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Autism isn’t always a superpower Not all 'neurodivergent' people have the capacity to change the world

Autism can hold people back as well as facilitate achievement. CRISTINA QUICLER/AFP via Getty Images

Autism can hold people back as well as facilitate achievement. CRISTINA QUICLER/AFP via Getty Images


December 22, 2020   5 mins

My first ever real job, beginning when I was 17, was as a disability support worker. For around five years I worked with kids and adults who had learning disabilities and needed varying degrees of assistance with everyday life. A couple of the boys I worked with were autistic; they had the communication problems, restricted interests and repetitive behaviours, sensory overload, and lack of interest in social interaction that are characteristic of the condition.

One autistic boy, just a few years younger than me, was particularly challenging to work with. He didn’t talk, and had only very basic non-verbal methods of communication, like tapping his head to indicate he wanted something. He was doubly incontinent, and furniture and objects in his room had either to be bolted to the floor or only left with him for a brief time, or they’d be torn to shreds. Even minor changes to his daily routine caused extreme stress, and he’d hit, scratch, or bite anyone within reach.

Thinking about the fleeting moments where he’d hug his mother, or the eventual progress he made in some areas, like learning when and how to go to the toilet, still brings a lump to my throat. But the general memory I have of his autism is one of suffering — it led to daily fear and anxiety for him, caused endless worry and heartache for his family, and (vastly less importantly) left me and my colleagues bruised, bleeding, and scarred at least a few times each week.

Since then, a movement has sprung up around the idea that “neurodivergence”, which can include autistic traits, should be celebrated, not treated as an illness. It’s an attitude that’s liberating for many. After all, autism is a spectrum — indeed, in the psychiatry manuals it’s officially called “Autism Spectrum Disorder”.  In my next job, I found myself regularly encountering people right at the other end of that spectrum: I went off to get a PhD in science.

In any scientific field, you’re surrounded by people who the autism expert Simon Baron-Cohen would call “Extreme Systemisers” — people with a penchant for — indeed, a preoccupation with — spotting patterns. Although not all Extreme Systemisers are autistic, Baron-Cohen argues that there’s a substantial overlap. It’s these kinds of people — in the past they’d be referred to as “high-functioning” — that campaigners for neurodiversity are wont to reference.

Extreme Systemizers — or, at least, the mechanism in their mind that makes them systemise — make the world go round, according to Baron-Cohen’s latest book, The Pattern Seekers (the subtitle for the US edition is How Autism Drives Human Invention). The book’s thesis is that, sometime between 100,000 and 70,000 years ago, the human brain evolved a “systemising mechanism” that allowed us to reason in the following way: if something is a certain way, and something changes, then we get a certain result. That seemingly-simple logic — that focus on understanding systems — is at the root of the human capacity for science, invention, and even art and music. Other animals don’t have the systemising mechanism, which explains why — despite being able to use tools and sometimes solve impressively-difficult puzzles — they don’t experiment or invent things: they’re essentially “system-blind”.

Baron-Cohen goes on to argue that those with an overactive “systemising mechanism,” which shades into autism, have had an outsize impact on the development of society and culture. Linnaeus (who obsessively categorised every species of animal), Thomas Edison (who spent his childhood reading every single book in the library, in shelf order), and Glenn Gould (whose compulsive and meticulous piano practice routine is well-known) are all, Baron-Cohen says, examples of Extreme Systemisers.

Extreme levels of systemising, according to Baron-Cohen, are usually antithetical to high levels of empathy for other people. His scheme of five “brain types” is a little over-simplified and arbitrary (the real, messy world isn’t really amenable to categories with bright lines between them), but it helps him illustrate how high levels of systemising might go along with social problems, and often manifest as autism. For instance, a fixation on identical daily routines can, as we saw above, create real problems in someone’s life. The book ends with an appeal for neurodiversity — arguing that there are many different types of brain out there, each with something to contribute, and we should ensure that everyone, including the extreme pattern seekers, can reach their potential.

Another such pattern seeker is Camilla Pang, a biochemist and the author of Explaining Humans, which just won the Royal Society Science Book Prize for 2020. Pang herself has a diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder, as well as Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and Generalised Anxiety Disorder. She used the “outsider” perspective she gained from growing up with these conditions to write a kind of scientific self-help book for those who have trouble fitting in. Pang writes about how scientific principles can help understand the messy, chaotic world of human relationships and life in general: for example, the functions of different kinds of proteins are a bit like those of people with different personalities; the workings of machine-learning algorithms can help us to make decisions; and learning about thermodynamics and entropy reminds us that true perfection is never attainable.

Perhaps unexpectedly for someone so motivated to understand how humans work, Pang shows absolutely zero interest in psychology research. As a psychology researcher myself, I found this oddly refreshing. Frankly, we’ve had enough of books that take shaky results from psychology studies and spin them into a “this-one-thing-will-change-your-life” message. I’d rather consider an interesting parallel between anxiety and the refraction of light than an over-generalised result from a tiny sample of university students.

If anything, Explaining Humans is more like a text from (perhaps appropriately) the Humanities: noting similarities and drawing analogies, rather than using scientific data to explain human behaviour directly. This kind of analogy-to-science reasoning can go too far — its nadir being the philosopher Jacques Lacan’s infamous analogy between the square root of minus one and “the erectile organ” — but outside of a couple of rather tenuous links, Pang does an impressive job of finding more-than-superficial similarities between the laws of nature and the “laws” of human beings (incidentally, readers who like this kind of thing will enjoy the superior — but more complicated — book Algorithms to Live By).

Baron-Cohen would surely approve: it’s the kind of creative, analogical reasoning displayed by Pang that’s part of his “systemising mechanism”. Just as Baron-Cohen urges us to be more understanding of neurodiversity, Pang ends with a plea for those with neurodivergent brains never to “apologise for being yourself”. Throughout the book she repeats that her autism and her ADHD give her a unique view of the world and made her who she is today, referring to them as her “superpowers” — the same word Greta Thunberg used to describe her Asperger’s Syndrome (a condition which, by the way, is now technically subsumed under the umbrella title of Autism Spectrum Disorder). In one interview, Pang even stated that “sometimes I wish I was more autistic.”

No doubt both Pang and Baron-Cohen’s books will be uplifting and inspiring for those systemisers who feel all at sea when it comes to human interaction. All I ask is that, in our understandable desire to focus on the hitherto-forgotten talents of those with neurodivergent brains, we don’t forget the plight of those on the other end of the spectrum. Somewhere between thirty and forty percent of people with autism also have a learning disability, like the boy from my old job. Those with lower levels of functioning might never produce a breakthrough invention, or come up with a quirky way of explaining humanity using science. But they deserve no less of our attention, no less of our support, and no less of our empathy.


Stuart Ritchie is a psychologist and a Lecturer in the Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Centre at King’s College London

StuartJRitchie

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Luft Mentsch
Luft Mentsch
3 years ago

The difference between “high functioning” and “severe” autism is not always clear-cut. I was extremely high functioning in the structured environment of school and got to a very good university, but I struggled there and even more since then. I’m thirty-seven and have never had a full-time job or a relationship that lasted more than a few months, nor have I ever built my friendship network the way I would have liked (although I do have some friends, albeit many online). Like a lot of people on the spectrum I’ve spent much of my life struggling with mental health issues. I don’t consider myself to have “autistic superpowers” and I worry about how I will cope with the world when my parents aren’t here to help me.

Fred Dibnah
Fred Dibnah
3 years ago
Reply to  Luft Mentsch

You have my sympathy, and I can empathise a little.

Luft Mentsch
Luft Mentsch
3 years ago
Reply to  Fred Dibnah

Thank you.

Ferrusian Gambit
Ferrusian Gambit
3 years ago
Reply to  Luft Mentsch

Have you considered software engineering?

My situation was not dissimilar to yours. I was kind of at sea after school too, and although I did fine at university it was more in spire of the mess of my life than because of it.

After a year and a half of hell working in an accountancy firm I took a job first as a tester for software (whilst taking an MSc in Computer Science at night), and eventually moved on to an engineer, and have worked for a couple of big tech companies and was able to move to Spain, and eventually get married.

I honestly think for those of us like ourselves it is the best career option open.

David McKee
David McKee
3 years ago
Reply to  Luft Mentsch

Daniel, you are not alone. I’ve been there, and I know exactly what it’s like. I’m 25 years older than you. Have I anything useful to pass on? I am not sure. I only know what I did at the turning-points in my life. We need to know more case histories, to establish patterns.

Athena Jones
Athena Jones
3 years ago
Reply to  Luft Mentsch

The problem with labels is that you then define yourself as that label. There are those who increasingly question many if not most psychiatric labels and the label of Autism rests on the flimsiest of grounds because most who are called Autistic are not and those who are really Autistic are profoundly disabled.

adler.mats
adler.mats
3 years ago

I want to point to problematic aspect of the concepts of neurodivergency and autism spectrum disorders as “superpowers”. Variations in the tendency to systematize is just one of a myriad of individual differences, who can be both helpful and impairing, to a large extent depending on the demands of the enviroment. To become a psychiatric disorder of the autism spectrum, the systemizing mechanism has to cause “significant impairment” in functioning. The claim that someones autism spectrum disorder is a superpower, without mentioning possible impairment, is misleading and might be harmful for people who suffer and need support for their autism. And if it is true that there is no or only minor impairment, it is simply not correct. They don´t have the disorder.

Adrian
Adrian
3 years ago
Reply to  adler.mats

I agree. But I think it would be helpful for psychiatrists to understand that even for ordinary systematisers, they can get into an awful panic when the world refuses to systematise. And that can cause them the sort of problems that got them sent to the shrink.
Instead you get shrinks who seem to think that the desire to systematise is ‘learnt’ or some other such rubbish, and then go about making it worse.

Sam Pope
Sam Pope
3 years ago
Reply to  adler.mats

It’s not that ASD/ADHD is a superpower, it’s that some of the associated traits can be. As someone with ADHD I find some of my traits do significantly impair my ability to function effectively in a neurotypical world. Other divergences are great strengths that the remaining +/- 95% of the population do not seem to share. Colloquially, the latter are increasingly referred to as ‘superpowers’, not least because the term confers a positivity about having divergent neurobiology that is often otherwise lacking. The term in no way minimises the impact of having such a disorder or prevents those that do from receiving appropriate support.

Auberon Linx
Auberon Linx
3 years ago

I find the concept of a “spectrum” problematic. Not enough is known about the causes of autism, and the claim that the only difference between a severely disabled person and a somewhat eccentric polymath is the intensity of a single trait should not be accepted as gospel. There seems to be little value in putting the anonymous autistic boy mentioned in the article in the same category as Greta Thunberg. Overenthusiastic extreme systemising?

Richard Gipps
Richard Gipps
3 years ago
Reply to  Auberon Linx

The spectrum isn’t one of IQ / degree of co-occurring learning impairment. The spectrum is one of autistic-ness.

Judy Englander
Judy Englander
3 years ago
Reply to  Richard Gipps

The point is it doesn’t seem to be a useful category. Astrology, for example, categorises people according to the planets. I’m not suggesting the autistic spectrum category is on the same level but simply that sometimes we have to recognise new connections, and discard old ones that don’t work.

Adrian
Adrian
3 years ago
Reply to  Auberon Linx

When you see extreme examples of both types of people in the same nuclear family, and a few in between, it’s hard NOT to see it as a spectrum.
What is hard to see is what the little differentiators between these differnt types of autistic are – they are there though, and they can make a huge difference.

Ian Barton
Ian Barton
3 years ago

The Autism scale concept is a really useful mechanism to encourage understanding and empathy within the wider population.

As a person who gets a bit anxious/irritated unless “everything is in its normal place” I know that I’m on the scale, and can understand and empathise with those much further along it.

7882 fremic
7882 fremic
3 years ago
Reply to  Ian Barton

I am opposite, I have always been attracted to chaos I guess. Sameness is tedium to me, I do not put things back in their place, just leave them lie where I drop them. Being a tradesman who can be using a large numbers of materials and tools scattered all over the work site the very worst thing is if my wife tries to organize them, as I find stuff by rooting around in the disordered heap I have left. Things put away slow me down and cause aggravation.

My life after leaving school was to hit the road and live in the chaotic world of the penniless drifter for decades. I would try to stay in one place and move ahead in life, but just hated that and would throw on the backpack and head off for another year on the road, I did this when ever I got a few $ ahead. The road with little money is the opposite of fun, more a kind of hell really, but when I would settle a wile it would just suck me back onto it.

I am a high IQ dyslexic who just never could do routine, or tolerate anyone telling me what to do. Authority defiant disorder I suppose. I never really minded hardship, in fact would live the hardest way in sort of a macho thing where I had to be tougher than anyone else.

Not a good combination as it meant I never got anywhere in life because I never built up well paying skill sets or got university degrees – I should have been wealthy and a professional, but just was a drifter for most of my life. I did see a lot of weird and amazing stuff, and hung with some really wild people, and had a lot of scary times, but basically frittered away my life because I could not tolerate anyone telling me what to do, and got restless if I stayed in one place. One reason I survived my life, which I should not have as it was pretty rough, is because I can talk to anyone, and can read people really well.

I am not anything like autistic, but some other odd thing.

Caitlin McDonald
Caitlin McDonald
3 years ago
Reply to  Ian Barton

As a person who gets a bit anxious/irritated unless “everything is in its normal place” I know that I’m on the scale,

Not at all necessarily. This is a characteristic of obsessive compulsive disorder and probably a number of other conditions, and certainly part of a normal personality.

Ian Barton
Ian Barton
3 years ago

Thanks for the correction.

Now I just need someone to convince my friends and family that I’m not odd 🙂

Alison Houston
Alison Houston
3 years ago

I don’t like the word empathy in your last sentence. Those of us who are not severely autistic cannot empathise with people who are like babies or wild animals. It is a kind of arrogance to imagine that we could share their distress or world view in some way that would be useful to them. Since by definition they have no use for empathy then we can only deem it necessary from our own non autistic perspective, or as Christians.

It would be more honest to say they deserve our Christian kindness and to be prepared to fight off the lefty do gooders who refuse to acknowledge that is what is at the heart of such charitable instincts.

Daniel Björkman
Daniel Björkman
3 years ago
Reply to  Alison Houston

Those of us who are not severely autistic cannot empathise with people who are like babies or wild animals.

You can’t emphathise with babies and wild animals? Whyever not? They mostly just want to be warm and fed. That would seem to be quite easy to relate to.

Since by definition they have no use for empathy then we can only deem it necessary from our own non autistic perspective, or as Christians.

I would say they have considerable use for empathy if that makes people want to reduce their suffering. What you mean is that they seem like they have no use for politeness and soft words, which may or may not be true. But anyone who can feel pain has a use for people who can empathise with that pain and who therefore would like to lessen it.

Alison Houston
Alison Houston
3 years ago

Being able to understand the needs of another living thing is not the same as empathy. I can understand a plant’s need for carbon dioxide and light and water, but that comprehension of its biological requirements are of use to it only so long as I am in charge of providing its access to them.

Providing a severely autistic person with food and water and shelter and cleaning up their bodily waste requires action and that is driven by kindness, and that old fashioned, much sneered at emotion, sympathy or pity, not empathy. Empathy is all about engaging emotionally in such a way as to be mentally useful to the subject upon whom your are practising it, without being patronising. That is impossible to all intents and purposes with someone whose state of mind is such that the very nature of their condition is defined by the fact that they have no use for it and cannot distinguish patronising kindness or pity from trendy, right on empathy.

Judy Johnson
Judy Johnson
3 years ago
Reply to  Alison Houston

The parents of a child with autism would probably disagree.

I am not sure why you think kindness is a ‘Christian’ characteristic. It is taught in many of the psalms. You can use words loosely but in comments on such an article is not really the place.

7882 fremic
7882 fremic
3 years ago
Reply to  Alison Houston

I am a big outdoors man, I lived in wild places for quite a few years and I am absolutely at home in the wilds. I have had very large interaction with creatures, I have killed a lot of them as used to hunt, and have killed tons of fish as I fish everywhere I have ever gone, and have commercial fished. I am exceptionally in tune with nature, I get it, I know the ecosystems, I know the creatures and plants, I know how they live and do not, and have a completely realistic understanding of creatures.

The problem is I empathize with them. I see their life, and it is mostly suffering and a bad death. That is nature, fecundity beyond the carrying capacity of nature, the young really have it very bad indeed. I have seen too much suffering, too much death, and I do not like nature as it is so cold. I have to spend hours a day in it as it is a part of me, I am driven to nature, but it is fantastically cruel. Just horribly so. I am in the woods, garden, on the water, hours a day, every day, with my dogs and it is all around, the cruelty of nature and life in it.

I am a wild creature my self, and love creatures, I have my dog with me 24 hours a day. But I just can never really like nature. It is grand, amazing, but as cold as an asteroid in space. It has zero compassion, it is so utterly cold. Nature and life are depressing, because I empathize with the creatures. Not just sympathize, but empathize, I know their suffering, I know them so well, and it bothers me greatly; the suffering all around us. I would like to not empathize with the creatures as it brings me distress, but I do. Empathize is a very good word, many really do feel it, just feel the travails of another, and so you feel their pain yourself, and from that comes the Sympathy.

F S
F S
3 years ago
Reply to  Alison Houston

Well my son is one that you would describe as a “baby” or even a “wild animal” at times.
However, if you spend any time with him you will learn he very much has feelings, has a need of empathy from others and in fact can empathise himself..
He might not understand social cues but he very much has feelings that need understanding. Autism is not knowing how to deal with feelings and social behaviour. It is absolutely not about the absence of feelings or wanting social interaction. It is a whole host of sensory processing issues that get in the way of everything every day. But that doesn’t mean severely autistic people don’t want to be included in whatever way they can.
It is precisely the assumption that there is no point empathising that has held back so many autistic people for so long.
And I’m not interested in anyone’s sympathy, though kindness is more than welcome.

Fred Dibnah
Fred Dibnah
3 years ago
Reply to  Alison Houston

As a parent of children diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome (Now classed as High Functioning Autism) I find the misuse of the word empathy where people mean sympathy very annoying.

Cassian Young
Cassian Young
3 years ago
Reply to  Fred Dibnah

Or “compassion”. Paul Bloom wrote an entire book about this : “Against Empathy”

Judy Englander
Judy Englander
3 years ago
Reply to  Alison Houston

Suggesting that people might want to m*rd*r Boris and ministers as you did recently at the Spectator, isn’t Christian kindness or charity is it Alison?

You phrased your Speccie comment carefully, but I saw what you did there.

Adrian
Adrian
3 years ago
Reply to  Alison Houston

You can. When I see a baby go nuts because the wrong colour of things have gone together I can empathise, sometimes better than its mother. Same with an adult severe autistic. I know which noises or combination of noises are setting him off, because they set my teeth on edge and make me grumpy.

Fraser Bailey
Fraser Bailey
3 years ago
Reply to  Alison Houston

I have just viewed Alison reciting her poem ‘When I Grow Up’ on YouTube. It is a perfect poem for our times.

F S
F S
3 years ago
Reply to  Alison Houston

Reply
−
Avatar
F S Alison Houston
2 minutes ago
Well my son is one that you would describe as a “baby” or even a “wild animal” at times.
However, if you spend any time with him you will learn he very much has feelings, has a need of empathy from others and in fact can empathise himself..
He might not understand social cues but he very much has feelings that need understanding. Autism is not knowing how to deal with feelings and social behaviour. It is absolutely not about the absence of feelings or wanting social interaction. It is a whole host of sensory processing issues that get in the way of everything every day. But that doesn’t mean severely autistic people don’t want to be included in whatever way they can.
It is precisely the assumption that there is no point empathising that has held back so many autistic people for so long.
And I’m not interested in anyone’s sympathy, though kindness is more than welcome.

F S
F S
3 years ago
Reply to  Alison Houston

Well my son is one that you would describe as a “baby” or even a “wild animal” at times.
However, if you spend any time with him you will learn he very much has feelings, has a need of empathy from others and in fact can empathise himself..
He might not understand social cues but he very much has feelings that need understanding. Autism is not knowing how to deal with feelings and social behaviour. It is absolutely not about the absence of feelings or wanting social interaction. It is a whole host of sensory processing issues that get in the way of everything every day. But that doesn’t mean severely autistic people don’t want to be included in whatever way they can.
It is precisely the assumption that there is no point empathising that has done so much harm to so many autistic people for so long.
And my son and I aren’t interested in anyone’s sympathy, though kindness is more than welcome.

deb cram
deb cram
3 years ago

Greta Thunberg is one-track-minded, as are many with Autism. Therefore she can easily concentrate on only ONE thing and ignore everything else. The world does not work that way. What annoys me about her is that EVERYONE must see only HER point of view (the climate more important than Covid, for instance). Also she does not say/do what she does in a “saintly” way to save the world. She actually does it to save herself!! Have you not read all about her parents, who said she was suicidal (with anorexia too) before she found HER cause. I’m glad she did, for her, but the rest of us have, amazingly, got other things to balance up. Autistic people can achieve amazing things, but not by bullying, as she does!

Daniel Björkman
Daniel Björkman
3 years ago

Yeah, fully agree. My autism has only ever been a pain in my ass. I’ve resigned myself to it, and to the limitations it forces me to live under, and at this point in my life I don’t think I could change to a neurotypical lifestyle even if that somehow became an option. But if I could get my life over again, I’d much rather be normal and functional.

bcfitzpatrickbcf
bcfitzpatrickbcf
3 years ago

I worked for 12 years in disability sector with some profoundly disabled children . Its not a job for everyone but I found I had deep compassion love for these children . I believe when you work in this field you become a better person . High functioning or well known people like Great Thunberg are an example to us all . Her dedication and commitment drive her as a young teen to do what she did not for fame or celebrity but purely out of a deep concern for the planet . I think non autistic people look at her and do not understand that she’s genuine because that’s the one quality all autistic people have that is sadly lacking in our world today …..genuiness

Adrian Smith
Adrian Smith
3 years ago

Yep St Greta is genuinely nuts and not just a deluded attention seeker pretending she can see the invisible.

Bengt Dhover
Bengt Dhover
3 years ago

Greta’s anxiety about the perceived immiment collapse of the eco-system might well be geuine. My problem is with the people who planted the idea in her head, then exploited her resulting fear in a most cynical way.

Andrew Thompson
Andrew Thompson
3 years ago
Reply to  Bengt Dhover

I think her pushy parents should be more concerned about her own eminent collapse from off her perch I reckon.

David McKee
David McKee
3 years ago

We need to remember that autism only came to prominence about thirty years ago. I research terms, that’s the day before yesterday. So I am very wary about people who claim to have great insights into the condition.
(Declaration of interest: I was diagnosed with autism, in my seventh decade of life.)
I am even more wary of self-promoters like Thunberg. She does not resemble me, or any other autistic person I know.
People bandy words like superpowers with gay abandon. I wish they would not. As things stand, we have no clear idea what advantages autism offers humanity. It’s about time we found out.

Athena Jones
Athena Jones
3 years ago
Reply to  David McKee

As things stand we no longer have any idea what Autism, brain damaged humans, is let alone what advantages it might offer.

Scott Norman Rosenthal
Scott Norman Rosenthal
3 years ago

In my case the symptoms were physiologically agonizing.

Athena Jones
Athena Jones
3 years ago

Many of those now labelled Autistic are not Autistic. In times past they would be called sensitive. Yes, there may be more of them now and given the synthetic chemical levels in the environment, food chain, pregnancy and childbirth today, that is not surprising.

Real Autism is a tragedy for the individual and the family. Being a bit different or highly sensitive is not what being Autistic is about. However, a variety of ‘conditions’ or symptoms, including Asperger’s which is ridiculous, have been lumped under the Autism umbrella, no doubt to disguise the levels of brain-damaged children in the world today.

Truly Autistic kids are brain-damaged. And no, it is not about more diagnosis and better diagnosis or we would have facilities today full of Autistic adults. Autism appeared as the age of maximum and excessive vaccination took off. And absolutely, correlation is not causation but neither have we done the studies to categorically show that vaccines do not play a part in this epidemic of brain damaged kids. Ultrasounds, overuse of antibiotics, too many C-sections, too many medications for kids, too many healthy temperatures synthetically reduced, are also factors over that time period. All should be studied as possible triggers for Autism.

I can look at myself and in this age be identified as Autistic. I am not and never was. I am however, like 20% of the population, highly sensitive. Perhaps I would be vastly worse if I had been born unnaturally, dosed up with antibiotics, constantly vaccinated and medicated to ‘treat’ my ‘problems.’

There is something disgraceful in the movement to turn Autism into almost a ‘lifestyle choice to celebrate being a bit different,’ given the ghastly realities it has for those who live with real Autism.