Is Autistic Joy A Colonial Construct?

When I was little, we had a picnic table with a central parasol on the patio outside our back doors, looking out onto the garden beyond. When it rained, I would gather my teddy bears and dolls, dress us all up in rain macs and hats and clip umbrellas onto their little buggies. Then I would take everyone outside, get snuggled under the various covers, and just be. I can still picture it, still remember how it felt and sounded and smelled. I remember the joy and peace and complete ease I felt.

On the Saturday of the August bank holiday weekend, I woke up to the sound of rain. No doubt ruining the plans of Brits around and about planning barbecues and camping and various outside activities. I, however, was delighted. I asked my nesting partner if they wanted to join me for a walk in the rain. They looked up from the comfy armchair in their PJs, Xbox controller in hand, and said ‘no?’. While I love their company, it really was OK that they didn’t want to come. Being alone in the rain would mean I could fully immerse myself in sensory elation without any self-consciousness.

I excitedly located my baseball cap and rain mac - the cap goes under my mac hood so that I can enjoy the rain without my face getting drenched or getting too much water in my eyes. I don’t really understand hoods that just cover your head/hair. The issue surely is the water getting in my eyes and preventing me from seeing? Anyway, putting aside my belief that more rain macs should have built-in baseball caps, I found my wellies, and an umbrella in case it got really heavy, although I was not intending to use it. I grabbed my keys and my phone and put them safely in my waterproof pockets and dashed out the front door, practically skipping through town towards a park nearby. I mentioned in Stimming Isn’t Always Observable how much I love watching trees moving in the wind. On this day, I was able to combine this stim with my water stim, and the result was nothing short of exhilarating. I walked around the park, deserted apart from a couple of soggy dog-walkers (and their dogs), and went to all my favourite places to see how the rain had changed it. Then I found a little bench that was partially sheltered from the rain by a tree, and sat. I watched. I inhaled. I listened. My skin was dry and warm, but the rain was all around me. I felt like I was part of the rain and it was part of me. It was the best I had felt in a good while. And when I think of it now I feel the echoes of pitter pattering joy.

So what is the difference between joy and Autistic joy? There isn’t necessarily a difference, or at least I’m not sure there should be. However, Autistics may encounter negative reactions to our joy, if we are joyful about something people perceive to be ‘silly’, ‘childish’ or ‘weird’, or if the intensity of our joy is uncomfortable for them. It is the intensity of my joyful experiences that makes them special, just as it can be the intensity of my experiences of a loud, choatic, fast, destructive reality that can make it very hard to be in. And it is that intensity of sensory experience that is generally described as the key characteristic of Autistic joy. And while I celebrate being able to name and describe my experiences of joy, I have to wonder, what have we done to ‘joy’ that means that my joy has become separate, different, apart from yours? Surely joy is, by nature, an intense emotion? I fear that it is the removal of true joy in our lives in general that makes it so easy for us to categorise joy as something unusual or unique, instead of a unifying, collective, human experience.

When your sensory experience is so strong that it overrides your ability to neuro-perform, it is what one might describe as intense. We could also view this as a deep level of presence and connection. We cannot neuro-perform while also being present and connected, so this intensity could be regarded as a tool to break free from neuro-performance. But one can also choose to be present and connected. There was a trend on TikTok a while back of ‘Black men frolicking’, an ever lengthening chain of videos of Black men running and skipping in green fields before tumbling joyfully to the ground, laughing all the while. It remains one of the most wholesome, beautiful examples of joy I have seen. Anti-Blackness (particularly within the imperial core) has demonised Black men as aggressive, dangerous, scary, and the pressure on Black men to perform masculinity also stems from dehumanising narratives, not allowing them to be themselves, but to perform for survival, while also navigating the health problems and threats to their lives that are caused by living within such harmful confines. Another stereotype is that Black men are funny, but only if it serves our entertainment, rather than their wellbeing. To see the softness, lightness, freedom, silliness and delight of Black men frolicking, was to witness the rejection of all of that BS and the reclamation of something that colonial systems have tried to strip from so many people; the true nature of joy. I feel similarly when I see people participating in Dabke, a Levantine folk dance tradition I was lucky enough to be able to witness and join in with recently at a gathering in Cambridge on the site where the student encampment for Palestine had been.

We have been conditioned to believe that joy lies in big houses, fancy cars, ‘successful careers’ in industries that prop up extractive capitalism, a cis-heternormative life that exists within the confines of ‘normal’ and is acceptable to whiteness. The reality is that there is no joy in the foundations of colonisation, patriarchy, capitalism or white supremacy. None of these systems require or benefit from joy. They benefit from numbing folx to joy, replacing that with consumerism, competition and want, while actively trying to destroy any true joy that exists in those whose existence threatens the systems. The ‘comfortable life’ of a privileged person in the imperial core is one removed from the realities of the violence that their comfortable life inflicts on others. It removes them from nature, and makes them believe they are apart from and superior to it. It removes them from their purpose, their true self, their connection to land, to earthly kin, to spirit. This is something that has been taken, and it is so important that those who are used to ‘comfort’ start to recognise that they have sacrificed true joy, among so many other things. There are also people refusing to participate in or seek joy, almost as a badge of honour, because so many are suffering. This is, unfortunately, falling prey to colonial conditioning. The idea that we should ‘feel bad’ because others do is a form of oppression against us and also a tool to make us less effective in dismantling the oppression of others. We need action - not commiseration. This is a long game. It needs stamina and endurance, compassion and clarity, and these things require joy. As Audre Lorde tells us, ‘joy gives us the energy for change’.

Is Autistic joy a colonial construct? The naming of Autistic joy as something that separates us from the collective could be seen as constructed, and indeed something that upholds and reinforces harmful systems. But to some extent, intense sensory experiences create connection that can break through some of the colonial facade. So perhaps that is the magic of Autistic joy. And as an experiencer of Autistic joy, it is my responsibility to make the connection between my joy and yours, to know that they are inexorably intertwined, and reliant on each other for liberation.

—AJ

Today’s Neuro-Embodiment Prompts:

Suggestions and questions to help you engage with mindbody decolonisation:

• Are you familiar with the feeling of true joy? Do you know how it differs from anticipation, excitement, contentment? How can you seek and access more joy?

• Joy is connected and present. Do you know how it feels for you to be connected? Do you know what it feels like for you to be present? What can you do to cultivate more moments of connection? More moments of presence?

• How are you encouraging true, unfiltered joy in those around you? In children in your care? How can you disrupt colonial messaging that seeks to dampen joy?

• How does intensity sit with you? How can you challenge feelings of discomfort around intensity? What levels of joy might you be able to access if you were to embrace intensity?