Framing Isn't Neutral
How epistemic responsibility exposes structural harm
When we speak our minds—whether we’re critiquing a system, sharing an article, or just forming a strong opinion—we’re not doing that in isolation. We’re interacting with structure. We’re participating in systems.
And that’s not just an abstract idea. A system can be a healthcare policy, a diagnostic manual, a therapeutic model, or a conversation. If you’re in it—or speaking into it—then you’re shaping it, even if just a little. That’s where epistemic responsibility comes in.
It’s not about being an expert in everything. Or having a perfectly formed take. It’s not about shutting out the opposition with facts.
It’s about being honest—structurally honest—about what you’re engaging with. That means knowing enough to avoid misrepresenting how something works. It means checking whether your conclusions are grounded in how the system actually operates, not just how it feels to you.
And yeah, that’s harder than just reacting.
But if we’re going to live in a system-shaped world—and we do—then understanding the shape of what we’re pressing on isn’t optional. It’s part of being here.
Let’s consider a concrete example.
I’ve been critical of deficit-based psychology for years.
When psychology frames autism as a disorder, it doesn’t begin by asking what autistic cognition is. It begins by measuring what it isn’t. It takes neurotypical norms—of social behavior, emotional expression, communication style—and treats every divergence from those expectations as a sign of dysfunction. It defines from the outside in, using observable difference as diagnostic evidence, and then presents that framework as objective science.
But the structure it relies on is not neutral. The so-called norms are not universal—they’re shaped by social preferences, historical bias, and behavioral standards fundamentally incompatible with how autistic cognition actually works. We’re not failing to follow a shared path. We’re following a different one, based on a different internal logic. But when a system refuses to model that logic—when it builds itself around deviation instead of understanding—what it produces isn’t clarity or care. It produces erasure.
That’s not a rhetorical flourish. It’s a structural failure.
And it’s not hidden in nuance. You don’t need a clinical degree to spot it. It’s right there in the diagnostic machinery: observe surface behavior, compare it to neurotypical performance, and classify every discrepancy as a deficit. There’s no model of autistic attention. No framework for autistic logic. No system-level attempt to understand from the inside. Just behavioral mapping, filtered through normative expectation, repackaged as clinical truth.
And so, when autistic people say, “This isn’t how I think,” we’re not challenging science—we’re pointing out that the system was never designed to recognize us. And the longer it continues to define autism by what it lacks, the more damage it does—because it doesn’t just misrepresent our experience. It informs how the world treats us.
That’s what epistemic responsibility is meant to call out. Not just errors in fact, but distortions in framing. When a system misrepresents the people it’s meant to serve—and when that misrepresentation is baked into the structure—it becomes ethically irresponsible to keep acting as if the system is neutral just because it’s institutional.
This matters because these structures scale. They shape public understanding, medical practice, school interventions, insurance policies, and everyday perceptions. They teach parents to see their child as broken. They teach autistic people to see themselves as problems to be fixed. And the worst part is that most of the people inside the system don’t even mean harm. They just never questioned the frame.
So no—I don’t need to know every subcategory in the DSM to speak to its failure here. I need to know what it does. And what it does is define autistic people through the lens of dysfunction while systematically excluding our own models of self. That’s not care. That’s institutional dominance.
And if a system produces harm because it refuses to model the people it governs, then it deserves critique from the people who live inside that harm.
That critique is epistemically valid because it is structurally accurate. It’s what happens when someone takes responsibility not just for what they believe, but for how those beliefs function inside the systems they touch.
This isn’t theoretical. It’s existential. I’ve lived inside misalignment. I’ve felt the weight of being defined by frameworks that couldn’t see me. I’ve spent years building internal models to explain systems that were never explained to me. And I’ve learned that clarity doesn’t come from credentials—it comes from alignment. When you understand the structure of what you’re pushing against, your voice doesn’t need permission. It has precision.
That’s the point of epistemic responsibility. Not to demand certainty. Not to test ideological alignment. But to insist that if your words interact with a system—especially one that governs how people are seen or treated—then those words carry weight. They don’t just reflect the world. They participate in it. They affect it.
And if we want systems that actually serve people—especially people who’ve been misrepresented or pathologized—then we need more structural honesty, not less. We need to stop pretending that neutrality is harmless and start recognizing that framing is power.
You don’t have to know everything. But you do have to know what you’re doing enough not to reinforce what you don’t understand. And if that feels like a high bar—it is. But it’s the world we live in. And if we’re going to build something better, it starts with this:
Understanding is not performance.
Belief is not exemption.
Knowledge is not ownership.
It’s a responsibility. ∞