Unfashionable Abilities

Every now and again, someone misrepresents the neurodiversity movement by claiming that its adherents believe autism is not a disability, but a wonderful gift and the next stage in human evolution. Without fail, several pro-neurodiversity bloggers respond that they don't believe any such thing—that yes, autism is a disability, but that it is OK to be disabled, and that neurodiversity is all about making the world a more accepting place for the cognitively disabled.

Speaking only for myself here, neither of the above viewpoints accurately represents the way I see neurodiversity. The question of whether or not autism is a disability is a false dichotomy, as I see it, and the wrong question to ask.

There are two main schools of thought with respect to disability: the medical model, which characterizes disability as consisting of medically defined impairments; and the social model, which looks upon disability as a culturally constructed status resulting from society's failure to provide adequate services and accommodations to enable full participation in society by those who have physical and/or cognitive differences.

Most of the arguments about autism as a disability seem to be rooted in the confusion caused by these conflicting approaches. Behaviorist and biomed supporters chiefly see autism in terms of the medical model, that is, as a defect to be remediated by means of various therapies. When someone disputes the validity of their medical claims, they're likely to interpret that as the equivalent of denying that autism is a disability or that autistic people have medical problems. Neurodiversity supporters, on the other hand, generally embrace the social model of disability and argue that social acceptance of cognitive differences is the most important issue. According to this view, treatment of medical problems, while appropriate to the extent it is based on solid and unbiased scientific research, should never be a substitute for respecting and protecting human rights.

As a consequence of the different ways in which the term "disability" is being understood in the autism community, the discourse often degenerates into straw-man claims that have little to do with reality. This is what I have to say about that: It's time for everyone in the various camps to recognize that these issues are very complex and that unrealistic caricatures of opposing views are not going to help autistic people or their families. I haven't seen any neurodiversity supporters who would deny that some autistic people have medical problems; disputing issues of causation and treatment is another matter altogether and has more to do with scientific accuracy than with political activism. I also don't believe that the majority of behaviorist and/or biomed supporters are ogres who consider the civil rights of autistics to be totally irrelevant.

Regarding the straw-man depiction of neurodiversity as some sort of aspie supremacy cult, I'll note that a few people have indeed argued that autism is the next stage in human evolution; however, my impression is that they're mainly teenagers who complain on forums that they don't get enough respect for their academic talents. As they grow up and develop a more mature perspective, they'll eventually realize that high scores on tests do not equate to overall intellectual superiority and should never be used to pass judgment on anyone's value as a human being. (And maybe they'll learn how evolution actually works, too.)

Although I generally agree with the views expressed by the pro-neurodiversity bloggers, I don't believe that it is appropriate under the social model of disability to make categorical statements such as "autism is a disability." Yes, it's certainly true that some aspects of autism are disabilities under some circumstances; but the same could potentially be said of any other set of human characteristics. To put it another way, today's disability classifications often are based on irrational prejudices and subjective value judgments; they're not just about a lack or impairment of an ability.

When pro-neurodiversity bloggers write that autism is a disability, I think what's meant is that in today's society, autistic people can benefit significantly from services and accommodations that are not commonly available. I don't disagree with that observation, and I believe that accommodations for all sorts of differences should be made available as a matter of course; but, at the same time, I think we need to be very cautious about declaring millions of people to be disabled on the basis of recently created and vaguely defined diagnostic classifications. On that point, here's an excerpt from the anti-psychiatry essay Shrinking to Excess:


The latest edition of DSM lists more than 300 mental syndromes. Only two decades ago, an earlier edition listed a mere 106... the psychiatric establishment is foisting these invented illnesses on us in a bid to lay claim to handsome reimbursements from insurance companies. For psychiatrists to receive payment from health insurance companies, they must find a way to label a patient with a recognized condition--which is why they recognize more, and more, and more conditions. Wait for the next DSM, and there will be at least another 50 conditions added to the existing list. According to Drs. Kutchins and Kirk, "the unlabeled masses are a vast untapped market, the virgin Alaska oilfields of mental disorder."


When we fail to challenge the authority of medical professionals to classify and pathologize traits that once were accepted as natural human differences, we make ourselves complicit in perpetuating a modern-day caste system that ranks people according to their perceived normality. The central underpinning of this oppressive system is the arbitrary division of the human race into "disabled" people and "normal" people, which depends largely on what sort of abilities happen to be fashionable at the moment. Instead of playing along with this destructive charade and obediently agreeing that we are disabled because they say so, we ought to be standing up and screaming at the top of our lungs that the Emperor of Normality is butt-nekkid.