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- [00:00]
A
Foreign. Okay. Today we're talking about the history of autism, specifically because of the Elon Musk Nazi salute and people being like, oh, it's because of Asperger's. Yeah.
- [00:30]
B
So funny story. I saw this on Blue Sky. I saw the attribute. No, no, this is Elon Musk is a friend of the Jews. This is just a person with Asperger's who's flailing in excitement.
- [00:46]
A
Okay.
- [00:47]
B
And that triggered my first panic attack in, like, a decade. That's bad, because as ready as I was for a whole lot like the immigration stuff and the anti transgender people stuff, despite that, and the people of color and black people stuff, I wasn't ready for the ableism. I don't know why I wasn't, but there it is. So that's why we're talking about it.
- [01:11]
A
Okay. So I think we should, like, first, let's address people's preconceptions.
- [01:15]
B
What?
- [01:15]
A
Why people are using the term Asperger's. In my mind, and let's just say.
- [01:19]
B
Out loud, both of us are formally diagnosed on the spectrum ASD level one. We know of where we speak.
- [01:28]
A
Yeah. So. But my preconception before I started, like, learning about this stuff was that Asperger's was a kind of a disease that was a diagnosis that meant someone was a mad genius, someone with high intelligence or special skills. Like, a highly talented, sophisticated person who is, like, kind of mean and couldn't help it.
- [01:49]
B
Yeah. My understanding of Asperger's was it was somebody who was pretty rigid and highly intellectual, and so they would be successful in academia. For example.
- [02:00]
A
Yeah. Sherlock Holmes. And I think there's an episode of House where Cuddy suggests that maybe he has Asperger's. And he's like, no, I'm just an asshole.
- [02:08]
B
Yeah. And you made up a song when the. We were sort of, like, moving in the direction of getting diagnosed. What was your song? Hey, everybody. It's the ukulele.
- [02:19]
A
The song went something like this. Am I autistic or am I an asshole? Divergent or just introverted? Am I spectrum Y or just sensitive? How do we explain what my weirdness is? Am I autistic dick or am I an. And the answer is, of course. Por.
- [02:50]
B
Yeah.
- [02:51]
A
Porque noos dos.
- [02:52]
B
Yeah.
- [02:53]
A
Why not? Yeah. So I brought my ukulele over specifically because I thought, like, I'm probably gonna sing that song.
- [02:59]
B
Yeah.
- [02:59]
A
Anyway, it's just a song I was singing in my car while I was in the middle of my assessment.
- [03:04]
B
Yeah.
- [03:07]
A
Because I had this. Because that's the Sense I had. Anyway, since then I've become far more educated on the subject. Yeah. Most of the history stuff I'm going to talk about comes from the book Asperger's the Origins of Autism in Nazi Vienna, which is by an author named Edith Scheffer. She is a historian and brings the receipts so that. That our sense of what Asperger's syndrome is was in fact pretty accurate because that is in fact what the diagnosis was. Here's how it came to be. There was this guy named Hans Asperger. And when I'm talking about the guy, I'm going to pronounce his name Asperger in the German pronunciation. When I'm talking about the thing, I'm going to call it Asperger's.
- [03:54]
B
Oh, he was German.
- [03:55]
A
He was Venice. I'm going to pronounce it in the German language because that's the language he spoke.
- [04:01]
B
Okay.
- [04:02]
A
And that's how he would have pronounced his name, Hans, because I thought he.
- [04:04]
B
Was Austrian and if he's Viennese, then yes, he's Austrian. But he spoke German.
- [04:08]
A
Yeah, yeah, that's what I mean by German. Okay, great, thanks. He was not the first person to publish using the word autism to describe a kind of inward, self facing lack of connectedness to the outside world in as. As a atypical feature of children who were in mental health care is how I'll put it in the beginning of the 20th century. A research psychologist in America who had immigrated, I forget if it was from Austria or Germany. His name was Leo Kanna, K A N N E R Kanner in American. He ended up working at Johns Hopkins, working with these kids. And he identified this thing he called autism, like, as in the Greek root for the self. Autism, as in. Like this, as. As a facet of schizophrenia, psychopathy. None of these words meant then what they do now. But he, he was using it not to describe a single state or a single diagnosis, but actually just to describe a certain facet of how these kids seem to be like, really attuned to their own inner world and less attuned to the community or even to objects. Like they were just really inward facing. He saw, he thought. So he published a paper on that, I think in 1940. I don't remember the years, but then the next year is when Ospera published a paper using that same word to describe the same sort of inward facingness of these kids who seem to have this unique way of being in the world. So the word autism comes from later, much later, way after the war. War in the 50s, the World War II. I mean, in the 50s and the 60s, there was a research psychologist named Lorna Wing, who's a British psychologist who was looking at autism and learned of Asperger's work and connected it to the autism of Leona in America and was like, you know what? I think these are describing the same thing, this sense of, like inward turning, aware more of their own internal experience than of being connected to the outside world. And I think what Asperger was describing was these kids who have no speech developmental differences and have no intellectual disabilities, but they seem to have this same thing in common. And she spoke to Asperger and he disagreed. He said, no, no, no, these are totally different kids. They describe a totally different thing. But the history of what actually happened after this is that, indeed Asperger syndrome, which was named by Lorna Wing after Asperger as a professional courtesy. She brought his work from German into the English speaking language in the middle of the 20th century and she called it Asperger Syndrome after him. He had called it autistic psychopathy, because those words didn't mean the same thing then as they do now. And she was definitely like, it's definitely not a psychopathy according to how we use these words now. So I'm just going to call it Asperger Syndrome. And she regretted that much later, not much later. She regretted that shortly thereafter. And the ICD10 included it under his name. And they, like, apparently didn't vet Asperger properly.
- [07:39]
B
The ICD is the international classification of diseases.
- [07:42]
A
It is, yeah. Which is what the Europeans use.
- [07:44]
B
Places that are not the US US use. And in fact, in the US sometimes they use the ICD as. As their. And we're not on 10 anymore. I think we're on 12.
- [07:53]
A
We are on. Oh, I think we're only on 11.
- [07:55]
B
We might only be on 11.
- [07:57]
A
As of 2021, it was 11. And as of 2021 in the ICD 11, Asperger syndrome was erased as its own separate diagnosis and it was included under the autism spectrum disorder, which is how it has been listed in the DSM at least since 5. Right. Which is autism spectrum disorder, where there's a kind of a note of autism level one without speech development delay, without intellectual disability, minimal support needs, formerly known as, or also called Asperger Syndrome. Does that make sense? Yes.
- [08:37]
B
What was the part about they didn't vet Asperger?
- [08:39]
A
Oh, I will tell you that story in a hot second. But one of the reasons it's no longer called Asperger syndrome is because it didn't vet Asperger. So here's. Here's the story. Here's the story of Asperger. Of Asperger. He lived in Vienna. He was Catholic.
- [08:53]
B
Warning, it gets real dark.
- [08:55]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's Nazis and fascism and stuff. He lived in Vienna when Hitler came and the Anschluss, and they just annexed Austria, And Austria was like, we don't want to get. We don't want to be in a war. We want to be invaded like this. This is probably fine. And most of Austria just, like, rolled over. They hung swastikas in the streets, and we're like, okay, welcome, Nazis. I guess many, many Jews were fired from their jobs.
- [09:22]
B
The whole.
- [09:23]
A
The whole Jewish ghettoization then being sent to concentration camps. That all happened in Vienna after this. And Asperger, who was young, practicing doctor of, you know, in psychiatry, he. He was working in a job, and, like, a bunch of Jews ran, were fled or were taken away on a cattle car. And so he, like, became a leader in his field real fast because of all these newly vacant positions. He just rose to the top of his field. All these vacancies happened to come up. Yikes. Yeah, yeah. Oh, dark. And so in 1938, he published a paper. He's been working with kids with mental things, and he published a paper that said, you know what? Like, diagnosis is a bad idea. Because with children, so much potential, so much change is going to happen. If you stick a label on it like, it, it really limits your understanding of what the child is capable of and how you should be, like, catering your treatment to meet the individual needs of that child. And then in 1939, here come the Nazis, and he publishes another paper saying, here's a diagnosis. I made up autistic psychopathy. And it's important to know that as autism was becoming a word that was used to describe children with certain characteristics, fascism was a word that was also being used. And because, you know, Asperger knew Greek, he knew what these roots of these words meant. Like, so auto. The self. And fascia in your body. Fascia is this, like, sheet of collagen, I guess, that surrounds muscle groups and binds the muscle fibers together to turn a bunch of muscle fibers into a muscle. Right fascia is.
- [11:31]
B
One time I was getting a massage, and I asked, why does. When you work on my shoulder, why. Why do I feel that I'm relaxing my lower back? And he goes, it's all connected. And I was like, yeah, but, like, what connects it like, really, like, what's the actual answer of what connects it? And he was like, oh, it's fascia. Yeah, it's fascia because there's this tissue that holds the whole thing together. It is like when you're. If you're. If you've got a piece of meat that you're sort of preparing, like if you've got baby back ribs, there's going be a sheet of fascia on the inside of the ribs that holds the whole thing together. And you remove that so that when it cooks, it gets. Falls apart.
- [12:09]
A
It all falls apart. Exactly. Yeah. So in Italy, the fashionism was used as a conscious word to talk about binding together many small parts. Italy before the 20th century, before the middle of the 19th century, was just a bunch of little nation states, and it was finally bound together into the single nation of Italy. That's a relatively new concept in the history of Europe, that Italy is one single nation, and it was fascism that bound it together to, like, create this national identity. It's not the only thing. And it happened kind of late in that history, but that was consciously one of the things they were doing in Italy. So the idea that a nation is bound together by this idea that we are a nation and that stands. Fascism, the binding of many things together into one strong unit, stands in opposition linguistically and in Aspero's mind, in opposition to autism. Fascism versus autism. And we know this because he used fascist language in his description of his diagnosis of autistic psychopathy. He actually used a term that in Germany is like a very. Was like a very big deal in the 19th and early 20th century called Gemut. And it's one of those German words that doesn't have a translation into any other language. It's sort of. Gemut is sort of like your soul, but it's the way that your soul is bound to all other souls. It's your sense of connectedness to your nation, your community, your identity as it is a part of something. Something larger. Gemut. And someone who's gemutlich is like somebody who's just like, really great to be around. You feel really connected to them. They seem like, you know, a real. A real community member, a real. Yeah, great. Like. Yeah. Contributor to. Yeah, Gmut. And like, this was. It was. It was kind of a meme word in the 19th century, such that the poet Goethe was like, y'all gotta stop saying gamut, because it doesn't mean anything anymore. Like, can we just stop saying gamut for like, 30 years? And then maybe It'll fucking mean something again. It was like the. As if. Like demure. If demure had been a big deal for 20 years and people were like, stop saying it. It doesn't mean what you think it means. Like, Goethe was like, stop using that word. But people used it gamut. It was a big deal. And for Hitler and fascists, the idea that gamut was a specifically German thing. And when they talked about German, they didn't mean Germany the country, they meant the German nationality. And this is nation, like Red Sox nation, where, like, you don't have to live in a place to be a member of this nation. You, You. You are a part of the spirit of the place. And even if you do live in that place, you might not be a member of the German nation. If you're gay, you're not a member of the German nation.
- [15:13]
B
Right.
- [15:14]
A
If you're disabled, you're not a member of the German nation. If you are Roma, you are not a member of the German nation.
- [15:20]
B
If you're black, not a member of the German nation.
- [15:23]
A
Not a member of the German nation. Yeah, but so. Oh. So Asperger was working in a hospital with children who had been identified as, like, troublesome. And it was his job to be like, what do we do with these kids? How do we help them? Curative education was specifically his department. So, like, how do we help them become of value to the Reich? To the Reich? How do we make these kids of value to the right? How do we make sure that they are contributing in ways that we are interested in to make them members of the nation? Yeah. And he had very different ideas about the value of boys versus the value of girls.
- [16:07]
B
No.
- [16:08]
A
Yeah. Can you figure. So when it came to boys, and this is, to this day, one of the reasons we still think about autism as being about skinny white boys who are enthusiastic about trains. Right. Is that literally he used the example of train schedules or tram schedules as being a thing that, like, there are these kids who are, like, they have no respect for authority. They speak to adults the same way they speak to other children. Literally in German, there's a form of address. You know, you say du for you informal, and sie for you, formal. For someone who's older than you or know higher ranking than you. He's like, these kids, they just say do instead of Z. They never use Z as the formal address, which I very much relate to. Yeah, but so he identified that, like, what they lack is gamut. They don't have this thing that we identify that is normal and Natural for people to have this sense of soulful connectedness to everything around them. They. They lack that. They are instead autistic.
- [17:11]
B
I mean, that does feel. Yep, yep.
- [17:14]
A
Yeah. So he identified that, like, some of these kids are really, really intelligent, like, hyper intelligent. A lot of them seem to have this, like, hyper capability with language. They're poetic. They. They're rhapsodic about the way they describe things. Some of them have really, like, intense, focused interest that they will talk on and on about, and it's hard to get a word in edgewise. Some of them can, you know, tell you the date on a calendar for any day of the week or vice versa. And they have these, like, specialized interests. Some of the interests are really useful. Like, man, they could really excel in math and science and be of use to the Reich, or they are really interested in things that are useless and will not be of use to the Reich. And so when it came to boys, he was like, this kid's really verbal. This kid's really good at math. And when it came to girls, it was a matter of how do these girls act not in school, but in their homes?
- [18:18]
B
Sure.
- [18:18]
A
How do they act around boys? And so girls were of far less value to him because if a girl doesn't have a sense of connectedness to their community, then that is of much less value to the Reich. So he identified and diagnosed these kids and he described them and he ranked them according to their value to the community. And he was fully on board with eugenics. He never became a member, on paper, of the Nazi party, which is why he never got in trouble after the war.
- [18:54]
B
But he made his whole job systematically categorizing which young humans would be of service to the Reich.
- [19:03]
A
Yes. And those who he deemed not remotely potentially of service, he sent to another hospital called Spiegelklund, which was the location of the largest mass murder of children in the Nazi Reich.
- [19:19]
B
Important key question. Did he know?
- [19:21]
A
Yes, he 100% knew.
- [19:22]
B
He 100% knew. He 100% Knew.
- [19:26]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah. He 100% Knew. He.
- [19:28]
B
So he was sending the children who could not be of service to the Reich to their death.
- [19:31]
A
To their death on purpose, intentionally, unknowingly. He was a friend. He was an academic cohort of the man who was in charge of Spiegel Grund. So he would name. I'm sending him to this guy. I'm sending this child to this guy over this other hospital who he knew was murdering children on purpose because they would not be of service to the Reich. And The Reich knew this was not going to be popular and the people weren't going to like it because they hid it. They published newspaper articles saying there's this rumor that we're killing children and it's just not true. Like, in abject contradiction of reality where parents knew their kid had been sent to Spiegel Glund and their kid had died, was a perfectly healthy child who had died two months later of quote, unquote, pneumonia, which is like the same kind of symptoms that are brought on by the kind of poison they use to kill these children. And we're talking children from between. Like, from toddlers to teenagers. So this is. The diagnosis of Asperger Syndrome is intentionally by Asperger himself was defined as in contradiction to fascism. He was like this fascist ideal of a gemutlich person who prioritizes their commitment to the community. That's an ideal person. And someone who is autistic has no access to being fascistic in their internal state, in their sentiment, naturally, this person is of less value. This person is ill. And whatever steps are taken with ill people in your community is what should be taken with this person. They need to be shunned, slash sent to Spiegelklund. Yeah. So that's some. That's the history of Asperger Syndrome, except.
- [21:28]
B
For these kids, these boys who have skills.
- [21:32]
A
Yeah, yeah. Unless you're. Unless you're, you know, a white boy who. Who strikes as fancy, who he thinks is, like, you know what, he's really wayward and difficult to, like, test, and you can't have a conversation with him. But he's so charismatic and, like, the use of language is so fascinating. And there were never any girls who struck him that way. The girls were always just unruly and unsympathetic. Yeah.
- [22:01]
B
Because they were falling short. Human Giver Syndrome was alive and well then. Girls are expected to be pretty happy, calm, generous, and above all, attentive to the needs of others. And it is not in the nature of autism to notice others.
- [22:17]
A
Yeah. And actually, in Vienna at the time and in Germany at the time, women were professionals. There were women working as doctors in the psychiatric hospitals. There were professionals who were advancing. So it was a kind of regressive thing that the Nazis were bringing to kind of like, send women back into the home.
- [22:39]
B
That doesn't sound at all like what's happening now.
- [22:43]
A
Right.
- [22:43]
B
Yeah.
- [22:44]
A
Yeah. So when we start talking about Asperger's Syndrome in people like Elon Musk, number one, that's not a diagnosis anymore. I understand.
- [22:53]
B
It hasn't been for over a decade.
- [22:55]
A
It hasn't been in the DSM for over a decade. It hasn't been in the ICD11 since 2021 is when that took effect. Yeah, yeah. Oh, for sure. So we need to, like, get that name out of our mouths now. There is a whole community of people with ASD Love got diagnosed who identify as aspies because they were diagnosed before that word went away, particularly in Europe, particularly in Australia. Aspies. I have Asperger's. I'm an Aspergerls is the name of a book about girls with Asperger syndrome, which I like to think is spelled A, S, S B U, R G, E, R. Asperger. That's which is.
- [23:40]
B
There's a romance novel called the Rosie Project where the. It's told from the point of view of the hero who learns that Asperger's is a thing. And he, like, goes and talks to a bunch of kids who teach him the term Aspies, and he starts, like, celebrating being an Aspie.
- [23:57]
A
Right. And people can embrace it because it's this cute. And I don't want to take anything away from their embrace of this term. And it feels good for them. I never can or will. And I hope that as people learn this history. Asperger, after the war, stopped studying autistic kids, published nothing else about autism, was not well known outside of his immediate circle of professionals. When Lorna Wing talked to him about his research, she was much more well known than he was. So she was being like, as a big deal, I'm not gonna, like, dismiss this little deal. She was being a good colleague by saying, like, I'm a big deal, but I'm not gonna, like, I'm not gonna erase your name, even though I disagree with you about the fundamental nature as to whether these two kinds of autism are related.
- [25:01]
B
Yeah.
- [25:02]
A
Yeah.
- [25:04]
B
The difference being between the two kinds being basically verbalness, whether or not they speak.
- [25:11]
A
Yeah. In the diagnostic criteria, the difference is no difference. Or impairment or delay of speech development is the way it's termed. And no intellectual disability. Okay, but, like, all the other things.
- [25:30]
B
Are true, like the rigidity, the hypersensitivity or hyposensitivity.
- [25:35]
A
Hypersensitivity was not part of the diagnosis, I don't think at the time.
- [25:38]
B
Okay.
- [25:39]
A
But the. So for. Oh. I also want to talk about how from the very beginning, from the very beginning of an autistic diagnosis, the primary feature of autism was other people's experience of an autistic person.
- [25:53]
B
Wow.
- [25:54]
A
Their lack of connectedness to their community, Their lack of, like, capacity to belong to a group. Well, from the very beginning, that was the definition.
- [26:05]
B
Have I. I've told you the story of what my own psychiatrist said when I said I was pursuing an autism diagnosis or like undergoing comprehensive neuropsych evaluation in order to rule out everything.
- [26:18]
A
What do you say?
- [26:19]
B
His. His.
- [26:20]
A
He.
- [26:20]
B
As I said it, he was shaking his head and he said, I've known people who've gotten that diagnosis and I've always felt like there's something missing in this connection.
- [26:32]
A
Yeah.
- [26:32]
B
And he didn't feel that with me.
- [26:34]
A
Yeah.
- [26:35]
B
So that's. Wow. Wow. From the beginning of diagnosis, it was about other people's experience of the person. And if they didn't experience that sense of like, this person is not connecting with me like a heavy air quotes, normal person, then there must be something wrong. What is that wrong thing? That wrong thing is autism.
- [26:54]
A
It's a lack of gamete.
- [26:56]
B
Yeah.
- [26:57]
A
From the very beginning, even Leo Kana, who was diagnosing people who we'd now call level two or level three who have intellectual disabilities, who have differences or delays in speech development, he also noticed in them a sense of disconnectedness from other people, a different kind of relationship. Oseberger talks about how these. These kids are subjects of ridicule. They're just obviously like someone that would just get teased by other kids.
- [27:30]
B
Yeah.
- [27:31]
A
What makes it obvious? He doesn't say. It just seems obvious to him that they're lacking this sameness of a regular kid.
- [27:41]
B
Giovanni Cricket.
- [27:43]
A
So from the very beginning. Yeah. It's been about other people's experiences of their social connection. And I mean, I guess it would have to be because people are not. People who are non autistic are.
- [27:55]
B
That is, that is. That's.
- [27:57]
A
It's their observations that get into the record.
- [28:01]
B
Yeah.
- [28:02]
A
And people who are autistic don't have access to power to set the record for themselves until very, very recently. Very recently.
- [28:11]
B
Yeah.
- [28:11]
A
Yeah. There is no part of autism that is about having a twitch that might make you give a hell or salute.
- [28:21]
B
No, there's nothing. Nothing. I'm a person who gestures wildly a lot, all the time.
- [28:27]
A
Yeah.
- [28:28]
B
And I am very capable of gesturing wildly in a way that doesn't even remotely resemble a Hitler. Kreuss. Like, there's like. There's nothing about being autistic that means. I don't understand what that means.
- [28:46]
A
There is a common feature of autistic, especially autistic children, that they are clumsy and seem not to be able to like, coordinate their limbs and There is a story about me in ballet class when we were kids that I was not told until after I got the autism diagnosis. That our parents put you and me in ballet class. And our grandmother went to observe ballet class. And grandmom asked mom, should Amelia be in this class? Are we hurting her by putting her through this? Because I was so bad at it and so oblivious to my badness that she thought that me being in this class might be, like, detrimental to my sense of, I don't know, self or like. But also, I have no memory of this. I thought I was pretty good.
- [29:39]
B
Why? Why did they put us in? Why? So, like, our parents were poor, our grandparents paid for our dance lessons to begin with, and we got a discount.
- [29:49]
A
Because our dad was the photographer for the studio.
- [29:50]
B
For the studio. And our grandmother wanted us to be in ballet classes because I walked on my toes. Yeah, like a stereotypical autistic all the time. Very like, now we know. Very stereotype. Like, if you see a kid walking on her toes.
- [30:09]
A
That'S just, that's.
- [30:10]
B
That's the thing autistic kids do. I'm just letting you know. And I did all the time. And our grandmother's first thought was ballet.
- [30:17]
A
Ballet classes.
- [30:18]
B
Walking on your toes. We know a young autistic boy who is non speaking and black, and he also walked on his toes. And we were white and speaking and masking and girls. So we got ballet lessons. And this black non speaking boy was put in the kind of boots that you give to people who've broken their ankles.
- [30:45]
A
Yeah.
- [30:47]
B
Because when you're a boy, when you're non speaking and when you're black, they don't. They don't give you ballet lessons.
- [30:54]
A
Yeah.
- [30:56]
B
In a lot of ways we have extreme good fortune in the way people responded to what was not diagnosed at the time and would not have been diagnosed in the early fucking 80s.
- [31:08]
A
Nope. Nope, nope, nope. Yeah. I mean, even now, AMAB people are diagnosed three times more often than AFAB people.
- [31:18]
B
Yeah. Not least because AFAB people are more likely to mask.
- [31:24]
A
Heavily to mask. And also because the fundamental grounding in the diagnosis was.
- [31:29]
B
Is inherently patriarchal.
- [31:30]
A
Inherently. Asperger himself looked for boys and called them this autistic thing. As though it's a thing. I mean, hey, person with science training, Emily, what's a diagnosis for?
- [31:46]
B
Yeah, that's a complicated question mostly.
- [31:49]
A
Right.
- [31:50]
B
What a diagnosis is for is to create a treatment plan.
- [31:54]
A
Right, Exactly. To create a treatment plan. You diagnose someone to give them hope, to say, we know what the problem is and we know how it is.
- [32:03]
B
Not to give them hope, but. Okay, okay.
- [32:05]
A
Well, it's to say we know what the problem is and we know how to help you. Right. Yeah. And some people would object to the idea that you're identifying a problem when maybe you're just identifying a difference. But either way, if a thing has been studied and identified and there are ways to make life easier for a person who fits that definition, that's a good thing. But also, diagnoses change over time based on social ideas and the social idea. So, for example, homosexuality was in the DSM until, what, 4, 72, 1972.
- [32:43]
B
Ish.
- [32:44]
A
The DSM had a diagnosis of homosexuality as, like, a mental illness.
- [32:50]
B
There's a wonderful episode of this American Life from a long time ago called 88 words about the activism both outside of and inside the psychiatric community to remove homosexuality from. It's A wonderful episode.
- [33:02]
A
88 Words.
- [33:03]
B
Highly recommend people listen.
- [33:05]
A
Yeah. So diagnoses change based on society and their ideals of what. Of what healthy is and what normal is and what requires support and treatment versus what's just like, oh, that's who you are, and that's fine. And the definition of autism grew in a world where literal fascism was the ideal, where gamut was not just a thing. People have that. Let's talk about and write music that, like, really touches people in their gamut and makes people feel their gamut. But. But because music history is where I get most of my history, so I know about Goethe and the music of the Romantic era, but instead it was where gamut was a necessary attribute for productive members of society. And anyone who lacks it is not only abnormal, but like a speed bump in the road to the future. Like someone with a club foot, like someone who is a Jew. Like, these people don't belong here. They need to be disposed of so we can clean up society and make the world perfect.
- [34:26]
B
Eugenics.
- [34:28]
A
Yeah, eugenics. And so the definition of autism was. Was like the definition of homosexuality changed when society was like, oh, yeah, that's not a disease. That's just a normal way to be. And autism came to be when literally Nazis were like, this is disease.
- [34:49]
B
Yeah.
- [34:50]
A
This is an erratic. Like a thing that needs eradication from our world. Right. If the Nazis had not come to Vienna, would Asperger have ever come up with this name, autism? Would he ever have labeled this difference, this what he. Yes. Identified as kind of a lack of gamut? These kids who don't feel connected, would he ever have called it a diagnosis? Because the year before the Nazis Came. He wrote a paper saying, diagnosis is dumb. It limits what you can do for a kid who's like, got so much potential. You never know. And then the year later, here come the Nazis. Autism, right? It's fucked up.
- [35:36]
B
Yep, that's fucked up. So one of the first things that happens when I started disclosing to people that I was diagnosed on the spectrum, one of the very first people I told, a really good friend said, that's not surprising to me. And also, why are you not identifying as Asperger's?
- [35:52]
A
Right.
- [35:53]
B
And. And I was like, super short answer. Basically Nazis. Like, this is a. This is a supremacist diagnosis. That is outdated.
- [36:02]
A
Yes.
- [36:03]
B
And I identify as being autistic, both because that's where the science is right now. That is where social justice is right now. And also I want to tell this story of how I really was like, oh, shit, this might be a thing for me.
- [36:21]
A
Yeah, it was 2020. Hold on.
- [36:23]
B
Okay.
- [36:25]
A
I want to reinforce the idea that when Dr. Wing talked to Asperger and she said, I think, I think Leokana's autism and your autism talk about the same thing. He was like, no, no, my kids were special. Yeah. Yep, yep.
- [36:45]
B
So he protected those children because they could be of service to the Reich. His special Asperger boys.
- [36:52]
A
Yeah. Yikes. Yeah. It is absolutely a supremacist idea.
- [36:59]
B
Yes. And the way I was finally convinced to pursue diagnosis was because I could recognize myself in a person of higher support need than myself. This story got reported in a very brief way in the New York Times profile about me. I told the whole story, but obviously there's not room to tell the whole story. So I want to tell the whole story here. So that is on the record.
- [37:23]
A
Do that. Yeah, for sure.
- [37:24]
B
First I saw Hannah Gatsby's Douglas, which is about their autism diagnosis. And I thought, that's really funny. But that's just like my experience. That's not autism. And Hannah Gatsby is right around the same support need level. The levels of autism are based on your support needs. ASD level 1, 2, and 3. And we're ASD level 1. And we are extraordinarily fortunate that our support needs. We have access to the resources we need to meet our support needs. So I was like, that's not. That's. I'm just socially awkward. And then I saw the Pixar animated short loop, which is about a boy named Marcus and a girl named Renee. And Renee is a non speaking autistic girl who uses like emojis on her phone to communicate. And Marcus gets like stuck with this autistic girl in a canoe because they're both like going to camp and it's canoe day and he's the last one to show up. So he's stuck with this non speaking autistic girl. And they end up like connecting really well, sharing some like, beautiful sensory experiences. And Marcus has the reason it's called loop is because Renee listens to this sound on her phone over and over and over again. And Marcus has this fun idea because they're playing with sensory experiences of going under a tunnel in the canoe so they could hear this loop on her phone play and like echo and reverberate. And it's a great idea. When she first starts hearing it, she's like fucking stoked. It's like fireworks in her brain. And then a motorboat goes through, which is both sound and motion because it creates a wave and. And Rene, it triggers a meltdown. Rene grabs the oars and paddles the boat to shore, Flips the canoe over and hides under it. Scream, Crying, sobbing. And Marcus, who is allistic, not autistic, in the New York Times article, they described him as neurotypical. We do not know that he's neurotypical. There are a lot of neurodivergences that are not autism.
- [39:40]
A
We.
- [39:40]
B
He could have adhd, he could be depressed, we don't know. But he's allistic, meaning he is not autistic. And he like sees Renee sobbing under the canoe, terrified of he doesn't understand what. And there's this image of this boy looking at this girl hiding under canoe and sobbing. And he says, I don't know what to do. You're kind of a lot, but I'm just gonna sit here and wait until you're ready to tell me what you need. And he sits and time passes. We see the sun getting lower in the sky until gradually Renee comes out from under the canoe and sits against it next to him. And they sing the loop song from her phone. And then they get in the canoe and they go back and it's that moment of an allistic kid saying to Renee, you're kind of intense, but I'm gonna wait until you're ready to tell me what you need. And I was like, oh, that's me. I am both of those things. There is a part of me that witnesses, that observes. Another part of me that just has a fucking meltdown, just is a total goddamn mess. But I, for some reason can hold onto it until I get home. And Have a total fucking meltdown behind a closed door. But both of those things are who I am. And if that's what autism is, then I'm autistic. I saw myself in a higher support need person. Not in house or the good doctor or any of those like, skinny white boy, interested in trains, super intelligent, but doesn't know how to be around people. That is not where I saw myself. Even though that is a reasonable description of me. I felt who I am when I saw. Oh, these can be parts of myself. I can have both of these things happening. And I. It just so happens that I have the ability to control, except under very intense circumstances. I have ability to control when my meltdowns happen.
- [42:12]
A
And I just want to be clear that Pixar and artists in general do intentionally create stories where the story is a metaphor for parts of yourself.
- [42:23]
B
Yes.
- [42:24]
A
Where, I mean, they make the movie Inside out, which is literally about parts of a self, but every movie Pixar makes is about parts of a single self.
- [42:34]
B
Yeah.
- [42:34]
A
So this is intentionally about anyone who's.
- [42:39]
B
Heard us talk about Moana.
- [42:41]
A
Yeah. Turning toward the part of yourself that you know is abandoned.
- [42:46]
B
If Pixar made this particular short as like a metaphor for. For a single self.
- [42:52]
A
Like everything they do is a metaphor for the single self.
- [42:55]
B
They hired a non speaking autistic person to play Renee.
- [43:00]
A
Yeah.
- [43:01]
B
They used a recording process that felt good for her based on what her needs are. So they like, followed her around with a microphone when she was just out for a walk and, like, communicating in the way that she communicates.
- [43:17]
A
But if people are saying that it's, you know, this story was about an external perception.
- [43:22]
B
Two kids. Yeah.
- [43:23]
A
Of an autistic person. Just like I was saying that it always has been. Pixar intentionally makes movies that are not that even their shorts are about.
- [43:33]
B
Yeah.
- [43:33]
A
Relation between internal parts.
- [43:35]
B
I experienced that shot as like, we are showing you a self.
- [43:40]
A
Yes.
- [43:41]
B
They.
- [43:42]
A
You experience it that way. Because they made it that.
- [43:43]
B
Because they made it that way. Yeah.
- [43:45]
A
Yeah. So if people just in general, I think it's gonna help people enjoy movies more if they imagine, like, what if everyone in this movie was a part of a self.
- [43:54]
B
Yeah. And this is all happening inside one person.
- [43:56]
A
Yeah.
- [43:57]
B
Like.
- [43:57]
A
And then what do these other parts represent? But like, Pixar does that on purpose and they, like, gave up trying to make it a metaphor and made inside out and just made it fucking literal. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, that's. That's the history of autism. It's. It was invented as a diagnosis in contrast to fascism.
- [44:18]
B
Yes.
- [44:18]
A
Which was considered the ideal. So congratulations, you're the opposite of a fascist.
- [44:23]
B
And yeah, everybody on the spectrum has like the meltdown self inside them.
- [44:32]
A
Yeah.
- [44:32]
B
And we are so we, we are all connected. All of us diagnosed on the spectrum are connected. I do not identify as being different from the 10 year old kid on an airplane just like totally losing their shit. Because airplanes are appalling from a sensory point of view and they're appalled. Like you feel you're trapped in this metal tube in the sky. Of course that kid is losing their shit. Me inside, I am also desperately losing my shit. And I know how to hold on to that loss until I get to my hotel room where I proceed to lose my shit. Yeah, that's just, that's so I, I want the moral of the story to be that autistic people are all connected. We all, it's a spectrum and we're all different from each other. If you've met one autistic person, you've met one autistic person, you have now met two autistic people at least in your life. And we all share similar experiences. I am not different from Renee. I am not different from that 10 year old on the plane.
- [45:43]
A
I also want to say that Elon Musk does not have a formal diagnosis and he's allowed to self diagnosis. But as, but as the richest man.
- [45:49]
B
In the world, self diagnosis, 100% legit.
- [45:52]
A
He needs to go get diagnosed if he wants to claim. Yeah, if you're the actual membership in a, in an oppressed community, if you're.
- [45:59]
B
If you're the richest man on earth currently alive, then you have access to all the resources that so many autistic people don't have access to. You can get yourself a comprehensive neuropsych evaluation if you want to click. Which he did not claim membership in this case. He did not say I'm Asperger's and blah blah, blah. But he has in the past said that he recognizes himself in the diagnostic characteristics of Asperger's syndrome. And I hope this makes it clear why somebody saying no, no. Elon Musk is a friend to the Jews. This is just. He's has Asperger's and is flailing. I hope it makes sense now why that was so triggering for me because that was this person showing their whole ableist ass.
- [46:54]
A
Yeah. Also Elon Musk has told us in words that he's an anti Semite.
- [47:00]
B
Oh yeah. And in actions, in the things that he does, in the way he's supporting the off day.
- [47:07]
A
Sure, sure. But, like, it kind of feels like an action needs to be interpreted, but he has told us in actual literal words. Yeah, I agree with anti Semitic things.
- [47:16]
B
So, yeah, History of autism.
- [47:19]
A
So, yeah. So let's think about the context of words and meanings and diagnoses and understand that it's not okay to call someone an Aspie if they don't identify that way.
- [47:32]
B
They don't identify that way.
- [47:34]
A
Like, and maybe. And maybe if you would identify as an Aspie, maybe you'll. Maybe you'll rethink that if you understand the context. Definitely. I recommend Asperger's Children as a book to read. It is darker and you may not.
- [47:50]
B
Have the wherewithal for that. And that is. Yeah, fine.
- [47:53]
A
Yeah, that's okay. But if you're interested in this history and you want to hear the receipts straight from, you know, the historian who wrote them, who went and saw the documents and.
- [48:04]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [48:08]
A
Yeah. So that's it for this time. We're gonna have a lighter episode next week.
- [48:12]
B
It's gonna be. Gonna be so much gentler next time.
- [48:15]
A
And we're going to talk more in depth about our experiences of autism, because our experiences of autism are going to color everything we talk about. And maybe understanding our experience of autism might sort of help you interpret why and how we talk about things. But in the meantime, we'll have a light episode next week and then maybe.
- [48:35]
B
The last thing I want to say.
- [48:37]
A
Yeah.
- [48:38]
B
Rich told me that we got an email from a parent who listened to the masking episode, and they're the parent of a teenager, and that teenager was diagnosed with ADHD and was just really struggling in ways that it was difficult for this parent to understand. But they, at dinner, asked their kid, have you ever felt like people are just like, following rules and you don't know what those rules are or why they are following them? And their kid, their teenager burst into tears at the dinner table and they sat and talked about it for, like a couple hours. And it opens up the door to this brand new understanding of the ways this kid is struggling and the ways that they might get support in the future. And I don't know if that's like, going to be like an autism diagnosis, but even understanding that there are people who do not understand the unspoken rules that you don't even realize you're following is really powerful.
- [49:41]
A
Asperger himself described these autistic kids as being like aliens. Jesus. Living among a different kind of person. Disconnected.
- [49:51]
B
Yeah.
- [49:51]
A
He also described them as life unworthy of life. So, like, you know.
- [49:57]
B
Ouch.
- [49:58]
A
Yeah. Oh.
- [49:59]
B
Oh, yeah.
- [50:00]
A
Life unworthy of life was a thing in Nazi hospitals. Yeah.
- [50:06]
B
Yeah.
- [50:08]
A
You had a cleft palate. You had down syndrome. Life unworthy of life. Yeah.
- [50:13]
B
I was. I was ready for the racism. I was ready for the misogyny. They managed not to talk about the ableism until. Yeah, until it's starting.
- [50:25]
A
Next week's gonna be lighter.
- [50:26]
B
Next week's gonna be lighter.
- [50:27]
A
We're gonna talk about. About shopping and things.
- [50:30]
B
Yeah, okay.
- [50:31]
A
It'll be great.
- [50:31]
B
Thank you so much, actually, for listening to this difficult episode. We are very grateful. It's a very special episode of the Feminist Arrival Project, Zombie Apocalypse Edition.
- [50:41]
A
Cue the UK Such that the poet Goethe was like, y'all gotta stop saying gamut because it doesn't mean anything anymore. Like, can we just stop saying gamut for, like, 30 years and then maybe it'll fucking mean something again?