Hate Is a Straight Line in a World of Casual Ableism

Before I even understood what a disability was, I understood what it felt like to be watched. 

Growing up with my older brother, a person with high-needs autism, public places were almost never neutral. Every sudden twist and turn, or every vocal stim that broke the ambient noise of a restaurant, was met with quiet giggles or exaggerated stares.

Children in school would mimic his bodily stims right in front of me, and some “well-meaning” adults would more often than not pull me aside with unsolicited advice.

“Dapat diyan, pinaparusahan. Hindi dapat hinahayaan na ganyan ‘yan.”

As if his condition was merely a failure of discipline, and that a few hits would cure him. I’ve been told countless times that they probably didn’t mean it, especially the children.

The adults told me that the cruelty was a symptom of either youth or ignorance, something people would outgrow once they encountered awareness and reached maturity.

But years later, in college lecture halls filled with people who supposedly knew better, it was the same. 

The laughter hadn’t vanished—it simply achieved a slicker vocabulary.

“Is he acoustic?” (slang for autistic, used as an insult) 

“No, he must be r-word.” 

I would hear those terms over and over again every time someone acted “unusual” in class. Using internet slang to turn a condition into some sort of clever punchline, and using a slur with so much offensive history as a light joke. 

“It’s not that deep. You know what we meant.”

But I would remember the disapproving stares, the whispered comments every time my brother’s pitch went high, and the countless playground arguments I’ve had on his behalf. 

It is deep.

Deep enough that despite my fierce, unconditional love for my brother, society had managed to make a child feel shame.

As I grew up, that childhood shame turned into sharp disappointment—in myself, and everyone else. I assumed college would be different. But someone would say ‘acoustic’ and an entire row would laugh. 

It taught me a harsher truth. Education, as I learned, does not remove discrimination. It just knows how to make it more socially palatable. 

Discrimination isn’t just a schoolyard behavior we grow out of—it follows us straight into adulthood. We see this dynamic play out publicly when the hosts of a podcast made cruel remarks about Joshua Aquino’s autism alongside a joke about Down syndrome. Grown men with popular platforms hide behind the excuses of “banter”, “freedom of speech”, and “impulse control” to reduce disabled people to laughs. 

That case wasn’t an isolated lapse of judgment, proven by the way they apologized—using another disorder like ADHD to justify cruel remarks, as if one diagnosis could be borrowed to mock another. The apology treated disability as an alibi, and not as people’s lives. Their response shows just how deeply normalized ableism remains in our country under the guise of content and chismis. 

I didn’t read the comments at first when it blew up. I knew I’d get hot-headed, and didn’t trust what I’d type. Anger is something I had to swallow my entire childhood. My sweet brother, who understands none of it, went about his day smiling at every family member while humming. When I finally looked, most people were defending Joshua and condemning the hosts—which I was glad of. 

But it didn’t stop me from wondering where that outrage goes when it’s an ordinary kid in public. 

Our outrage has a ceiling. We reserve it for physical violence and trending neglect, and then we file everything beneath that—the jokes, the stares, the “non-malicious” microaggressions as harmless. As long as there is no physical harm included, no harm was meant. 

However the moment we mock persons with autism, or anyone with a disability, we are comfortable with their pain. When you laugh at someone long enough and stop really seeing them, it makes leaving them out easier. 

Obviously, an actual punch isn’t a punchline. Both are not the same act. But they begin from the same decision, one that decided that my brother’s dignity is negotiable. 

The jokes make neglect feel normal. And the neglect makes the jokes feel true. That’s how it grows, that’s how it travels. Neglect doesn’t need outright villains, just a crowd who learned early not to look at people’s pain. 

Joshua Aquino is easily one of the most recognizable persons with autism in the country, but this didn’t shield him from being ridiculed. If someone as high-profile as him couldn’t escape from being turned into a joke, how about the ordinary day-to-day neurodivergent and disabled Filipinos?

Autism awareness is everywhere. But the thing is, there is a massive difference between knowing that persons with autism exist and actually respecting them. Without accountability, awareness is nothing but hollow posters in a mall where my brother is still stared at. 

But this everyday cruelty isn’t just about hurting a person’s feelings. This is about staying complicit while it directly shapes the physical world we build, the media we consume, and the laws we pass. Yes, the laughter inside a classroom and podcast booths eventually hardens into institutional neglect.

Here is what that looks like.

A server questioning my family when we hand them my brother’s PWD card, because he looks ‘normal’ at first glance. So my mother says it out loud every time: he has autism. We explain so there are no further questions, like a guaranteed law needs a witness.

Add the malls with blaring lights and noise, therapy that costs more than a family’s monthly grocery bill, the basic protections under the PWD law that goes unenforced—and a country that makes families prove their need before it honors it. 

When podcast hosts, classmates, and lawmakers view persons with autism as punchlines and burdens rather than equal citizens, their basic rights are no longer defaults but rather seen as special favors. And that mindset does not start in government halls; it starts in our chats, the streets, our circles.

Which means, it is ours to change. 

Dignity is not something my brother, Joshua Aquino, or anyone, should have to earn by acting “normal” or fitting in quietly into public spaces. It is a non-negotiable human right. 

And until we realize that casual cruelty sits on the exact same line as systemic neglect, all of our campaigns and infographics and awareness months will remain nothing but trending buzzwords. 

If we truly want inclusion, we must stop separating “harmless” jokes from actual harm.

Hate is a straight line: casual cruelty at one end, systemic neglect at the other, and every step in between leads the same way. And at the end of that line is someone real. 

Somewhere in my house as I write this, my brother is humming, smiling at whoever walks in. Trusting the world to be as kind as he is. None of us have earned that trust yet, the least we could do is make it true.