Auties, Aspies, and other CloudCuckooLanders!

A Whole New Ballgame seemed like it could be a promising study of friendship between an autistic character and neurotypical character. Based on the description on the cover flap, I was looking forward to seeing how the main characters’ love of basketball helps them through a stressful school year. Unfortunately, while the neurotypical character Rip gets a separate narrative and character development, Red is often relegated to muttering statistics and nervously stimming in the background.

However, several elements were portrayed well, early on in the story. Red’s tendency to describe things with excessive precision—for example, calling Rip “Mason Irving” or the cafeteria lunch “Super Salad featuring chilled chicken tender strips, crispy green lettuce, and freshly diced tomatoes”—reminded me of how I always called my childhood therapist by both her first name and last name, because that was how she was introduced to me. Red’s reactions to feeling confused and overwhelmed also seemed true to life; he stims to soothe himself and repeats his questions. Later on, Red is the only one to notice that their teacher, Mr. Acevedo, is upset, just before he makes a distressing announcement. This display of uncanny intuition is something I find is common in autistic people, but not as common in autistic narratives as written by neurotypicals. I was pleased to see this.

The story begins by introducing a new teacher, a new curriculum, and a new basketball league for Rip and Red’s school—all good changes, but stressful for a child with autism like Red, who thrives with a routine. Each new situation brings a lot of questions, a lot of stimming, and the need for lots of reassurance.

Red loves basketball and is gifted at it, but the leagues have recently been made competitive and his mom won’t allow him to compete. This causes difficulty later in the book, because the team struggles without him. Rip cites the very legitimate concern that Red might melt down if he’s body-checked by a stranger, and Red is still allowed to play at practices, but I would be surprised if he weren’t at least a little disappointed. However, the book shows no explicit reaction on Red’s part to this decision—another reason that I feel he isn’t treated as a fully developed character.

As Rip works on a separate group project with a cynical girl named Avery (who uses a wheelchair—one strong positive of this author is that he seems committed to representation), there is less and less of Red as the book goes on. On the occasions when he does appear, his character is contradictory without explanation. Sometimes he can deal with watching and participating in the basketball games, sometimes he can’t. Sometimes he is hampered by an overdone case of literalism (mentioning it once or twice is fine, but the author relies on it far too much), other times it’s easier for him to grasp figures of speech. Early on in the book, Rip says only he and a few grown-ups are allowed to touch Red, yet he will give spontaneous hugs. I understand better than most that autistic people often appear to contradict themselves; for example, I am comfortable with initiating touch if it’s wanted, but I am uncomfortable with people touching me uninvited. But instead of explaining these contradictions, the author never addresses them, leaving some of Red’s behavior to be viewed as out-of-character.

Throughout the book, it is emphasized that Red is part of the team, both in the classroom and on the basketball court. However, the author seems to use him and his autism as more of a pawn to further the story, discarding him when not needed.

At one point, Avery says to Rip, “Red is the autistic kid … You’re the black kid who lives and breathes basketball. I’m the wheeler. That’s who we are. Deal with it.” It’s clear that the author is attempting to show that this is not true, and people are more than just their labels. Perhaps in the next books, he’ll be able to paint a fuller picture of Red, beyond that of “the autistic kid.”

Problem 1b: Our actual experiences are downplayed or ignored

In kid lit, often our internal experiences are ignored in favor of showing “behaviors.” Our emotional responses (including to abuse) may be portrayed as muted, distant, or rarely shown. The false, and harmful, implication is that our internal experiences are unimportant or less intense, and therefore mistreatment matters less.

In real life, our internal experiences — especially of sensory processing issues and anxiety—are the exact opposite. They can be painfully intense and overloading. Executive functioning issues make the world harder and more stressful. Other people, including therapists, often ignore these internal experiences to focus on normalizing our surface behaviors, which neglects the reasons we have those behaviors — often they help reduce anxiety or sensory overwhelm. Some behaviors are very difficult to suppress, and suppressing them doesn’t make the reasons they happen go away. In fact, suppressing them can actively interfere with the ability to pay attention and learn.

Problem 2a: Character growth is shown as becoming more neurotypical

In fiction, character growth is often presented as acting less autistic or even being (unrealistically) cured at the end of the book.

Similarly, in real life, the pressure to look less autistic is strong and insistent. It includes both authority-endorsed treatments and unrelenting social pressure. Consequences include trauma, burnout or regression, reduced learning from suppressing stimming, and (if you are able to eventually look non-autistic enough) being incorrectly considered recovered and then penalized by having needed services removed. Anecdotally — I don’t know of any research on this — post-traumatic stress symptoms from abuse for being different and/or forced to hide it seem nearly universal among my autistic friends.

Learning to consistently force yourself beyond your limits and being punished when you don’t is not character growth. It is character harm.

Fiction can show good character growth for autistic characters. For example, it could show us gaining coping skills, learning to accept ourselves, and learning how being disabled affects us and what it means.

Problem 2b: Mystical disability to compensate

There’s a second way we’re shown as making up for autism: having a mystical disability or special talent to entertain the reader or to serve as a plot device. This sends the message that we can’t just be people, like non-autistic characters can; we have to compensate for disability by providing value.

Functioning labels are also often based on how neurotypical we appear on the surface rather than the capacities more relevant to our ability to work or manage our daily lives. What is being objected to here is not the labels; it’s the concepts, and specifically that the concepts are both inaccurate and grounded in how much inconvenience we appear to create for other people.

In kid lit, “low-functioning” characters — often young and less verbal—are frequently objects who exist solely to affect other characters, such as by embarrassing their siblings or providing goodness points to others. If talented, it may be shown as an extreme talent or psychic ability. In real life, people labeled “low-functioning” often have talents and skills ignored or unsupported, receive excessively low expectations and an absence of respect, and are particularly likely to be portrayed as burdens.

Problem 3c: Stereotypical presentations

In real life, there are many, many ways to be autistic. Kid lit overplays some autistic symptoms and interests/talents and underplays others. It does correctly represent some things as common (e.g., difficulty with eye contact and social interaction). But sensory issues, which are incredibly common in real life, are often downplayed or absent, and executive functioning impairments, difficulty with activities of daily living, and motor differences are rarely referenced (except for some stimming; other common motor issues like catatonia are absent). (This also means the difficulty we have negotiating support for these difficulties isn’t shown; a striking absence for anyone who has ever dealt with them in real life.)

When it comes to talents and special interests, there is an overfocus on stereotyped ones: math, numbers, counting, physics, and being a detective.

(...)

In real life, stereotypes contribute to difficulty getting diagnosed, being pressured into job expectations you can’t meet, or having to frequently explain that you’re not automatically gifted at math. Stereotyped portrayals can also be self-reinforcing, and can cause people to think they (or other people) can’t be autistic because they’re not like the representations they see in fiction.

In real life, we are presented as burdens as well—and are often aware of it even when we may not seem to be listening. This has consequences. At the extreme end, media or other parents justify parents murdering autistic children. Abuse is common, by friends, people on the street, caregivers, and others such as paid service providers, foster care providers, and transportation providers. In general, people with developmental disabilities have drastically higher rates of abuse; abusers may target autistic individuals because they have more difficulty detecting deception and communicating, are less likely to receive appropriate sex education, are more likely to have their communication about sexual abuse misinterpreted, and are more likely to have symptoms of sexual abuse attributed to “autism.”

What fiction can do at its best

At its best, fiction shows us as full characters, real people who exist not just to affect others or educate the reader, and without being reduced to entertainment. It gives us agency. It shows our internal experiences as real and vivid and shows other characters recognizing that we have them.

It can show character growth that doesn’t require us to become more neurotypical, and could show the costs of passing and of not passing. It can include us as regular (though autistic) people, without special talents or psychic powers.

It can show us as people with uneven abilities and disabilities who don’t fall into “high-functioning” or “low-functioning” stereotypes. It shows us as worthy of respect even when we can’t speak or can’t speak much. It identifies us as autistic even when we have self-reflection and narration and agency (with obvious exceptions, such as historical settings where the diagnosis did not exist). It shows us as disabled even if we pass as neurotypical. It can show autistic adults, people of all races and ethnicities, sexual orientations, genders. It shows sensory issues, executive functioning impairments, and motor differences and difficulties.

though I have been fired by one person who felt uncomfortable around me from a job where everybody else liked me (yet again), and was bullied out of a subbing job last fall, I have done and achieved a lot and people seem to resent me for it (from meeting and interviewing rock stars in college to traveling the world and having articles and photography published) and want to diminish what I have done.

That said, these deviations in narration are so disproportionally common with autistic narrators that I’ve grown skeptical of them. The voice quirks often aren’t particularly related to the character’s situation or personality, but instead very much about the character’s autism. It sets the character apart in an attempt to convey “the autistic mind.”

• Autistics often recite and focus on facts, so let’s add footnotes and interjections.

• Autistics may struggle with emotions, so let’s indicate those with a different font.

• Autistics obsess over their special interests, so let’s pepper the narrative with homophones or Latin names to convey this all-consuming obsession.

• Autistics can sound stiff and official, so let’s mimic this with a detached narrative voice.

(...)

The distant voice in particular feels like an outside-in approach, and not an inside-out approach: it comes across as though authors focus on the way autistics present externally and extrapolate what they must feel and think like on the inside. Except—whose insides and outsides line up that neatly? Especially for autistic people, given that a common symptom is difficulty expressing emotions in ways that are recognizable (let alone acceptable) to neurotypicals? If an autistic person comes across as stilted, even robotic, it’s often because they’ve had to consciously learn how to express their thoughts and feelings. It doesn’t mean those thoughts and feelings themselves are robotic.

• We expect orcas and autistics to function in an artificial, harmful environment. SeaWorld places Orcas in a concrete bathtub in which they not only have insufficient room in an unnatural, acoustically dead environment, they are also subject to higher forces of gravity and UV radiation exposure than they would be in the wild. We know that autistic people typically have challenges with respect to auditory, sensory and motor processing and yet IBI environments replicate the sensory environment that kids encounter in schools (the whole point of IBI is to train autistic kids to be “school and table ready”). Autistic children are forced to train their bodies and senses to adapt to a hostile environment rather than taught self-regulatory techniques and how to advocate for supports and accommodations.
• Both orcas and autistic children are placed in unnatural social situations. Orcas are social animals who live their entire lives in the wild with their mothers and other family members; in captivity, not only are mothers and calves separated, but orcas are either left alone or placed within groups that are both artificial and stressful for them. In IBI, our kids are so often made to do things they aren’t comfortable with – stimming is suppressed in favour of “table ready hands,” they are separated from the people and things they enjoy, “comfort” with groups of people is enforced and they are trained in “social skills.”
• Both orcas and autistic kids are asked to perform unnatural behaviours, over and over again. In the same way that orcas in captivity are asked to perform behaviours they don’t do in the wild, autistic children in IBI are expected to continually perform behaviours that are either unnatural for them (like forced eye contact) or pointless, other than to test and ensure ongoing compliance (“touch your nose”).
• Placing orcas in captivity leads to psychological damage, self-injurious behaviour and aggression, both between orcas and towards trainers (according to this report). Autistic adults have written about how traumatizing ABA intervention was for them (in the short, medium and long term). We simply have to acknowledge that, to the extent our autistic children express “problem” behaviours, this may, in certain cases, be the result of the stress and/or trauma they are currently experiencing or have experienced in the past as part of ABA programming. Responding to their challenges by again focusing on ABA-solutions and behaviour modifications is only likely to make the problem worse.

The jackasses at the institute I went to once demanded I eat a McDonald's cheeseburger the way it's normally meant to be eaten, instead of the way I always ate them, where I'd pick off the onions and other crap and eat only the patty and cheese.