Autistic monkeys: Everything wrong with allistic-led autism research

😒 I thought “autistic monkeys” was a meme or metaphor and my blog was showing up for the term for literally anything other than actual monkeys.

No.

It’s actual monkeys. Non-autistic scientists have “genetically modified” monkeys by giving them “the autism gene” so they can find an autism cure.

Autistic monkeys aren’t talked about as much because the first instance was in 2016, then 2020, and people don’t care much about the topic anymore.

Autistic monkeys are everything wrong with autism research led by non-autistic people. Here’s why.

1. Non-autistics researching autism = selfishly biased.

Non-autistic people, also known as allistic people, love to research autism because they believe autistic people need to be saved.

The science and medical community perceives autism as an abnormality that needs to be eradicated from existence.

This is where “autism cure culture” originates and why the autistic community started #ActuallyAutistic.

2. Researchers know NOTHING about autism

EXCEPT their selfish/misguided biases. Viewing autism strictly from a medical/scientific lens erases the humanity.

I mean, they’ve literally proven they don’t care about life because they’ve managed to genetically modify monkeys to “make” them autistic.

Um, what?

To understand what I mean, we have to go wayyyy back to the start of applied behavioral analysis and how Sir Ovaas told the world that autistic people aren’t actual people, but body bags to be molded.

“You see, you start pretty much from scratch when you work with an autistic child.

You have a person in the physical sense — they have hair, a nose and a mouth — but they are not people in the psychological sense.

One way to look at the job of helping autistic kids is to see it as a matter of constructing a person. You have the raw materials, but you have to build the person.”

Whether society perceived autistics as complete people prior to him saying this doesn’t matter; I only need you to comprehend the brevity of what I’m saying.

Because without understanding this — the way allistic people perceive autistics as having the audacity to EXIST as autistic people — you’re unable to comprehend the extent to which the misguidedness entails.

Imagine aliens come to planet Earth and start conducting research because — plot twist — WE are the aliens to THEM.

They don’t see as as real living beings worth anything. We’re weird and don’t share the same way of living as them.

We think they’re wrong, but they think we’re wrong.

As they’re researching us, they decide we need to be fixed/cured.

But we, as Earthlings, do not think we need to be “fixed” or “cured”…because there’s nothing wrong with us.

The aliens don’t agree; they know more and their technology is way more advanced than ours, so they get the final say.

Compared to them, Earthlings are the minority.

Doesn’t that give alien privilege or alien supremacy?

Do you see what I’m saying? Like, what in the Frosted Flakes gave them the audacity to come to our planet and claim we need to be fixed?

Autistic people are similar, except we’re born this way into a family that either understands us or doesn’t.

Not a lot of parents stumble onto articles by autistic people when they’re researching about autism, because search engine and social media algorithms boost non-autistic voices instead of actually autistic people.

3. Researchers don’t like unique beings.

If mermaids or unicorns were real, they would be hunted and experimented on — mermaids especially.

Scientists would first wonder whether these fantastical beings could cure diseases, stop aging, or benefit humans in some other way.

Autistic people are treated similarly. We’re an anomaly, though researchers don’t perceive us to have any benefit.

Caregivers of autistic people create inspiration porn to feel better about their lives and encourage us to develop self-esteem under the guise of self-hatred…and they don’t even grasp that that’s what they’re doing because they don’t process language literally.

Allistic scientists don’t embrace differences — they fear them. They view them as things to study and correct, because they view differences in nature as mutations, i.e. wrong.

4. Non-autistic people think an autism cure is the best thing for society.

This is the age-old, super tiring fact that I’m tired of addressing every time I write about autism…but it’s true.

At the end of the day, so many things boil down to allistic people’s obsession with finding an autism cure.

To find a cure, non-autistic people will stop at nothing, even if that means harming living beings in the process.

From what I’ve observed about allistic people, this is because they see unethical things as “okay” if the intentions are good or there’s a means to an end.

Remember: Many allistic people think autistic people need to be saved. 💁‍♀️

The whole autistic monkeys situation is questionable because scientists had to rely on autism stereotypes to create them in the first place.

Regardless of where I stand religiously, I’m autistic and don’t appreciate researchers playing God because they think I don’t deserve to exist.

If the autistic monkeys are real, shame on those scientists…and shame on everyone supporting this research.

What a waste of money that could’ve been used towards literally anything else — such as why allistics behave the way they do and why allism is the default. 💅