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In light of the shit that @DrWilliamProct1 has been pulling, I want to talk a bit about how much damage comes from using autism to excuse abusive behavior from white men, especially ones in positions of power.
First, to be clear: I am not questioning or challenging whether Dr. Proctor is Autistic. That& #39;s not what this is about.
Second: since this is going to come up, I am #ActuallyAutistic. I& #39;ve also spent most of my career advocating against workplace harassment, abuse, and discrimination, so this particular intersection is close to home for me.
There are two contexts in which I continually see autism used to excuse poor behavior: when individuals use their own diagnoses to dodge accountability, as Dr. Proctor did; and when others armchair diagnose bad actors as Autistic to excuse their behavior. Both do harm.
. @SamiraNadkarni did an excellent job of addressing the ways this intersects with institutional racism in her response to Dr. Proctor& #39;s letter, which you can read--along with Nadkarni& #39;s response--in this thread: https://twitter.com/SamiraNadkarni/status/1300142119072358401">https://twitter.com/SamiraNad...
Nadkarni also names BIPOC Autistic scholars and their work in her response; you should look those--and others--up and follow them, because understanding how autism is racialized is really important for both racial and disability justice.
I& #39;m addressing this as a white Autistic trans man; my perspective is focused mostly along the vectors within my experience, namely, the normalization of both ableism and abuse.
I& #39;m not going to attempt to adjudicate Dr. Proctor& #39;s claim that he sent those emails in the middle of a meltdown; again, that& #39;s not a relevant question.
I will say that using autism as an excuse for that behavior is absolute, rank bullshit.
I will say that using autism as an excuse for that behavior is absolute, rank bullshit.
That degree of disregard for other people isn& #39;t symptomatic of autism. It& #39;s symptomatic of privilege, and of using a disability as a shield from having other vectors of privilege questioned or challenged.
As Samira Nadkarni noted, that& #39;s not a strategy available to Autistic people who are not white men.
It& #39;s also massively reinforced by institutional power, especially in a professional academic context, where Autistim-adjacent traits are often enthusiastically rewarded in white men as proof of genius, and aggressively punished in everyone else.
Which is to say: Dr. Proctor is hiding behind autism in exactly the same way that men in his position hide behind eccentric genius; and essentially requesting the same absence of culpability for the harm he does that& #39;s historically accorded--wrongly--to those men.
(This isn& #39;t a dynamic that actually requires that setting; but I think it& #39;s important that we acknowledge the ways that academia reinforces and rewards this shit.)
Going back a step: The contexts in which I see people using autism as an excuse, as Dr. Proctor did, are almost exclusively ones in which it& #39;s used to dismiss the discomfort, hurt, or anger of someone who isn& #39;t a white man.
Again, this happens directly--as in Dr. Proctor& #39;s case--and from outside, when non-autistic people either use known autism or armchair diagnose a white man as Autistic to excuse or dismiss abusive or inappropriate behavior and the harm it does.
I& #39;ve seen both approaches weaponized against Autistic women--whose autism was simultaneously used to dismiss the validity of their concerns--including me, pre-transition.
This is not rare.
This is not rare.
When I& #39;ve challenged it--often as gently and apologetically as possible; internalized ableism is real, kids--from non-Autistic people, the response has generally been dismissal, hostility, and defensiveness.
Okay.
Okay.
(I get the impulse to identify bad actors as a discretely categorizable Other. It& #39;s harmful, but I get it.)
Within the Autistic community, it makes me so much angrier, because it& #39;s so specifically a privileged class weaponizing a disability in ways that actively harm the rest of us. Privilege, like marginalization, is intersectional; so is the harm it can do.
This is a plea to STOP.
If you& #39;re not Autistic, don& #39;t use autism to dismiss or excuse other people& #39;s harmful behavior; and challenge your peers when they do it. Listen to the Autistic people that behavior hurts, not just the ones you don& #39;t want to hold accountable.
If you& #39;re not Autistic, don& #39;t use autism to dismiss or excuse other people& #39;s harmful behavior; and challenge your peers when they do it. Listen to the Autistic people that behavior hurts, not just the ones you don& #39;t want to hold accountable.
If you are Autistic, you have as much responsibility as anyone else to be aware of the ways that your privilege mediates your cultural status as a disabled person, and how your actions can impact people who don& #39;t share that privilege. Autism does not obviate that responsibility.
In conclusion: autism isn& #39;t a get-out-of-social-compact-free card; most Autistic people don& #39;t have the option of using it as one; and pretending otherwise hurts everyone, including Autistic people.
We can be assholes, too.
We can be assholes, too.
P.S.
If I were Bournemouth University, after seeing the way that Dr. Proctor weaponized autism to excuse abuse of a peer, I would be extremely concerned about how he treats his students.
If I were Bournemouth University, after seeing the way that Dr. Proctor weaponized autism to excuse abuse of a peer, I would be extremely concerned about how he treats his students.
P.P.S. If you& #39;ve found this thread useful and are in a position to do so, it would be very cool if you made a donation to the Fund for Community Reparations for Autistic People of Color’s Interdependence, Survival, and Empowerment: https://autismandrace.com/autistic-people-of-color-fund/">https://autismandrace.com/autistic-...
