Why Autistic Culture Is the Future of Autism Advocacy
Pride movements don’t just happen. They’re campaigns that put unity ahead of division. See Italy for details.
The Autistic community is a diaspora. Late-diagnosed adults like me trading survival stories. Non-speakers and Spellers building whole worlds through alternative communication. AuDHD folks navigating overlapping needs. Black Autistics naming the double burden of racism and ableism. Autism moms staking their claims. Each group has its own language, heroes, and struggles — like distinct regions on a map. And when I think about how all these pieces might come together, I’m reminded of another patchwork that became a whole: the scattered city-states and kingdoms that eventually united as Italy.
Did you know that Italy didn’t start as Italy? For centuries it was a mosaic of Venetians, Neapolitans (my people), Sicilians (also my people), Florentines, etc, each proud of their own heritage, each with deep traditions, but with little sense of being part of something larger. Even in my third generation family in the 1980s in the USA I was always taught anything north of Rome isn’t “really” Italy. But, it WAS Italy and had been for more than 100 years. Change just moves slowly.
In 1860, a red-shirted revolutionary named Giuseppe Garibaldi landed in Sicily with a ragtag army. Within months, whole kingdoms toppled and, for the first time in centuries, people began calling themselves “Italian.” Italy was imagined into existence and with it, Italian pride. It was the Risorgimento, the “resurgence,” led by a handful of visionaries who decided that the peninsula’s future required unity. Out of dozens of regions came a single nation, held together not because it was inevitable, but because people fought to imagine it into being.
And that, my friends, is the lesson for us. Autistic culture won’t coalesce on its own. Pride doesn’t just appear because we exist. It has to be built. We have to build it. Like
did in this article about a future where Autistic people are respected and not repaired.
Deaf communities had to fight to reclaim their languages. Italians had to be convinced they shared a destiny. And we, as Autistics, will have to campaign, tell stories, and weave together our “regions” into a whole that claims its place in history.
When we talk about “Italian pride,” it’s easy to imagine it as something that’s always been there. But it wasn’t. Before 1861, there was no Italy. Italy as we know it was a project, stitched together by revolutionaries, politicians, and poets who decided it was time for the world to see them as one people. Giuseppe Mazzini gave the idea. Count Cavour worked the politics. Giuseppe Garibaldi fought the battles. They were the TikTok influencers and podcasters of their day. They taught people to be proud to be Italian. The flag, the anthem, the shared history of Rome and the Renaissance, all of that was propaganda with a purpose. Italian pride wasn’t automatic. It was created.
The same goes for Deaf pride. For most of modern history, Deaf people were treated as broken hearing people. Their languages were banned or dismissed as gestures. But activists and scholars in the 20th century flipped the script: sign languages are languages. Deaf people are not medical problems, but a cultural community. The 1988 Deaf President Now protest at Gallaudet University was the tipping point. As Nyle DiMarco wrote about in his recent memoir and the Deaf President Now documentary on Apple Plus. Suddenly the world had to reckon with Deaf culture. Again, not automatic. Created. Fought for.
And here we are with autism. Right now, autism is still framed as deficit, disorder, or tragedy. And inside our own community, we have our “regions.” Gestalt language processors. Non-speakers. Spellers. Autism moms. AuDHD folks. Late-diagnosed. Black autistics. Each has their own story, their own culture. But like the patchwork of Venice, Naples, and Sicily, we’re stronger when we see the tapestry as a whole.
Italian pride had to be articulated. Deaf pride had to be articulated. Autistic pride has to be articulated too. Autistic culture won’t coalesce on its own. Pride doesn’t just appear because we exist. It has to be built. Deaf communities had to fight to reclaim their languages. Italians had to be convinced they shared a destiny. And we, as Autistics, will have to campaign, tell stories, and weave together our “regions” into a whole that claims its place in history.
It doesn’t come automatically. It comes from campaigns, leaders, symbols, stories, and the deliberate choice to say: this is who we are. And just like Italy is richer for having Venetians and Neapolitans, Sicilians and Florentines, Autistic culture is richer when all the regions of our community are seen as part of one whole. Not erased. Not assimilated. But connected.
Autistic culture is a project. And it’s ours to build.
P.S. I was honored to have the fine folks at Sage Publications where I serve over at Neurodiversity Journal on the editorial team publish an article I wrote about life as an Autistic author. If you like my writing and want to ready more of it or learn about my process of writing every day, even when I’m on vacation in Italy like here in this clip.
