A few days ago, an Autistic content creator, Morgan Foley, posted a video called The internet gets the “autistic sense of justice” wrong a lot, and I have been thinking about writing about it ever since. She is 100% correct about what it actually is vs. what people think it is, and misinformation is a huge problem on the internet. This misinformation contributes to misconceptions like, “everyone is a little Autistic,” “the spectrum is too broad and should be split up,” “low support needs Autistics are just a little socially awkward,” “Autism isn’t a disability,” “Autism is a super power,” etc.
The Autistic sense of justice does not make someone a good person, or mean they are morally superior. It does not mean they will always fight against injustice. The way it gets applied depends on the person’s world view and their own personal morals and values. For example, I have seen this “sense of justice” used to justify harm to immigrants and to excuse the actions on January 6th… Therefore, I think it’s better to call it “cognitive rigidity” as another creator, audhd_academic has talked about on multiple occasions.
It’s more like a “personal sense of justice”, as can be seen in Morgan’s video. She gives examples of doing something one day and expecting someone else to do it the next day because it’s fair, desserts being handed out and not getting the one she wants, and someone being mean to her so not understanding why it isn’t right for her to treat that person the same way.
For me, justice sensitivity has shown up in a lot of different ways. The doing something one day and expecting someone else to do it the next is applicable, because I will get very stressed out if I feel like everything is falling on me. It’s not as precise as “I do it today and you do it tomorrow,” but I do have to feel like everyone is helping out. The dessert example is also applicable. I don’t like nuts, so it would upset me if I were given a dessert with nuts in it, especially when I was younger. Some other examples include being given pizza I don’t like at my own birthday party, and family knowing I don’t like fried food but still taking me to a place with only fried food.
I was never intentionally mean, but I was, often to people who didn’t even deserve it. If someone hurt me, I would not care if they overheard me saying something that hurt their feelings, because I saw it as a natural consequence of their actions. Similarly, if someone did something I saw as wrong, I would not have any empathy for them. For example, I struggled with a great deal of internalized ableism, so if another blind adult relied too much on their family members, like not having access to their own money, I was very critical of them. One time I asked a couple of blind people who were coming to my house for the day to grab some cheap pizza on the way. When they did not do this, I was furious. They did make things more expensive for us since we then had to order pizza from somewhere else, but still, I am not proud of the way I treated them.
Another personal example not based on the video is that I get very upset when playing games if things don’t seem fair. I don’t have to win, but I have to feel like I have the same chance at winning as everyone else. I also don’t like being ahead to the point that other people can’t catch up, so I will do bad on purpose until everyone is on the same playing field again. Most people do not enjoy playing games with me, and I don’t enjoy playing games with most people, so I will only play them with a few friends who understand how I am and why I am this way. This is actually very relevant as recently my partner convinced me to play a new game with him and a few of our friends. I was resistant at first, but I decided to give it a shot. Because everyone else started a few days before me, I was way behind at first and felt like I wasn’t good at the game. This isn’t true as eventually I shot way ahead of everyone else. Instead of being happy about this, I have been helping others catch up to me by explaining what to unlock so they can match my speed.
Lastly, I want to give one more relevant example of how justice sensitivity recently showed up for me. I have a dog named Dash. I’ve had him since 2016. I love him very much and I am not interested in getting another dog. However, when someone rescued a blind puppy who was going to be thrown into a river, I fell in love with her. We knew it was a long shot, but we reached out to the person to express our interest and thank the person for saving the puppy. For several days, all I could talk about was wanting the puppy and what we would do if we had her… even though we knew it wasn’t likely to happen and that we would be taking on a lot. In my mind, no one would understand this puppy like we would since we are also blind. Logically, I know this isn’t necessarily the case. Being blind doesn’t necessarily make us the best choice, but it was still hard to let that go. The puppy had already been promised to someone else, so we were right that we wouldn’t get her but wrong about the reason. It has been hard to accept, but we’re glad the puppy will be going to a good home.
Hopefully these examples help you understand what the Autistic sense of justice actually is, and how to spot harmful misinformation (and sometimes even disinformation) online. If they’re speaking in generalizations, calling people “neurodivergent” and “neurotypical”, saying “neurodivergent” when they are exclusively talking about Autism and ADHD, or if they are selling something, take what they say with a grain of salt. If you want some good resources to learn from, I have a bunch of links on the Resources page.
As always, thanks for reading!