We need more careful thought about the interactions between mental and neurodevelopmental conditions and misbehaviour
Last month a young woman took to twitter to describe her experience of growing up with a severely autistic brother. Her story did not follow the usual path of admitting things were difficult at first, before explaining — in the manner of all good “healthy” (or “healthier”) siblings — that in the end she was lucky to learn about kindness and difference way ahead of most other kids.
“Being told to ‘be patient’ while my boundaries were violated daily for over a decade didn’t teach me empathy,” she wrote. “[…] When someone walks all over ur space/time/autonomy for damn near ur whole life, and u can’t even push back bc their comfort is prioritized over yours, resentment literally rewires you.”
This was, as one can imagine, not something everyone wanted to hear. Responses to the thread fell into three camps: those who sympathised with the sister; parents who feared what she’d written described their own family situation and wanted her to offer them a solution; and people who thought she ought to be over it all by now (didn’t she still have the easier life? And wasn’t she hurting those more vulnerable by making a fuss?).
I fell into the first category of readers, seeing some similarities with my own childhood. This was a common feature of those expressing sympathy — it seems you really had to have been there. Indeed, I felt grateful to the anonymous tweeter because this is something which is rarely discussed (and when it is, the focus is usually on parents, not siblings). Sometimes the silence is a form of care, recognition that the person hurting you really is more vulnerable in a broader sense (even if not in an immediate one). At the same time, it can be a form of resignation. There is no point complaining because it messes with people’s pre-programmed responses to victimhood. Without a diagnostic label, people would know who the baddie was. But with it? Now it’s much too hard.
Some will suggest, often without much subtlety, that in such a situation they would be far more tolerant. Certainly they wouldn’t complain about it later. The complainer is usually presented with two reasons to keep quiet, reasons which contradict one another, but which are still deployed simultaneously: one, it’s not proper harm — at least not in any moral sense — because the diagnostic label means the person cannot help it, and two, the diagnosis should not be associated with the actions because that would promote stigma. The diagnosis both excuses the behaviour and has absolutely nothing to do with it (call the behaviour bad and you’ll be referred to the diagnosis, refer to the diagnosis and you’ll be accused of tarring all sufferers with the same brush). To talk about being punched is, in this scenario, to punch down.
Like the tweeter, I do not have a magic solution to this problem. Some acknowledgement that this tension exists, usually in private, would, however, be a start. Instead what we tend to witness — a while ago with Kanye West, and now in the case of Gregg Wallace — is an intermittent insistence that no one should be using diagnoses to justify terrible behaviour, as if this is always easy to spot, and as if there isn’t a grey area, one which, if we are honest, allows us to pick and choose where to direct our own empathy spotlight.
Having been sacked as a MasterChef presenter following complaints of harassment from more than 50 people, Wallace has blamed his own conduct — conduct which allegedly includes making inappropriate comments, groping, not wearing underwear and dropping his trousers in front of others — on his “neurodiversity, now formally diagnosed as autism”, complaining that “nothing was done to investigate my disability or protect me from what I now realise was a dangerous environment for over 20 years”. Wallace suggests that in an age of tolerance and understanding, he deserves to be treated with kindness and empathy. Hey, if we’re all so keen on celebrating difference, why could that not theoretically include the “difference” that compels a powerful man to touch a woman inappropriately? (Wallace has also denied some of the allegations against him.)
Unfortunately for Gregg, this bid for a #metoo revolution for alleged gropers hasn’t achieved much momentum. Indeed, Wallace’s autism defence has been subject to far less progressive tolerance than the behaviour of the brother as described by the anonymous tweeter. Wallace’s is, after all, a situation in which the power hierarchy, and the abuse of it, seems much clearer. What he was doing is what plenty of men in his position have done in order to control, intimidate, objectify and belittle others. Do all of them have faulty brain wiring? How would we even know?
Enna Banks of the neurodiversity training body Enna has told the BBC that “being autistic is never an excuse for misconduct”:
It doesn’t absolve anyone of responsibility, and it certainly doesn’t mean you can’t tell the difference between right and wrong.
Meanwhile, Dan Harris of Neurodiversity in Business, himself diagnosed with autism, has insisted that “autism is not a free pass for bad behaviour”, pointing out that comments such as Wallace’s “stigmatise us and add an unfortunate negative focus on our community”.
I understand the need to create some distance. At the same time, I don’t think such blanket statements are entirely honest. Sometimes — as in the case mentioned at the start — a diagnosis really is used to suggest a person cannot be held responsible for their behaviour. Indeed, sometimes it is entirely fair to suggest this. I don’t think this is true in the case of Gregg Wallace, but what does it mean when we insist it is never, ever the case? Where does this leave people who do not wish the person who hurt them to be held morally culpable — who can accept that it was not intentional or an abuse of power — but who still expects some broader social acknowledgement of what has happened? Anxiety over stigma can, it seems to me, impose even more silence on them.
In his new book Searching for Normal, the psychiatrist Sami Timimi points out the circularity of explaining behaviours by a diagnosis if the diagnosis itself is created by listing certain behaviours. The diagnosis explains all without explaining anything, which is particularly difficult for those on the receiving end of actions which would be unacceptable without the label, but are to be tolerated (and ideally never spoken of) with it. This does create the possibility of people vying for a protected status, whereby their supposed difference places them beyond judgement. Wallace might have failed in his attempt to access it, but this does not mean no one can.
Meanwhile those who struggle in situations in which there are no “baddies” are left on their own. “It’s not a free pass for bad behaviour” is no help to them. Sometimes the diagnosis really is. It just needs to be more than that, too.
