The Power to Control Our Own Destiny: Neurodiversity, Epistemic Authority, and the Significance of Autistic Researchers

Authors

Abstract

Within conversations regarding autism, the autistic community is frequently denied epistemic authority due to the assumption that autism impairs our capacity to accurately understand our own experiences. Although non-autistic practitioners claim their frameworks can produce objective science independent of their biases, autism research continues to reinforce dehumanizing conceptualizations of autism, leading to marginalization and widespread harm. This dominance makes it paramount to explore autism research from the vantage point of autistic-led research. Utilizing my autistic experience, I argue that we bring unique contributions that facilitate compassionate, ethical, and robust autism research centered in neurodiversity that challenges the status quo. Our narratives detailing personal hopes, struggles, and triumphs serve to demonstrate our epistemic authority and contributory expertise, and this expertise can counter ableist autism frameworks while uplifting essential subjects into the scientific realm such as masking, autistic burnout, stimming, therapeutic goals and institutional reform. Crucially, in contrast to non-autistic-led fields like applied behavior analysis, our methodologies of community-based participatory research and reflexivity are derived from our status as a minority community, embracing diversity, subjectivity, social change, and self-determination in the hopes of emancipating all autistic people from oppression, and therefore, we deserve the spotlight to lead this field forward.

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