Autism isn’t a crisis. Misrepresenting science is. When public health messaging treats neurodivergence as a fate worse than fever, it’s not just bad science—it’s bad citizenship.
When the White House recently announced that acetaminophen use during pregnancy may increase the risk of autism, it did more than stir scientific debate—it reignited a troubling civic pattern: the framing of autism as a condition to be feared, avoided, and pathologised at all costs. As a New Zealander and autistic civic writer, I find this framing ethically corrosive and scientifically unsound.
This post offers two correctives: first, a summary of the actual scientific consensus on acetaminophen (known as paracetamol in Aotearoa and many other countries) and autism; second, a reframing of autism itself—not as a crisis to be prevented, but as a form of neurodivergence deserving of dignity, support, and civic hospitality.
What Science Actually Says About Paracetamol and Autism
Paracetamol (acetaminophen) is one of the most widely recommended medications for managing pain and fever during pregnancy. Its safety profile is well-established, and its use is often critical—especially when high maternal fever poses known risks to fetal development.
So what’s behind the White House’s claim?
The administration cited observational studies suggesting a possible link between frequent paracetamol use and autism. But these studies are inconclusive, riddled with confounding variables, and contradicted by larger sibling-controlled studies that found no causal relationship.
The Autism Science Foundation responded unequivocally: “Any association is based on limited, conflicting, and inconsistent science and is premature”.
The FDA itself stated that “a causal relationship has not been established,” and leading medical bodies continue to recommend paracetamol as the safest option for managing fever during pregnancy.
In short: the scientific consensus does not support the White House’s claim. What it does support is the continued use of paracetamol when clinically indicated, especially to reduce fever—a known risk factor for neurodevelopmental complications.
Debunking the Cuba Claim
President Trump also claimed that Cuba has no autism because acetaminophen isn’t available there. This is factually false on both counts:
Paracetamol is widely available in Cuba, both in pharmacies and hospitals.
Cuba does report autism diagnoses, though rates may differ due to diagnostic infrastructure, cultural factors, and reporting systems—not medication access.
This claim not only misrepresents global health realities—it weaponises misinformation to stigmatise neurodivergence and distract from real civic responsibilities.
Reframing Autism: From Crisis to Civic Inclusion
The deeper concern here isn’t just scientific—it’s rhetorical. The announcement framed autism as a “horrible crisis,” implying that any risk, however speculative, justifies avoidance. This framing is not only misleading—it’s harmful.
Autism is:
A form of neurodivergence, not a disease.
Protected under disability rights frameworks like the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Better understood through support, inclusion, and lived experience, not fear-based avoidance.
When public health messaging treats autism as a fate worse than fever, it reinforces stigma, undermines neurodivergent dignity, and distracts from real civic work—like improving access to diagnosis, education, and support services.
Civic Ethics in Public Health Messaging
We must ask: what happens when political rhetoric outpaces scientific evidence?
Expecting parents may avoid safe medications, increasing the risk of untreated fever and other complications.
Autistic individuals may feel further marginalised, reduced to cautionary tales rather than citizens with rights and voices.
Public trust in science may erode, replaced by fear, misinformation, and false binaries.
A civic response requires more than fact-checking. It requires reframing. We must move from “avoid autism at all costs” to “support all neurotypes with dignity”. We must challenge the idea that autism is a crisis, and instead treat it as a call to expand our civic imagination.
Final Thought
Autism is not a warning label. It is a way of being in the world. And any public health policy that treats it otherwise—especially by misrepresenting science—fails not just medically, but ethically.
Let’s demand better. For science. For parents. For autistic citizens. For civic truth.
Claim: Cuba has no autism because it doesn’t use acetaminophen (paracetamol). Reality: Cuba has paracetamol (acetaminophen). Cuba has autism. What Cuba doesn’t have is a habit of announcing public health policy via vibes and vintage conspiracy theories.
They say the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. I’m not entirely sure about the science behind that proverb, but I do know this: my wife’s cooking has kept me surprised, delighted, and well-fed for over five decades.
When we married back in 1971, one of the unexpected gifts she brought into our life together was her astonishing talent in the kitchen. Not just a good cook—scrub that—she’s an exceptional chef. Her culinary journey began in Japan around 1959, when she was just twelve. Her mother wasn’t fond of cooking but didn’t mind tidying up, so a practical arrangement was struck: my future wife would cook, and her mother would clean. That division of labour has endured, albeit with a slight twist—these days, I’m the one doing the cleaning. And I’ve been doing it ever since we married.
Her cooking has evolved over the years, but the sense of adventure remains. From delicate Japanese dishes to bold Chinese flavours and what we might call Kiwi-fusion—ethnic inspirations reimagined with local flair—she continues to surprise me with what she creates. These days, I contribute to the meal prep too. My hand comes to the fore in pastas, pizzas, and the occasional heroic cut of meat. I cook about three nights a week, though my repertoire is a little more conservative. I know my place in the kitchen hierarchy.
I’ve just put together a short video titled Two Minutes of Dining In with Barry, showcasing some of the dishes we’ve made together recently. It’s a celebration of kai, of shared effort, and of the quiet joy that comes from preparing food for someone you love. It’s also a nod to the enduring rhythms of partnership—where one cooks, the other cleans, and both eat with gratitude.
Truth be told, we’re often disappointed when we dine out. The meals just don’t compare. So we dine in. And we dine well.
Aroha lives in many places. In our home, it often arrives plated, garnished, and served with a smile.
Some ideas are efficient because they demand nothing. Others are inconvenient because they demand everything. This is a short reflection on why equity remains the least convenient — and most necessary — system we’ve ever tried to build.
Some ideas are so efficient, they require no effort at all. Fatalism is one of them.
It’s the perfect system for doing nothing. No meetings. No funding models. No uncomfortable questions. Just a shrug and a well-worn phrase: “That’s just how things are.”
Equity, on the other hand, is wildly inefficient. It demands attention, discomfort, and the occasional spreadsheet. It asks us to notice who’s missing, who’s waiting, and who’s been quietly dropped from the queue.
It’s not popular. It’s not easy. And it’s definitely not convenient.
Fatalism: the most efficient system ever devised for doing nothing. Equity: the most inconvenient system ever devised for doing what’s right.
And yet, one of them builds a society. The other just maintains a hierarchy.
In The Gaze That Undresses, I explored how autistic experience is often theorised from the outside — observed, interpreted, and explained without being heard. That pattern, unfortunately, is not unique to autism. It echoes across many domains where difference is medicalised, moralised, or misunderstood.
Trans and queer communities are frequently spoken about in clinical or sociological terms, often by those who have never lived the realities they describe. Ethnic minorities are analysed through demographic data and cultural generalisations, while disabled people are framed through deficit models that rarely centre their voices. Even gender discourse carries this imbalance: men often theorise about women’s experiences from a distance, with an air of detached authority. Some women do the same with men, but in my experience, it’s far less common — and rarely carries the same institutional weight.
What links these patterns is a kind of epistemic distancing. The gaze becomes a tool of control — not just of how people are seen, but of how their experiences are defined. The observer assumes the right to interpret, while the observed are expected to remain silent, or at best, supplementary.
This isn’t just a philosophical concern. It has real-world consequences. When public perception is shaped by outsider narratives, it affects how people are treated in schools, clinics, workplaces, and policy. It influences who is believed, who is accommodated, and who is dismissed.
And it’s not always malicious. Often, the gaze is well-intentioned — driven by curiosity, concern, or a desire to help. But good intentions don’t erase the harm of misrepresentation. Nor do they justify the exclusion of lived testimony.
What’s needed is a shift: from theorising about to listening with. From detached observation to participatory dialogue. From expertise that speaks over to humility that makes space.
This postscript isn’t a detour — it’s a continuation. The discomfort I felt reading that neuroscience article wasn’t just about eye contact. It was about a broader civic pattern: the tendency to treat difference as pathology, and to treat lived experience as secondary to theory.
Whether we’re talking about autism, gender, ethnicity, disability, or queerness, the principle remains the same: those who live the experience must be central to its understanding.
And that — more than any academic framework — is what dignifies the gaze.
The debate over public and private healthcare often skips the one question that matters most: who gets left behind. When equity is missing from the conversation, it’s not just an oversight — it’s a signal. This piece begins where the silence is loudest.
Why Equity Must Lead
We don’t have a public health system because it’s efficient. We have it because it’s equitable.
The founding logic of publicly funded healthcare in Aotearoa was simple: that access to care should not depend on wealth, geography, or social status. That illness should not bankrupt a family. That the dignity of a person should not be measured by their ability to pay.
Equity wasn’t an afterthought. It was the reason.
And it remains the reason. In a country where Māori and Pacific peoples face disproportionate health burdens, where rural communities struggle for access, and where disabled and neurodivergent individuals are routinely underserved, equity is not a slogan. It’s a survival mechanism.
Yet in the debate over public versus private provision, equity is conspicuously absent. The arguments for private involvement speak of efficiency, flexibility, and choice — but not of fairness. Not of obligation. Not of justice.
A health system that does not centre equity is not a system. It is a marketplace. And marketplaces do not heal — they transact.
If we are to assess any reform, any contract, any claim of improvement, we must ask:
Does this reduce disparities? Does this serve those who are most underserved? Does this honour the founding promise of public care?
If the answer is no, then it is not reform. It is retreat.
If equity is our compass, then funding is the terrain we’re asked to navigate. And right now, that terrain is uneven — carved into ridges of privilege and troughs of neglect. The public system was built to honour equity, but its ability to do so depends entirely on how it’s resourced. When funding decisions favour simplicity over complexity, speed over fairness, and private contracts over public capacity, we’re not just drifting off course — we’re subsidising illusions. To understand why private providers appear to outperform public ones, we must first examine the faultline beneath them: how we fund care, and who benefits from the way that care is priced.
The Funding Faultline
Before we compare outcomes, we need to compare inputs. Because funding isn’t neutral — it’s narrative. And in New Zealand’s health system, that narrative is increasingly tilted toward private providers.
Public hospitals are funded to serve everyone. They receive bulk operational budgets, calibrated to population needs, regional priorities, and service capacity. They carry the weight of complexity — chronic conditions, acute emergencies, rural outreach, culturally safe care. Their mandate is universal, their margins tight.
Private providers, by contrast, are paid per procedure. They contract with the government to deliver specific services — cataracts, joint replacements, diagnostics — often at higher rates than their public counterparts. These contracts are not publicly disclosed. We don’t know what we’re paying, or what we’re subsidising.
And what we’re subsidising, it turns out, are illusions.
Private providers are praised for efficiency, but they select low-risk cases. They’re lauded for shorter wait times, but they’re resourced to deliver speed. They’re framed as flexible, but they operate without the constraints of universal access or equity obligations. Their apparent superiority is not structural — it’s financial.
We’ve seen this playbook before. Charter schools were funded at nearly double the rate of state schools, then celebrated for outperforming them. The trick wasn’t innovation. It was preferential treatment. Looser regulations, more generous funding, and a curriculum tailored to their strengths. Meanwhile, state schools were held to tighter standards and narrower mandates.
The same distortion is now playing out in health. Private providers are paid more to do less — and then held up as proof that the system needs reform. But this isn’t reform. It’s redistribution by stealth. From public need to private convenience.
If equity is the compass, then funding is the terrain. And right now, the terrain is tilted.
The Efficiency Myth
Private providers are often praised for their efficiency. Shorter wait times, streamlined procedures, faster discharges — all held up as proof that the private sector “just works better.” But efficiency, in this context, is not a neutral metric. It’s a curated illusion.
Private hospitals are funded per procedure. They’re contracted to deliver specific services — cataracts, joint replacements, diagnostics — and they do so with speed and precision. But that speed is made possible by selectivity. Private providers choose low-risk cases, avoid complex comorbidities, and operate without the obligations of universal access. They are efficient because they are allowed to be.
Public hospitals, by contrast, are funded to serve everyone. They carry the full weight of complexity — acute emergencies, chronic conditions, rural outreach, culturally safe care. They are not inefficient. They are overburdened and under-resourced.
If equity is our compass, then efficiency must be measured in more than throughput. A system that treats only the simplest cases quickly is not efficient — it’s evasive.
And what we’re subsidising, it turns out, are illusions.
This is not a critique of private providers themselves. It’s a critique of the system that funds them to outperform public hospitals — then uses that performance as justification for further outsourcing.
Efficiency without equity is just speed for the few. And speed for the few is not reform. It’s retreat.
The Wait Time Mirage
One of the most common arguments for private healthcare involvement is that it reduces wait times. And on the surface, it appears to be true. Private providers deliver elective procedures faster, with shorter queues and quicker discharges. But this speed is not a structural virtue — it’s a funding artefact.
Private hospitals are paid per procedure. They’re resourced to deliver volume, not complexity. They take on low-risk cases, avoid acute conditions, and operate without the obligations of universal access. Their waitlists are short because their scope is narrow.
Public hospitals, by contrast, are funded to serve everyone. They manage emergencies, chronic conditions, and high-needs populations. Their waitlists are long not because they are inefficient, but because they are underfunded and overburdened.
And when the waitlists grow too long, the solution is not more funding — it’s triage by omission.
Footnote: In some cases, patients are quietly removed from the queue altogether. I was scheduled for biennial colonoscopies. When the wait time reached five years, I was dropped from the list — not because my need had vanished, but because it was no longer deemed urgent enough to count.
This is not reform. It’s rationing by stealth.
Private speed is just public neglect in a tuxedo. It looks polished, but it’s built on exclusion. And exclusion is not a system flaw — it’s the system’s design when equity is absent.
If we want shorter wait times, we must fund public capacity. Not outsource it. Not abandon it. Not pretend that speed for the few is a solution for the many.
The Choice Trap
“Patients deserve choice.” It’s a popular refrain in the pro-private lobby — framed as empowerment, as dignity, as progress. But choice, in this context, is not a neutral offering. It’s a manufactured illusion.
Private providers are presented as alternatives to the public system. Faster, more comfortable, more personalised. But these alternatives only appear viable because the public option is deliberately constrained. Underfunded, understaffed, and overburdened, public hospitals are forced to ration care, stretch capacity, and delay procedures. The result is not choice — it’s coercion by scarcity.
When the public option is a hallway bed, the private suite begins to look like liberation. But this is not a triumph of innovation. It’s a failure of investment.
Welcome to the Health System CaféYour choices today: 🛏️ Private Suite – Includes espresso machine, plush recliner, and a 3-month wait. 🧻 Public Corridor – Includes flickering lights, hallway foot traffic, and an 18-month wait.
Chef’s Note: – Gluten-free, culturally safe, and rural options are off the menu. – Complex cases may be served cold or not at all. – Equity available upon request, but subject to funding.
This isn’t satire. It’s policy.
True choice requires parity. It requires that public care be funded to the point where it can genuinely compete — not just survive. Otherwise, we’re not offering options. We’re offering escape routes for the resourced, and endurance tests for everyone else.
Choice without equity is just privilege with better branding.
The Equity Absence
Across all the arguments for private healthcare involvement — efficiency, flexibility, speed, choice — one word is conspicuously missing: equity.
Not once is it cited as a reason to contract out services. Not once is it used to measure success. Not once is it treated as a non-negotiable outcome.
And that absence is not accidental. It’s structural.
Private providers are not required to reduce disparities. They are not funded to serve high-needs populations. They are not obligated to deliver culturally safe care, rural outreach, or complex interventions. These responsibilities remain with the public system — the one increasingly starved of the resources needed to fulfil them.
This is not a partnership. It’s a siphon.
When equity is absent from the pitch deck, it is absent from the plan. And when it is absent from the plan, it is absent from the outcome.
A health system that does not centre equity is not reforming. It is retreating. It is outsourcing complexity, rationing care, and branding exclusion as innovation.
We must ask — not just what works, but who it works for. We must measure success — not by speed, but by fairness. We must fund care — not for convenience, but for justice.
Discomfort should be the most honest outcome unless we understand why the current model needs changing.
Because equity is not a luxury. It is the reason we built a public system at all.
I could not have disagreed more with Charlie Kirk’s politics. His values were the antithesis of my own, and in no universe would I have stood alongside his ideology.
And yet — his assassination is deplorable.
The moment we start measuring the worth of a human life by the alignment of their politics, we have already surrendered something essential. The moment we feel a flicker of satisfaction at the violent death of someone we opposed, we have crossed a line that no cause can justify.
I am disturbed — no, horrified — to see celebratory tones among some who identify as “woke,” as if the killing of a political adversary were a victory. It is not. It is a wound to the civic body we all inhabit.
Extreme partisanship, as too often displayed in the United States, corrodes the moral floor beneath us. It turns disagreement into dehumanisation, and dehumanisation into permission for violence. That is not justice. That is not progress. That is the slow unravelling of the very principles we claim to defend.
I unreservedly separate myself from any glee, any satisfaction, any framing of this killing as a win. My opposition to Kirk’s ideas was — and remains — political, not personal. My opposition to political violence is absolute.
If we cannot hold both truths — that we can reject a person’s beliefs while affirming their right to live — then we have lost more than a debate. We have lost the point of having one.
Recent observations suggest that aging bodies exhibit a marked shift in logistical priorities. Tasks once performed with fluid spontaneity now require strategic planning, risk assessment, and occasional delegation to gravity. This report outlines key operational adjustments observed in the field.
At seventy-six, I remain mentally agile—though my knees have filed for early retirement. Aging, I’ve come to realise, is less a biological inevitability and more a civic condition. The body becomes a bureaucracy. Each joint a department. Each ache a memo. Strategic planning now includes stair negotiations, memory drift audits, and the occasional emergency summit with my lower back.
“Every movement now requires a permit. Every nap is a strategic pause.”
I bend down with purpose. Retrieval is secondary. While I’m down here, I audit the floorboards, renegotiate my relationship with gravity, and consider whether socks should be taxed as floor clutter.
Recent studies (conducted informally by me, in slippers) suggest that forgetting why one entered a room increases cardiovascular activity by 3.2%. This phenomenon—known as Purposeful Wandering—has been endorsed by my Fitbit, which congratulates me for every aimless lap around the kitchen.
My knees have formed a union. They meet at dawn to discuss grievances. The minutes are written in creaks.
To address these infrastructural challenges, I propose a new civic initiative: G.R.O.A.N.—Gradual Reduction Of Agile Navigation. It’s bipartisan. My hips and shoulders have signed on. The elbows remain undecided, pending further negotiation with the cutlery drawer.
“The descent is tactical. The ascent, aspirational.”
My body whispers to me in the morning: “Don’t do that again.” It never specifies what. I assume it means everything.
A nostalgic nod to bulletin boards, hoverboards, and the bureaucratic wisdom of aging knees.
When I was younger, I didn’t mind growing older. But now that I am, I do. Not because aging is undignified—but because it’s so hilariously bureaucratic. Every blog post, apparently, is now a civic memo from the Ministry of Aging.
📚 Select References from the Ministry of Aging Archives
The Journal of Intentional Forgetting, Vol. 42, Issue 7: “Spatial Drift and the Fridge Door Paradox”
Knee Quarterly: “Unionising the Lower Limbs—A Case Study in Joint Resistance”
The Institute for Domestic Navigation: “Purposeful Wandering and the Rise of Unscheduled Exercise”
The Bulletin Board Archives: “Pre-Social Media Diplomacy and the Art of the Signature Line”
G.R.O.A.N. White Paper: “Reducing Agile Navigation Without Sacrificing Dignity (Mostly)”
Footnote: All references listed are entirely fictional and should not be consulted for actual policy development, medical advice, or stair negotiation strategies. The Ministry of Aging is not a recognised government body, though it has recently applied for funding to study sock retrieval ergonomics.
Meme image created in collaboration with Microsoft Copilot using AI tools. Text excerpted from this post. Background metaphor courtesy of the Ministry of Aging’s visual archives.
There was a moment once – at a hair salon – that still lingers in my body. The stylist, without warning, ran all five fingers slowly across my scalp, cooing about the elegance of my head. I sat frozen, skin crawling, unsure how to respond. It wasn’t just touch; it was trespass. A kind of intimacy I hadn’t consented to, delivered under the guise of compliment.
That same feeling returns when someone insists on eye contact.
For me, making direct eye contact can feel like being undressed. Like someone is reaching through my pupils and rummaging around in places I keep private. Sometimes it’s overwhelming, like standing in a shopping mall with every light, sound, and movement turned up to full volume. Other times, it’s more subtle – a quiet sense of being invaded, of having my boundaries ignored in the name of social expectation.
This morning, I read an article that triggered that same discomfort. It was about eye movements—specifically saccades—and how they relate to cognition and health. The science was fascinating, until it wasn’t. Until autism was lumped in with diseases. Until outdated theories about “low social motivation” resurfaced. Until my lived experience was reduced to a set of observable behaviours, interpreted from the outside.
This piece is my response. Not just to the article, but to the broader pattern it represents: a clinical gaze that privileges theory over testimony, and observation over understanding. It’s time to reclaim the narrative.
The Article That Sparked Discomfort
The article I read this morning, published by Penn NeuroKnow, explores the science of eye movements—particularly saccades, the rapid, directed shifts our eyes make when scanning the world. For the most part, I found it illuminating. It offered insights into how saccades reflect cognition, individuality, and even neurological health. But then came the section titled “Eye Movements and Health”, and with it, a wave of discomfort.
The opening lines set the tone:
“Not only are there interesting differences in eye movements between healthy individuals, but differences in patterns of eye movements can also help doctors to detect and diagnose some diseases.”
Immediately, the framing drew a line – between “healthy individuals” and those with “diseases” – and then, without pause, folded autism into that latter category.
“One prominent example is how eye movements (particularly the preference for faces versus objects) have been extensively studied within the context of autism spectrum disorder, which is a social neurodevelopmental disorder that is largely driven by genetics.”
While I recognise that “disorder” remains the dominant clinical term, I find it demeaning. More troubling, though, is the conceptual lumping: autism, a neurodevelopmental difference, is positioned alongside Parkinson’s, dystonia, and stroke. This rhetorical move – subtle but powerful – reinforces the idea that autistic people are “unwell”, that our divergence is a pathology to be detected and managed.
The article then revisits an outdated theory: that autistic people avoid eye contact due to “low social motivation”. This view, long critiqued by autistic advocates, reduces our behaviour to a deficit – a failure to desire connection – rather than acknowledging the sensory, emotional, and cultural factors that shape our choices.
A newer theory is then introduced: that autistic individuals may have smaller or briefer saccades, which interfere with our ability to shift attention fluidly to social stimuli. This mechanistic explanation, while perhaps well-intentioned, still misses the mark. It implies that autistic people want to make eye contact but are hindered by motor limitations – rather than recognising that many of us actively choose to avoid it because it feels invasive, overwhelming, or simply unnatural.
What’s absent throughout is any engagement with autistic testimony. No quotes. No lived experience. No acknowledgement that autistic people have been speaking about eye contact for decades – not as a clinical symptom, but as a deeply personal and often fraught experience. The article, like so many before it, observes us from the outside and theorises about our interiority without ever asking us what it feels like.
And that – more than any single sentence – is what made me uncomfortable.
The Epistemic Divide
What unsettled me most about the article wasn’t just the outdated theory or the clinical lumping of autism with disease. It was the deeper pattern – the assumption that autistic experience can be fully understood through observation alone. That our interiority is best interpreted from the outside, rather than heard directly from us.
When I say that eye contact feels like trespass, I’m not speaking metaphorically. It can feel like someone is reaching through my eyes and touching something sacred – something I haven’t offered. Sometimes it’s overwhelming, like sensory static. Other times, it’s intimate in a way that feels violating. These aren’t quirks or deficits. They’re boundaries. And they deserve to be understood on our own terms.
The Reframing Autism community blog offers a far more accurate account. Autistic contributors describe eye contact as invasive, exhausting, and often incompatible with verbal processing. They speak of masking, of cultural expectations, and of reclaiming our right to look away. It’s a rich tapestry of insight – and it stands in stark contrast to the clinical gaze that reduces our choices to symptoms.
This is what philosophers call epistemic injustice: when marginalised groups are denied credibility in defining our own experience. In autism discourse, it shows up when researchers theorise about us without listening to us. When behaviour is prioritised over testimony. When discomfort is pathologised instead of dignified.
And that – more than any theory – is what I’m pushing back against.
Reframing Eye Contact
To understand autistic eye contact, one must begin not with observation, but with listening. The dominant theories – whether about low social motivation or impaired saccadic movement – all presume that autistic people should want to make eye contact, and that any deviation must be explained as dysfunction. But what if the avoidance is intentional? What if it’s protective?
For many autistic people, eye contact isn’t neutral. It’s invasive. It can feel like someone is reaching through the eyes and into the self – not metaphorically, but viscerally. In my own case, it often feels like being undressed. Like someone is touching something intimate without permission. The discomfort is not abstract; it’s embodied.
There’s also the matter of sensory overwhelm. Eye contact demands simultaneous processing of facial expressions, emotional cues, and verbal content – a cognitive load that can quickly become unmanageable. For those of us with alexithymia, the challenge is compounded. I may not consciously register others’ emotions, but something is still happening beneath the surface – a kind of unfiltered input that floods the system. It’s not that I don’t care; it’s that I can’t always parse what I’m receiving.
Avoiding eye contact, then, is not a failure of social engagement. It’s a boundary-setting act. It’s a way of regulating sensory input, protecting emotional space, and asserting autonomy in a world that often demands too much. It’s not a symptom – it’s a strategy.
And that – more than any pathologising assumption – is what needs to be understood.
Civic Implications
Language shapes perception – and perception shapes lives. When autism is framed as a “disorder” or lumped in with diseases, it doesn’t just stay within the pages of academic journals. It filters into classrooms, workplaces, media, and policy. It informs how strangers treat us, how professionals speak to us, and how society imagines our capacities. For autistic people, this isn’t theoretical. It’s daily.
The diagnostic lens, while useful in some contexts, often casts a long shadow. It encourages the public to see autistic traits as symptoms, rather than expressions of difference. It primes people to interpret our boundaries – like avoiding eye contact – as deficits, rather than dignified choices. And it reinforces the idea that understanding autism is a matter of decoding behaviour, rather than listening to experience.
This is why participatory research matters. Autistic people must not only be consulted – we must be central to the inquiry. Our insights, discomforts, and reframings should guide the questions, shape the methods, and inform the conclusions. Anything less risks perpetuating the very injustices it seeks to address.
Scientific humility is also essential. Researchers must recognise the limits of observation, and resist the urge to explain us without us. Theories should be provisional, porous, and open to correction – especially when they conflict with lived testimony.
And that – more than any well-intentioned hypothesis – is what determines whether science dignifies or distorts.
Reclaiming Autistic Space
I remember a moment in school when I handed in an assignment I’d worked hard on – only to have the teacher ask if it was really mine. I said yes. But I couldn’t look her in the eye when I said it. Not because I was lying, but because eye contact felt unbearable. She took my averted gaze as proof of dishonesty. My work was returned unmarked.
That moment stayed with me. Not just because of the injustice, but because it revealed how deeply public perception is shaped by assumptions – assumptions rooted in clinical language, in behavioural expectations, in the idea that truth lives in the eyes.
But for me, eye contact has never been about truth. It’s been about trespass. About protecting something intimate. About regulating a world that often overwhelms. Just like the hairdresser’s fingers on my scalp, unwanted eye contact can feel like a boundary crossed – a moment where my autonomy is ignored in favour of someone else’s comfort.
This article is my way of reclaiming that space. Of saying that autistic experience is not a puzzle to be solved, but a voice to be heard. That our discomfort is not a symptom, but a signal. That our boundaries are not deficits, but dignified choices.
And that – more than any behavioural marker – is what deserves to be recognised.
This is Part 2 of a two-part series. If you haven’t read Part 1, you can find it here.
In this final section, we shift from reflection to reconstruction – tracing how communities, advocates, and survivors are reshaping the meaning of safety beyond institutional metrics. What emerges is not a blueprint, but a mosaic: imperfect, plural, and alive.
The Myth of Stranger Danger and the Reality of Familiar Harm
Every age writes its own gospel. Stranger danger is ours – preached in classrooms, whispered in playgrounds, canonised in policy. The parable is simple: the unknown is evil, the known is safe, and salvation lies in vigilance.
Public safety education has long centred on the threat of “stranger danger” – the idea that individuals, particularly women and children, are most at risk from unknown assailants in public spaces. This narrative has shaped generations of safety advice: don’t walk alone at night, don’t talk to strangers, stay in well-lit areas. While these precautions may reduce certain risks, they misrepresent the statistical reality of violence. And they can lead to misplaced vigilance.
The sermon is loud. But the statistics whisper something else.
In New Zealand and beyond, the majority of violent offences–especially sexual and domestic violence – are committed by someone known to the victim. For women, the most common perpetrators are intimate partners, family members, or acquaintances. Yet public messaging continues to spotlight external threats, reinforcing fear of public spaces while downplaying the risks present in homes, schools, workplaces, and social circles.
This misdirection has consequences for men as well. While men are more likely than women to be assaulted by strangers, the emphasis on stranger danger can create a false sense of security in familiar environments. It also reinforces gendered assumptions about who is vulnerable and who is safe–leaving many men unprepared to recognise or respond to coercion, bullying, or abuse from peers or authority figures.
Even the faithful are misled. Some are taught they are invulnerable—until the harm comes wearing a friend’s face.
For neurodivergent individuals, the gap between public messaging and lived experience is even wider. People with autism, ADHD, or other cognitive differences are disproportionately harmed by those who know them—caregivers, educators, family members, or peers. Many struggle with social cues, boundary-setting, or recognition, making them more vulnerable to manipulation and less able to report harm. In my own case, prosopagnosia made it impossible to identify my assailants, even though they were familiar with me. This asymmetry – being known but unable to know – created a unique vulnerability that public safety frameworks do not address.
The rainbow community faces similar patterns. While public discourse often focuses on hate crimes committed by strangers, many rainbow community individuals experience violence from family members, intimate partners, or within supportive institutions. Trans and gender-diverse people, in particular, report high rates of domestic violence, sexual assault, and emotional abuse from people they know. The assumption that visibility equals safety is not borne out by the data.
The gospel of fear has no footnotes. It omits the familiar, the trusted, the ones who smile before they strike.
By focusing on stranger danger, public education misdirects attention from the true sources of harm. It teaches people to fear the unknown while ignoring the risks embedded in familiar relationships and environments. It also fails to account for the ways cognitive and identity differences shape vulnerability. A more accurate and inclusive approach to safety would recognise that danger often comes from those closest to us. And that systems must be designed to protect those who cannot name, recognise, or escape their abusers.
Institutional Complicity and the Architecture of Silence
Fear was the sermon. Silence became the creed. And the institutions? They built cathedrals out of complicity—stone by stone, policy by policy.
When harm is familiar, institutions often become architects of denial. Schools, churches, hospitals, and justice systems are built not only to protect – but to preserve reputations, manage liability, and maintain public trust. In doing so, they frequently obscure the very violence they claim to prevent. The architecture is elegant: policies that prioritise optics over outcomes, documentation that sanitises trauma, and procedures that defer accountability until the trail grows cold.
The blueprints were drafted in euphemism. “Incident,” not assault. “Miscommunication,” not coercion. “Unsubstantiated,” not ignored.
Mandatory reporting frameworks, for example, are structurally porous. Educators may be required to report suspected abuse, but institutions often funnel those reports into internal reviews that prioritize institutional risk over survivor safety. Police may log complaints without investigation, citing lack of evidence or “he said, she said” ambiguity. In healthcare settings, disclosures of harm are often reframed as symptoms–pathologised, minimised, or redirected into treatment plans that erase the perpetrator.
For neurodivergent and rainbow community individuals, the betrayal deepens. When harm is disclosed, it is often met with disbelief, deflection, or diagnostic override. A child with autism who reports abuse may be labelled confused or non-compliant. A trans adult seeking protection may be asked to justify their identity before their safety is considered. These patterns are not accidental. They are embedded in the design.
Silence is not passive. It is engineered. And every form, every intake process, every missing checkbox is a brick in the wall.
Even documentation itself becomes a tool of erasure. Incident reports are written in language that flattens complexity, stripping away context and emotion. Survivors are asked to recount trauma in bureaucratic terms, their stories filtered through templates that privilege brevity over truth. When records are incomplete or contradictory, institutions cite uncertainty as a reason not to act–while ignoring the conditions that produced that uncertainty in the first place.
The cathedral stands tall. Not because it is holy–but because it is built to last. Reinforced by policy, buttressed by denial, and adorned with the stained glass of plausible deniability.
To dismantle this architecture, we must first name it. Not as a failure of individual actors, but as a system engineered to obscure harm. The silence is not incidental – it is structural. And until we redesign the foundations, survivors will continue to be gaslit by the very institutions that claim to protect them.
Section 7: Rethinking Safety and Progress
Progress isn’t a graph. It’s a reckoning. Safety isn’t a number. It’s a promise – kept or broken.
Progress, we’re told, is a line trending upward –a graph that smooths over jagged realities. But safety, when averaged, becomes abstraction. The statistical drop in reported harm may comfort institutions, yet it rarely reflects the lived experience of those most vulnerable. Survivors don’t live in trendlines. They live in moments of disbelief, dismissal, and delayed response.
The promise of “statistical progress” often functions as a civic sedative –reassuring the public while obscuring the persistence of harm. When safety is defined by aggregate improvement, it risks becoming a story told by those who were never at risk. What’s needed is a shift: from metrics of reassurance to measures of recognition, responsiveness, and repair.
The graph may slope downward. But the silence slopes upward. And that slope is steepest where harm is hardest to name.
Safety cannot be reverse-engineered from aggregate data. It must be built from the ground up—from the testimony of those who were harmed, unheard, or misread. Survivors of institutional neglect, neurodivergent individuals navigating inaccessible systems, elders dismissed as confused, queer youth punished for disclosure –these are not edge cases. They are the diagnostic lens.
When lived experience is treated as noise in the dataset, harm is perpetuated under the guise of neutrality. But when it is treated as signal –as the primary source of civic insight –policy begins to shift. Not toward perfection, but toward responsiveness. Toward systems that listen before they defend, adapt before they justify.
Safety, in this frame, is not a product of control. It is a function of recognition. And recognition begins with believing those whose stories were once inconvenient to the narrative of progress.
If safety is to be more than statistical reassurance, it must be designed for pluralism –not as a concession, but as a foundation. Systems must be trauma-informed, culturally responsive, and cognitively accessible. Reporting mechanisms should flex to accommodate different modes of communication, memory, and trust. Care must be offered in ways that honour neurodivergent pacing, linguistic nuance, and the right to silence.
Pluralism isn’t a detour. It’s the map. And every deviation from sameness reveals where safety was never built.
Pluralism is not a complication –it is the diagnostic key. It reveals where harm hides in plain sight, where policies fail by assuming sameness. To design for pluralism is to accept that safety cannot be standardised. It must be negotiated, relational, and revisited.
This is not a call for infinite customisation. It is a call for principled adaptability –for systems that can listen without flattening, respond without delay, and repair without defensiveness.
Progress, as popularly framed, is a story told by institutions to themselves. It is linear, upward, and conveniently selective. When public figures cite declining rates of harm or improved response times, they often do so without naming who remains unprotected, unheard, or retraumatised. The narrative of progress becomes a civic mirage –visible from afar, but evaporating on contact.
This is not to deny improvement. It is to question its framing. Who defines progress? Who benefits from its declaration? And who is asked to wait –again –for their safety to be included in the next phase?
Safety is not a milestone. It is a relationship. And relationships require repair, not just metrics. Until institutions can name their complicity and centre those they once sidelined, the story of progress will remain incomplete –an unfinished sentence spoken over those still waiting to be heard.
Safety isn’t the absence of fear. It’s the presence of dignity, agency, and recognition – especially for those who were taught to expect none.
Section 8: A Gentle Reckoning
Not every reckoning is loud. Some arrive as questions, and stay as invitations.
We are taught to trust the numbers. To believe that progress is measurable, that safety is scalable, and that harm –if it cannot be named—must not be real. But lived experience resists that neatness. It stutters. It contradicts. It refuses to be averaged.
This article has traced a path through myth, memory, and institutional silence –not to offer a definitive answer, but to suggest that our frameworks for safety may be too narrow, too polished, too afraid of complexity. If you’ve felt a quiet discomfort while reading, that may be the beginning of something. Not guilt. Not shame. Just the recognition that your beliefs –like mine –might not tell the whole story.
We do not need to abandon our frameworks. But we may need to widen them. To ask who they exclude, what they assume, and how they might be reimagined. Safety, after all, is not a fixed destination. It is a shared journey –one that begins with listening, and continues with the courage to revise.
Stone altar crumbles – a child’s voice in the silence names what was withheld.
Safer than ever? Tell that to the girl who never made it home. Progress doesn’t comfort the ones who never got to grow old.
This reflection began with a blog post by Ark, which featured a clip of Neil deGrasse Tyson asserting that “we live in the safest times ever.” The claim, while statistically grounded, prompted me to ask: safer for whom – and by what measure?
In recent public commentary, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson has claimed that “we live in the safest times ever,” citing a decline in violent crime rates in the United States between 1994 and 2014. This framing has gained traction, especially in media segments that emphasise technological progress and statistical gains in safety. But such claims depend heavily on the time frame selected – and risk obscuring the lived experiences of those whose personal histories span a broader arc.
I was first violently assaulted in 1963. At that time, both New Zealand and the United States reported markedly lower rates of violent crime than they do today. While it is true that crime peaked in the 1990s and declined for a period, the long-term trend tells a more complex story. For someone of my generation, the assertion that we are “safer than ever” does not align with personal experience. Nor does it align with historical data.
Safety isn’t universal when some bodies are still negotiable.
The claim also falters for younger generations. A person who came of age in 2014 – when violent crime rates were near their lowest in recent decades – would now be witnessing a marked increase in violence. In New Zealand, recent data from the New Zealand Crime and Victim Survey (NZCVS) shows a disproportionate rise in victimisation, particularly among rainbow communities. These patterns suggest that safety is not a universal condition, and that statistical averages can mask significant disparities.
You can’t audit a wound. You can only witness it.
Public perception of safety is shaped not only by data, but by the narratives used to interpret it. When commentators select a 30-year window to define progress, they may inadvertently exclude those whose experiences fall outside that frame. This raises important civic questions: Who gets to define “progress”? Whose safety is being measured? What kinds of violence remain invisible? And what is lost when harm doesn’t fit the dominant narrative?
Safer than ever? Ask the autistic teen whose caregiver called it discipline. Some of the deepest harms wear the mask of care.
Visibility, Vulnerability, and the Limits of Measurement
Some harms wore cassocks. But the state signed the silence and kept the doors locked. Now it counts safety by postcode, not by memory.
The New Zealand Crime and Victims Survey (NZCVS) offers a portrait of national safety – clean, quantifiable, reassuring. But its lens is calibrated for visibility, not vulnerability. It counts households, not histories; maps harm by geography, not by trust betrayed or care weaponised. When abuse is nested inside state care, or masked by familial obligation, it slips past the survey’s frame. The result is a statistical silence that echoes the administrative one: harm uncounted is harm unacknowledged.
Even within its visible margins, the NZCVS reveals troubling disparities. In the 2023 survey, 46% of rainbow community respondents reported being victims of crime in the previous year, compared to 31% of non-rainbow respondents. Among trans and gender-diverse individuals, hate crimes rose by 42% between 2022 and 2023. These figures challenge the assumption that visibility and inclusion in public discourse translate into safety in practice. New Zealand’s reputation for inclusivity is not borne out by the data.
This pattern is not unique to Aotearoa. In the United States and the United Kingdom, rainbow community individuals—especially trans women and non-binary people – face elevated risks of assault, harassment, and homicide. Taken together, these trends point to a broader civic failure: the inability of dominant safety narratives to account for identity-based harm. When safety is measured by statistical averages, those most at risk are rendered exceptional, invisible, or anecdotal.
Even the government’s use of NZCVS data has come under scrutiny. A recent RNZ investigation questioned whether the Ministry of Justice’s quarterly releases reflect meaningful reductions in harm, or simply reframe volatility as progress.
Safety, in this frame, becomes a spotlight – bright, narrow, and blinding. Those outside its beam are not seen, not counted, not protected. The margins are where harm hides, and where policy forgets. When the map is drawn in averages, the fault lines vanish.
The Politics of Time frames and Public Messaging
“Lies, damned lies, and statistics.” The phrase survives because it stings. Not because numbers deceive, but because they’re so easily choreographed – trimmed to fit the news cycle, stretched to flatter policy, looped to soothe the public. Harm doesn’t move in quarters. Trauma doesn’t resolve by fiscal year.
When reassurance is built on averages, it erases the asymmetry of harm. Not all crimes weigh the same in the human psyche.
This tension between statistical comfort and lived reality isn’t unique to the United States. In New Zealand, the Crime and Victims Survey (NZCVS) offers its own version of reassurance – released in annual and quarterly formats, each presenting a snapshot of national safety. But snapshots are not stories. Crucially, the quarterly reports are not condensed versions of the annual ones – they lack the same level of statistical analysis and contextual framing. When harm is measured in three-month intervals, the result is not clarity – it’s compression. Volatility is flattened. Outliers are dismissed. The slow erosion of trust, or the cumulative toll of repeated victimisation, is lost in the rhythm of release schedules and ministerial talking points.
Public perception of safety is shaped not only by statistical trends but by the time frames and narratives chosen to interpret them. Tyson’s claim that we are “safer than ever” relies on a 30-year window beginning in the mid-1990s – a period of historically high crime rates. From that vantage point, the decline appears dramatic. But if one begins in the 1960s, the picture shifts: violent crime rates were lower then than they are today, both in New Zealand and the United States.
This selective framing raises important questions about how progress is defined. For older generations, the claim of increased safety may feel disconnected from lived experience. For younger generations, the recent rise in violence undermines the notion of steady improvement. And for marginalised communities, whose victimisation rates remain disproportionately high, the narrative of progress may feel not only inaccurate but exclusionary.
Public messaging often reinforces these curated narratives. Safety campaigns tend to spotlight stranger danger and street-level crime, while underemphasising domestic violence, institutional abuse, and identity-based harm. This creates a mismatch between the risks people are taught to fear and the risks they are most likely to face.
Progress, when plotted on a graph, becomes a comfort loop – smooth, upward, and soothing. But lived safety is jagged. It stutters. It disappears between reporting cycles. And it rarely fits the frame.
Personal Experience and Systemic Blind Spots
My own experience, described in Last meal, reveals the failure of public safety frameworks. In 1963, I was violently assaulted by a group of older boys at school. I did not know their names, and due to prosopagnosia – a condition that impairs facial recognition – I could not identify them. They knew me. I could not recognise them. That asymmetry made reporting the assault impossible. The incident was never acknowledged, never investigated, never resolved.
It didn’t end when they walked away. It echoed in silence, in systems that asked for names I couldn’t give. Recognition failed me. So did the frameworks built around it.
The trauma remained unspoken for decades. I carried it quietly – not because I lacked memory, but because I lacked the language and institutional scaffolding to make it legible. Only recently have I been able to speak about it, and even now, it exacts a toll. The inability to name my assailants was not a failure of will – it was a cognitive difference that public systems were not equipped to accommodate.
This experience highlights a broader issue: safety frameworks often assume mutual recognition, verbal fluency, and emotional clarity. These assumptions can render harm invisible and justice inaccessible – not only for neurodivergent individuals, but also for the elderly, for rainbow communities, and for those navigating mental health challenges. Systems built to protect may not recognise the ways we experience danger. They may ask the wrong questions, rely on the wrong cues, and dismiss the wrong silences. When safety depends on being easily understood, those who live at the margins of recognition are left unprotected. Especially when silence is procedural.
This is the end of Part 1. The article will conclude in Part 2, which will be published shortly. There, we continue the journey – moving from institutional critique toward civic possibility, and exploring how safety might be re-imagined through practice, not just policy.
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