Best headline on this particular topic:
RFK Jr. Says There Are No Autistic Poets. We Asked an Autistic Poet. Julia Mètraux, Mother Jones
Read it.
I am so enraged by yesterday’s comments by RFK Jr. that I honestly can’t string words together. But I can’t remain silent, either. So here are some screenshots from Bluesky, because sometimes other people say it better than I ever could.
I honestly can't stop thinking about this RFK speech. A lot of the outrage around it is focused on pointing out that it's not true.
But so fucking what if it was?
Do people whose bodies don't work not deserve to exist in society? If all these things were true for a person are they less worthy?
You all desperately need to consider the possibility that it's ok and good actually for disabled people to exist and our existence doesn't make our lives less real or worthy or human. We're not a drain on society. We're not a burden.
We're literally just people. - - Erin Biba
fwiw, i think both arguments are important and need to be repeated until they sink in; because everybody DOES deserve to exist with dignity, AND because autistic people specifically are so frequently infantilized as a means to deprive us of our agency - - bubbe yaga
The focus on disabled children rather than adults is always to further dehumanize people with disabilities, as children are often not viewed as people yet, and purposely ignores the existence of disabled adults who are alive and thriving because they want to create the illusion of no future for them. - - Bree
Autistic children deserve to become happy fully supported autistic adults, in whatever capacity that looks like to them. - - selfcaregamer
Guys, I love all of you, but the answer to RFK, Jr. is not that autistic adults hold jobs, pay taxes, and get laid, it's that everyone deserves to live even if they can't work, pay taxes, or get laid. - - Ridley
*****
We are told that women must not have reproductive rights because anything that interferes with conception is against God's will and is, essentially murder. That each human life is precious. Yet almost in the same breath we are told that if you are autistic you ought not to be alive.
There is nothing pro-life about this. This is the language of eugenics and extermination. If you obviously need supports then your life has no value. If you are desperately masking in order to “pass” then you clearly never needed supports, anyway.
That is the future that RFK Jr is preaching.
It’s completely dehumanizing. He didn’t lead with “poet.” He led with they’ll never pay taxes, they’ll never have a job. It’s just “useless eaters” rhetoric. And then he fluffs it up with, they’ll never write a poem. They’ll never play baseball. Some people won’t—some people have higher support needs. They are still people. They have a right to live and a right to dignity. And that’s not what he wants for us. He is using the straight-up eugenicist playbook. People who can’t go to the toilet by themselves are still people. People who can’t write a poem are still people. I doubt [Kennedy] can write a poem, but he’s still a person.
You can’t eradicate autism without eradicating autistic people. It’s genocidal rhetoric against us that’s justified by “autism destroys families. It destroys children.” No, it doesn’t. It’s bias against autistic people. - - Elizabeth McClennan, autistic poet
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