👁️ Session 11: Not All Autistic People Are Seen: Systems, Structures & Paradigms
🌿 Transformative Education for Neurodivergent Liberation
"And that visibility which makes us most vulnerable is that which also is the source of our greatest strength."
— Audre Lorde
📌 If you’re just joining us, I recommend reading [Session 1 – Why I’m Leading This Workshop (My Positionality)] for shared agreements and to understand how this space is held.
We’re entering a new chapter in this journey—one where we step beyond the personal, and into the structural.
Systems. Institutions. Paradigms.
The ones that decide who gets seen, who gets supported, who gets erased.
Because the hard truth is:
not all autistic people are seen.
Not in data.
Not in diagnosis.
Not in community.
Not in activism.
Not even in the neurodiversity movement.
This session is about that erasure.
How it happens. Why it happens.
And what it will take to build a world that sees—and values—all of us.
📉 The System Sees What It’s Trained to See
The medical model was never built to recognize all autistic people.
It was built to diagnose—and gatekeep.
It measures autism by how well someone fits (or fails to fit) into neurotypical norms. It relies on checklists, clinical observations, and biased assumptions. It values what is visible, verbal, and quantifiable. And it erases what doesn’t conform to its lens.
That’s why:
Black and Brown children are more likely to be misdiagnosed—or not diagnosed at all.
Girls and AFAB people are often seen as “just anxious,” “dramatic,” or “gifted but moody.”
Queer and trans autistics are pathologized for identity, not supported in their needs.
Poor and working-class people are dismissed as “neglectful” or “unmotivated” instead of seen through a trauma-informed lens.
Nonspeaking, AAC users, and multiply disabled autistics are excluded from even the most “inclusive” neurodiversity spaces.
The truth is, autism doesn’t hide.
It’s overlooked. Misread. Systemically unseen.
Even now, in 2025, the dominant image of “what autism looks like” is still shaped by whiteness, maleness, verbal ability, and access to diagnostic systems.
That image is incomplete.
It’s not just that the system overlooks certain people—it was designed not to see them.
👁 Visibility Is Not the Same as Liberation
Representation matters. But representation alone doesn’t guarantee safety, support, or justice.
We’ve seen a rise in “visibility” around autism—more late-diagnosed adults sharing their stories, more characters in media, more social media discourse. But much of that visibility centers a narrow sliver of the spectrum:
White
Verbal
Formally diagnosed
Academically literate
Often middle-class or higher
These stories matter. But when they become the default, everyone else disappears.
You can be visible online and invisible in your community.
You can be praised for advocacy and punished for your actual needs.
You can be "seen" as autistic, but only if you match what someone else expects autism to look like.
I know this firsthand. After I began speaking openly about being autistic, people assumed I didn’t need support—because I could speak, write, “function.” But behind the posts was a body in collapse. A soul trying to integrate decades of dissociation. A life shaped by exclusion.
Visibility gave me a platform—but it didn’t give me safety.
Because what people really want is not your truth. They want a version of your truth that fits neatly into what they already understand.
But liberation doesn’t come from being seen—it comes from being understood in your fullness.
And for many of us, that still hasn’t happened.
🏛️ Structural Invisibility Is by Design
Many autistic people are not unseen by accident—they are erased by the systems that shape diagnosis, access, and legitimacy.
The structures that define and validate autism—medical, educational, legal, and social—were not built for all of us. They were built for a particular kind of profile: usually white, usually male, usually presenting in stereotypical, externally observable ways.
That means:
Black and Brown autistic kids are punished instead of supported.
Girls and femmes are labeled anxious or dramatic, not autistic.
Poor and working-class families are dismissed, gaslit, or ignored.
Immigrants face language and cultural barriers to recognition.
Nonspeaking people are assumed to lack understanding.
Late-diagnosed adults are told they “don’t count.”
These exclusions are not rare—they are routine. They are the result of diagnostic frameworks rooted in white, Western, neuronormative standards. Frameworks that reduce lived complexity into checkbox symptoms. That reward conformity and penalize adaptation. That erase trauma histories and dismiss nontraditional expressions of distress.
And the harm is compounded for those at the intersections.
Imagine navigating the world as:
A Black nonspeaking teen constantly policed and surveilled
A queer autistic immigrant whose needs are mislabeled as “noncompliance”
A late-diagnosed autistic mom labeled “unstable” while fighting for her kid’s IEP
A houseless adult denied services because their trauma makes them “difficult”
This is not theory.
This is happening—every day.
Visibility that centers privilege cannot fix this.
We must redesign the structures—not just add more faces to a broken frame.
Want to see the margins? Listen to:
🪶 Autistic organizers challenging carceral systems in disability justice movements like Sins Invalid and Project LETS, who remind us that freedom is collective, not conditional.
🗣 AAC users and nonspeaking autistics like Jordyn Zimmerman, NeuroClastic contributors, and the I-ASC network, who challenge our very definitions of language, fluency, and presence.
📚 Black autistic feminists like Morénike Giwa Onaiwu and Ericka Hart, who live and teach from the intersections of race, disability, and gendered survivorship—refusing to dilute their truths to be palatable.
🌀 Trans and nonbinary neurodivergent creators like Eli Clare and Lydia X.Z. Brown, who expose the violence of “normalcy” and reclaim the body as a site of resistance and knowing.
🌱 Poor, houseless, and disabled community builders organizing outside of academia—those who don’t write manifestos, but live them daily, in mutual aid networks, harm reduction work, and kinship webs that hold people when systems don’t.
The system will not make room.
We have to build rooms that hold us all.
🫥 Erasure Happens Inside Our Movements Too
It’s easy to point to systems “out there”—medicine, education, policy—and name the harm. But if we’re serious about transformative change, we also have to look at what happens in here, inside our own neurodivergent communities.
Because erasure doesn’t stop at the system’s edge. It replicates itself in movements that forget their own margins.
In the name of visibility, we often uplift the most “palatable” stories:
White, articulate, late-diagnosed creators with academic language
People who “found themselves” through diagnosis and now teach others how to do the same
Narratives that fit a redemptive arc: from confusion to clarity, burnout to thriving
There’s nothing wrong with these stories—I’ve lived one myself.
But they’re not the only stories.
And when they become the dominant narrative, we risk sidelining:
Nonspeaking people who don’t have access to social platforms
People who are still in survival, not yet able to craft a public-facing journey
Autistics navigating state violence, incarceration, or institutionalization
Those who challenge not just the system, but the frameworks we use to explain ourselves
When we uplift only the digestible, we silence the disruptive.
And in doing so, we become gatekeepers of the very liberation we claim to seek.
We must make space for:
Messy stories
Stories without neat endings
Stories still unfolding in grief, in rage, in complexity
Stories that do not fit into “awareness month” graphics or algorithm-friendly soundbites
Because if our movements do not hold the full spectrum of autistic experience—especially the ones that make us uncomfortable—they are not liberation movements.
They are brand campaigns.
🧯 Being Seen Is Not the Same as Being Safe
Visibility is often framed as the goal. And yes—being seen can be powerful. It can bring validation, connection, and recognition to lives long ignored.
But being seen without understanding…
Without safety…
Without care…
Is not liberation.
It’s exposure.
Some of us have become “visible” only to be surveilled, judged, and targeted.
Some of us were never hidden—we were hyper-visible our whole lives, in ways that led to harm.
And some of us still aren’t seen at all, except through the distorted lenses of stereotype and stigma.
We cannot confuse visibility with safety.
Because who gets seen, how they’re seen, and what happens after—that’s shaped by systems.
Whiteness often gets read as “interesting.”
Blackness gets read as “aggressive.”
Fluency is called “articulate.”
AAC is called “difficult.”
Compliance is praised.
Distress is pathologized.
And too often, when autistic people challenge norms—whether social, linguistic, behavioral, or political—they are not met with curiosity.
They are met with containment.
So we need to ask ourselves:
Is our visibility rooted in truth, or in performance?
Does our visibility make room for others, or consume the space?
Are we becoming more free—or just more followed?
Because the work is not to be seen by systems that were never built to recognize our humanity.
The work is to build new ways of seeing each other.
Of honoring stories that haven’t been centered.
Of creating conditions where all of us can be visible and safe.
Different and held.
Unpolished and protected.
That is the work of collective liberation.
And it starts not with the loudest voices—but with the ones who’ve been left out of the room.
🧘🏽♀️ Reflection Prompt: Beyond Visibility
Take a breath. Settle into your body. Let these questions land softly—there’s no right answer, only your truth.
When have I felt visible, but not safe?
When have I felt erased—or hyper-visible in a way that brought harm?
Who in my community is still not being seen, and why?
What systems have shaped how I see others—and how can I begin to unlearn them?
How can I create space for someone else to be seen without needing them to conform?
Let your answers be messy, complex, and incomplete. Liberation doesn’t come from clarity alone—it comes from courage.
💫 New Sessions Every Monday & Wednesday
This 12-week journey unfolds twice a week—every Monday and Wednesday—with each session building on the last.
You can view the full session lineup here, and here’s what’s coming next:
✨ Session 12 – Who Gets Believed?
We’ll explore how believability is distributed unequally across race, gender, language, and neurotype—and how reclaiming truth means learning to trust ourselves and each other again.
💬 Share your reflections, insights, or questions in the comments. This space grows stronger through our voices—not just mine.
💖 A Note on Support
This work will never live behind a paywall.
It’s here to be accessible, co-created, and shared freely.
If you have the means to support it through a paid subscription, it allows this series to remain accessible to those who can’t afford to pay, while sustaining the labor that makes it possible. It also directly contributes to The Compassion Collective—a community rooted in justice, mutual care, and transformative change.
Every subscription, every share, every message of resonance keeps this space alive and grounded in care.
Thank you for being here.
🌿
Shamani of The Compassion Collective