I have some personal experience with the men’s rights hate group on YouTube, and one of the things that struck me is their extreme intolerance and downplaying of autism as a mental issue. I’ve had this article as a backlog as a while, but, as it’s now World Autism Awareness Week, I think it’s finally time to write it.
There is a giant problem with autism-phobia in the M.R.A. community. They have in the past year begun to deliberately conflate it with third-wave feminism as some kind of sick bigoted joke, and marginalise this mentally-ill minority in their ongoing crusade against equality. It’s always really worried me; I can’t imagine how degrading it would be to have your brain problem taken hold of by a hate group and mocked as they slander the feminist cause. Deplorable.
Checking the videos of any of these people will reveal boundless references to autism. “You’re being a bit autistic!” “The autism must flow!” “Only the most autistic survive!” These are but a few ofthe terrible quotations I have found. If you call them out for their problematic behaviour you always get the same, predicable response: “It’s just a meme! It’s sarcasm!” Well, here’s an excellent video by the sublime Kristi Winters about exactly why the “It’s a joke” argument falls down. Suffice to say, you have to make it clear you’re joking. If we don’t get it, it’s not sarcasm.
It’s easy to simply condemn these people as being terrible hate-mongers, bent on protecting their right to be terribly offensive because they have no productive reason to exist, styling themselves as (trigger warning: men’s rights) “Socratics” to mask their invidiousness; but there is more information. Kraut and Tea, Spinosauruskin, Harmful Opinions: all are sizeable anti-feminist YouTube channels, and all are autistic to a greater or lesser degree. Many others, including the creator of the joke, Carl Benjamin, are from the software industry, which is known for a prevalence of autistic people, diagnosed or not. What this is about, clearly, is self-hatred. The M.R.A. community is a cold, lonely place filled with sad men, unmarried, often estranged and (deservedly, surely) without custody. This is internalised. This is self-deprecation.
Sometimes it does to be considerate, to be mannered. Men’s suicide rates are certainly far higher than women’s, and if we want to defeat our enemies we must prove ourselves more moral, more mannered and more principled and willing to stand up to and for people wherever it is needed. Fellow feminists, the M.R.A. community, whether they like it or not, needs our help.
