Is Rain Man such a bad image of autism?

Raymond is a very exaggerated stereotype. He has an extreme disability – he is very rigidly bound by a schedule, he cannot do much without assistance, he has serious communication difficulties. His mathematical gift is very extreme. Most people with autism don’t have genius-level intelligence or specific skills, and while they have significant difficulties that affect them in every aspect of day-to-day life, it doesn’t completely disable them. Also, if memory serves me correctly, he has no physical coordination problems. He makes a poor model of a person with autism. This has now become the most popular stereotype of a person with autism, so people assume that when they meet a person with autism, they will be ‘like Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man’.

Films such as Rain Man have another less well known negative aspect – they all feature male autistic people. Females with autism are very heavily under-represented. Not only are they a small minority anyway, they are more difficult to diagnose because the female social role encourages women to hide behaviour traits that would lead to a diagnosis of autism, and the fact that almost every single stereotype of an autistic person is male, while female autism is actually very different to male autism, means that people who see a woman with autism might not associate them with stereotypes of autism.

After autism became popular because it was featured in a big hit film, it became a ‘fad disability’. Everyone thought they had autism. Most of the people who thought they had it clearly didn’t – they were trying to gain sympathy while being rude and antisocial, or just trying to get benefits in an era when autism was the easiest condition to get diagnosed with, but nobody really knew what autism was, so you might get a diagnosis even if you clearly aren’t autistic. This had a negative impact on people with genuine autism, who now might not be believed, or might have their benefits pool diluted. It also had a negative impact on the people who were self-diagnosing, as they were receiving the wrong sort of treatment and believing a lie about themselves, when they might even have a different disability altogether.

Sure but there are different types of awareness.

There’s a type of awareness that actually shows people on the spectrum in a realistic light and then there is the wrong type of awareness that says that autistic people need to be pitied and despite having special traits suffer from their condition when the reality can be more complex. That type of recognition can actually be counterproductive as it may help a person in their young age it either ignores them as an adult or helps to deny the advanced services available amongst other things.

What’s more there are now better depictions of autism and Aspergers Syndrome than Rain Man (For example Steig Larsson’s Millenium Trilogy or the The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time so the film gives a basic and dated image of autism and the “help” available.

The National Autistic Society is the only British based autistic organisation to have supported. And while as much as I respect and admire the NAS being a member of it, the organisation faces a difficult balancing act with the views and interests of it’s parents as opposed to the views and interests of its autistic members. This was demonstrated in the McKinnon case where the organisation took a far more aggressive approach then it should have done. So don’t assume that just because the NAS backs something it automatically means that the Autistic community support it entirely.

It lays down expectations on you to be a genius, making you feel like an underachiever if you aren’t, or people will think you’re not autistic if you aren’t a genius. For a person with autism who takes everything literally or automatically obeys orders, it can make them think the same of themselves.

Some people still yell ‘retard’ at you if you act unusual even if they don’t know whether you’re autistic or not.