Passing Privilege

my earshape is none of your business

An old topic, vis-à-vis melanin, & rather more urgent (depending on the lighting: courthouse or dance floor) these days as trans; I’ve never seen this used among neurodivergents, but surely that’s what they mean when distinguishing Mildly (once “Asperger’s”) from Severely Autistic.

Is also as contingent, really. If all places gave us equal amenities (or at least aspired to), many more autistics could function & support themselves—which is what they would say if you would just ask them. And no one is so “high-functioning” that they can’t accumulate a near-lethal stress level, & have to melt down/chill out/climb into a media cocoon for a breather…

This notion that there is a single way to be, & that everyone should aspire to meet it (at whatever exorbitant personal cost), permeates all social structures to some degree, but moreso the more the social realm is surveilled. Autism did not emerge from the general concept of “eccentricity” until Fordist education produced misfits & “learning disabilities”.

This is why I am not comfortable with resting in these categories with any identitarian finality. I think oneday there will exist societies (if not a direct descendent of ours--) in which basic human variation has ceased to be either contentious or remarkable. If there is no stigma or advantage in having a certain Earlobe phenotype (e.g. Easter Islanders), there is also no reason for anyone to consider themselves a Longear or a Shortear. They won’t have to fear anti-Shortear discrimination. There won’t be the need for a Shortear Liberation movement to overcome this. In short, nobody will care.

It does require, needless to say, an enormous amount of privilege in the present circumstances for me to philosophize this so glibly. I know exactly what autistic people are up against—among hellbent workplaces, in the jackbooted halls of RFK’s Health Inferno, & online where it is just another means of generating hateclicks. It’s a long road ahead—even to get back to where we were a few years ago.

But passing is for all of us or none of us.

10-2-25