Against cure, against backlash: neuroaffirmative responses to antifeminism and the war on autism

Rita Serra^1*Andreia Dickinson²

• ¹Center for Social Studies, University of Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal
• ²Ispa CRL, Lisbon, Portugal

children's autism by unconsciously rejecting the role of maternity (Bettelheim, 1967;Douglas & Klar, 2019). Autism was the perfect metaphor for the social problems attributed to working women and feminist ideals, who were accused of sickening their children and disordering their families and the nation. Yet again, the category was kept white (Maddox, 2025). As one mother recalls in the documentary Refrigerator Mothers (2003): "my son could not be autistic. I was not white, it was assumed that I was not educated and therefore he was labeled emotionally disturbed (...) You can't even be a refrigerator mother (laughs), the irony of it all". Mother blaming was severely fought by parent advocacy movements, which redefined autism as its own disorder. Together with experts, parents established autism as clearly biological, with a hereditary basis, but caused by environmental triggers, such as pollutants, antibiotics and vaccines (Chapman, 2023). Autism was again framed as a 'social problem', this time as an epidemic of something worse than death. It was compared to an abductor (McGuire, 2016;Broderick & Roscino, 2021) that prevented the children from developing as fully humans, yet one that could be defeated through normalizing interventions. In this context, the figure of the autism's warrior mother emerged (Douglas, 2025), who blamed big pharma and sought to rescue and cure her children "against all odds" (McCarthy, 2008). In the aftermath of COVID-19, antivaccination movements gained traction, converging with conspiracy, wellness and far-right groups that shared a distrust in established experts and a desire to keep bodyminds healthy and pure from environmental and social aggressions (Brady et al., 2023;Hoffman et al., 2019). Once more, autism became the embodied metaphor for the physical and spiritual degeneration of Western societies in need of a cure -something that must be purged. The war on autism, as defined by MacGuire ( 2016), considers autism as some 'thing' and not a someone, a struggle between vital 'non-autistic' and non-vital 'autistic' parts. The autism industrial complex (McGuire, 2013;Broderick & Roscigno, 2021), promising a cure, was reinforced by alternative medicines; once autism is framed as an enemy (McGuire, 2016;Douglas, 2025), anyone can profit from the urge of middle-class parents to 'save' and 'develop' their kids. Understanding the conditions of emergence of autism as a concept allows us to understand it as a white category (Maddox, 2025;Ellis, 2023) at the service of the eugenic movement, which focuses both on negative traits to be eliminated and desirable traits for success. Ableism is a two-faced coin with negative discrimination on one side, and the glorification of 'superpowers' on the other, as seen in the obsession with gifted prodigies and indigo/crystal children (Waltz, 2009). Whenever the focus is on abilities instead of humanness, weaponization of autism can occur. We identify three tropes where autistics are weaponized within the far-right: as 1) "all-powerful masters-of-technology" (Welch et al., 2022); 2) victims in incel culture; and 3) vulnerable to gender ideology. In the first trope, (male) autistics are simultaneously glorified on the basis of their cognitive skills at the service of the cause, and derogated by lacking social skills. This trope relies on a narrow conception of rationality-one that is systematizing, technical, and culturally coded as masculine. As Tavares, Mattos, & Tsallis (2023) argue through their analysis of Mel Baggs's work, this is in line with a patriarchal and ableist "male rationality" that is used to exclude autistic forms of intelligence and communication that are more empathetic, relational, or non-linear. Yet, for some autistic people, the partial acceptance offered within the far-right community may be preferable to the lack of acceptance they experience in society (Welch et al., 2022). This aligns with 'Aspie supremacy' -the view that Aspies (from Asperger's Syndrome, named after the Nazi doctor) are superior to other autistics and non-autistics "in terms of whiteness, masculinity and economic worthiness" (de Hooge, 2019). In the second trope, autistics are weaponized in the opposite direction, through naturalized oppression, placing them at the bottom of a social hierarchy (supposedly) defined by female preferences. The incels are thus vowed to absolute rejection, which fuels reactions of "aggrieved entitlement to women", amid a context of ableism and 'networked misogyny' (Gheorghe & Clement, 2023). In the third trope, autism is weaponized against trans people, hindering their access to transition-related services and social acceptance. The overlap between autism and transgender is emphasized, framing autistic people as vulnerable to the so-called gender ideology, which purportedly induces confusion and pressures them to transition (Maddox, 2025). The consequences of the war on autism for autistic people are multiple and layered across social class, race, gender and disability. To begin with, working class individuals, racialized groups, women and non-binary folks, and autistic people with co-occurring disabilities are often excluded from this battle, as they are frequently denied access to diagnosis due to autism's construction as a white, male, middle-class category (Jack, 2011;Fox, 2025). The lack of recognition of autism in childhood can result in lack of support and adverse experiences, such as incomprehension and unhelpful labels, bullying and sexual violence, as reported by late-diagnosed autistics, in particular, women (Botha & Gillespie-Lynch, 2022;Cazalis et al., 2022). Black autistic men may have their lives endangered during public meltdowns (Yates Flanagan et al., 2025); non-speaking autistics or those with co-occurring disabilities risk being institutionalized and subjected to forced sterilization, aversives, restraint, and seclusion. Those considered 'high-functioning' are often forced to mask their traits daily, which can lead to a great deal of suffering, autistic burnout, and even suicide, as seen among autistic doctors (Shaw et al., 2023) and other skilled professionals. Those diagnosed in childhood may face therapies that aim to make them "indistinguishable from their normal friends" (Lovaas, 1987, p. 8), notably, applied behavior analysis (ABA). ABA is the primary target of the wars between parents and neurodiversity advocates, as while parents seek therapies that promise social inclusion through normativity, autistic adults who were subjected to ABA as children report it as a profoundly traumatizing experience (Kupferstein, 2018;Anderson, 2023). Framing autism as a 'thing' to be fought rather than a 'someone' justifies harmful practices operated on autistic bodies such as chelation, intensive therapies or aversive electroshocks (Douglas & Klar, 2019). In the extreme, it can legitimize filicide as a 'merciful killing' (McGuire, 2016). Above all, the focus on prevention and cure negates autistic subjectivities, experiences, and humanness (Bergenmar et al., 2015;de Hooge, 2019;Douglas & Klar, 2019), undermining support and disability rights (Pellicano et al., 2014;Botha & Cage, 2022). Neuroaffirmative responses are based in an anti-cure perspective, and are rooted in the neurodiversity movement built over four decades (Kapp, 2020). We highlight four underlying counterstrategies: 1) defining autism as an identity; 2) adulting autism; 3) science as advocacy; 4) self-advocacy. Defining autism as an identity was essential to reconceptualizing it from a 'thing' to a 'someone', as done by Jim Sinclair's (1993) in his seminal lecture at the parents' conference. The aim was to establish autism as an integral part of a person's being, coloring every experience, putting an end to its understanding as a separate entity that could be removed. This approach legitimized first person accounts and identity-first language (e.g., 'autistic person' instead of 'person with autism'), and encouraged unmasking in safe environments (Price, 2022). We coin the term 'adulting autism' to refer to the crucial move of rescuing autism from being exclusively viewed as a child disorder, introducing the notion that autistic people grow and develop at their own pace, but also need support as they age. This was essential for establishing epistemic validity and challenging the marginalization of autistic people as knowers of their own bodies (Chapman & Carel, 2022). Engaging in scientific production was critical for building the neurodiversity paradigm, recentering autism as a natural variation of human bodyminds, and politically advocating for its acceptance, including it in our concepts of humanness instead of pathologizing it. Some critical steps were the debunking of ToM (theory of the mind) theory (Baron-Cohen et al., 1985) and deficit-based biomedical approaches to autism (Chapman, 2021(Chapman, , 2023)), exposing its ableist bias and eugenic tenets, advancing other theories that reduce the non-autistic bias, such as the double empathy theory (Milton, 2012). This set the basis for a different knowledge production, more participatory, community-based and led and authored by autistic researchers (Nicolaidis et al., 2019;Yergeau, 2018). Finally, the foundation of self-advocacy associations has been critical for advancing autistic rights -from combating misinformation (e.g., the Autistic Self Advocacy Network's work against false claims about acetaminophen and vaccines) to opposing abuse and torture in the name of cure (e.g., protests against the Judge Rotenberg Center; Neumeier & Brown, 2020) and promoting acceptance among parents, clinical professions and the general society. Neuroaffirmative responses to antifeminism must account for the co-construction of autism with gender and motherhood, focusing on intersectional and anti-eugenic approaches. Gender is indissociable from autism, as it was historically constructed as the outcome of an "extreme male brain" ( Baron-Cohen, 2002). This theory reinforces essentialized gender views, associating systematizing knowledge with masculinity and a lack of empathy (Jack, 2011). Many autistic people are gender-nonconforming, identifying as non-binary or sexually diverse. A key strategy is to emphasize the natural diversity of sex and gender, exposing nature as inherently unruly and evolutionary queer (Roughgarden, 2013). Autistic experiences of masculinity and femininities must also be researched, including toxic forms of masculinity and forced adoption of gender stereotyped roles as part of masking, to think how autistic alternative masculinities and femininities can look like as part of unmasking. Motherhood is a central aspect of autism and antifeminism, as women are expected to breed and nurture the citizens of the nation state, educating them to fit in and conform with society's goals and standards. Mother warriors represent this far-right subjectivity, and a feminist perspective may require the 'unmothering' of autism (Douglas, 2025), advocating for neurodiversity while challenging intensive, normative maternity under 'end of times fascism' (Klein & Taylor, 2025), and including the parental rights of fathers. Supporting neurodivergent mothers is essential to grant reproductive rights to autistic and disabled women, including freedom from coerced sterilization (Malacrida, 2020), access to abortion and contraception, and comprehensive reproductive healthcare and education, including consent-based sexual education for autistic people. Framing autism as a 'thing' to be fought... negates autistic subjectivities, experiences, and humanness. This logic of exclusion is what autistic scholar and activist Mel Baggs fundamentally challenged. As analyzed by Yergeau (2018), Baggs's work demonstrates that rhetorics of the human are often deployed to dehumanize and exclude the validity of autistic ways of being. Our argument, therefore, is for a political and ethical expansion of humanness-one that fully includes autistic experience not as a deficit, but as a vital part of the human spectrum. Intersectional approaches are critical to support autistic people from vulnerable groups, such as migrants, and critically assess how autism is being constructed beyond male and white conceptions. Intersectional approaches with disability will be central (Malacrida, 2020;Roscigno, 2021;Botha & Gillespie-Lynch, 2022;Ellis, 2023;Fox, 2025;Jones et al., 2025), as autistic people experience different support needs throughout life, and can have co-ocorrences with other neurodivergences, chronic diseases or mental illnesses (Csecs et al., 2022;Raymaker et al., 2020); this calls for finding ways for autistic people with intellectual disability to participate in the neurodiversity movement, and forging alliances with movements such as crip activism (de Hooge, 2019), disability and civil rights movements, in uniting struggles such as enabling independent living. Anti-eugenic approaches must target not only negative eugenics but also the positive eugenics that enable supremacy thinking. Acceptance must find ways of "staying with the trouble" (Haraway, 2016), exploring what autistic flourishing (Chapman & Carel, 2022;Pellicano & Heyworth, 2023;Hedlun et al., 2025) might mean, while exposing the racism that might come historically attached to biological explanations of identities as social categories. While autism should not be seen as an innate basis that handicaps human connections, different biologies require different ways to communicate and connect, and non-autistics must also learn how to do it. Expanding humanness is fighting against a hierarchical and unilinear (Ellis, 2023) order of human development, to liberate all of us from a perpetual urge for perfection aimed at value extraction (Broderick & Roscigno, 2021;Chapman, 2023;Maddox, 2025), which defines us as unfit and hinders our possibilities of rest and of experiencing the joy of being alive in our imperfect and impure bodies, accepting and integrating all parts of us.