What’s so funny?
April 26, 2006 by Kristina Chew, PhD
Filed under Health
The latest issue of the Autism Society of America’s magazine, Autism Advocate, contains a new column, “Out of the Mouths of Babes,” in which autism parents send in anecdotes exemplifying how “children and adults with autism have a ‘different’ way of looking at the world” (a mother notes that her 6-year-old son “told his aide that she is a ‘cat,’ but with ‘f’”). One gets (as the column suggests) “a good chuckle” from similar examples of literal thinking (a 10-year old girl asks a dreadlocked lawn worker, ‘”Are you not a lady?’”).
Allow me to be overly literal myself in wondering at some of the wording of “Out of the Mouths of Babes.” “Babes” seems hardly appropriate (and instantly infantilizing) when one of the autistic persons quoted is a 25-year-old man. And,
…the thoughts serve as a reminder that spectrumites and nonspectrumites simply do not think the same way!
“Spectrumites” and “nonspectrumites”? Well, we already have non-NT and NT; autistic and non-autistic; disabled and non-disabled; _________ and “normal”?
On the one hand, you can’t take anyone’s words too literally; on the other hands, sometimes words just mean what they mean. One person’s funny can be another’s most seriously stated truth.
What bugs me about stuff like this is that it makes autistics, especially kids, out to be different from everyone else. And, yes, they are different, but in so many ways they are the same – they’re just KIDS!!!
And kids say the darndest things, autistic or not. All a part of the joy of parenthood.
Although I suppose any human condition occasionally leads to a “laughing to keep from crying” attitude, I can’t help but think that these examples you give can be better labeled as gallows humor. That denotes a feeling of hopelessness that should be offensive to all autistics and parents of autistics, whether we fall in the “curebie” or “neurodiversity” camps.
I also wonder, if the examples are funny to the autistic kids or adults. I could see why each story (and there were a few more in the ASA magazine) could evoke a “chuckle,” but it is humor at someone’s expense.
I think it’s annoying that they imply that autistics are KIDS. We grow up.
And we think they say some funny-weird/funny-haha stuff too. I think it’s hilarious in a bad way that parents and professionals think they’re the “autism community”. It’s funny-scary when they say their kids got autism from a shot (I really did laugh the first time I heard that). The social behavior of NTs is hysterical. Baffling, but pretty funny.
But say that to them, or laugh at the utter BS of it all, and they burn you as a witch or something.
If I thought that ASA was actually interested in the lives of the 1 million autism spectrum adults in this country that they state exist, then I could cut them some slack, maybe, but they pretend autistic adults don’t exist so they don’t have any business calling us “babes”. The ASA stands accused of treating their autistic adults advisors as “clients.” I won’t be laughing at anything they publish until they care. That might require that they get rid of the members of the cult of Bernie “wants to send a ballistic missile into the heart of autism” Rimland on their boards. Not likely.
wow, I say things like that right now and I’m 23. then again, I’m sort of childish… but I don’t think it’s the same thing. I am definitely a “babe,” though
I think if the article was slanted to appreciate the unique way in which autistic people see the world it would be more appropriate, but you’re right, this is a bit insulting to those people whose anecdotes are sent in… a chuckle at their expense.