Autism. A developmental disorder that affects that person's ability to communicate and socialize with other people, which he or she finds difficult, and also causes the person to think in literal and concrete terms, have limited to no control over their body movements, sometimes find comfort in rigid routines, and engage in stereotypical behaviors, such as flapping arms, hitting an object over and over again, and talking to him/herself; in short, autism affects the person's ability to function in society, depending on the spectrum. The spectrum, or severity of the disorder, ranges from mild to severe. For those with mild forms of autism, they are able to assimilate in society via family, friends, school, and the workforce. In more severe cases, an autistic person is unable speak and express him/herself, is extremely sensitive to light, sounds, and crowds, and has behavior problems that result in self-injury, consisting of, for instance, head banging and hair pulling.
Ever since Leo Kanner discovered it in 1943, many people have been unsure as to what to make of autism and how to deal with it. Numerous studies in science, medicine, and social psychology have been conducted to examine how autism has been occurring and look for ways to deal with it. At one point, it was believed that children develop autism as a sort of coping mechanism due to a lack of emotional attachment to cold uncaring mothers, a theory which has since been debunked. Some people believed, and still believe, that autism was a side effect of a mercury-based preservative found in vaccines, an emotion-fueled dogma that has been consistently debunked by the medical community. There is now growing evidence that autism is rooted in genetic factors. Yet with all the progress being made in the science of autism, there is still a debate as to what can be done to improve the lives and well being of autistic people. For example, there is some confusion in the use of the terms "autistic person" and "a person with autism." An autistic person is someone who is born with autism. When someone is referred to as "a person with autism," it implies that autism is something that can be removed like a splinter embedded in skin; an emotional shell that protects a "healthy and normal" human being that needs to be cracked; and an inhibiting disease that needs to be cured. Of course, that may be a minor thing. But such simple terms are just the tip of the iceberg. In many attempts to raise awareness of autism among the general public, the information that comes from research studies and parent-led advocacy groups and gets transmitted and filtered by the mass media, consisting of newspapers, magazines, radio broadcasts, television, movies, books, etc., has been affecting, for better or worse, how autistic people are looked upon in society. The debate has also been affecting, both directly and indirectly, the quality of life autistic people lead as children and adults, the opportunities in employment and education being made available to them, and how their dignity as human beings gets defined in mainstream society. In short, autism awareness as it is now has been, for all intents and purposes, a problem that leads to inaccurate myths about autism, eight of which I have personally debunked a few years ago. In order to demonstrate a basic understanding of this problem, I will briefly go over a few key components of the mass media that affects how society perceives autistic people: movies and images accompanying news stories. In movies featuring autistic characters like Rain Man, Mercury Rising, and Mozart and the Whale, autistic people get depicted as having limited to no emotion and possessing either extraordinary (almost supernatural) abilities such as pattern-recognition, perfect memory, and complex mathematics (leading to the savant stereotype) or diminished intellectual capacity. When images are featured with news stories about autism, they tend to portray autistic children as fragmented and imprisoned by the disorder. The words 'fragmented,' 'imprisoned,' and 'disorder' are just a few of the many key words that are part of the problem of raising awareness of autism.
When it comes to even talking about autism, the developmental disorder is often spoken of as one that diminishes the quality of the person born with it as a human being, a belief that some people are striving to debunk by not even calling autism a disability. Words, besides the ones I just referred to, that reinforce this notion include 'deficit,' 'impaired,' 'retarded,' 'devastating,' 'destructive,' 'puzzle,' 'illness,' 'epidemic,' 'broken,' 'restricted,' and 'limited,' among others. When talking about autism in this context, it is like saying "be aware that [so-and-so] has autism, so he/she might end up destroying something;" or "be aware that it may not be easy to talk to this person since he/she has autism;" or "be aware that he/she may get into a temper tantrum if you [insert any action here] because of his/her autism;" or "be aware that he/she may get upset over something you say that you usually find funny or friendly." According to Lydia Brown, an autistic rights activist, society tends to use "disability" as a sort of social and cultural antibody, a means to label, ostracize, and alienate anyone who does not behave, act, think, communicate, and socialize in the same manner as everyone else.
In conclusion, raising awareness of autism is not enough and is doing little to help autistic people of all ages have a better life, even as more research studies are being conducted to better understand the developmental disorder, which is a good thing. As an autistic man, I call for drastic changes in how the public becomes more aware of autism, understands it, and deals with it. The first step would be to change "Autism Awareness Month" to "Autism Acceptance Month." The second step would be to find ways in which children diagnosed with autism receive the best education and social communication training possible. The third step would be to support autistic people as they make transitions to a productive and independent life. It may have been too late to do the first step last month. But with enough public support, we as a society could change the way in which autism is discussed and accept autistic people without labeling, ostracizing, and alienating them by granting them the right which most people in this country take for granted: the right to lead better and more independent lives.
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