beckettsthoughts:

You, like myself, may have heard a buzz about autistic people boycotting the recently-published nonfiction novel To Siri With Love. Seeing the controversy surrounding this publication, I decided to take a short break from my university assignments and do a little research for myself about the book and the issues it raises, hoping to be able to explain in short why the #BoycottToSiri movement is so important to the autistic community. The book is a memoir written by Judith Newman about her experiences with her autistic son, Gus. That alone is not a bad concept, but some of the comments the author makes send nasty shivers down my spine. To start with, here’s some of the smaller problems that were discovered:

• The author did not ask her teenage son’s permission or advice when writing an invasive commentary on his life, a choice she views as “selfish but necessary.” She also published text conversations between Gus and his friends. Though I cannot claim to know whether or not anyone involved consented to have their words published, it is difficult to overlook the possibility that they did not.

• Transphobic comments regarding the use of the terms “cisgender” and “they” (as opposed to “he or she”) to be an “ugly and imprecise” evolution of language. Also, I there’s something that rubs me the wrong way about her insistence on using “the masculine pronoun” when “talking about people in generalities”, but I can’t pinpoint exactly what it is that makes me feel so uneasy about that.

• Newman described popular autism advocate Amythest Schaber using a sexist movie trope by saying that they resemble “everyone’s favourite manic pixie dream girl.”

• Made the ableist claim that someone like her son will “never have real friends,” which is incredibly insulting to autistic and otherwise neurodivergent individuals.

• Declined using person-first language in her book not because of the many valid criticisms about the dehumanisation of autistic people but because it is “clunky” and she didn’t want to have to write “the phrase “person with autism” over and over again.”

• Continued the long ableist trend of desexualising disabled people when she mocked the possibility of her son having any sort of romantic experience (“I could not imagine that any girl, anywhere, would find him interesting at this point”) and described the situation as one she imagines to be soundtracked by “Benny Hill” theme. 

Now we get onto the main problem of To Siri With Love, and it concerns the topic of eugenics. In the novel, Newman declared that she wanted to get Power of Attorney so that she could force her son to have a vasectomy so he couldn’t have children, so that she could have “one less worry. For [her.]” She then asked how she could make such a comment “without sounding like a eugenicist,” which only makes it worse by highlighting that she understands the horrific concept of eugenics. She then explains the unpleasant history of eugenics, acknowledging how “the history of disability is inextricably intertwined with the history of euthanizing and enforced sterilization,” but admits that she would still be “the first in line to sign him up.”

I hope this explanation sheds some light onto the problematic nature of this memoir and the ableist commentary within it. Please, if you want to read a real-life story about autistic life, do yourself a favour and read any one of the countless memoirs by members of the autistic community instead of the undeniable ableism presented by Judith Newman. 

(Quotes are taken from screenshots of the book posted to Twitter by disability inclusion advocate Andrea Pregel, as well as from a tweet by Elizabeth Roderick and a screenshot from Amythest Schaber.)