America’s Go-To Autism Therapy Is Also the Most Controversial

Kaelynn Partlow doesn’t seem like she’d have haters. The friendly, energetic 29-year-old is best known for appearing on Love on the Spectrum, the Netflix reality show about the joy and agony of dating as an autistic person. These days, she lives in Greenville, South Carolina, and works with autistic kids. She also gives talks around the country and has developed a huge following on social media, where she posts videos debunking misconceptions about autism and offering advice for interacting with autistic people.

Yet Partlow has a tendency to make people mad online. There was the time she posted a video in which a colleague purposely mispronounced Zohran Mamdani’s name, drawing accusations of racism. Or when she used the phrase “human meat puppet” to refer to the practice of helping autistic people use certain types of assisted communication. Or when she suggested that highly articulate autistic people like herself aren’t given as much grace as those with low verbal skills. She deleted or apologized after each of these missteps, all of which could be chalked up to the classic autistic difficulty with reading a room.