Burden – A Heavily Loaded Word

Back when I was still on Twitter, before it became the land of Nazis, bots, and Nazi bots, I found myself delving into a discussion with author Michael Grant about the representation of autism in literature. Specifically, the discussion was about the respresentation of autism in Michael Grant’s Gone series. Please note the phrasing. I can’t say I was engaged in an online discussion with Mr. Grant, because he ignored everything I said. As far as I can tell, Mr. Grant only responded to people he was relatively certain weren’t Autistic. Regardless, I expressed my thoughts and then directed people who were interested to a thoughtful and concise review. Corrine Duyvis’s review of Michael Grant’s Gone series was specifically written with an eye to autism representation in the books. Disability in KidLit, Review of the Gone series

This heated discussion centred around the word “Burden.” Michael Grant downplayed his suggestion that a mother would be lying if she didn’t tell her autistic son he’s a burden, suggesting all children are inherently burdens. This attempt at a joke on the subject demonstrates a lack of empathy concerning the experiences Autistic people have had with the word.

A writer as prolific as Michael Grant must understand the importance of words, both in connotation and denotation. The denotation of the word burden is onerous: A burden makes life difficult for the person who shoulders it, with very little resulting reward.

The connotation of this word, for Autistics, is much worse. It carries the weight of their existence being a burden. This sentiment was echoed by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in April of 2025, when he listed off things he believed Autistic people would never be able to do, and called them a threat to the American way of life. Autistics are widely portrayed as burdens in all forms of media (books, television, news articles). This also applies to the Disabled.

Consider the movie/book Me Before You. The entire plot hinges on the idea the Disabled character’s life is a nightmare. The character took it as a given that he was a burden to those around him. The marketing for the movie included the ironic slogan “Live Boldly.” The Disabled character was left out of that slogan. In fact, his death by assisted suicide and subsequent the subsequent wishes of his last will and testament set up the non-Disabled main character with enough money to do the things he had told her would qualify as “Living Boldly.” He believed she could not do any of these things if he were alive. He also appeared to believe that dealing with his own depression could not result in being able to live boldly. At one point in the novel, he had a “best before date” tattooed on himself. It was the date of his injury. He never appeared to consider the possibility of being able to live boldly with a disability.

Consider the way journalists report on the murder of Disabled people. There isn’t a week that goes by where I don’t read of another Disabled person being murdered by a family member/caregiver. The articles and news segments reporting on these events almost always include the idea that the murderer was devoted to the Disabled person, but was also burdened by them. The language of the articles tends to forgive the murderer before they’ve come close to facing consequences. It also blames the victim for their own death. If their existence wasn’t such a burden, it wouldn’t have been necessary to murder them.

Going back to autism specifically, some Autistic people have been convinced to end their lives by Assisted Suicide because they supposedly were too much of a burden for their caregivers. Language like that used of RFK Jr. in April of 2025 only make these kinds of outcomes more likely.

Consider the narrative created by Autism Speaks, the organisation which supposedly represents Autistics. One of their propaganda pieces included an on-camera interview with one of their board members. She sat with an interviewer while her Autistic child played in the background and told the story of the day she had planned to commit murder/suicide. Her Autistic child was within ear-shot while she discussed how she’d planned to drive them both off a bridge, and the only thing that stopped her was the thought of how her non-autistic child would suffer.

Autism Speaks has a history of centring parents in its rhetoric. They use fear-mongering and tragedy as a tool for fundraising. They have suggested that having an Autistic child will destroy families, particularly ripping apart marriages. RFK Jr. said the same thing in April of 2025. They’ve referred to Autistics as “Tsunamis” and “Epidemics.” RFK Jr. has also referred to Autistic people in this way.

Michael Grant admitted in his response to Corinne’s review that he did very little research on autism before he included an Autistic character. Her review demonstrated that the result of this lack of research was to reinforce some of the most toxic characterisations of autism: tragedy, pitiable, nightmare, painful etc. RFK Jr. framed Autistic people’s lives as tragedies. No amount of research would have made Michael Grant capable of writing an Autistic character with more empathy than an actually Autistic author could have written the character. The same is true of non-Autistic people who insinuate that someone they call “high-functioning” is less qualified that they are to talk about autism, because they have a “high-support needs” Autistic child.

Michael wrote more than one book in this series with this same narrative. One of his fans pointed out that his opinion of Autistics has dramatically improved since reading these books. Is that what we should be focused on? Should we consider it a win that a person who previously was very ignorant of autism is slightly less so after reading these books?

This entire conversation started when a woman pointed out her Autistic child read this book and saw his most deeply seeded fears confirmed: He is a burden.

We should not be centring the perspectives of non-Autistic’s over Autistics when it comes to this aspect of the Gone series.

Michael Grant’s flippant response (at best) demonstrated that he doesn’t appreciate how deep the fear of being seen as a burden runs in Disability culture. He doesn’t understand how it pushes the Disabled to suicide, or keeps them in perpetual fear that someone will one day try to kill them to relieve the world of the burden of their life. He could never understand the level of terror RFK Jr. inspired when he said Autistic people in the United States would have their names put on a database. If Grant doesn’t understand these things, is he the correct person to be writing such a character? Does it do more good than harm, or the other way around? While you consider the answer to this question, consider also that Michael Grant suggested that since the boy in question was able to think about how the perception that his life was a burden hurt him and to express these thoughts mean the boy could not be very Autistic. However his character was written, this sentiment lands shockingly close to things RFK Jr. said about Autistic people in April 2025.