Instead, my long-held distaste for RFK Jr. and his antivaccine furor boils down to a far more basic impasse: You simply cannot make me see my brother as broken.
By Julia Shiota
It is a strange feeling to see your family’s bugbear, a niche annoyance complained about for decades, suddenly emblazoned across national newspapers and spat out in red rolling chyrons day after day. It’s even stranger to hear those around you discovering this pest, often for the first time.
“Does he really talk like that?”
“He said WHAT?”
“I’m just learning about him now, that man’s nuts!”
Murmurs from friends and coworkers put things into sharp contrast for me, because in these comments I see a world where we did not need to listen to his addled lies, a world where we did not pass the microphone to a person so undeserving of this spotlight. His name could have passed into the annals of history, a footnote to the entry beneath the dynasty of his family name.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been a known entity for most of my life. I am in my mid-thirties, with a younger brother who is in his early thirties. He has autism and was part of the cohort of American children who became the battleground for parents in the 90s and early 2000s who saw something in their children that frightened them. And here it is important to be sympathetic. Remember that this is a time when autism meant little to the broader public and — if someone did know the term — they had preconceived notions of what it looked like to be autistic that were often exaggerated and crafted out of malice. This is a time when the r word was casually tossed around as an insult among school-aged kids and adults in movies alike. Parents fought tooth and nail for IEPs, school support, acknowledgement, therapies, anything to help their children when many professionals and doctors had little to offer in terms of concrete answers.
In this world, it makes sense that parents grab for whatever foothold they can. It was the mothers of many children with autism, feeling as if their concerns had been cast aside, who brought RFK Jr. into the fold as a celebrity to support their cause. Kennedy had long been fixated on the idea of mercury in vaccines, so adding autism to his list of crusades was an easy integration.
The claim that vaccines cause autism is a lie. It makes little sense to argue this point any more than it does to argue that there is a moon orbiting our planet — the people who are doggedly against believing reality will cling to their beliefs no matter what. For decades there have been articles, written both for academic audiences as well as general audiences, that outline why vaccines do not cause autism. I am deeply uninterested in relitigating something long established.
Instead, my long-held distaste for RFK Jr. and his antivaccine furor boils down to a far more basic impasse: You simply cannot make me see my brother as broken.
Parents of children with autism have long been on the front-lines of advocating for their loved ones. For many of these parents, the advocacy has surrounded the harm they believe was done to their children by the vaccine. They believe they are doing something for their child. Yet, when those like well-known antivaccine proponent Jenny McCarthy pour money and resources into hawking antivaccination based on her experience with her own son, what lingers in my mind is this: A child watching their celebrity parent do multiple interviews and hearing this parent say, repeatedly, that they are broken and are in need of a cure.
And this is where my sympathy for some parents runs out. Autism is not polio, it is not measles, it is not something that can be or needs to be cured. It is the way that some humans are and how their brains are built. Beyond that fact, focusing on getting rid of vaccines does not help your autistic child. Yet, that is where so many parents lock in. This is something that I saw time and time again in the community, a parent’s entire life consumed by a singular moment: The moment their child received the diagnosis. It is this moment that shapes their activism.
But at the core of it, your child is autistic and, even if you believe a vaccine is the culprit, how does removing vaccines from the public sphere make the world more livable for your child? It does nothing for them. Worse still, it creates more harm for the wider community.
Like many parents, my mother was afraid and unsure when my brother was diagnosed as a child. But for her this fear was based in something tangible. She was afraid because she knew the world, as it was then, did not make space for someone like my brother. Rather than fixating only what had occurred, she considered what could be done. While she kept abreast of the questions around vaccines and all the crank cure rumors circulating within the community, she set her sights on a different question: How do you shape the world?
Part of being able to create a new world is first being able to imagine one. In many ways, where we live allowed me to imagine a future for my brother to a degree those in other states likely could not. Minnesota has a robust history of legislation around disability rights and advocacy; there was a belief that those with developmental disabilities have a right to self-determination either on their own or in concert with their guardians and loved ones. Because of the economic and societal supports that are in place, some of which my own mother had a role in getting from concept to signed bill, my brother lives a life of independence that suits his needs and desires. He is in community with others with a range of disabilities, has a full social calendar, and lives the life of an artist participating in art shows across the state. And his life is not unique here; there are multiple options for the entire range of needs and abilities including and beyond those with autism. There was no celebrity backing the legislation that made this world possible, it was us — the individuals and families and communities ourselves — who made it a reality.
This is the activism I grew up with and was always drawn to because I never believed there was anything wrong with my brother. He did not need to change, the world needed to change. We were able to do that for him, though by no means is it a perfect world. It is just a start. But it shows that other worlds are possible.
In the summer of 2024, RFK Jr. revealed his view of autism on a popular right-wing conspiracy podcast, croaking:
“I bet you’ve never met anybody with full-blown autism your age. You know, head-banging, football helmet on, non-toilet-trained, nonverbal. I mean, I’ve never met anybody like that at my age.”
This is not an off-the-cuff comment, this is an image of autism that he has touted publicly several times. For those of us who are actually in community with people with a range of developmental disabilities, his bumbling and unkind stereotype reveals how little he truly knows. It goes without saying that there are many people his age who either are diagnosed with autism or, if they are not, it is often because the diagnosis was not available when they were young. Doing your own research here, I suppose, does not include going out and interacting with real people with autism.
But his claims also reveal a lack of imagination. Someone like RFK Jr. has likely never seen someone “like that” in his life, not because they do not exist, but because he operates in circles where people like my brother are still unwelcome. Why would I claim this feckless man as a champion for a cause that is so important to me?
Imagine what could have happened if the energy of the antivaccine movement was focused towards something that could materially improve the lives of children already diagnosed with autism. What systems and opportunities could have been created already if you imagined those with autism as people who are not broken, but different, and who can collaborate with us to create spaces that they can thrive in.
If you are someone with autism, know this: Together, we will continue to imagine better futures in the face of those who want to make us believe outmoded, damaging lies. You, like my brother, are not broken and they cannot make me believe otherwise.
Julia Shiota is a writer and editor from Minnesota. Her fiction and nonfiction work have appeared in Catapult, the Asian American Writers Workshop, Poets & Writers and elsewhere. When she isn’t writing or reading, she’s most often knitting or listening to Prince.
