No discussion about the Rainbow would be complete without a mention of Autistic people. The Rainbow is a symbol of Autism because it is a spectrum of different colors, just as there are different people with different levels of ability in various skills.
https://101autism.com/understanding-autism-the-significance-of-colors-and-symbols/
The jigsaw puzzle piece is also a relevant symbol because of the unique ability of visually autistic thinkers to place pieces of the world together in unusual ways. Some of us are also really good at completing jigsaw puzzles (and playing Tetris, which is the same idea).
But you might wonder what exactly Autism is. I can provide my explanation and point you to some resources. Autism is one of the hardest things to explain. In fact, it may be harder to describe Autism to a neurotypical (non-autistic person) than it is to explain LGBTQIA+ to cisgender straight people.
But because I am even more autistic than I am Transgender, I do believe I can help explain it a bit. Obviously, this is only my experience because each autistic person is different.
It might surprise you that I think in pictures and struggle with words. Words have never come easy to me. I could always talk since I was a small child, but I did not know what the words meant most of the time. I memorized quotes from cartoons and video games and repeated them endlessly.
My strength has always been in math and visual arts. Give me shapes and colors, and I can tell you their number of sides and hexadecimal RGB color codes. Perhaps this is why computer programming languages were always easier than speaking English to humans, although I have obviously improved over the years.
But have you ever tried to explain the difference between a man and a woman to an autistic person? The perception that people with Autism have of the world is very different than it is for most of my readers.
An autistic person is more likely to think in terms of specific examples of something and then generalize over time. A non-autistic is more likely to have a general idea of something abstract enough to apply to specific cases.
For example, when I was a 6-year-old child, I observed that boys were evil because they liked to bully me and physically beat me up at Lindbergh Elementary School. I further observed that girls played Tetherball on the playground and that they provided me safety from the boys because girls had cooties and boys were afraid of cooties (though to this day, I never figured out what that means exactly).
My ideas of gender were very different from what other people spoke about it. To me, the role of a boy, girl, man, or woman was about behavior but not about body parts. To put it bluntly, I did not think of people by their penis or vagina because they wore pants. As long as people were wearing clothes, I only had their behavior to judge what kind of person they were.
There is also evidence that people with Autism are more likely to identify as LGBTQIA+ than the general population.
https://autism.org/lgbtq-and-autism/
I firmly believe that many other people with Autism are very much like me in that they have to process and figure the world out slowly. It isn’t that being autistic makes you gay or transgender, but you may observe that gender is also a spectrum, much like Autism or the Rainbow is.
For example, in the minds of some people, women have long hair, but what about when a woman cuts her hair short? Furthermore, long and short are not absolute but are relative terms.
What about the generality that men are stronger than women? Just because this is true, most of the time, does not mean that there are not women with naturally high testosterone who build muscle faster than other women and even a lot of men. Athletes who exercise get stronger regardless of the silly ideas in our heads over who is supposed to be stronger.
For every rule that can be made to define what a man or a woman is, there is also an exception. Some people like me argue that the rules are flexible because humans made them up and that they can be broken.
But let me finish by telling you a story about the misunderstood Rainbow.
There was a display put up about Autism by two librarians in a library in Sterling, Kansas. The Infinity Rainbow was displayed. Somebody thought it was about an LGBTQIA+ topic and complained. These two librarians were fired and then sued the Sterling Free Public Library.
I suppose that it can be easy to mistake an Autism rainbow as being a Pride Month symbol, especially since it was displayed in the month of June. However, I would say that people with Autism are included in the spectrum of diversity that must be understood and celebrated for their unique gifts.
No, being autistic doesn’t really imply a certain sexual orientation or gender identity. Still, autistic people like me have no filter, and we will say exactly what we think and feel. I believe that the rate of LGBTQIA+ individuals among the autistic community could be the same as the rest of the population, but that WE ARE MORE LIKELY TO ADMIT OUR DIFFERENCE.
If there is anything that Autism is known for, it is our lack of social awareness. Just as the Rainbow was misunderstood at the Sterling Free Public Library, autistic people are also misunderstood because we don’t know how to lie and pretend to be something we are not.
I have not even barely scratched the surface of what Autism really means, but I can point you to an expert that you may have heard of. Her name is Temple Grandin. I invite you to read the first chapter of her book Thinking in Pictures because she explains it better than I can.
https://www.grandin.com/inc/visual.thinking.html
Because I think in pictures much like Temple Grandin does, I do think her books are a good description of my form of Autism.
At the same time, I would also like to say that some people are so gifted with words and communication that they may be autistic but in the “reverse direction” of what is expected. Autism is diagnosed as a social disability, but there remains the possibility that the criteria for diagnosing Autism can also be wrong.
I might have the same type of brain as Temple Grandin, but I think that others might actually be good at talking and understanding humans but be very bad at the visual and spatial talents that I have. I would like to conclude this chapter with my definition of Autism, which I think captures the essence of what I mean.
A condition caused by a superpower (talent, skill, ability) that requires so much brain space that there is not much left for other abilities. Autistic individuals can do one or two things very well, but this comes at the cost of other abilities that society thinks are important.
Or said another way, some of the playing cards in our brain deck are missing, but then others were shuffled in from another deck. We have 2 missing queens, 17 extra jacks, and no 5s or 7s.