Photo Exhibit Reappropriates “But You Don’t Look Autistic” Slur
Photo credit: Rewild Play
BBC recently wrote about a Newport, Wales photo exhibit where autistic kids, teens, and adults turned the insult "But you don't look autistic" into portraits of pride. Fifteen-year-old Liam put it plainly: people talk to him like he isn’t smart, or like he can’t do what they can. Mackenzie, sixteen, said people treat him as “a little bit less.” Instead of swallowing that, they hung their own images on a gallery wall. Sophia, thirteen, brought her music. Jade West — ADHD, waiting on an autism diagnosis — also stood with them, camera in hand. Other autistic adults lent their faces and voices to the portraits, pushing back against stereotypes alongside the younger generation.
That’s not “awareness.” That’s counter-explanation in its clearest form: you told us we were less; here we are, showing you otherwise.
Autistic People Claim the Frame
On its own terms, the exhibition is protective, proud and community-led. No caveats. No hedging. These participants — kids, teens, and adults — chose how to be seen, and the public had to meet them on their terms. That shift in authorship is everything. It makes autism subject, not object. It makes autistic people narrators, not diagnoses.
Why Counter-Explanation Is Still Required
But here’s the contradiction: they shouldn’t have to do all that hard work just to place themselves in their rightful places in the world — as part of a neurodiverse humanity.
Counter-explanation is necessary only because the system built autistic deficit as the default. The medical gatekeeping, the diagnostic waitlists, the schoolroom whispers, the charity pity campaigns, the media stereotypes — all of these make “you don’t look autistic” feel like a verdict instead of an observation. When society misunderstands you by design, every portrait, every interview, every gallery becomes a defense brief. That burden is not neutral. It’s labor forced on us by a world that still refuses to acknowledge that it has built a discriminatory system against autistic people.
Shifting the Burden Back
So the next question isn’t: Can autistic people change attitudes? They just did. The portraits prove it. The real question is: Will institutions stop demanding counter-explanations and start explaining why they discriminated against us in the first place? Why do autistic people have to prove competence while the rest of society insists on perpetuating awareness campaigns and pity narratives that misunderstand us?
These portraits don’t ask permission; they demand recognition. The frame has changed. Now institutions need to explain themselves. The question remains: will they, or will autistic people need to keep embarrassing the powers that be with their own brilliance and presence?