ASPIES ÜBER ALLES

Elon Musk believes autism makes him superhuman. Just don't call it that.

- By Julia Métraux

IN SEPTEMBER, ELON MUSK AMPLIFIED A POST from Autism Capital-a pro-Trump X account that he often reposts-that read: "Only high T alpha males and aneurotypical people (hey autists!) are actually free to parse new information with an objective 'is this true?' filter. This is why a Republic of high status males is best for decision-making. Democratic, but a democracy only for those who are free to think." Musk called the claim, which originated on the infamous web forum 4chan, an "interesting observation." His repost was viewed 20 million times.

Musk is the world’s most prominent—and most powerful—autistic person. It’s not something he conceals; notably, he mentioned it during a 2021 monologue on Saturday Night Live. Only “autistic” wasn’t the term he used. Musk told the SNL audience he had Asperger's syndrome, a term struck from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) in 2013 and largely disused in psychiatry.

But Asperger's has persisted in popular culture, even as psychiatrists have ditched it. As a shorthand for autistic people with low support needs, it has gradually become an armchair diagnosis that’s often used to sidestep the baggage or consequences that come with calling someone autistic.

It means not autistic autistic; autistic, but not quite. The words “mild” or “high-functioning” are never far off. “Aspies,” in this vision, are socially inept, technically gifted, mathematically minded, unemotional, blunt. They can probably code.

At its best, the cultural rise of Asperger's has yielded somewhat positive (if still flattening) depictions in media: Think Sheldon Cooper in The Big Bang Theory. But who are we talking about when we talk about Aspies? The answer is bound up with ideas about white men—who were disproportionately given that label—and decades of underdiagnosis of other autistic people.