top of page
Search

Episode 5 – “We Didn’t Have Autism in MY day!” – And Other Bulls**t

  • Writer: Rachel Toner
    Rachel Toner
  • Sep 30, 2024
  • 3 min read

Updated: Oct 2, 2024




Ah yes. The battle cry of the intolerant and uneducated. “We didn’t have autism in MY day!!”

 

In this sentence, uttered smugly and/or disdainfully by people of a certain mindset, the word “autism” can usually be swapped out for “ADHD”, “social anxiety” (accompanied by air quotes and an eye roll), “so many genders”, “the gays” and “all this fuss about mental health”.

 

Allow me to assist, if I may.

 

Yes, you DID have autism in YOUR day. And all the other things as well.

 

What you DIDN’T have was awareness, recognition, tolerance, knowledge, education, a diagnostic process, medical models to consult, the copious amount of research that now exists, experts in the field, help, support, and treatment.

 

What you also DID have was a shed load of undiagnosed autistic people struggling through life wondering why the world didn’t make sense. Why so many things that most people find easy and take for granted were horribly difficult for them. Why they couldn’t communicate “properly”, why they couldn’t function “normally” and why there seemed to be something “wrong” with them (accompanied by air quotes and an eye roll, this time from me).

 

By the way, the fact that knowledge exists now that wasn’t around 20/50/100 years ago isn’t anyone’s fault. I know things now that I didn’t know 20 years ago. The fact that I’m autistic, for example. I’m not blaming or judging anyone here. What I’m asking is that when the world moves on, you at least try to move with it. Use our constantly evolving knowledge to educate yourself. If we didn’t leave outdated mindsets behind, we’d still be holding opinions that women shouldn’t vote, or that people of colour should only sit in certain parts of the bus. And don’t even get me started on people who still hold such opinions.

 

So. Who first identified a set of behavioural differences in certain people and named those differences “autism”?

 

There’s a bit of conflict regarding the very first diagnosis of autism, but here are some folk who were indisputably key players.

 

In 1943, Leo Kanner identified a pattern of “abnormal behaviour” that set some children apart from others.

 

“He concluded that this was a neurodevelopmental disorder and that 'these children have come into the world with an innate inability to form the usual, biologically provided contact with people”. (Harris, 2018)

 

The duo of psychiatrist and psychologist Wing and Gould came up with the “Triad Of Impairments”, “A set of behaviours often found in children on the autism spectrum—that are still used to identify autism today.” (Women In Medicine Legacy Foundation)

 

Today it is estimated by the World Health Organisation that 1 in 100 children are somewhere on the autistic spectrum. They also point out that, “Some well-controlled studies have, however, reported figures that are substantially higher.”

 

So we exist, we basically always have, and we ain’t going away any time soon.

 

On the subject of bullshit, vaccines don’t cause autism. They never did. This particular piece of nonsense was created in 1998 by an article in The Lancet, which was later proven to be fraudulent. The study in question used a tiny sample (only 12 children) and problems were later uncovered regarding how it was conducted and the controls used.

 

“In 2010, the General Medical Counsel declared that the paper was not only based on bad science, but was deliberate fraud and falsifications by the head researcher, Dr. Andrew Wakefield, and revoked his medical license.” – (Bruce, reviewed by Bhandari, 2024).

 

This doesn’t stop – in some cases – the scare continuing to this day and some children remaining unvaccinated as a result.


Oh yeah, and we're not contagious either. You won't catch autism if you hug us.

Assuming we WANT to be hugged, that is......


Love and sparkles,


Rach xxx

 

 

 

Sources:

 

Harris J. Leo Kanner and autism: a 75-year perspective. Int Rev Psychiatry. 2018 Feb;30(1):3-17. doi: 10.1080/09540261.2018.1455646. Epub 2018 Apr 18. PMID: 29667863.

 

 

 

 

 
 
 

Comments

bottom of page