Episode 24
Tylenol, Autism, and RFK's Dangerous Search for Someone to Blame
When a bad headline blames Tylenol for autism, L2’s had enough.
This is her blistering, hilarious takedown of pseudo-science, mom-shaming, and the politicians who thrive on both.
It starts with keyboards, ends with capitalism, and somehow makes perfect sense in between.
Click play, have a listen, and then check out her Stan Store.
Mentioned in this episode:
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Transcript
I asked this question of my adoring fans,
Speaker:and by that I mean the people who follow me on LinkedIn. Only
Speaker:a large portion of hate follow me, but it was a. It's
Speaker:a real question that I have that I would like to just
Speaker:gather together and answer for among
Speaker:the brilliant people who surround me and are out there in
Speaker:the universe. And it's a real question, so. So
Speaker:if you have the answer, hit me with it. Do you think
Speaker:my kids are neurodivergent
Speaker:because I took Tylenol
Speaker:when I was pregnant? Or is it
Speaker:possibly because I can't wear
Speaker:socks that feel too towely inside? And
Speaker:the idea of Jello as like
Speaker:a thing that exists makes me violently
Speaker:gag. And I am trying to not do that right now.
Speaker:And I can't eat beans because they
Speaker:taste like a cat's tongue feels. And I have
Speaker:all of the maps memorized from the original Ms. Pac
Speaker:man game and I can play them in my head and I
Speaker:do. And when I was like 9
Speaker:or 10, my favorite thing to do was
Speaker:impressions of Bob Dole, and I ran around
Speaker:and did them frequently, which my dad thought
Speaker:was hilarious, but the rest of the world did not understand.
Speaker:And I have a sandwich that I've
Speaker:been eating my whole life that does not change and
Speaker:it cannot change. And if you change it, I will not
Speaker:eat it. And I have a pretty encyclopedic
Speaker:knowledge of computer keyboards. Like, I wish that was a
Speaker:joke, but there is nothing that I love
Speaker:more than computer keyboards. I can tell you what kind of
Speaker:keyboard you're using, by the way it sounds. And if I walk
Speaker:past keyboards in a store, I have to type on them to see if they're
Speaker:satisfactory. I have multiple. I literally have a drawer full
Speaker:of keyboards because sometimes I pick my keyboards based on how I feel
Speaker:that day. And again, not a joke. Not a joke.
Speaker:So do you think it's. Do you think it's the Tylenol, or do you think
Speaker:it's all of that other stuff? Or. Okay, let me give you another example. Is
Speaker:it possibly the Tylenol? Or is it the fact that my husband,
Speaker:who is my children's father, has an encyclopedic
Speaker:knowledge of audio and stereo equipment and
Speaker:can educate you on any piece of equipment
Speaker:from any point in time in history up to and including,
Speaker:like, what it costs and whether it's worth it and he can
Speaker:like, fix mechanical things? Or it could it possibly be that he has
Speaker:an innate talent for never reading the room
Speaker:before telling an awkward dad joke that lands
Speaker:horribly? Is it do you think it's possibly
Speaker:those things? Or is it that maybe one
Speaker:time across two pregnancies
Speaker:I might have taken Tylenol because according to our
Speaker:federal government and the jackasses they're
Speaker:in, it's the Tylenol and
Speaker:also the vaccines that have been proven to have
Speaker:no effect on autism rates whatsoever.
Speaker:So now we're blaming Tylenol and
Speaker:vaccines, both of which have been disproven.
Speaker:And there are a lot of keyboard warriors out there who
Speaker:would like you to believe that this is a Harvard study that says
Speaker:that Tylenol is the cause of autism, which is not true.
Speaker:And if that's the misinformation you're gonna show up with, get
Speaker:the fuck outta here. Please go somewhere else.
Speaker:Hopefully somebody with. Somewhere with a whole bunch of other. I
Speaker:was going to call them Tylenol deniers, but I don't think that's the right word.
Speaker:Tylenol scapegoats. I don't know, something like that. Go
Speaker:over there because you guys are all going to get the communicable diseases and share
Speaker:them amongst yourself and the gene pool will take care of that problem itself. Like
Speaker:you just please do us that favor. Go over there.
Speaker:But the rest of us who know that this is batshit crazy
Speaker:and absolutely bonkers would like you to
Speaker:not bring this nonsense into our existence. Like, let's be
Speaker:clear, rfk, who is beyond all behind all of this nonsense,
Speaker:said, what was it six months ago, that he was going to
Speaker:know what the cause of autism is by September.
Speaker:He put a firm date on something that
Speaker:require, that would require extensive
Speaker:scientific and medical research,
Speaker:both of which probably would have to be
Speaker:global work done in many, many different
Speaker:environments that would take far longer than six months.
Speaker:He wasn't doing scientific research, he was doing
Speaker:market research. But he said that he was going to get this answer
Speaker:within this very, very complex scientific and medical
Speaker:answer within six months by doing no science and no medicine.
Speaker:So when it all came down to it, he pulled something out of thin air.
Speaker:Something that magically, magically just
Speaker:by, by the strike of who knows what.
Speaker:I can't even imagine why he would pick a pharmaceutical. Oh wait,
Speaker:maybe it's because he makes all of his money by referring
Speaker:people for lawsuits against pharmaceutical companies.
Speaker:So if he can provide some, or if he can prove some sort of large
Speaker:scale long term injury, quote unquote, prove, really all
Speaker:he's doing is suggesting it and letting other people do the work. And by the
Speaker:work, I mean the frivolous stupid shit that nobody should
Speaker:have time for, but if he can make the recommendation,
Speaker:he can also refer people to his
Speaker:unscrupulous buddies who will file lawsuits on these things
Speaker:and make him just a shit ton of money. And are you supposed to do
Speaker:stuff like that when you're running a government agency? Doesn't. Isn't that
Speaker:one of those, like, conflict of interest things? Of course it fucking
Speaker:is. You are not supposed to be lining your own pockets
Speaker:with your government job. That is not the way that anything is
Speaker:supposed to work. However, nobody in this administration gives a
Speaker:fuck, and clearly nobody in the organizations that
Speaker:are supposed to be checking and balancing them gives enough
Speaker:of a fuck to do anything. So he's lining his
Speaker:pockets through various and sundry
Speaker:and many, many unscrupulous things. This was never about Tylenol.
Speaker:It was never about vaccines. It was about creating a false
Speaker:narrative so that the wellness influencer parading as our HHS
Speaker:secretary can find a way to sell
Speaker:more snake oil. Because that's all he knows how to do,
Speaker:is sell snake oil. And he is further
Speaker:supported by the ultimate seller of the
Speaker:snake oil. And here's what's adorable. I'm not regulated by the
Speaker:fcc. Donald Trump can't pressure anybody to take me off the air.
Speaker:Not that I have the reach that, say, a late night host has,
Speaker:because obviously I do not. But I'm just saying
Speaker:my podcast is not regulated by anybody.
Speaker:And so you're stuck with me. I can say all
Speaker:the quiet parts out loud because there is no government agency that's going
Speaker:to show up at my door and threaten to take my licensing because I don't,
Speaker:I don't have a license for, like, anything. Like, I have,
Speaker:I've only had a couple of them. I have a mortgage license. Does that count?
Speaker:I don't think so. I think it's. I think my mortgage license is still active.
Speaker:I'm pretty sure I pay for it every year. I don't know, I was licensed
Speaker:in like a bunch of states too. But anyway, that's just a little call out
Speaker:to Jimmy Kimmel, who I don't like love or anything, but he
Speaker:should not have been shut off the air for
Speaker:anything that he said. But anyway. And Donald Trump should not be
Speaker:able to pressure news stations into feeling like they're going to lose their license if
Speaker:they don't stop broadcasting the things that are put on their schedule
Speaker:by a national organization, a private organization that doesn't have to answer to
Speaker:fricking Donald Trump. Anyway, so back to
Speaker:my original question. Do you think it's possible that it's the
Speaker:Tylenol or it's the other wildly
Speaker:neurodivergent things that happened well before my children are born
Speaker:that we know to have a genetic component
Speaker:that I was generous enough to pass down to them and my
Speaker:husband was generous enough to pass down to them. They also got the
Speaker:smirk that he gets when he's about to do something shitty.
Speaker:And I don't mean like shitty like mean. I mean like shitty like a prank
Speaker:or like misdirection, which is like something he loves to do.
Speaker:And so I didn't realize that it was possible to have three
Speaker:people in your house create blind rage within you
Speaker:without saying a word. But they all do the same
Speaker:smirk. And it is like. It's like a button. Like
Speaker:it's just like a button they pushed. And I have to walk away because
Speaker:I'll yell at my husband, but I'm not going to yell at my kids. And
Speaker:they'll look at me and they'll go, did we do the dad face? You're like,
Speaker:yes, don't do it.
Speaker:I lived with that for many years before you were born. And I did not
Speaker:expect it to multiply. Hate it. Don't make
Speaker:that face. Anyway, so I have a suspicion that
Speaker:it in fact was not the Tylenol that I probably took.
Speaker:I don't actually remember taking it at all during my pregnancy. I was
Speaker:both pregnancies. I was pretty good about not taking medication. I think I took.
Speaker:I probably took a very small amount of anxiety medication during my first
Speaker:pregnancy because my dad was diagnosed with cancer and that did like a
Speaker:whole thing. And so they
Speaker:gave me anxiety medication for a couple of days just to like calm things down.
Speaker:And so I probably. I think I took like one or two of those, but
Speaker:I don't remember taking any, any other medication while I was pregnant,
Speaker:except like, yeah, I don't remember now. It's very possible
Speaker:that I had a headache or something and I took a Tylenol.
Speaker:That is the thing that would happen. But I have zero recollection of it. And
Speaker:it's entirely possible that I took exactly zero of it. And
Speaker:the likelihood of. Of it being Tylenol related based
Speaker:on my taking exactly zero of it. Also, I like that they called
Speaker:out the brand name. I think he tried. I think they were saying the brand
Speaker:name because he can't say acetaminophen like he tried and he
Speaker:failed miserably. I think it's possible that they don't
Speaker:know that it's called paracetamol in the rest of the world
Speaker:because he certainly can't say that. So it makes me wonder, like, is it
Speaker:just American Tylenol? Like, is it. If you're in another
Speaker:country and it's technically called paracetamol, are you
Speaker:safe? Are those kids out of the woods? Because they, they
Speaker:didn't address that. And that seems like a differentiator, because I don't
Speaker:know if they know this, but autism isn't only in the US There are other
Speaker:autistic people in this world, and that's wild. It's not
Speaker:wild. It's obvious. But to them, who knows?
Speaker:There's another aspect to this, though, that probably needs a little bit more
Speaker:airtime than we're getting. Like, it's fun to make fun of it, because if we
Speaker:don't laugh, we're going to cry. And trust me, I do plenty of that too.
Speaker:But, like, the whole goal here is one, to
Speaker:drive revenue or drive money into RFK's pockets, because that's all he cares about and
Speaker:that is the only thing that's important to him. And he will sacrifice the public
Speaker:health of the people whose public health he is responsible for
Speaker:in a minute to make $5. No question about that. Very clear, very
Speaker:obvious, no question. So there's that. But then also,
Speaker:let's break apart this narrative. They are saying
Speaker:that autism is caused by consumption of
Speaker:Tylenol for minor aches and pains while
Speaker:pregnant. Do people who are assigned male
Speaker:at birth get pregnant? No. At
Speaker:least not usually. So that leaves
Speaker:only one portion of the population who they could
Speaker:blame a public health crisis on. And I'm not calling it a public health crisis.
Speaker:That's what, that's how they're treating it. That leaves only one portion of the population,
Speaker:and that is people who have carried children who tend by
Speaker:and large to be assigned female at birth, most of whom, not all of
Speaker:whom, most of whom identify as
Speaker:women, some of whom identify as non binary, but most of whom identify as women.
Speaker:So we have an administration that has worked
Speaker:for the entirety of its existence and prior
Speaker:to lay the groundwork to strip bodily
Speaker:autonomy from every woman in the US So that they can
Speaker:decide what women can and cannot do with their bodies and what,
Speaker:what rights and freedoms should be permitted to women based on
Speaker:what they think is appropriate. And they've taken away
Speaker:Roe, and states that follow their lead are
Speaker:putting in harsh restrictions on abortion care
Speaker:and your ability to access certain services and your ability to access
Speaker:birth control has been affected in those places and in many other places.
Speaker:And this idea of, you know,
Speaker:they, they parrot this idea of the quote
Speaker:unquote traditional American family with the, with good
Speaker:subservient woman at home and the nuclear
Speaker:or the head of the family male who is
Speaker:responsible for all of the hard thinking things. And that's what they want you to
Speaker:believe. So they've done so
Speaker:much to reinforce these incredibly
Speaker:disgusting, antiquated ideas that further
Speaker:relegate women and reduce their access to
Speaker:independence and healthcare and freedom and all
Speaker:of those fun things. So now on top of that, let's create
Speaker:a narrative that if your kid's autistic, it's your fault. If
Speaker:your kid's autistic, it's because you had a headache and couldn't just
Speaker:muscle through it. If your kid's autistic, it's because you
Speaker:thought that your pain meant anything
Speaker:and you couldn't just, you couldn't just suffer through it in
Speaker:the name of taking care of your children. Why aren't you a better mom? Why
Speaker:don't you care about your kids? Why would you make such
Speaker:disastrous decisions for your children? That's the narrative, that's what
Speaker:they're trying to spell out. Not that we have
Speaker:identified the cause of what we perceive
Speaker:to be an escalating issue in our country. But again,
Speaker:women, this is your fault you did this. You should feel
Speaker:more guilty for the fact that your kid was diagnosed with
Speaker:autism. You should feel responsible for it.
Speaker:It's your fault you did this. As if just existing
Speaker:as a mother or a parent isn't
Speaker:enough cause for guilt. Because let's be honest, if
Speaker:you are, if you have children, and I'm
Speaker:speaking specifically to my own feminine
Speaker:experience with having children, I'm not saying that this doesn't happen
Speaker:to men, but I think it very specifically happens to women and
Speaker:parents who identify as non binary who are perceived to be the people
Speaker:who should be the primary caretakers. Your husband is too busy
Speaker:doing the jobs and making the monies and being a productive member of
Speaker:society. And you should be home, quiet, barefoot and taking
Speaker:care of your children, right? So they, you're put in a
Speaker:situation from day one where if you try to exist in this world that
Speaker:doesn't really allow for that to begin with, even that if that's what you want,
Speaker:you're already at a disadvantage for how people perceive you. And
Speaker:whether it matters to you how people perceive you or not, we
Speaker:internalize that from day one. There is, I can't think of a single
Speaker:person who has been able to fully deprogram from
Speaker:the idea of traditional motherhood. Now that doesn't mean that we
Speaker:Don't. That doesn't mean that we subscribe to it. It doesn't
Speaker:mean that we follow along with
Speaker:that because we think we're supposed to. But the ideas are ingrained.
Speaker:They're in there. And choosing the opposite is often a
Speaker:very conscious thing that we do. Or even if it's, even if it's
Speaker:a natural thing, like we all have internalized misogyny. We
Speaker:all have these internalized processes that tell us what we
Speaker:are supposed to do, that we have to make a conscious decision or sometimes
Speaker:just process through the fact that's not actually how we operate. That is
Speaker:what the internal, internalized misogyny tells me. The reason I say
Speaker:that is those things follow
Speaker:people who identify as mothers around everywhere we go. So if you have
Speaker:a job, you are, you, you should be ashamed
Speaker:that you're not spending enough time with your kids and that your kids aren't your
Speaker:primary focus. But if you decide to stay home,
Speaker:you're not contributing enough, you're not doing enough for the household.
Speaker:And if you leave work early or not, if you
Speaker:leave work on time, it's not even usually early. If you leave work on time
Speaker:to get to where your children need to be and you don't
Speaker:stay late, you're not dedicated to your job, but if you don't
Speaker:go to the baseball practice, you don't care about your kids. And
Speaker:if you stay home sick with your kid, you,
Speaker:because your kid is sick and needs you, you're not dedicated to your job.
Speaker:But if you send them to school sick because you have no
Speaker:other option because you literally can't miss another day at work,
Speaker:you're a bad parent. You're a bad parent. You don't care about anybody else.
Speaker:Everything is your fault. You got everybody sick. You did this there. You
Speaker:cannot win. They've already created an environment where you cannot
Speaker:win. And whether you subscribe to those ideas or not, we all
Speaker:internalize that as guilt. I am literally home with my children
Speaker:every day. They do homeschool. I work from home. I see them 57 times a
Speaker:day. That is not a complaint. I love the fact that I get more time
Speaker:with my kids than most people, especially while working as many full time jobs as
Speaker:I do. And I still worry all the time that they don't get,
Speaker:get enough of my attention. I worry all the time that we
Speaker:made the wrong decision to homeschool them. I worry constantly. My
Speaker:kids are brilliant and they love other kids and they're social and they
Speaker:spend plenty of time with people who aren't us. And we have made a very
Speaker:concerted effort to make sure that that happens. And we try to give them normalcy,
Speaker:and we try to give them, you know, time to do normal kid things. And
Speaker:we try to, you know, we work really, really hard to give
Speaker:them as normal a life and normal as
Speaker:relative, to participate in the things that we believe that kids should
Speaker:participate in. We work really, really hard on that. And I still
Speaker:sit up at night and go, I don't think we're doing enough. I don't think
Speaker:we're doing enough. But we're put in an impossible situation where I have to decide
Speaker:to send my kid down the street to a school that's not allowed
Speaker:to call her by her nickname. Because we use a shortened name for
Speaker:my oldest, they're not allowed to call her by her nickname unless we fill out
Speaker:a form saying that she can use the nickname for
Speaker:fear that a child might
Speaker:identify as something at school that their
Speaker:parents don't know about, thus forcing parents
Speaker:to out possibly trans children to their unsafe parents.
Speaker:Kids are not identifying differently at school and not at home
Speaker:with parents who are safe. But we created an entire
Speaker:process now there we literally, there, you literally have to fill out a
Speaker:form and take it home to your parents and say, my
Speaker:name's John, but I want to be called Johnny. And is that okay?
Speaker:So that the kids whose name is. The kid who's,
Speaker:whose given name is John, who chooses to go by Jennifer,
Speaker:can't do that without outing them to their unsafe parents.
Speaker:That's the whole reason for the form. It has nothing to do with anybody's name.
Speaker:It has everything to do with making sure that teachers aren't creating safe
Speaker:environments for kids who could potentially be transitioning
Speaker:or considering transitioning or testing their gender
Speaker:identity or learning, which, God forbid we do that in
Speaker:schools. And that's not the reason that we don't send our kids to schools. The
Speaker:reason that we don't send our kids to school and there's literally one walking distance
Speaker:away from us. The reason is because people keep bringing guns to school and no
Speaker:one seems to give a shit. Every single time we get closer to that,
Speaker:to closer to the point where we're like, it's just, they need to be in
Speaker:school. It's the right thing to do for them. Another
Speaker:bonkers person shows up with a gun in hand to a school and someone
Speaker:else dies, some other child dies,
Speaker:and we just go on like it's normal. The anxiety that I would
Speaker:feel sending them out into that possible environment every day
Speaker:is untenable for me. And I get that people do it and
Speaker:I understand that people have found ways to make themselves comfortable with it. And that
Speaker:is not a judgment of them by any means. But we made that decision
Speaker:because it's the only way that we feel comfortable making sure
Speaker:that our kids come home alive every day or giving them the best
Speaker:chance. And I still feel guilty about it every day.
Speaker:It's literally something we perceive to be a life saving
Speaker:measure. And I feel guilty about it every day. I feel
Speaker:guilty that they don't get the typical experience with class
Speaker:parties and best friends and fights with other kids,
Speaker:not physical ones. The kind of squabbles that kids should have, like
Speaker:they get to fight with each other basically. And sometimes that does get
Speaker:physical. My little one, my little one's a scrapper. I can't help it.
Speaker:We try, we intervene, but she's a scrapper. My
Speaker:oldest one is peaceful, she only has peace in her heart. But my youngest,
Speaker:she is all violence, all day, every day. And so that's a decision that
Speaker:we made for the safety and security of our children. And I still
Speaker:go to bed every night feeling guilty about it.
Speaker:They just removed all vaccine mandates from schools in the
Speaker:state, so kids no longer have to be vaccinated to go to school. So
Speaker:there's no requirement for a kid to go to school and not spread
Speaker:communicable disease. That's a really good reason not to send your kid
Speaker:there. Like that's a safety issue, that's a health issue. All of those
Speaker:are great reasons not to send your kid there. And I still
Speaker:feel guilty about it all the time. I feel guilty about the amount I work.
Speaker:Even though it has afforded my children a great life, they do have a
Speaker:parent who's home with them all the time. Still feel guilty about how much I
Speaker:work. I feel guilty about the fact that
Speaker:I'm not a super social person and I have no desire to, to meet
Speaker:other parents who have children. All of that is like
Speaker:completely normal stuff. The baseline for
Speaker:guilt for parents is like
Speaker:certainly taller than I am, I'm not very tall, but like that's still
Speaker:five plus feet in the air. And it exists for
Speaker:everybody. We all feel guilty all the time. And if you don't, I'm not saying
Speaker:you should feel guilty. I don't want you to feel guilty. Guilt is a wasted
Speaker:emotion usually, but it's natural when you're a
Speaker:parent. And if you've never experienced parental guilt, that's concern.
Speaker:Not because I want you to feel guilty, but because it is like
Speaker:Part of this sensation of your heart breaking open for this
Speaker:small human who is now who you are now responsible for.
Speaker:That's a very mixed message. I don't want you to feel guilty,
Speaker:but the guilt also proves your humanity. I get that it's a mixed message,
Speaker:but you know what I mean. Anyway, that's what it's like to walk
Speaker:around with your soul connected to these tiny
Speaker:humans who you are responsible for. That's what it's like at baseline to
Speaker:have messaging reinforced from the federal government
Speaker:that, oh, by the way, here's some more shit that you should feel guilty
Speaker:for. That's really like, aside from lining RFK's
Speaker:pockets, that's the goal. That's what they're
Speaker:after. Further subjugation of people who do not
Speaker:identify as male. Further subjugation of people who are not
Speaker:superior white men. If there was any
Speaker:inkling that their perception of what
Speaker:causes autism came from men
Speaker:or people they perceive to be men, they would have picked something else,
Speaker:because that's not the target. You can't create the narrative
Speaker:that women are secondary by assigning blame or fault to
Speaker:anyone who is not them, who is not women. All of that
Speaker:to say, if you took Tylenol while you're pregnant, good for you for taking care
Speaker:of yourself. And also, if you have an autistic
Speaker:kid, good for you for having an awesome kid. Congrats.
Speaker:And if you're trying to figure out how to exist through this
Speaker:toxic hellscape where everybody keeps throwing
Speaker:shit at the wall just to see what hate can stick, I get it.
Speaker:And I see you. And I'm sorry that this is the world that we're existing
Speaker:through, but it has nothing to do with Tylenol, and it
Speaker:has everything to do with jackasses being
Speaker:jackasses. You did not make your kids autistic.
Speaker:Like, maybe genetically, but that was
Speaker:out of your control. But certainly not because of something like you. You
Speaker:can't get autism over the counter.
