For months, individuals have requested my opinion on the favored Telepathy Tapes podcast, and its premise of non-speaking autistics not solely studying minds however bringing the world messages of affection and peace. (You’ve in all probability been requested about it, too, when you’ve got even a tangential autism connection.) And I’m right here to let you know: The Telepathy Tapes is a scorching, sophisticated mess—however not for the explanations you might assume.
In case you’re unfamiliar with the present, its host Ky Dickens describes it as “a groundbreaking podcast exploring the voices of nonspeakers and the science of consciousness, connection, and communication.” The “nonspeakers” half is vital, as a result of Dickens goals to indicate the world that non-speaking autistics should not solely underestimated (that is true), however telepathic (that is questionable at finest). In case you want one more reason to be skeptical, The Telepathy Tapes is endorsed by conspiracy theorist Glenn Beck, who claims in his personal podcast that autism “could also be a blessing that we simply don’t perceive but,” and needs us to think about “the potential for a religious assembly place for autistic kids guarded by angels.”
Treating the autistic individuals within the Telepathy Tapes as particular religious messengers is absurd. When you have ever encountered later-emerged AAC (augmentative and different communication) customers, they are usually traumatized about how they had been handled earlier than that they had helpful communication, and most felt (and nonetheless really feel) extremely remoted. Autistic AAC customers might overflow with empathy and understanding, however they don’t exist to carry different individuals therapeutic radiance, not more than any human does.
The Telepathy Tapes’s patronizing woo just isn’t about understanding or accepting autistic individuals. However it’s why the podcast is successful, as a result of its narrative provides non-autistic individuals a fairy story about magically connecting with autistic individuals, as a substitute of doing the onerous work of really exploring autistic individuals’s typically very difficult realities, enabling communication entry, and understanding the methods non-autistic individuals and society might enhance their lives. We should additionally reject its message that if AAC customers can learn minds and talk telepathically, perhaps they don’t want entry to the strong language-based communication that is a human proper.
As AAC person Danny With Phrases explains,
“There’s already widespread skepticism about my methodology of communication. This podcast provides gasoline to the skeptics’ hearth. What’s the plan for a way the claims of our telepathy will really make our lives higher? Positive, individuals would possibly marvel and see extra potential in our minds, however they may simply assume our complete group is delusional or some type of circus attraction. That is like savants being handled as a spectacle to be amazed by, not as full people with dignity and rights.”
We can not use the questionable agenda of The Telepathy Tapes to query whether or not or not the autistic persons are “actually speaking,” regardless of retailers like Vice and The Lower and even The Guardian utilizing outdated communication positions and non-autistic advocates to dismiss its autistic topics’ autonomy. Profitable AAC customers who presently use, or began out utilizing, supported communication exist. I’ve met many. They aren’t unicorns. They don’t have supernatural abilities.
If non-speaking autistic individuals aren’t telepathic, then what’s behind the “thoughts studying” feats in The Telepathy Tapes? As one autistic commenter explains on BlueSky: “I’m excellent at studying nonverbal cues. I’m not telepathic.” That is probably the most believable situation. Autistic individuals may be wildly delicate to and adept at sample matching, to not point out their tendency in the direction of phenomenal listening to, wonderful statement, elephantine reminiscence, and eager emotional notion—whether or not the particular person is ready to communicate, or not. Since many non-autistic individuals don’t query stereotypes about autistic individuals as distant, unfeeling, and refusing to make eye contact, they assume that autistic persons are disengaged and unobservant. And so they assume it’s a miracle when autistic individuals discover, take up, anticipate, and recall what the individuals round them do and say.
Within the podcast, Dickens calls these skills “telepathy.” She just isn’t the primary particular person to recommend that AAC customers (particularly individuals who use supported communication strategies) are telepathic, by the best way; individuals have been making such claims for the reason that Nineties.
Autistic non-speakers deserve higher than The Telepathy Tapes’s wishful fantasizing. It’s, frankly, offensive that the podcast portrays all non- or partially talking autistics as able to telepathy; a stance worryingly just like the claims of former anti-vaccine Speller mother and father who insist that all autistic children with communication disabilities are “locked inside.” One outstanding such father or mother is J.B. Handley, who based the crank mercury-causes-autism group Technology Rescue—now defunct however as soon as figureheaded by Jenny McCarthy—and who wrote the hateful guide Finish the Autism Epidemic. Handley now has a guide referred to as Underestimated: An Autism Miracle, about his Speller son. But he was relentlessly, publicly livid about having an autistic baby, till his baby was in a position to join in a manner that Handley himself valued.
It’s simple that many present AAC customers had been previously in inappropriate particular academic settings (sedentary and unenriching placements which might be inappropriate for any pupil, not for simply non-speakers who use AAC). However we additionally must acknowledge that some autistic individuals, as Julia Bascom factors out,” actually do have mental disabilities and actually do want distinctive assist,” and that this wouldn’t change even that they had entry to acceptable communication. But The Telepathy Tapes ignores autistics who aren’t speaking in ways in which captivate a non-autistic viewers.
Individuals shouldn’t must carry out to matter, or to get the helps they deserve for communication and well-being. If solely the Telepathy Tapes viewers could possibly be simply as curious and accepting about individuals like my very own grownup autistic son, who has little curiosity within the AAC strategies he’s tried over time, however nonetheless deserves to reside his finest life and have individuals take into account him worthy. He additionally deserves extra analysis and efforts into methods to assist him talk higher. Per AAC person Typer Tremblings,
“Our speller and typer utopia, won’t be a utopia in the event that they keep within the cage whereas we come out as a result of we’re so so completely different from them. I hope that they’ll slot in our goals, even when the world might by no means name them genius or secret good or intact thoughts. Even when they’ll’t spell their manner out of the cage they shouldn’t be within the cage. The cage mustn’t exist. We’re all actual and all of us talk and assume and ought to be free.”
We have to do higher by autistic individuals who want AAC. We additionally must have some empathy for the AAC customers and households who seem in The Telepathy Tapes. Most of them have little-to-no assist, and lack connections to different autistic individuals or non-speakers. It isn’t shocking that they could be keen to associate with a questionable agenda, if it provides them connections which were desperately lacking from their lives.
Lastly, don’t be fooled by The Telepathy Tapes utilizing advocacy buzzwords like acceptance, neurodiversity, and ableism. When used for such a questionable agenda, these phrases are hole.
If you’re sincerely concerned about understanding the wants and experiences of being autistic and non-speaking, keep away from The Telepathy Tapes. As a substitute, comply with organizations like Communication First that advocate for individuals who “can not depend on speech alone to be heard and understood.” Learn books just like the novel Happiness Falls, about falling for pretend AAC however then discovering actual AAC, with its audiobook that includes narration by real-life AAC person Thomas Pruyn. Watch motion pictures like Wretches and Jabberers, The Cause I Leap, or This Is Not About Me, which doc the lives of autistic non-speakers on their very own phrases. Autistic individuals deserve reality-rooted sources for bettering their lives, not The Telepathy Tapes’s false smoke and feel-good mirrors.
