Autism Chic Needs to End

A photo of the author's hand, recently injured in an attack by her autistic son, next to a Time magazine article boosting a cuddly (and dishonest) view of autism.

       

               If you are a straight woman of a certain age, you probably know about the Canadian gay romance series Heated Rivalry. Articles have sprung up everywhere talking about "Why Every Woman You Know Is Frothing-at-the-Mouth Feral for 'Heated Rivalry.'"  I personally planned to give the series a miss until a friend of mine recommended it to me. She knew I had an autistic son. "You'll love Heated Rivalry," she told me. "One of the main characters is autistic and it's handled in such a beautiful way." Intrigued, I watched the series. Episode after episode went by and I thought "Is the autism in the room with us? In the same neighborhood? Within even a fifty mile radius of any of these characters?" I was flummoxed. After the final episode of the season finished and no character was revealed to be autistic, I took to the internet. Googling "Heated Rivalry autism" I finally got my answer: the character of Shane Hollander was supposed to be autistic. 

           

Connor Hudson as major league hockey player Shane Hollander in "Heated Rivalry."

    
             Excuse me, what? 

           Shane Hollander is one of the two main characters in Heated Rivalry. He gives smooth press interviews in multiple languages, plays many hockey games in screaming massive  stadiums that would give even non-autistic people sensory overload, and handles his relationship with his boyfriend Ilya with an emotional deftness that would impress even a seasoned therapist. 

               As I sit here typing these words with hands are that scarred from multiple violent meltdowns by my autistic son, I can say unequivocally that there is nothing remotely autistic about the character of Shane Hollander. It appears that the author of the Heated Rivalry romance book series Rachel Reid and the actor Connor Hudson (who insists that his own father was autistic) have recast the disability of autism into a cuddly series of mild quirks. Hollander folds his clothes before sex. He must be autistic! (If you're looking for a scene in Heated Rivalry where Hollander melts down in agitation over a minor change in schedule, don't waste your time).

                The character of Shane's "autism" is defined by author Rachel Reid as being very vague. "When I wrote Heated Rivalry, I wasn't specifically thinking about Shane being neurodivergent because I wasn't particularly informed about that sort of thing. He was just uptight/anxious/ focused etc...... I learned a lot then, and since. So by the time I wrote The Long Game, I had a better understanding of Shane, I think, and I realized that, yeah, he's probably autistic."                              

                    The problem is that Reid was right the first time. Shane's character as portrayed in the TV series seems to be at most uptight/ (occasionally) anxious / focused. Reid deciding later in the game, so to speak, to funnel those traits into a form of very high functioning autism speaks to a real problem in our society in the 2020s: The dishonest portrayal of autism. 

                         The good news is that a few people are now finally calling out how the definition of autism has become so blurred that people who are not autistic are nevertheless somehow either self-diagnosing themselves in order to fulfill a social media trend or shopping for specialists who may give them that most golden of trophies: a medical diagnosis of autism. Christina Buttons wrote an article in the Free Press about her journey from being considered autistic to realizing that her "autism" was a misdiagnosis engendered by a dangerously sloppy definition of what actually defines the real disability of having Autism Spectrum Disorder. 

             Ironically enough, Buttons' description of her symptoms that led her to be diagnosed with autism are far more close to the clinical definition of autism than any of the silliness that we are made to see as "autistic" in shows like "Heated Rivalry." 

        Buttons goes on to describe how the initial relief of her autism diagnosis began to fray when she realized that communities that were supposed to be safe spaces for autistic individuals instead devolved into toxicity fairly easily. 

            Buttons noticed the phenomenon that has bedeviled caregivers and parents like myself who spend our lives advocating for our profoundly autistic children. We sit on the couch literally bleeding from wounds that our children have given us in sometimes daily meltdowns and read about how describing our agonies is "stigmatizing autism." As Buttons describes, "Activists reserved particular contempt for anyone who upheld the medical understanding of autism spectrum disorder, targeting organizations, researchers, and universities that treated autism as a disorder and supported work on its causes, treatment, or cure. They compared that work to eugenics and tried to shut it down through petitions, harassment, and public pressure. Too often, they succeeded."

                Buttons describes how her own definition of autism began to change when she started working as a special education classroom assistant in college to autistic children. Once she experienced just how profoundly disabled autistic children were, she realized that the nattering of "autistic" adults on social media was nonsense. 

An autistic child bleeding from self-injurious behavior after a meltdown.

          After college Buttons became a journalist. Her stories were mostly in-depth examinations of certain topics and they required her to ask hard questions. These combinations of experiences led Buttons to examine her own diagnosis. 

                 In the end Buttons states that she no longer describes herself as autistic despite actually obtaining a medical diagnosis. "I just took a little bit longer to find myself, and took some wrong turns along the way.....There is comfort in a story that shifts responsibility away from the self. Sometimes that comfort is almost irresistible. But in the end, it is better to believe in the possibility of change than to embrace a narrative that says you never had a choice at all." 

                 For those of us who have for too long endure the "autism narratives" of accomplished college-educated adults with jobs and families who insist they are autistic, Buttons' article hits like a fresh brisk mountain breeze. Her analysis, personal stories and unapologetic observations clear away the dishonest narratives about autism that currently permeate the media. I wish I could reproduce her entire excellent article here but I cannot. Buttons' words offer no cure nor treatment but they do offer a clear and excellent affirmation of the suffering, yes, suffering, that autistic people and their families endure all over the world.
            
                   And for that I am profoundly grateful.