autist

Much has been said about that contest, but let me add: It was an exhilarating and devastating time to be a politics-obsessed Jewish American teenage autist.

As a fellow autist, I find myself stuck in the middle of these two incompatible views: on the one hand, autistic people are disturbed, naïve individuals who are incapable of knowing their own minds or speaking credibly; on the other, autistic people are superhumans with a preternatural ability to see the truth of things and to articulate it without equivocation.

In late July, Instagram shut down roughly 30 several popular repost accounts—including @uniquevines, which had more than 8 million followers, and @autist, a page run by an 18-year-old who told Fox 5 San Diego he’d made $30,000 from the page, which he planned to use for college tuition.

Also, Timotheus Gordon Jr., creator of the blog Black Autist, and Sara Luterman, founder and editor of NOS Magazine, join the show to talk about how Netflix’s new series Atypical reinforces negative stereotypes about autistic people.

The first person I spoke with was Timotheus Gordon Jr., a PhD student at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and the creator of the blog Black Autist, which explores issues surrounding autistic people of color.