In 2018, I came across a story about an autistic 10-year-old who was magically excelling in subjects like maths and science after listening to Eminem.
At that time, I wasn’t aware of two things — that Eminem was autistic and so was I.
The story showed up on my feed because I was obsessed with Eminem. For the longest time, I wondered, why him? I wasn’t a huge fan of rap, my father never abandoned me and my mother wasn’t a crack addict. I didn’t dream of dumping girlfriends in the trunk of my car or murdering pop stars. I was taken care of, I was kissed before heading to school and I was given everything reasonable for a middle-class Assamese family.
Four years later, when I got diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder, the answer became clear as day. There’s a running gag in the autism community that an ‘aspie’ (someone with high-functioning autism) can very easily recognise another aspie. Somehow, subconsciously, I had recognised the autistic voice in Eminem that was laying dormant in my own body. I was relating to the anger, frustration, and disdain for authority figures and the painstaking attention to words and meaning, instead of the virulent misogyny and homophobia.
Likewise, I always end up making friends who turn out to be neurodivergent. There’s something that clicks and I wouldn’t find out what it is unless they get diagnosed.
Is this a thing though? And why does it matter?
Double Empathy Problem
Autism used to be taboo. It wasn’t until the start of the century that awareness spread about it. But the way most people understand autism and how it’s defined is still a “deficit in communication”.
The thing is, deficit with who? We communicate perfectly with other autistic people. We are also better at understanding each other’s needs, facial expressions and speech patterns. I could identify another autistic person through music from continents away, as in my case.
Also read: ‘As We See It’: An Imperfect Step Forward for Representing Autism on Screen
Earlier, a great deal of research focussed on how autistic people perform in a non-autistic society. But a 2012 study explains that non-autistic people struggle just as much in an autistic environment. My allistic friends have an equally hard time figuring me out like I have a hard time figuring them out. Isn’t the problem quite mutual then?
We aren’t bad at communicating, we do it differently. We can be great at it provided the right environment.
World Autism Acceptance Month
So raising awareness about our “deficits” in communication isn’t enough and is no longer correct. While there’s no such thing as too much autism awareness, it’s time we moved on and celebrated April as the month of acceptance instead.
Let’s make April the month to acknowledge autistic voices that tend to drown out in a sea of pseudoscience and ableism. Let’s make April the month to celebrate the fact that we are different, and not broken. Yes, some of us do struggle to find pride in being autistic, some of us are too burnt out to raise our voices for social justice. But sometimes, it takes one simple act of acceptance, or one autistic voice to relate to, that can make the world feel a whole lot less lonely.
This month, let’s admit that communication is mutual, that we speak two different languages, that we inhabit two distinct emotional universes (as Bertrand Russell would put it) and that only love and acceptance are the way forward.
Lonav Ojha is an autistic 20-year-old, pursuing a BA in English, Psychology and Journalism at St. Joseph’s College, Bangalore.
Featured image: Wikimedia Commons