Seeing as Robert F. Kennedy has re-opened this ugly can of worms, let’s get into why even asking the question of what “causes” autism shows that he has no idea.
Our humanity is not up for discussion.
I don’t know what’s been worse — his ugly words or watching others defend us using the very model that oppresses us. While it’s heartening to see people speak out in support of our community, so much of that defence is still laced with notions of difference, disorder, and medical model nonsense.
Using the master’s tools — using the same tired frameworks that framed us as broken in the first place — is not a defence. It’s a repetition of the harm.
Let’s get something straight from the beginning:
Autism isn’t real.
Not in the way we’ve been told.
Not as a condition. Not as a disorder. Not as some mysterious glitch in human wiring.
“Autism” is a constructed label — invented by privileged, ableist professionals almost a century ago, who decided that certain people were simply too much, too little, too intense, too sensitive, too quiet, too wrong, just not quite human enough…
But here’s the truth:
The problem was never the people.
It was the definition of normal.
And that definition?
It’s far too narrow to contain the full range of what it means to be human.
People aren’t broken.
The measuring stick is.
Diagnosing the Fallout of Oppression
What gets diagnosed as “Autism” is often just a reflection of distress.
A person reacting — understandably — to a world that overwhelms, invalidates, or tries to control them.
The criteria don’t describe an identity.
They describe survival strategies, sensory experiences, emotional responses, and expressions of pain — all filtered through an ableist gaze.
Stimming? Normal. Everyone stims.
Needing predictability and routine in hostile environments? Normal.
Feeling exhausted from constant adaptation? Very normal.
But in this system, those things are pathologised.
They are turned into symptoms.
They are used as evidence of disorder — not because they are wrong, but because they don’t serve the economy of sameness.
So what is the “real cause of autism”?
The real cause is a society that labels natural human variation as illness.
A society that punishes what it cannot control.
That silences what it doesn’t want to hear.
That pathologises what doesn’t perform “normal” on command.
And let’s be clear:
Normal is not real either.
It’s a myth created by systems of power — to reward compliance and punish difference.
We are not other.
We are human.
There is nothing “wrong” with being sensitive, expressive, passionate, intense, deep-feeling, or non-conforming.
There is only something wrong with a world that calls those things disorders.
The Wrong Question
Asking, “What causes autism?” is like asking:
What causes Tuesdays?
What causes quarter past three?
What causes people to wear their watches on the left wrist?
It’s not a real question.
It’s a distraction from the real problem:
Why are we still trying to explain why people are the way they are — instead of fixing the systems that make life unlivable for them?
We do not need to defend our existence.
We do not need to justify our wiring.
We do not need to explain stimming, or our tone of voice, or how we process emotion, or why we don’t pretend to be someone we’re not.
We do not have to use our master’s tools to dismantle the master’s house.
Because the “condition” they called Autism?
It was never ours to carry.
It belongs to the people who needed it to make sense of a world they refuse to share.
And we don’t owe them our suffering to keep their version of normal intact.
So no, Robert.
There is no cause.
There never was.
And the fact that people are still asking means we’ve got a lot more unlearning to do.
Let’s talk about colonisation.
The narrow view of “normal” we live with today wasn’t just born out of science or psychology — it was built through colonisation.
Colonisation didn’t only invade land — it invaded minds.
It imposed strict rules about what kind of body, voice, movement, and emotion was acceptable.
It taught entire populations that there was only one right way to speak, to sit, to make eye contact, to express yourself — and anyone who didn’t fit that mold was labelled as less than.
It erased indigenous knowledge, neurodivergent ways of being, communal forms of care, and rich, expressive cultures — all in the name of order, discipline, control.
This narrow version of “normal” was designed to serve empire.
It was built to maintain dominance.
And it continues to function as a weapon — especially against those of us whose existence defies it.
The “medical model” of Autism, and the obsession with diagnosing and managing us, didn’t fall out of the sky.
It’s part of that same lineage.
We weren’t discovered by science.
We were targeted by it.
So when we talk about the “real cause” of Autism, we’re not just talking about ableism.
We’re talking about colonisation.
About white supremacy.
About capitalist systems that only value people who can be productive in one specific, robotic, soul-numbing way.
We’re talking about centuries of control, domination, and erasure — disguised as help.
The Cause of What, Exactly?
Searching for the cause of autism is like searching for the cause of hysteria.
Not because they’re the same thing — but because they come from the same place:
oppression disguised as science.
“Hysteria” was never a real condition.
It was a weapon — used to dismiss, control, and institutionalise women who were angry, traumatised, emotional, outspoken, or simply inconvenient.
It turned normal human responses to pain and injustice into pathology.
Sound familiar?
Just like hysteria, Autism as a diagnosis doesn’t reflect some inherent truth about people — it reflects a society deeply uncomfortable with those who cannot or will not fit its mould.
Both labels were created to justify mistreatment.
Both were used to rob people of autonomy.
Both served systems that needed obedience — not freedom.
So when people go looking for the “cause” of autism, what they’re really doing is trying to explain away the parts of humanity they’ve already decided are unacceptable.
Let’s be very clear:
We don’t need cures.
We don’t need causes.
We don’t need frameworks designed by people who’ve never had to live inside the boxes they build.
We need liberation.
We need truth.
We need to burn the whole false construct down — and build something honest in its place.
Our existence isn’t a riddle to solve.
It’s a reality to accept.
And it’s not us who need explaining.
It’s the world that ever made us feel like we did.
We are Autistic. We do not have to justify our existence. Our humanity is not up for debate.
We are human
