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Autistic people are not your political prop [1]

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Date: 2025-09-01

Decent people stand up for other people even when they have little in common beyond shared humanity. I always appreciate it when I see straight people march for queer rights, abled people protest for disability rights, men stand up for women, or white people fight for minorities. But do you know what group is always on our own without support from anyone else? Autistic people.

This year has been terrifying for Autistic people, since our government is threatening to declare us all incompetent and send us to "wellness" camps. Yes, RFKjr is a monster who threatens the health of all Americans, but he is gunning for Autistic people in particular. Who knows what he truly believes, but he talks about Autistic people like we're a problem to be dealt with, not a community that needs understanding and support. To him, we are a political prop he can use to attack vaccines. So I understand why many people also see us as a handy prop to use to counter his anti-vaxx agenda. All you have to do is invoke Autistic people as being villainized by RFKjr and voila, you have turned someone's sympathy for us into antipathy for him. And then you can forget about us again until the next time you need us. And that's what keeps happening. Sure, when RFKjr says something braindead about autism we see folks speak up against him, and that's good. But those same folks almost never speak out about Autistic issues or in support of Autistic people any other time. It's like we don't matter except for when we're useful to someone else's politics.

Stop doing that. Please, stop using us as political props you can trundle out whenever you need to oppose RFKjr's insane nonsense, then go back to ignoring us and our very real, very desperate needs when you don't need to use our suffering to advance your goals. You may not notice you're doing that, but we Autistic people do. And we do not appreciate how you never will stand up for us, but expect us to be your willing props whenever that might help you out. If I'm wrong here, please feel free to point out the many times when non-autistic people have stood up for Autistic people by platforming Autistic voices and supporting our goals, rather than promoting some autism "charity" run by non-autistic people that doesn't actually help us. Yes, some non-autistic people do occasionally try to do something helpful, but even the best attempts fall flat because they don’t understand what matters to us or take the time to ask us.

Back in the spring, RFKjr promised they'd release a report in September (now this month) that would explain the cause of autism. This isn't just nonsense, but dangerous misinformation. There is no research or work they could have done to possibly come up with that information in such a short amount of time, so everyone is right to be skeptical about their claims. And we already know what that stupid fake report will say: they'll say it's because of vaccines and environmental toxins, which is pure bunk. The best science we have says autism is inherited so genetics are certainly a big factor, possibly the determinative one. So it will be important for people to speak up against this nonsense. But it's also important to reject the baseline assumption that more Autistic people being born is a problem that must be solved, because that is eugenics, plain and simple. Most Autistic people find that our big problems aren't because we're Autistic, but because the world is built for non-autistic people's convenience so Autistic people's problems are dismissed and ignored. If we're going to stand up against RFKjr, we can't do it with a message that says to be sympathetic to Autistic people because their lives are so hard, while at the same time casting Autistic people as a problem to be solved where the goal is no more Autistic people.

The way to fight back is to stand with Autistic people and support us and our goals. That means giving up the idea that being Autistic is a tragedy and that Autistic people are inherently broken and it would be better if we were never born. It also means giving up the idea that we are too infantile to understand our own lives and how to make them better. That nonsense is what RFKjr is pushing when he says we'll never have jobs, know love, or pay taxes. The anti-vaxx movement started with the idea that it's better to have a child die of an easily preventable disease than grow up Autistic, and this is still the core of its message. It's no different from the tragic nonsense that it's better for a child to die than to grow up queer, which results in many children being driven from their homes or abused if they remain. So we have to push back against that idea, that someone is better off dead than Autistic. And that means embracing neurodiversity and the idea that neurodivergent people are valid and deserve to have good lives, too.

If you want to stand with us against anti-vaxx nonsense and RFKjr's attacks on us, that's good, and more power to you. But don't turn us into props in your fight like that's all we're good for. And more importantly, stand with us for things we care about. And Autistic people do have a political agenda. (I don't mean to say all Autistic people have the same agenda, but the majority of Autistic people do align on a lot of things.) We want to ban ABA (Applied Behavior Analysis, the exact same thing as gay conversion therapy, invented by the same person, but for autism). We want research on how to help us live better lives instead of eugenics research into how to get rid of us. We want to be able to shop in stores or dine in restaurants without having to endure the onslaught of loud music and bright lights that allistic people seem to require to engage in retail transactions or casual conversation. We want to be able to see healthcare professionals who have learned how to communicate with us effectively, so that we don't have a life expectancy that is shorter by decades than neurotypicals. We want to be able to do what we need to take care of ourselves without being ridiculed for being different. We want to be treated as adults with agency and the ability to make our own decisions, which means you treat us like people, not props.

“Nothing about us without us” is our motto. It’s crucial that Autistic people not only are heard, but that we get to lead the conversations about us, our rights, and how to best support us. You wouldn’t trust a white person to lead a movement for minority rights or a cis person to lead on trans rights, and it’s the same thing here. We need allistic people to stand up and support us and our work, but you have to remember that it’s our work, and our lives that are on the line. It’s important for you to support us, but it’s also important to let us lead our own fight. That doesn’t mean you should back off and let us succeed or fail on our own, but that you should look to us to set direction, then get on board with those goals.

If people didn't think being Autistic was a tragedy or that autism has to be eliminated, RFKjr and his ilk couldn't use Autistic people as his political prop. This is the big challenge for us, simply being accepted as valid humans who deserve to live decent lives on our own terms, like everyone else. Help us fix that, and then anti-vaxxers won't be able to use autism as a boogeyman to scare parents into voting for fascists.

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