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In this April Autism Awareness Month episode, I explore how our society and medical education system pathologizes those who resist conformity. The video examines my journey as an autistic person navigating medical school and how traits that should be valued—honesty, directness, authenticity—became labeled as “disabilities.”
I discuss the fundamental dysfunction in systems that reward sociopathic tendencies while punishing earnestness. Throughout the video, I analyze how medical education attempts to mold diverse individuals into a single archetype based on cishet white male norms, and how this affected me as a Nigerian immigrant with multiple marginalized identities.
This first part questions whether the problem lies with those labeled as “disabled” or with institutions that cannot accommodate authentic human diversity. It’s about recognizing when systems label us as defective to avoid confronting their own dysfunction stemming from decades long legacies of trauma and abuse.
#audhd #medicalschool #medicine #autismawareness #autism #adhd
Episode links:
instagram video link: https://www.instagram.com/p/DBWm89QtHtx/
white supremacy culture website: https://www.whitesupremacyculture.info/characteristics.html
Timestamps:
00:00 “I am disabled because society is dysfunctional”
01:00 Introduction and autism awareness context
03:15 Control is enforced by demonizing resistance
07:00 Autistic traits are pathologized in a system that rewards dishonesty
10:00 The “hidden curriculum” is about hiding our real selves
13:00 Performing cis-het-white maleness is required to survive medicine
18:00 Why I am bad at performing whiteness
21:00 Disability is society’s fault, not the individual
25:00 Refusing torture ended my time at UCSF
27:00 Triangulation and administrative dysfunction
29:00 Constant stress as a tool for exploitation
It’s 2:05am, april 29, 2025 as I upload and I’ll try a typical description this time. I also have sources to link, and notes to add. This was really special to film, edit and put out before the month of April is done.
I love myself so much, I love my brain, I love being autistic and I love the fact that you’re reading this. I need to say that over and over because I’ve lived realities where I did not know if this day would come. I hope the message finds those it needs to, and resonates. Every single one of us is powerful, valuable and treasured beyond measure.
I’m hoping to put out part 2 soon. I thought this deserved to be broken up into two, so many themes and crevices reached into, so many topics interwoven with great emotional depth. I’m so glad to be back sharing post technical hiatus (editing and storage learnings), so lucky so privileged, so grateful to you all.
signing off at 2:28am i’ll schedule this to post sometime later today.
came back to edit timestamps and add to my notes (after clipping the start of the video yesterday: the first 3 minutes were blank, i love making mistakes, bc i get to learn: now i know how clipping works) at 11:12am on april 30, 2025 🙂
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