As of 2006, Susan Senator—blogger and mother to an autistic son—has it all figured out. With autism statistics having risen to 1 in 166 children, something has to be amiss. However, unlike most hysterical parents, Senator isn’t obsessing over thimoseral and vaccines. Her theory doesn’t hopelessly latch onto genetic mutations, airborne pollutants, or excessive television watching. Rather, Senator’s found a more nouveau explanation for the autism epidemic: autism, she’s concluded, is the new gay.

While one might contend that Senator’s use of queer theory involves the over-diagnosis of autism, I would submit that her argument involves a harmful assumption about the gay community: since when, I wonder, has it become fashionable to be gay? I fail to surmise how gayness compares with coolness, and I likewise cannot wrap my mind around autism being trendy. As a perpetual student with Asperger’s, it has been my experience that cool people play sports, have friends, wear gender- and age-appropriate clothing, and, perhaps most importantly, do not wet themselves. Furthermore, we would be naïve and wholly tactless to proclaim that homosexuals experience little backlash when outing themselves.

I find it difficult to separate my autistic symptoms from my personality traits. To say that I am proud of being autistic borders hyperbole, but I certainly cannot say that my experience as a human being has been wretched and full of suffering.

Unfortunately for us, autdar is more difficult to execute than gaydar. But, as with closeted and uncloseted homosexuals, we autistics surround you. We occupy pitiable blurbs on Wheaties boxes and puzzle pieces and Starbucks coffee cups. We are visible and invisible, rocking and hurting ourselves, holding down jobs and shopping in grocery stores. Of course, our diagnoses vary, ranging from Kanner’s to Asperger’s to savant-like genius. We are human calculators; we are institutionalized; we are college students; we are coffeehouse baristas. And somehow, according to the blogosphere, our label is now as trendy as Versace pants.

As a higher-functioning autistic individual, I sympathize with Senator and others in her position: the autistic spectrum holds so many extremes and unknowns, and that any graduate student could lay claims to autism, the same autism that renders their children self-injurious or nonverbal, seems outlandish. How could any spectrum of “related disorders” be so divergent? Like many labeled people, I question the name that society and my neuro-psychologist have given me. I question the expectations that others have for me to be normal, to mimic their behavior, to betray my socially inappropriate instincts. I do not, however, question my diagnosis, no matter how trendy it’s perceived to be.

When I try to identify myself outside the context of my label, I find it difficult to separate my autistic symptoms from my personality traits. To say that I am proud of being autistic borders hyperbole, but I certainly cannot say that my experience as a human being has been wretched and full of suffering. At times, I’ve wished—and still wish—that I were neurotypical. I’ve wished that I could drive, that I could understand facial expressions, that I could bite into cheeseburgers and other mixed foods without hyperventilating, that I could cry during funerals and chick flicks. I’ve longed to be cognitively straight, to stop thinking like a male IT professional and develop some hormonal emotions. Yet, being these things would be an end to me. And, after living these longings, I cannot fathom any person—no matter how many My Chemical Romance albums they own—wanting to be autistic.

It is important to note that not all bloggerly theorists take the gay route when designating autism as trendy. During a recent conversation with my physician, I was informed that Asperger’s is the new ADHD, not the new gay. Frantic mothers drag their toddlers to doctors, afraid that measles vaccines make their children dislike Sesame Street or cause them to stare at road maps instead of cereal boxes. Certainly, within our culture of hypochondria, misdiagnoses are bound to happen. However, rather than likening learning disabilities to outbreak or hysteria, perhaps we would be wiser to associate such disorders with cognitive difference, human variation, or individuality.

[Not to “up” the outbreak ante, but—some physicians believe ADHD should be placed on the milder end of the autistic spectrum. If this occurs, would our numbers then rise to 1 in 30? If so, we autistics just might beat the homosexuals at the game of statistics. Of course, one must note that, unlike Rain Man, I am not a statistician.]

The idea of an autistic spectrum is relatively new. Asperger’s didn’t attain label-hood until 1994. Theorists rotate between genetics and a potential causal link with environment. We don’t know where autism comes from, what it does, why it affects those it does. Senator, like so many others desperate to understand their children, takes great pause in accommodating the notion that some autistics are different from others—that, in a like manner with neurotypical variation, we don’t all talk to ourselves in subway tunnels or perseverate on the Electric Light Orchestra. Yet, even though we may vary in severity or symptomology, we can still share autism. I’m not in this to predict or explain what Senator’s son is feeling at any given moment in time. I’m not in this to argue that physicians shouldn’t treat autism (although, “cure” is another argument entirely). Nevertheless, I would posit that, if some autistics can speak and can even somewhat relate to the ones who cannot—us, the ones who supposedly lack empathy, personality, and emotions—then should we not heighten awareness about our communicative peculiarities and reverse the binaries of this perceived trend, no matter how existent or nonexistent it is?