“If autism isn’t caused by environmental factors and is natural why didn’t we ever see it in the past?”
We did, except it wasn’t called autism it was called “Little Jonathan is a r*tarded halfwit who bangs his head on things and can’t speak so we’re taking him into the middle of the cold dark forest and leaving him there to die.”
Or “little Jonathan doesn’t talk but does a good job herding the sheep, contributes to the community in his own way, and is, all around, a decent guy.” That happened a lot, too, especially before the 19th century.
Or, backing up FURTHER
and lots of people think this very likely,
“Oh little Sionnat has obviously been taken by the fairies and they’ve left us a Changeling Child who knows too much, and asks strange questions, and uses words she shouldn’t know, and watches everything with her big dark eyes, clearly a Fairy Child and not a Human Like Us.”
The Myth of the Changeling child, a human baby apparently replaced at a young age by a toddler who “suddenly” acts “strange and fey” is an almost textbook depiction of autistic children.
To this day, “autism warrior mommies” talk about autism “stealing” their “sweet normal child” and have this idea of “getting their real baby back” which (in the face of modern science) indicates how the human psyche actually does deal with finding out their kid acts unlike what they expected.
Given this evidence, and how common we now know autism actually is, the Changeling myth is almost definitely the result of people’s confusion at the development of autistic children.
Weirdly enough, that legend is now comforting to me.
I think it’s worth noting that many like me, who are diagnosed with ASD now, would probably have been seen as just a bit odd in centuries past. I’m only a little bit autistic; I can pass for neurotypical for short periods if I work really hard at it. I have a lack of talent in social situations, and I’m prone to sensory overload or you might notice me stimming.
But here’s the thing: life is louder, brighter and more intense and confusing than it has ever been. I live on the edge of London and I rarely go into the centre of town because it’s too overwhelming. If I went back in time and lived on a farm somewhere, would anyone even notice there was anything odd about me? No police sirens, no crowded streets that go on for miles and miles, no flickery electric lights. Working on a farm has a clear routine. I’d be a badass at spinning cloth or churning butter because I find endless repetition soothing rather than boring.
I’m not trying to romanticise the past because I know it was hard, dirty work with a constant risk of premature death. I don’t actually want to be a 16th century farmer! What I’m saying is that disability exists in the context of the environment. Our environment isn’t making people autistic in the sense of some chemical causing brain damage. But we have created a modern environment which is hostile to autistic people in many ways, which effectively makes us more disabled. When you make people more disabled, you start to see more people struggling, failing at school because they’re overwhelmed, freaking out at the sound of electric hand dryers and so on. And suddenly it looks like there’s millions more autistic people than existed before.
“…disability exists in the context of the environment.”
Reblog for disability commentary.
That last paragraph is absolutely important.
“How come nobody ever heard of ‘dyslexia’ until widespread literacy became a thing?”
How does anyone hate kids they are so funny I sold tickets to incredibles to this little girl and her mom and she’s like mom are we sitting next to each other and the moms like ya and the kid screamed YES so loud it broke my ears
The other day I was bringing an older gentleman up the hill in a golf cart and we drove past this huge YMCA group of kids like 100 kids
and driving past the first chunk like 10 of them yelled out “let me on” in unison and then since I’m driving so slowly to be safe, halfway in some kid leaned up and said “do you play fortnite” and I told him I played a little and he just pointed and shouted “THIS GUY PLAYS FORTNITE” and then like 20 kids started talking to me all at once about fortnite
A kid asked me if I lived in the ambulance. I said yes.
The hero we deserve
When I was on register at Kohl’s a little girl came through with her grandma and she was so very excited to tell me the meaning of her name (I think it was like warrior of god) and she begged her grandma for her phone so she could google to find out what my name means too
i wear two spinner rings on one finger and one time at my last job a young girl (probably 6-8) said “your ring is very pretty” and when i showed her it was two rings she GASPED and said “does that mean you’re marrying two people?!”
I have this necklace with a mermaid on it that I wear to work a lot and I got asked by a kid if it gave me magic powers. I leaned in real close and told her in a low voice it gave me magical girl powers but it was a secret. She got this real serious look on her face and said to her mom “that lady has superpowers, don’t tell anyone or the government will take her away”.
The other day i had to give a speech at my school despite my horrific fear of public speaking and afterwards i had kid come up to me and say well done to me. It was so cute.
god I love tiny kids
there was a kid in one of our science camps and he spent the whole week in a lab coat and goggles screaming “CHEMICALS” at the top of his lungs. he wouldn’t even tell us his name for the first two days just screamed CHEMICALS instead.
I was watching these kids at church today and one of them screamed and threw a toy car into the wall and it broke and the other one looked over calmly and said “does your insurance cover that?”
I was taking the drink order for a family at work and I asked their kid what he wanted to drink and he just looked at me with a completely deadpan expression and said “vodka” and me and the parents just fucking lost it
kid I used to babysit asked why my lips were different (she was two), and when I told her that it was because I was wearing lipstick, she yelled, “MAYA, I WANT LIPITZ.”
I work in a school and every time I draw anything on the board (I am a terrible artist and usually resort to stick men), the kids will all go ‘I love your picture, that’s a great drawing Miss’. So blindly supportive.
One time my younger brother ordered a “non-alcoholic fanta” at a hotel bar and the bartender lost his shit and I was never the same man
When I was student teaching, I was taking my fourth graders back from lunch and noticed one little girl looking longingly at the playground, where the younger kids were having recess. She heaved a big sigh and said, “I used to be that free.”
Intuition is real. Vibes are real. Energy doesn’t lie. Tune in.
This is actually called thin slicing. Your brain recognizes patterns from very small “slices” of information by comparing them to things you have experienced before. This all happens very quickly on a subconscious level without our conscious mind being involved. So intuition is actually really fast pattern recognition, and it can be very accurate. So yeah, if you have a gut feeling that a person or situation is not good, get the hell out. Your brain knows what’s up.
When I was young - because I’ve always been a big skeptical pain in the ass - I thought that when people were talking about interpersonal “energy,” they were on some Gay Ass Shit.
Years later, after spending hundreds of hours reading studies about intuition and neuroscience and pattern recognition and the processing power of the subconscious mind, I realized that that kind of talk - “she has such good energy,” “you need to read the energy of the room,” “I just got some really bad energy off of that guy” - is a convenient shorthand for the lightning-fast, weirdly-accurate, real-as-fuck subconscious processing of the probability of positive or negative social outcomes likely to result from hundreds or thousands of variables. That “energy” isn’t a tangible thing floating around in the air. It’s your brain updating you constantly with information about your situation. Listen to it. Especially if it’s telling you to be nervous or scared. Your brain is very good at recognizing danger. Let the enormous processing power of your subconscious mind protect you. It’s better at spotting patterns than you are.
“Bad energy” isn’t some hippie shit. It’s your brain setting off a claxon because it knows something’s not right.
Thin slicing is wonderfully helpful, but be aware that if it’s doing its pattern recognition from bad sources, you need to actively override it. We’re raised in a racist society, inundated with racist media, and bombarded with subtly (or unsubtly) racist advice. Thin slicing can save your life, but it’s also the cause behind the unconscious elements of racism (and misogyny/ableism/antisemitism/islamophobia/etc.) that we all suffer from
Trust your instincts, but if your instincts tell you something that seems prejudicial, double check their work.
