12/26/2023 0 Comments 2d 4d ratio per gallon![]() ![]() That type of scale can support a range of unsavory arguments for policies of all sorts, and would be fundamentally rhetorical both in its construction and its use. This claim might seem noncontroversial, but imagine constructing a scale in which we measure intelligence, instead, and order individuals according to sex. For instance, if we claim that men tend to be heavier than women, who tend to be heavier than children, we have constructed an incrementum, ordering those three groups according to weight. In the process, researchers espousing this theory construct a scale, drawing on the rhetorical figure of incrementum, or scale, which positions women, men, and people with autism along a continuum according to the degree to which they possess some quantified trait.Īn incrementum is simply a scale, but one that can be used for rhetorical purposes. These statistical facts, though, are extended to the disorder itself, where maleness is applied to the brains of individuals with autism. This commonality stems from the fact that more boys than girls receive autism diagnoses, by a ratio of 4 to 1. In autism discourse, hegemonic notions of sex and gender provide a common terministic screen through which researchers make sense of a complex and often puzzling condition. In this way, the very terms we use to understand the world both select some elements of reality and deflect our attention away from others. According to Burke, these organizing frameworks "direct the attention" in some channels rather than others (45). ![]() In rhetorical terms, sex/gender provides what Kenneth Burke would call a terministic screen through which autism is understood by some researchers and popularizers. In the case of the EMB theory, gendered discourses, in particular, offer rhetorical fodder to fill in the spaces left by uncertainty. What makes this process unique, in the case of autism, is that these social meanings do not merely demarcate the "normal" (or neurotypical) from the "abnormal" (or neurodiverse) instead, they also differentiate between men and women, in such a manner that the "male condition" is pathologized alongside the autistic condition. Such a shift would be fundamentally rhetorical, in that it is enacted through language, persuading practitioners to categorize individuals in a new way.Īs is the case with any disability, then, autism is shaped in part by "social meanings, symbols, and stigmas" attached to it (Siebers 3). For instance, in 2010 the APA released working notes for the DSM-V, which offered new criteria for autism and placed Asperger's syndrome (heretofore a separate disorder) within the umbrella category of ASD. Researchers continue to debate what features constitute autism. Persuasion therefore plays an important role in how autism is defined and diagnosed. Instead, it is diagnosed through comparison with psychological standards, such as the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychological Association, which defines autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) according to behavioral signs. What makes this statement possible, rhetorically, is a process of gendering that has made autism spectrum disorder (ASD) into "The Male Condition"-the title of Baron-Cohen's piece.Īutism is an example of what Judy Segal calls a rhetorical disorder (74): in the absence of clear biological markers for autism, "discourse fills the space that certainty in medicine leaves unoccupied" (75). In 2005, autism researcher Simon Baron-Cohen opened a New York Times article with the following statement: "By studying the differences between male and female brains, we can generate significant insights into the mystery of autism" (Baron-Cohen). ![]()
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