Contemporary American society has established a foundation of understanding autism in the last ten years, with awareness campaigns like World Autism Awareness Month and the emergence of autistic representation in American popular culture. However, the neurotypical perceptions of autism are still clouded when it comes to addressing the gender issues that exist within the autistic community, and popular culture still misrepresents or fails to represent autistic individuals. Therefore, it is not presenting autistic characters who can more effectively educate neurotypical society.
It can’t be denied that there have been significant improvements of autistic representation in American popular culture and media within recent years, like ABC’s ‘The Good Doctor,’ which aims to move away from “the stereotypical versions of people with autism that have been shown on television and in certain movies in the past.” However, popular culture still fails to present an autistic character which is not solely recognised by neurotypical society as being a “‘savant.”’ As Wenn Lawson expresses, “if you read a book like The Curious Incident of a Dog in the Night, people think oh that’s autism and we are all like the lad in the story and it’s absolutely untrue. Very few of us actually are or Rainman[…] we’re not all like Raymond in Rainman.”
American popular culture and media are also failing to present to the autistic society a fully realized and relatable female autistic character for female individuals to feel connected to. There is still a dire need for women of autism to be presented in the forefront of American popular culture (other than the sole example of HBO’s ‘Temple Grandin’), this only being recently touched upon by Rachel Israel’s debut film, ‘Keep the Change’, with the female autistic character, Sarah, and the representation of her sexuality in offhanded comments like “I find you really, really smoking hot and so sexy.”
Leading on from the discussion of the lack of female autistic representation within American popular culture, the neurotypical world has still to recognise that there is a feminist cry that has been buried deep inside the hearts of female autistics and needs to be let out. Lawson states that “there needs to be a more feminist approach to autism which is often seen as owned by men,” autism being defined in the past as a condition that functions as “an extreme male brain.”
Sarai Pahla shares in a Ted Talk her experiences of dating, illustrating the pressures that exist for a female autistic in a neurotypical sphere, which demands certain expectations of women in romantic scenarios. Carrie Beckwith-Fellows, meanwhile, discusses in her Ted Talk about the gender issue that exists within the autistic community itself, describing how women of autism are the “invisible diversity” within both neurotypical and autistic spheres. What is in desperate need of recognition is that women of autism are “a minority within an existing minority,” and therefore are at risk of suffering deep mental issues because of it, due to the decreased amount of attention and service that female autistics receive in comparison to male autistics (especially since the diagnostic ratio of men to women are 4:1). As Liane Holliday Willey (a woman of Asperger’s) explains, female autistics are “more prone to self-injury and self-blame” when feeling pressured by neurotypical expectations and therefore need a support system that will keep women of autism from “hating and hurting” themselves.
Overall, what the unheard voices of autistic Americans demand from their neurotypical counterparts is the opportunity to raise deeper, underlying issues that exist within the autistic community through the channels of popular culture and the opportunity for the feminist autistic cries to ring out loud and clear for all of the neurotypical world to hear.
Sources:
Freddie Highmore says The Good Doctor aims to challenge people’s perceptions of autism, Daily Mail, 7August 2017 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-4766506/Freddie-Highmore-Good-Doctor-defies-autism-stereotype.html#ixzz5Cyi1zDEE
Why Women With Autism Are Invisible, Anna North, 3 April 2012 https://www.buzzfeed.com/annanorth/why-women-with-autism-are-invisble?utm_term=.awWrYDQmA#.lmPPmDB63
Sarai Pahla, Ted Talk, 21 November 2017 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MA7o6FgPRU&t=784s
Carrie Beckwith-Fellows, Ted Talk, 6 July 2017 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cF2dhWWUyQ4&t=244s
‘Keep the Change’ Film Review, The Hollywood Reporter, 12 March 2018 https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/keep-change-1087460
Wenn Lawson Podcast Interview, 7 September 2015 http://www.mapyourlearning.com/podcasts/autism-dr-wenn-lawson/