A former student, Mark Engleson, who is autistic, writes:

I recently got embroiled in a bit of go-round on Twitter (do not recommend). The background: the Judge Rotenberg Center in Massachusetts uses shock collars on autistic children to make them more compliant. The FDA tried to ban this use of the device, and a federal court threw it out.

On Twitter, someone posted a poll asking fellow autistics how traumatized they were by the knowledge that this is happening. I objected that this is a misunderstanding of trauma: the trauma here is clearly the children being shocked, not other people hearing about it. 

The problem with this language and this line of thought is that some went so far as to say that the problem with this whole situation is how it makes other autistics feel. Now, this situation disturbs me, but that's not why it's wrong: it's wrong because they're using shock collars on children. My feelings have nothing to do with it; if no one knew this was going on, it would still be horrific.

I tried to put out that the problem with this argument is that all kinds of things bother and disturb all kinds of people, often quite deeply. While there is some level of facetiousness, no doubt, there are people out there who are very, very, disturbed by abortion and gay sex, on a visceral level. That's not an argument for how we should deal with that.

As a rhetorical strategy, I think this is a loser, too. If you're not moved by the abject horror of electrocuting small children, you're sure as hell not going to be moved by other people feeling stressed about it.

There's a bizarre idea of epistemic privilege at work here, too. The idea that being autistic somehow gives you some privileged position vis-a-vis other autistics getting shocked is nuts. Anyone with a hold on reality should be able to clearly see how awful this is.

One final thing: it's offensive to equate your secondhand reactions to trauma to the trauma itself. I'm sure some people are very upset, but they're not getting electrocuted with shock collars!