Why do we allow mockery of autistic and neurodivergent people?

If you look at our media today, it seems to accept the idea that awkwardness and difference can be a source of amusement.  We’re routinely invited to laugh at neurodivergence and mock it.  We’re invited to laugh at the class nerd, or the crazy professor, or some other stereotyped neurodivergent character.  We’re even taught that awkward kids will get bullied: such bullying is often presented as entirely natural and predictable.  The bullying isn’t presented as an aberrant and deeply damaging violation of rights and dignity.

When our popular media say something is acceptable, we make it acceptable.  We normalize it.  And today, we normalize violence.  We normalize mockery.  When we normalize victimization of neurodivergent people, how can we be surprised when neurodivergent people are victimized?

If you look at old TV shows, you see all sorts of negative stereotypes about women and racial groups that are, thankfully, no longer acceptable in the mainstream media today.  Because the stereotypes are so unacceptable today, it can be jarring to see them on these old shows.  We’re certainly not perfect yet, but we’ve learned a lot about appropriate rhetoric and discourse when it comes to gender and race.  Stereotypes that may have seemed natural in the past have turned out to be things under our control, things that we can change.

Now it’s time for a new lesson, and a new change: we need to learn that it’s not right to present the marginalization and victimization of autistic people as normal or acceptable.