see the video about people and children with severe autism, click here!
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