The Particular Discomfort Neurodivergents Have with Speech Codes

“The patterns of behavior that characterize a broad part of the autistic spectrum are indirectly viewed as a hindrance towards the 21st-century diversity and inclusion goals.”

Introduction

In April of 2017, Arizona State political science professor Will H. Moore took his own life. In the suicide note that he had scheduled to be published around the time of his death, Moore describes how his high-functioning autism obstructed his social relations, as well as his ability to produce and publish his work. Moore describes having reached this juncture after he was reprimanded—in a certain way—for regularly stating his opinions in a manner that unintentionally offended those around him. Being censored, silenced, ostracized or just plain bullied by peers for expressing a set of facts isn’t unfamiliar in any way. Douglas Murray describes this phenomenon in his recently published book The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity, where he comments on the “cancel culture” of the 21st century, as well as the discontinuation of the “exploration, discovery and dissemination of truth” on university campuses.

A few months after Moore’s death, four to be exact, another individual with high-functioning autism was punished—this time for distributing a memo. A former Google engineer named James Damore put out Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber for discussion within the company. Unfortunately, on the 5th of August, the memo was released to the public, and Damore was fired shortly thereafter. Damore had created a comprehensive internal study about the gender gap within software engineering. By making use of psychological characteristics— more widely known as the Big Five personality traits — Damore laid out the differences between the sexes, why this can affect the career choices men and women respectively make, and the “gender gap” that can result from these differences. Joshua Trebuchon (reasonably) noted in his August, 2017 Merion West piece on the issue that the memo was not without its flaws. As such, Trebuchon discusses the typical minimalist argument on personality difference and suggests that regardless of Damore’s use of well-established psychological traits and differences, “the way that he uses these differences to argue against affirmative action severely exaggerates their significance.”

Being socially awkward and not having a way with words myself positions me as a natural target for rebuke, much like Damore. The arguments put forward by autistic people (at least, those people with autism that are in such a position where they can share their perspective), usually, are based on empirical findings—and not on abstract assumptions about how one perceives (or ought to perceive) the world. The Google Memo by Damore, for instance, is based on findings concerning psychological and personality traits that have been in use since the 1960’s.