Just the Facts, Please: On Being Too Autistic for the Annotated Bibliography

On critique, compliance, and the myth of neutrality in autistic scholarship.

A short course in “professional development” becomes a lesson in epistemic control, as one autistic student’s annotated bibliography dares to critique the Empire of neutrality—and refuses to stay in the lane they never chose.

Introduction: The Syllabus Said “Professional Development”

I enrolled in the Psych 001 course at my local community college as a kind of professional upkeep. My first psychology class had been back in 1988, one of those ‘football classes’ that prized attendance and ‘being quiet’ over anything resembling critical engagement. We were made aware of Maslow’s hierarchy, nodded along to Pavlov, and were told in no uncertain terms that Freud had been replaced by more modern minds — minds which, we were assured, understood people scientifically now.

Thirty-odd years and a few degrees later, I returned to Intro Psych out of something like curiosity — or perhaps a kind of experimental humility. What would happen if I entered this classroom, not as a teacher or researcher, but as a student again?

Then came the syllabus. Among the usual textbook chapters and asynchronous discussion posts was this:

Final Paper: Submit 5 annotated bibliography entries on recent (2025) peer-reviewed research relevant to class themes.

As someone who lives and works at the intersection of autism, education, and care work, it made sense to focus on recent autism research. I typed the keywords into the database, and up came the following: Tafolla, M., Singer, H., & Lord, C. (2025). Autism Spectrum Disorder Across the Lifespan. Annual Review of Clinical Psychology.

I read it. I annotated it. And, in the process, I broke the rules.

Annotated Bibliography of Autism Research: Entry 1

Tafolla, M., Singer, H., & Lord, C. (2025). Autism Spectrum Disorder Across the Lifespan. Annual Review of Clinical Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-clinpsy-081423-031110

This article presents itself as a comprehensive review of autism research across developmental stages, yet from its opening lines, it reasserts a medicalised narrative built on hierarchical knowledge production. Autism is framed as a “neurodevelopmental condition” defined by “profound heterogeneity”—terms that position autistic embodiment as a problem to be solved, rather than a way of being to be understood. The early introduction of the label “profound autism” serves as a rhetorical sorting mechanism, reviving functioning labels under a more respectable clinical euphemism. There is no critical engagement with the term’s origins in the Lancet Commission’s attempt to redraw boundaries of inclusion, nor any recognition of how it is contested by autistic communities. Instead, the label is naturalised—positioned as unproblematic, uncontroversial, and self-evident.

The timeline of autism’s “discovery” begins, predictably, with Leo Kanner in 1943. Grunya Sukhareva, whose detailed descriptions of autistic traits in 1925 should have reoriented this history years ago, is absent. Her erasure is not incidental—it functions to maintain the illusion that autism emerged only once it was named by the right people, in the right language, from within the right institutions. It is a canonical exclusion that reflects the paper’s broader refusal to reckon with epistemic justice or neurodivergent authorship.

One brief nod to the Autistic Self Advocacy Network (ASAN), alongside the WHO’s International Classification of Functioning, might suggest a balanced approach to defining adult outcomes. But the gesture is purely decorative. It is immediately neutralised by a return to “researchers, autistic adults, and caregivers” as interchangeable sources of authority—flattening power differentials and treating autistic perspectives as optional data points rather than central, sovereign voices. The passage reveals its priorities through structure: the mention of autistic self-advocacy functions as a pivot, not a foundation. It is used to tick a box, then set aside.

Throughout, the paper is steeped in the distancing language of clinical observation: “adaptive skills,” “external outcomes,” “standardised tools.” The autistic person remains a studied object, not a speaking subject. There is no engagement with community-led research, no citation of autistic scholars, and no mention of frameworks like monotropism, double empathy, or gestalt language processing—despite their growing influence in both academic and community settings.

What this review offers is not a neutral synthesis but a boundary project: one that defends institutional legitimacy, reinscribes deficit models, and selectively acknowledges neurodivergent voices only when they pose no structural threat. Its value, if any, lies in revealing how clinical psychology continues to centre itself—not autistic people—in the story of autism.

The Feedback: “Neutrality, Please”

I received my feedback in the same format I give to others: a Canvas comment and a grade.

“This is well-written and passionate. However, remember that annotated bibliographies should be neutral summaries of the article’s content, not critiques. Save your opinion for a separate analysis.”

In the discussion forum, a peer echoed this:

“I really liked how intense it was! But I think it was maybe too intense for this kind of assignment. We’re supposed to summarise the article, not evaluate it, right?”

And there it was.

Not the cruelty of rejection, but the soft constraint of a “reminder.” A redirection. A subtle gatekeeping that insists my words—my observations, my ways of knowing—do not belong here. I had wandered too far from the neutral zone. My annotations had bled.

But I am autistic. I don’t bleed neatly. Especially not around institutional violence.

The Afterword: On “Professionalism” and the Empire of Neutrality

I’ve been told, in many forms, that if I want to be heard, I need to be professional. Neutral. Dispassionate. Disembodied.

But I know what that really means. “Neutral” is a gate. “Neutral” is a moat around the ivory tower. And “professional development,” in contexts like this, often means developing the ability to suppress dissent, to convert resistance into compliance.

If I were to follow their advice—strip out the critique, tone down the voice, just summarise the article—I would be contributing to the very system that erases us. I would be affirming that clinical voices are objective while lived experience is opinion. That Kanner was first. That “profound autism” is a fact. That ASAN is a footnote.

This is not education. This is Empire.

Because Empire doesn’t just colonise land—it colonises language. And when autistic people learn to name what’s happening, to speak back in our own tongues, we’re told that’s not how annotated bibliographies work. That we should stay in our lane.

But some of us have made our homes in the margins. And we write from there, precisely because we were never supposed to.