E is for Empathy I know, right?

The “empathy question” is one of the biggest enemies to autism acceptance.

I read an award-winning philosophical treatise on the nature of autism (that I will not even name here, because it is so awful I don’t want it to get any recognition at all) that claimed that Autistic people do not have empathy and therefore are not fully human. The author said that Autistic people could never develop community, due to this alleged lack of empathy.

Moreover, the author made a philosophical argument that Autistic people should not be permitted to vote because our supposed lack of empathy meant we could not truly be citizens in the fullest sense of the word and had no place participating in the decisions of the nation. This isn’t some fringe book — like I said, this book won awards. And Temple Grandin wrote the foreword to it! I can only hope she was really busy that week and didn’t have the chance to actually read the text because she has said so many other things that do not agree with the message of that book.