The so-called “loneliness epidemic” has been talked about for years.
Young men in particular seem to be more isolated than ever, spending vast amounts of time on the internet, where they’re susceptible to radical points of view on, among other things, male identity. That’s resulting in a clear rightward drift in young men’s politics, and creating renewed concern about how to counteract the extreme ideologies they’re being exposed to.
Eric Garcia has been writing about the ways that men with autism express their gender identities. Garcia is the senior Washington correspondent at the Independent, the author of the book "We're Not Broken: Changing the Autism Conversation."
Garcia himself grew up autistic, and joined The Show to discuss how he sees a lot of overlap between the struggles men with autism have been dealing with for decades and many of the current issues confronting young men in general.
Full conversation
ERIC GARCIA: We're only now seeing with largely neurotypical young men what I'd been seeing for a long time with autistic young men online ... because I was a young autisic man online.
SAM DINGMAN: Talk a little bit about that. What was that like for you?
GARCIA: Like, you know, I'm 34. And, you know, I think I found a lot of solace as a very isolated teenager in the suburbs of California on music forums and — I'm dating myself — MySpace.
DINGMAN: [LAUGHS] That's OK. I remember MySpace.
GARCIA: It was a place where I could puff myself up, and I could argue, and I could have the force of my idea. And I could be bigger than I was in reality. And at the In time, like, I fully admit that I was that I said a lot of racist and homophobic things around that time when I was younger. Because it felt kind of liberating, like, hey, I'm using an anonymous account like with a screen name, you know, like, and I could say whatever I want. There's no accountability for that.
DINGMAN: Eric ... you're making me think about some other conversations I've had about this, and I'm curious to know if this is how you felt. That sometimes that type of behavior that you're describing amongst young men in particular, you know, it's less that they're saying these racist or homophobic things because they believe them, and more because they know that they're gonna get a reaction, and that it feels good to take up space in public life, even if it's virtual.
GARCIA: Yes, yes, absolutely. You know, because it's like, there's this feeling that you're powerless in real life or IRL — as they say on the internet. And I was really nerdy. I was a big bookworm growing up. I was overweight. I just was very awkward. Like I said, I was autistic growing up, and I just didn't know how to relate to my peers. And on the internet, there was this feeling that like, if you could say the most shocking thing, you could get a rise out of people.
DINGMAN: To me, what you're getting at there is nuance in a conversation about masculinity, which is something that is vanishingly rare in public discourse. I mean, we have a difficult enough time talking about masculinity amongst neurotypical men, and I would imagine that it's even harder to find onversations at all — let alone nuanced ones — in the autistic community.
GARCIA: It's weird because in one way, I'm really glad that nowadays we don't focus solely on autistic boys anymore. I'm really, really glad that we focus on girls, trans people and non-binary people. But ... feel like I don't want to do it at the expense of ignoring the questions of masculinity. Because for better or for worse we're still going to have to deal with men. We're still going to live with them, you know. So, like raising and steering good men is really important to me.
... And then what I thought about is like, what were the things that got that kept me from being disconnected growing up? I'm an Eagle Scout, you know, so I had a lot of very positive men that way. I had my stepdad. I had, my guitar teacher who's still one of my best friends. Strong men who are secure in their masculinity, but who don't use it to bully other people.
DINGMAN: That all makes sense, Eric. ... I know you mentioned MySpace, but, you know, you mentioned you were 34, which means you were growing up in a time that comparatively speaking was way less online. Where ... if you were looking for community amongst other men, or even being compelled to find community amongst other men, it was much less likely to be in a virtual, more radicalized, more extreme, more binary sort of space.
GARCIA: Yeah, so like I spent a lot of time on heavy metal forums when I was younger. And like heavy metal is extremely masculine. If I think about how I got into those toxic ways of thinking and those toxic behaviors in my time, I think about now. How much more aggressively online this generation is. Especially when they were locked in ... they just kind of went down internet rabbit holes.
We think about now how we've seen graph after graph about how young people are drinking less and are having sex less and are just spending more time on the internet. You know, it's funny because I think about it, and it was like when I was coming up, I was going on these forums because as an autistic person, I couldn't relate and I couldn't connect with my peers.
I was going online because I couldn't go out and party and drink and get laid with my with my classmates, you know. Whereas now it's almost as if young men now, instead of going out and partying and drinking and getting laid ... like high schoolers used to do, they're almost preferring being online.
DINGMAN: Right, right, yeah, that's really interesting. Well, do you think there are elements of dealing with autism that make a person particularly receptive to the kinds of arguments that somebody like an Andrew Tate or, you know, one of these radical —
GARCIA: Elon Musk? ... Let's talk about Elon Musk. I don't like talking about Elon Musk, but we got to talk about it, particularly because he is an autistic man, right? That has Asperger's syndrome — but even though Asperger's syndrome is no longer a thing.
Like, I don't think there's anything inherently biological about it. But I do think that when you, as I said, because there's difficulty connecting with people, there's difficulty with social isolation. I think that that primes someone for being radicalized online.
And then I think also there's the tendency with — I don't think that it's necessarily something about the autism brain, but I think that like a lot of us have special interests. And when we get involved in something, we get involved into it like very, very intensely. Like whether it's, you know — the common stereotype is trains or dinosaurs. But that's another form of masculinity too, you know. Like how many of our dads indulge in their masculinity by watching World War II documentaries? Falling into an interest really heavily ... predispose someone to what you're going to want to get take everything to to to the farthest extreme.
DINGMAN: I hear what you're saying about this, this idea of going deep on certain subjects, like really indulging in in fixations on certain things. But, you know, we've also been talking about the gender roles component of this. And there are ... studies that suggest that there are links between mental disorders and incels, the so-called "involuntarily celibate" men.
GARCIA: Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think a lot of it is that we do see that a lot of autistic men or a lot of these "incels" also self-identify as having mental disorders or having depression or having anxiety. It's so easy to take — to internalize all that. And just think that you're just not worth anybody's time, right?
So like if you, you're constantly told that you're not fully a man if you're autistic, or if you're told that like if you're autistic and you have difficulty dating or getting a job or all these other kind of totems. Or if you have depression, that makes you — or you have a mental illness — that makes it harder for you to hold a job. That it's very, very easy for you to see yourself as a failure as a man. It's very, very easy to fall into these, kind of, extremist ideologies. At least that's how I see it.
