Oh. My. God.
So the government is planning on rounding up the info of folks with autism and doing God knows what with it. As someone who is (now thankfully) self-diagnosed, I’m probably safe for now. But this doesn’t exactly bode well for those diagnosed with other forms of neurodivergence, and considering RFK Jr. has already laid out his plans for people with ADHD, a condition I am properly diagnosed with, I have some cause for concern.
Because we’re in the beginning stages of genocide.
Just listen to the way he talks about us:
Autism destroys families, and more importantly, it destroys our greatest resource, which is our children. These are children who should not be suffering like this. These are kids who will never pay taxes. They’ll never hold a job. They’ll never play baseball. They’ll never write a poem. They’ll never go out on a date. Many of them will never use a toilet unassisted.
Dehumanization. That’s where we are.
We live in a world that values labor above everything else. If you’re not able to hold down a job, sucks to suck, you just don’t get to live. If you can’t contribute to society in any meaningful way, you’re a waste of carbon atoms and a drain on our resources and should probably be Old Yellered on sight like the useless sack you are.
The value of a person is determined by what they bring to the metaphorical table, and if you lose that value by losing the ability to work, you wear the scarlet letter of being a freeloader at best and a symbol of the downfall of civilization at worst. Sometimes you don’t even need to lose the ability to work. Sometimes your perceived lack of contribution to society is not paying your share of taxes (like undocumented immigrants) or not making your share of babies (like queer folks). But whatever it is, these people are not contributing like good citizens.
And I think that’s where the disconnect is, because a human life shouldn’t be weighed against how hard it has worked, how much money it has given, or how many babies it has popped out. Human life should be considered inherently sacred, with no conditions. Hell, all life should be considered sacred and handled with care. My dad (who dubiously claims he is of indigenous descent, although I’m not sure I buy it) says when certain Native American tribes kill an animal for food, they say a prayer of thanksgiving for it. And apparently there’s some truth to that. And if a buffalo’s life is worth enough to warrant a gratitude prayer, a human life should be worth so much more. The Good Book even says so:
Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. But even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not, therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows.
-Matthew 10:29-31
But we don’t value each other.
Wanna see something horrifying?
Those are people. Human fucking beings. “But these are violent criminals!” Well, for one, 179 out of 238 of these guys don’t have a criminal record and were sent to this fucking gulag without due process, which, may I remind you, is so important to our American way of life that it’s an amendment in our Constitution. You know, that thing that’s supposed to govern how we run this country?
But imagine, for a second, these dudes were violent criminals. Should they be rounded up like cattle and tortured for their sins? It’s tempting to say yes — if someone violently murdered my family, my kneejerk reaction would be “throw them in the woodchipper.” But in addition to a multitude of arguments against capital punishment, just by saying “x, y, & z are worthy of punishment by death,” we set a dangerous precedent that crime must be paid for with human life, and who decides what’s a crime? Rape and murder are obviously bad to most decent people at least, but remember that historically, being queer was a crime, and it still is in parts of the world.
You can see where this is going, right?
When the government decides an entire group of people are worthy of death, it’ll make their very existence a crime. That is dehumanization.
I’m honestly afraid of how and even if we can come back from this. How do you teach people that they should care for one another? How do we teach people that altruism and compassion are cooler than “owning the libs”? How do we teach people that kidnapping and torturing folks is bad? That all feels like common sense to me. And yet so many Americans are clinging to the very ideas their grandfathers fought against in World War II.
There’s a quote in the first Pokémon film from Meowth of all characters that goes like this:
I think about my big brother, who ended up an all-out Trumper despite being raised by the same blue-collar Democrats as me. We have very different values and views, but at the end of the day, we were both born from the same womb. The same blood runs in our veins. Despite the fact that he’s a business owner with a traditional marriage and four kids and a perfect picket fence life, there are so many things we share as well.
He is every bit as human as me.
I recently started a job at an assisted living home, and last night while I was changing one of the residents, I noticed his bright red MAGA hat staring at me from his bedside table. You know what I did?
I gave that man the exact same care I would have given my own grandfather. Because that’s what being human is about.
In that moment, I didn’t see a man who voted to take away mine and my loved ones’ rights. I saw a man with a family who loves him enough to bring him a giant stuffed puppy, who lay helplessly in his own excrement, desperately crying for help. Jesus said to love and pray for your enemies, and I’m gonna fucking do that if it kills me. I want to love so fiercely and fearlessly that it baffles everyone around me.
And that’s why I have this blog. Our best defense against genocide is humanizing our experiences. I want to soften hearts. I want to humanize myself as a queer, polyamorous, neurodivergent woman. I recognize that many people might not have ever met someone who ticks all those boxes and only get their information about those demographics from sources like Fox News and other conservative media companies. To those people, it’s my job to be a positive representative. I’m demonstrating to them that I’m not some irredeemably evil sicko that needs to be put down. I’m a daughter, a partner, a friend, a future mother, a musician, an artist, a caregiver, a teacher, and a writer. But most importantly, I’m a human.
We all are.
JESSA JOYCE 