No One Was Autistic, Gluten Intolerant or Transgender In The 80s

Submission 188

About

No One Was Autistic, Gluten Intolerant or Transgender In the '80s or There Were No Autistic People In the '80s refers to a viral post by X / Twitter user @MilaLovesJoe reading, "Remember the 1970s and 1980s when no one was autistic, gluten intolerant, or transgender. So what happened?" The post was made in early September 2024 and was met with significant backlash online, inspiring users to share examples of autistic and transgender people who were prominent in the 1970s and 1980s. It also inspired memes, including posts sharing ironic examples of autistic people from the given decades.

Origin

On September 1st, 2024, X^[1] user @MilaLovesJoe posted, "Remember the 1970s and 1980s when no one was autistic, gluten intolerant, or transgender. So what happened?" garnering over 74,000 likes and 10,000 reposts in five days.

Spread

The post gained significant backlash over the following days from people insisting that autistic, gluten intolerant and transgender people existed prior to the 1970s and 1980s and that awareness of these people has simply increased over the years.

For example, on September 2nd, 2024, X^[2] user @_AnonHater_ commented, "Autism has been medically recognized since the 40s, the term Transgender was coined in the 60s and gluten intolerance/celiac since the 50s you absolute knob," garnering over 14,000 likes in four days.

On the same day, X^[3] user @realKellyKnight made a comment claiming they were diagnosed with autism in 1958, the year he was born, writing, "Just because we didn’t call it what we do today does not mean it didn’t exist then," garnering over 19,000 likes in four days.

On September 3rd, X^[4] user @ink0wright posted a photo of David Byrne from the band Talking Heads, who has claimed to be on the autism spectrum in the past,^[5] garnering over 62,000 likes in three days. On the same day, X^[6] user @MossAnimation posted images of Willy Wonka, Ariel from The Little Mermaid, Charlotte from Charlotte's Web and Egon from Ghostbusters in response to the post, garnering over 8,000 likes in the same span of time.

On September 4th, 2024, X^[7] user @ManthaMoment posted a clip of Kate Bush from the music video for "Babooshka" in response to the post, garnering over 117,000 likes in two days. On the same day, X^[8] user @DylanTweetin posted a photograph of Lou Reed kissing Rachel Humphreys, a transgender woman, in the '70s, garnering over 140,000 likes in the same span of time.