Do you think you could explain the magical autistic stereotype?

scriptautistic:

Hi anon, thanks for your question! I hope I understand it well enough to give you a proper answer.

By ‘magical autistic,’ I think you mean the notion that being autistic is a magical superpower which enables autistic people to surpass the rest of humanity. A lot of people over-romanticize autism like they are fetishizing abilities or skills beyond what’s realistic for any individuals, including autistic people. Some hypothesize autism is the ~*~*next step*~*~ in human evolution, but there’s no evidence for or against this. It remains an un-testable idea, an inviable hypothesis.

Instead, Steve Silberman, author of Neurotribes, posits autism is a series/spectrum of important neurotypes important for general humanity which have been a part of humankind for a very long time. In other words, it’s not the next step, it’s simply a facet of the wide variety of features which make up humanity.

There’s a difference between romanticizing and fetishizing something. While it’s dangerous to romanticize depression because depression is a mental illness which negatively affects people, it’s not dangerous to romanticize aspects of autism because being autistic is many people’s normal. To do this is to recognize positive aspects of the autistic experience, like this blog which focuses on positive aspects of autism or this post about someone accepting themselves in light of their autism diagnosis.

In this context, the purpose of romanticizing autism is to resist societal pressure of feeling ashamed for being autistic. It’s intentionally recognizing good autism experiences because autism is so negatively depicted the majority of the time. Here is a post explaining why romanticizing autism is important for the author of it.

There are good aspects of autism, but some take romanticizing too far into the territory of fetishization, which is when someone takes some particular aspect of an experience, extrudes it way beyond what’s realistic into the realm of the fantastical and flattens the rest of the experience out into a two-dimensional depiction. To fetishize is to objectify. To fetishize autism is to ignore all the legitimate struggles autistic people have with their lives and to celebrate only ‘acceptable’ aspects of autism.

As an example, this post is someone calling out an article for being “inspiration porn,” something that fetishizes a legitimate disability to show non-autistics the idea that they, too, can do amazing things if someone like an autistic person can take beautiful photographs. The autistic person who is the subject of the article, while seemingly benefiting, doesn’t benefit at all. He is still portrayed as lesser-than to make someone reading it feel better about themselves and their potential. Other autistic people reading the article can’t live up to the ‘look at this superpower’  mentality the article propagates, because no one can live up to it. Articles which ignore autistic struggles further alienate autistic people who face struggles like executive dysfunction or sensory overload because those articles don’t normalize those struggles. Those inspiration porn articles also imply disabled people are only celebrated in spite of or despite their disability, rather than valued as realistic people with strengths and struggles.

Everyone struggles with something, and at the end of the day, autism is something that brings different strengths and weaknesses to the table than is expected of neurotypical people. Autistic people are no more or less magical than anyone else. People should be able to celebrate themselves without ignoring things they could work on to do better or things they struggle with. To write an accurate autistic character or to spot stereotypes, keep in mind the way autism actually impacts someone on a day-to-day, realistic basis. This includes the celebrations and unpleasantness that come along with being neuroatypical.

I hope this answered your question.

 – Mod Siena

Just a few more thoughts about this: the “magical autism” can take different forms depending on the setting; in a real-world setting it translates into the “autistic genius” trope, in which the autistic person has abilities (whether general intellectual abilities or very specific skills) that are way above average, while in a fantasy setting the autistic person will actaully be magic, once again, in a way that is not average. That means that this stereotype is only present when the autistic person is more magic than other people in the world ; if every person in this world / several people have magic powers, including but not limited to autistic people, then the narrative doesn’t play into the “magical autism” trope. But if only autistic people have magic powers, or if autistic people have stronger powers than allistic people do, that’s the trope at play. I would also argue that in a “chosen one” situation, if the only person who is magical is autistic, that it is not implied that the magic is a result of the autism, and that other, non-magical autistic people are portrayed, the trope is avoided.

I also want to add to what Siena said that the trope is sometimes used not to romanticize autism, but to show autistic people are valuable. This might translate into “sure, Johnny has trouble with things and he’s a little weird sometimes, but his intelligence/powers are extroardinary!”. This makes it sound like autistic people need to redeem their autistic traits with extraordinary abilities. We don’t. We are full and valuable human beings already, and we don’t need to redeem anything. As Siena mentionned, this trope can actually be harmful to autistic people that see it everywhere: if all autistic characters in media are liked and valued, but only because they have special abilities rather than because of who they are as people, how are autistic people consuming that media going to feel, if they don’t have these kinds of special abilities?

-Mod Cat