Autistic Support Might Be Privilege
The high-functioning (white) woman who ends up depressed
When I was a child, life was okay. It began to go downhill at the age of seven, when I had a prophetic vision.
The vision centered on a new girl at the school. We’ll call her Emma. She moved to our school from another country and within a few days was crazy popular.
I’d been going to the same school with the same faces for three years. Every Valentine’s Day, I handcrafted a card for each student in my class.
One day, we had Show and Tell. I was scheduled to share a story that the teacher would read, “The Cat That Walked by Itself,” but Emma wanted to share a song, “Oh What a Night” by Frankie Valli.
Every kid in the class literally squealed in hysterical anticipation of her song, even though it was my turn. The teacher relented and I was shifted to sharing my story another day.
I realized I was screwed.
They say 7 is the age of reason. I knew.
At 9, we began changing classes for math. It was stressful, but I was still growing up in a safe neighborhood with loving parents and nice teachers.
At 10, we moved to another state. I was bullied, but I was still good at sports. I made friends with older, semi-outlaw kids.
Every year, I felt my grip on aptitude slip away. The churning tide carried my self-esteem with it.
By the time I got to junior high and began the “gifted” program, I was miserable. I was in my third school in three years.
And yet I had every privilege: white, upper-middle-class, healthy, and smart.
The Self-Esteem Trap
If you have low self-esteem, you’ve been blamed for it.
It’s your job to fix it. This is why we have massive sections in bookstores called ‘Self-Help.’ This is they the Highly Sensitive Person label has a cult following.
Anxiety, depression, and eating disorders run rampant in the female population, and the cure usually costs money we don’t have.
You didn’t measure up socially. It’s a tremendous burden to not only figure out why, but to find an alternative path to self-love.
In the meantime, you are on your own, and the Emmas of the world will keep showing up and becoming instantly more popular. You might even like Emma — you might imitate her, but your efforts yield no fruits except exhaustion.
I never craved popularity. I just wanted a level playing field. But who am I, the privileged “smart” one, to complain that the field isn’t level?
So I didn’t. I kept it inside and learned to hate myself.
And I am definitely, absolutely, 100% not alone.
Langston Hughes exposed a poignant truth with his eloquent words. What is a dream deferred?
What happens when you watch the dream slip away?
Images of Love
I’ve never grokked valentines, but I knew their social value. I didn’t like drawing one for every kid in the class, but my mother explained that was the right thing to do.
It took me hours to handcraft each Valentine's card because, like most autistic people, I am very detail-oriented. It was therapeutic to follow the rules, so I set to work.
As I drew hearts on each card, I envisioned the person I was making it for. To me, the kids were fairly indistinguishable except for the outliers. Susan was popular; my best friend, Yolande, was someone I could hang out with.
I’m sure some unpopular kid like me really appreciated getting a Valentine because a lot of kids got hardly any.
Love might be abstract, poorly conceived in a red heart, but I could clearly see that not being liked was a problem.
My social deficits had to do with body language, tone of voice, an awkward demeanor, and lack of eye contact — not lack of insight.
I am a subtly off-putting possum, and if all I can manage is a tame house pet, I’ll do it. I’d rather be human.
Lack of Insight
In the world of mental illness, psychologists like to bandy about the phrase lack of insight. The implication is the highest form of cruelty: if only the pathetic mentally ill person could see themselves clearly, they could get well.
Normal, healthy people lack insight.
They don’t need insight, because things are going relatively well.
All people lack insight. Self-knowledge is a hard-won gift we get as we age and gain experience that helps us shape a realistic picture of ourselves.
Asking someone to gain insight in order to cure themselves is absurd. Does insight help someone cope with illness? Sure — it helps in managing it.
Why would you want insight into an illness for which you are at fault?
An “insightful” diabetic is a child who accepts reality and learns to follow the rules of self-administered insulin. This is possible when the doctor and parent teach the child, and because the explanation for childhood diabetes is, “You had bad luck.” The treatment is painful but relatively straightforward.
It’s awful, but it’s a visible disability.
The explanation for mental illness comes with a stigma: you aren’t behaving correctly. It’s not a problem of your metabolism or immune system, it’s a problem of you.
It is implied, especially for women, that you are probably in trouble due to a lack of cooperation.
Clueless and Difficult: Why Learning Sucks
I recently completed a training program to become a 9–1–1 Dispatcher. When interviewed, the Chief said, “It’s tough to hire for this job, because we don’t know who will be good at it.”
Some people can’t handle the complexity of several computer systems, while others struggle with screaming humans in pain. It requires acting quickly and decisively but can’t be learned on a simulator.
I had three trainers. One was kind and encouraging, one had OCD, and one was neurotypical (NT).
My learning style means asking an unrelenting number of questions. I need a lot of context, even as a 50-something adult.
The encouraging trainer was patient with me. She didn’t take offense at being asked the same question twice. The NT trainer grew quickly impatient by my “questioning” her.
She stopped answering my questions. I was pleading for help and she was acting like I was the Gestapo.
The OCD trainer loved answering my questions. Fortunately, the kind and encouraging person was also the supervisor, and she figured out the OCD trainer would be the right one for me.
In that case, it worked out. I have many stories of it not working out.
I learn differently, and it gets misinterpreted. I am seen as complaining when I am trying to understand something new.
I go over like a lead balloon. It seems 57 is late in life to figure this out, but I actually got the gist of it at age 7.
The Wasteland of Lost Privilege
When you are marginalized in society — and racism is the most obvious example — you lose credibility. Your actions are misinterpreted as threatening.
The more you try to shine, the more you risk being seen in an unflattering light.
When you are privileged, you get the benefit of the doubt and second chances.
The tragedy of the lives of ‘gifted’ autistic women is loss. Once, I took joy in learning — when I was a child. Long ago, they were patient with me.
As a child, my questions were cute. As an adult, they were annoying.
I watched a tide slowly pull me out to sea. The more I swam, the deeper I sunk.
And I didn’t know why.
I lacked insight because that is what humans do. How do you gain insight into being a social outcast? I saw it when I was 7, but it was too horrifying to articulate, so I buried the fear and tried to forget about it.
Now that I’ve got (more) insight, I’m here to say something to women who feel broken.
You aren’t broken. You are a baffling mix of clashing colors. You learn well, but the reality is this: you are full of color.
If you were privileged, you watched the death of a beautiful dream.
If you weren’t, you went to war and fought to be seen, understood, and accepted and you fought on many fronts: social, legal, economic, and spiritual.
In truth, with or without the privilege we autistic women are a box of colors who got dumped into a witch's cauldron — and we know what happens when you mix up all your pots of paint.
You get brown, and it doesn’t make any sense.
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Jean Campbell is based in Hot Springs, Arkansas. She has been writing on Medium for years and recently published her first novel, Down and Out on the Road South, with Wings ePress. She is serializing the first part of her second book, City of Lies, on Substack.
