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Autism Speaks made the ad below to draw attention to the issue of private insurers that deny coverage of treatment for issues related to autism. They even manage to portray autistic children without suggesting that they are monsters, which is quite an achievement for this group, but take a close look at what they suggest the consequences of lack of coverage are:

A child who cannot get the treatments deemed appropriate by Autism Speaks will, apparently, not be invited to play and will thus be left alone in whatever activity he (because Autism Speaks only displays autistic boys) was engaged in. It seems to me that if the normative children refuse to befriend a child who hasn’t received treatment, then they are the flawed ones, but that is not what the audience is supposed to get from the commercial.

Rather, they are expected to understand that being alone while the other children play together is a terrible fate. By taking advantage of this perception, the ad also reifies it, which is unfortunate. I will not pretend that I have never been lonely, but my life as a young Aspie would have been a lot easier if the adults around me had realized that I often needed to be let alone. Paradoxically, such an understanding would have made it easier for me to get along with my peers; pushed to socialize more than I could handle, I was likelier to act in alienating ways, to lash out. Moreover, portraying playing alone as the worst possible fate disrespects the internal worlds, resources, and thoughts of autistic individuals.

To be clear, this is not just some theoretical objection about the relative value of interpersonal connections. The attitude this commercial adopts and confirms has a negative impact on real autistic children.

Note too that the boys are both white (though the normative children are more racially diverse) and, to judge from the size of their houses, from relatively affluent families. Autism knows no economic boundaries, but to portray children in a less-wealthy neighborhood would have required a message about truly universal healthcare, which would be just a bit too radical for the well-off neurotypicals who run this misnamed charity.

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Related posts:

1. I Am Autism
2. Helping Whom?
3. No More Asperger’s?
4. Blogging Against Disablism Day 2010: Fear & Othering

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