Does Autism Need To Be Cured?

Autistic people are subject to woefully inaccurate and outdated stereotypes that do a great deal of harm to us as a community. For a long time the Autistic community has pushed back against the idea of a linear spectrum, with the “severely disabled” at one end, and bright young mathematicians at the other end. Despite this we still have a wider and more general part of society that think it would be a good thing for an autism cure or pre-natal test be developed.

Click Here For My Original Article That I Have Reworked To Create This

This says a lot about their views on Autistic people as a whole. It’s eugenics, funded by a capitalist society that decides the value of our lives based on our financial productivity. Eighty years since Hans Asperger “saved” the useful Autistics, while dispensing the lives of those he deemed unworthy, we are still fighting for the right of all Autistics to exist, regardless of special skills or capitalist worth. Still in 2025, we are having to justify that Autistic people have value, regardless of their level of independence or economic ability.

Autism As Inhumanity

So many people become angry and combative at the idea that Autistic people who are less independent are not broken, or ill. It is part of a broader attitude within which disability is seen as something that lowers us beneath the standard of humanity. That standard is one of neuronormativity. It is the same standard that allows people to think they can decide on a person's right to life or their right to exist as they are. It's a bitter pill to swallow, but when a disability creates inconvenience for the people around the disabled person, those people feel they have a right to fix or eliminate them.

"Ableism is, to my knowledge, the only kind of oppression that is embedded in every other kind of oppression I have heard of. I have my theories as to why, but they’re not relevant here. When I say things like this, people think that I’m trying to make a case that ableism is the worst kind of oppression, or that I’m trying to get in some kind of pissing contest or another with regards to whose oppression is more uniquely terrible than anyone else’s. I’m not.

This has nothing to do with that kind of comparison. It’s just that some kind of oppression had to be the one embedded in more kinds of oppression than any other, and ableism happened to fit the bill."

Mel Baggs

Mel Baggs once argued that ableism was at the root of all forms of discrimination. My personal opinion is that ableism is a necessary tool of western capitalism. The world instills a sense of sub-humanity into the disabled so that they not only accept their oppression, they feel they deserve it. We have become complicit in our own removal from the discourse. We have allowed ourselves to become segregated from humanity at large. Even the neurodiversity movement itself has become somewhat isolated from the rest of the world. Some might argue through necessity, but the effect is the same.

The Fallacy of Autism Cure Culture

Despite the reasoning behind the overall attitudes towards Autistic people, curing autism is an endeavour doomed for failure. There is no central point to being Autistic. It's not a dodgy neuron or broken leg. Being Autistic is my whole Self. I am autism, and autism is me. I can no more remove autism from David than I can remove David from me. Autism and Autistic people are the same thing. It is our whole selves that are Autistic. It is not a virus that has taken control of my body. Therefore, any endeavour to cure autism is by default a quest to eliminate Autistic people from society. It is violence, not mercy, and one that can not be tolerated.

We are human. I am Human.

We have thoughts, feelings, emotions.

We have deep empathy and compassion. It can be overwhelming.

We Are Worthy Of Life

What right does society at large have to decide on our worthiness to exist? No one, not government, medic, friend, or parent, has a right to decide our right to exist. Nor do they have a right to decide if our existence is a broken one. Our value as human beings is not decided by others. In fact, human being do not have value.

The idea that life has to have value is the commodification of human life caused by the internalisation of a society that insists that economic productivity is the pinnacle of human existence. All humans, not just Autistics, exist outside the confines of human value judgements. To assume we can place value on another is an inherently egotistical and self-serving practice.

Autism does not need to be cured. It needs to be embraced, uplifted, supported, loved, empowered, accepted and given a place in a world that was never meant to set boundaries around what humans were and weren't worthy of life and compassion.

Autism and Diversity

As a final note, I am Autistic, but no, I am not like your child. I am not like any child. I am not even like the child I used to be. Human beings are different from one another, and Autistic people are also human. The implication of you stating my difference from your child to devalue my words is that to you, Autistic people are a monolith, and to see me as like your child means to either reduce my worthiness, or increase that of your child's. You can not separate me from autism just to keep a negative view of autism.

I am not here to remove vital support for those with greater marginalisation than I. I am here to make the point that our support needs shouldn't be the deciding factor in a person's human rights. Just because an Autistic person needs 24/7 support, does not mean they are any less human than you or I.

Autism isn't what needs curing. Normativity and ableism is.