- What up world?

Myles Bess here, journalist, host, and someone who can never ignore their YouTube comments section.

Y'all have asked for a video on autism, so y'all are gonna get a video on autism.

If you look up the definition of autism you'll get something like this.

Autism is a developmental disability caused by differences in the brain that can affect how people behave, communicate, interact, and learn.

The official diagnosis goes by ASD, autism spectrum disorder.

It's got disorder right there in the name, which implies that autism is something that needs to be fixed.

But if you've been on TikTok recently, maybe the algorithm sent you deep into the world of creators who identify as neurodiverse.

Many of these creators are autistic and showcase the fact that their differences don't have to be deficits.

It's almost kind of like a celebration of difference.

So today, I wanna get to the bottom of a binary that I keep seeing people talk about all over the place.

Is autism a disorder to be fixed or a difference to be celebrated?

(upbeat music) Let's take a look at the old human brain.

It has around 85 billion neurons that are talking to each other nonstop and control just about everything we do and sense and think about.

It's easily the most complex organ we have, so it shouldn't come as a surprise that everyone's brain develops in a unique way.

It's just like Cheetos in a way.

No two brains are exactly the same.

I mean, look at a Cheeto, man.

Those ridges, they're just, they're just not the same.

You can pick up two Cheetos right now.

Get back to me.

Tell me what you discovered.

That's how we get the concept of neurodiversity, which is the idea that there is no one universally-accepted definition of what a normal brain is.

It basically focuses on how the kinds of behaviors we consider normal vary depending on the culture we live in.

Like, let's say I pop by your house with some delicious ramen.

We both start diggin' in, and then out of the blue, right in the middle of the meal, I start loudly slurping my noodles.

(Myles slurping) (Myles sighs) You'd probably think, who the heck raised you?

Ew.

Stop, cut it out.

But that wouldn't be the case if we were eating our ramen in Japan.

Over there, slurping is a sign that you like the meal.

Not slurping would be considered rude.

When someone behaves as expected by their society, they can be considered neurotypical.

Most of society is built around how neurotypicals go about their day, but as I'm sure you know, there are tons of people who don't fit into how society expects them to be.

This includes many people with brain-based disabilities, like autism, ADHD, Tourette's, the list goes on.

Many of them consider themselves to be neurodivergent.

And this was confirmed when I hopped on TikTok where so many creators identify as being neurodivergent.

That's where I found Lina Fang, a therapist and autistic creator.

She told me that for her, the struggle is around communication and social cues.

- So as you can tell, the way that I'm communicating right now, it's, like, I have what's called reduced affect display.

So I don't have a lot of facial expressions or tone to the way that I speak.

And in a lot of ways that can be misinterpreted by other people when I'm talking as, like, being disinterested or being bored or something.

So that can cause a lot of misunderstanding and generally, a not-so-good communication and relationships with other people.

- But if there's one thing I learned from researching this episode, if you've met one person with autism, well, that you've met one person with autism.

There's no one look or symptom that you can point to and decree this person has autism.

I mean, it exists on a spectrum, meaning it shows up differently depending on the person.

When I talk to Sebastian, a journalist and autistic self-advocate, he told me about how he processes senses.

- Like me, for example, I'm hypersensitive, meaning that I experience things on a much greater level, such as pain and touch.

Like, a hyposensitive person could have a paper cut and not even know it's there.

And then for me, if I get a paper cut, it feels like my whole hand is burning.

I tend to flap my hands when I'm very excited, or when I tend to be, you know, overwhelmed, that could happen.

And I also use this toy to kind of keep my hands busy, especially in a more anxious situation such as this.

- Can you describe that?

Can you describe what the toy, like, what is that?

- So this is called a Tangle Therapy, and it just basically keeps my hands busy so that way I have other things to focus on when I'm in more anxious situations.

Kind of the same function that chewing gum serves.

You know what I mean?

- Autism is usually recognized in early childhood, but it's not uncommon for people to get officially diagnosed later in life.

- I was diagnosed when I was 28, which is later in life, but that's not even, like, the latest that someone has been diagnosed.

There are lots of people, like, especially looking at my comments section, people in their 40s, 50s, 60s, kind of coming to understand later in life that they're autistic.

And for myself and how I came to understand that I'm autistic, I think that I've always known that I'm different than other people.

And if you talk to other late-diagnosed individuals, it's pretty common across the board, just feeling, like, that you're different than others, and you have this experience of, like, observing society and humanity as almost an alien.

That's a very common thing that pops up here, like, this alien watching things happen around you and not being able to fully relate on a human level.

- To really understand how autism is thought of today, we have to understand that for much of its history, it was viewed through the medical model of disability.

Usually that means a disability is a problem that needs to be fixed.

The word autism first popped up in 1911 when a Swiss psychologist used it to describe certain symptoms of schizophrenia.

By the 1920s, a common treatment was ECT, electroconvulsive therapy.

Doctors send a mild electrical current through the brain, which triggers a brief seizure which then causes electrical and chemical changes that can change how people behave.

Turns out that autism is not related to schizophrenia.

And it wasn't until the late 40s that doctors figured out that it typically begins in childhood.

Still, that didn't stop some pretty wacky ideas of what caused autism, like the Refrigerator Mother hypothesis, cold mothers who didn't love their kids enough, and one treatment for this was separating kids from their mothers.

Mommy, mommy, is that you?

Mom?

Mommy?

(Myles laughs) (playful music) Seriously, it's called a parentectomy, and shocker, this theory would go on to be totally debunked.

An official autism diagnosis didn't become a thing until the 1980s, and by the 1990s, autism awareness became more widespread, in part due to another debunked claim that the MMR vaccine caused autism.

But I repeat, the theory that vaccines caused autism has 100% been disproven.

I don't care what your aunt's best friend's first cousin says on Facebook.

And it wasn't until 1998 when the word neurodiversity was first used as we now use it today, and it's since become a movement about supporting the rights of neurodivergent people.

All of this sets up attention, the medical model of disability versus neurodiversity.

And it brings us back to our original question.

Is autism a disorder to be fixed or a difference to be celebrated?

And that's what we call a false binary folks because many autistic people identify as being disabled, but that disability isn't something that needs to be fixed or cured.

- A lot of these traits that neurodiverse individuals exhibit are framed as deficits, and therefore, should be corrected in therapy or in whatever system that they're in.

And so I had to do a lot of unlearning and relearning and just really educating myself on how to not just help myself but help other people who are neurodiverse.

- This is where the social model of disability comes in.

Instead of forcing someone to fit into society, what if parts of society could be tweaked to better support the person?

- Well, we are perfectly fine the way we are, but that we do need accommodations to be able to thrive in life.

We can look at it like this.

The medical model, you have a person in a wheelchair where they're trying to get into a building.

Medical model says, well, that person, you know, has a disability, and they need to be fixed in order to get through that door.

The social model, on the other hand, recognizes, hey, this person has a wheelchair, and they need to get in the building.

Let's build a ramp so they can get in.

If you apply that to autism, the medical model sees autism as the problem, that it needs to be fixed for society to be better.

The social model recognizes that an autistic person is in a world that just isn't designed for them.

It's designed for neurotypical people.

- The most concise way I can describe it is, basically, a different processor.

Like, if you imagined the brain as a computer, and the majority of society operated on Windows, and then autistic individuals operate on macOS.

And therefore, like, the information you're intaking is the same as everyone else is intaking.

It's, like, reality, but then the way that you process it is different, and your output is going to look different as well.

- So, in the end, autism can create challenges, but that doesn't mean the person has a problem within them that needs to be fixed.

Like, there's nothing wrong with disliking social activities, but that's different from wanting to be social but being unable to.

One requires acceptance from society.

The other requires assistance.

But now we want to hear from you.

How do you think viewing autism through the lens of the social model of disability could change how it's represented in our culture?