I know you think you’re disagreeing with me, but in fact we are in total agreement when it comes to the substance of your post. You will note, for example, that in my article I discuss the fact that Hughes’s poetry is exemplary because he is able to make a subject difficult to render into poetry into beautiful poems. I said he is great because of his quality AND his substance — that the substance is made poetic because of his quality. The two necessarily interact in his work. Content matters, and I have always said content matters. If I emphasize style, it’s because style has been denigrated in the arts for far too long, and it needs defense.

Yes, minorities and women and gays have in the past been dismissed and hated and suppressed in the past. If that is still happening in the present, it’s happening among the very kinds of people who supposedly oppose racism, sexism, and homophobia — how many right-wing conservative people are even in the theater, or any of the other arts? This is a problem among the left, which was in many ways my point in the article. You cannot replace racism, sexism, and homophobia by changing the target groups — all you get is more discrimination by more people. I want to judge the arts by their quality and content and not by the race, sex, etc. of the creators. Like I said, the latter can come to play in helping to understand certain aspects of their work, but they shouldn’t be in play in determining the quality of the work itself. A terrible poet is a terrible poet, regardless of race, sex, or anything else. A great poet is a great poet, regardless of race, sex, etc.

I’m very much in favor of a transitionary period in which we judge works by their quality rather than the identity of who made things. When I read something, I want to not care a whit whether the person it white or black, male or female, Chinese or Japanese or German or Nigerian or Colombian or American or Mexican or Czech or Malian or Australian or Zimbabwean or anything else. I want my daughter’s theater work and music to be judged good or bad because it’s good or bad, not because she’s a half-Hispanic female. I want my son’s art work and music to be judged good or bad because it’s good or bad, not because he’s half-Hispanic. I want my poetry and plays to be judged good or bad because they’re good or bad, not because I’m a white, straight male, and not because I’m autistic.

The world isn’t safe for me because too many people — on the left, especially, I have learned — are extremely prejudiced against people on the autism spectrum. I am extremely familiar with institutional discrimination because of my autism. My life is nothing but a daily struggle. I have to hide my autism to the best of my ability to get and keep a job — and the minute someone finds out, they fire me. I have literally been told “We have no intention of accommodating you” by someone as they fired me for being autistic. I also discovered in the aftermath that the federal government is not at all there to protect me from discrimination, but to protect the business from me.

In other words, I would actually benefit from identitarian politics when it comes to my poetry and plays. Should we decide that some talented non-autistic playwright should fail to have a career so that I can have one? What kind of poetry and plays do you think I would write if I had an advantage by being autistic? Would I continue to try to create high-quality work, or would I be able to ride my autism to fame and fortune regardless of quality?

And how do you think people would actually treat me and my works if it was known my plays were produced primarily because I’m autistic? I’d simply be the token autistic person. Am I being included just to shut me up, to be the token so that the theaters can produce the non-autistic playwrights they prefer to produce? That’s how many would perceive me. My work wouldn’t be taken seriously because of the underlying assumption that people have only heard of me because I’m autistic.

I’m afraid the world WON’T change, not that it is. I don’t see change happening. I see the same racism, sexism, and other forms of prejudice being promulgated as being what’s most important when it comes to the arts. Changing who you discriminate against is still discrimination.

Give me new ideas beautifully written, beautifully painted, beautifully composed any day, regardless of race, sex, sexual orientation, or anything else. Be Langston Hughes, writing difficult things beautifully and identifying with far more than who he himself was — even when everyone else was insisting that his identity was the only thing that mattered.