Sort of the spiritual sequel to this post. Not that I wanted to write a sequel, but I'm mad at this point.

7. If you're going to write about an autistic character who struggles with metaphors, please learn the difference between a metaphor and an idiom. Problems with idioms are a difficulty for English language learners and should not be a problem for native English speakers.

8. An autistic adult should not sound like an autistic child; if they do, something has gone seriously wrong. To put it another way, would you write a neurotypical adult to sound like a neurotypical child? Obviously, the answer is NO. The difference between an autistic adult and autistic child is similar: the adult will have more accumulated life experience to know how to cope with and understand situations. An autistic child may be confused as to why string cheese isn't literally made of string; it's unlikely that an autistic adult would be so confused because they should have come across multiple instances of non-literal food names by the time they're an adult.

9. Please don't write about an autistic who is able to suppress their stimming in favor of appearing "socially acceptable" without consequences. Stimming serves a purpose and the elimination of stimming behaviors is one grievance many autistics have against therapies like ABA. I've read accounts of autistics who experience negative consequences if they suppress their stimming. Also, this kind of rhetoric just enforces the idea that autistics are able to and therefore should behave more "neurotypically." (The one exception would be the depiction of an autistic who has a self-destructive stim and sometimes struggles with channeling it into a different kind of stim.)

10. Autistics can and do use slang, colloquialisms, and profanities. Where the idea that we all speak like automatons comes from, I have no idea (my guess is that it stems from associations of autistics with robots/rigidly following rules).


And number one on my grudge list...

11. If you're writing an autistic adult who does not have an intellectual disability, do not, I repeat, do NOT write as though they are incapable of or would have difficulties consenting to romantic relationships and/or sex. This is infantilizing, ableist, and infuriating. If an autistic adult does not have an intellectual disability, they are FULLY CAPABLE of understanding consent. There is NO REASON for allistic characters to worry that said autistic ADULT is going to be "taken advantage of" by agreeing to a relationship/sex. By doing so, they are treating said ADULT as having the mental age of a child SOLELY because the adult is autistic. I repeat: THIS IS INFANTILIZING AND ABLEIST.

The Heart As He Hears It by A.M. Arthur

It's always nice to see a romance in which one of the main characters is disabled and neurodivergent (in this case, it's Isaac, who is partially deaf and has agoraphobia and extreme anxiety issues. Also, Jon had anorexia and a history of emotional abuse).

I enjoyed this book overall, though towards the end, it started to get soap-opera-y and dramatic for drama's sake (I thought Jon acted OOC near the end just to create conflict between him and Isaac). Also, I feel like I don't know enough about agoraphobia and anxiety to comment on how it was handled for Isaac.

I'm not very familiar with anxiety disorders (other than social anxiety), so maybe some of the symptoms overlap with autism, but I couldn't help feeling like Isaac was kind of autistic-coded. His adherence to a strict daily routine, and his freak-out when he deviated from a "rule" while serving guests dinner—I felt like it would've been interesting if he was also explicitly described as autistic.


The Deep of the Sound by Amy Lane

I DNF'ed this one before I got halfway through, largely due to the way it treated autism and mental illness, which I'll get into in a second.

This author's writing style doesn't really do it for me. It took like 25% of the way through the book before the two romantic leads even met, and I don't really think all that description was necessary.


And that brief sex scene between Cal and his boss? Um...okay. I don't have any personal experience in this area, but the idea of Cal being so into pain that he actually, uh, enjoys sex without any kind of lubrication...that strikes me as unrealistic and kind of impossible. Like. I'm pretty sure he should have been bleeding and dealing with interior tissue tearing. Which is obviously highly unpleasant and potentially health-hazardous. That part of the book was a massive turn-off for me.


But let's get into the autism and mental illness thing. The portrayal of mentally ill people, autistic people, or in this case, a character who's mentally ill and autistic (Cal's brother Keir), as violent?

Yeah. No. That's an instant ragequit button for me.

And while we're on this subject, let me just get up on my soapbox for a minute and say that I'm really tired of narratives about neurotypical protagonists caring for disabled neurodivergent family members, and how hard *their* lives are because they have to care for their "damaged" disabled family member (that word is an actual description of Keir in the book, by the way). Disabled neurodivergent characters in these situations are portrayed as having no agency, always resisting medication/therapy because their illness/autism automatically makes them incompetent to understand their situation, somehow, and being a tragic burden at best or a violently psychotic stereotype at worst (and there are shades of both in this book).

I am so, so tired of seeing autistic characters only portrayed in one way: completely unable to care for themselves, banging their heads on the wall when they're not adequately supervised, unable to tolerate any disruption to their routines without an outburst of violence, 100% literal understanding of language all the time, unable to talk to anyone except to infodump about their special interests.

Yes, there are some autistic people like that. But these depictions have real-life consequences. There are people—particularly girls and women, and also people of color—who are never diagnosed as autistic because they don't fit the "stereotype." There are autistic people who learn early on ways of coping and "passing" as neurotypical, in order to survive and avoid total social ostracization—and they're penalized for it by being told, by ableist allistic people, that they can't possibly be autistic or that they can't speak on autistic issues because they're "too high-functioning."

There are plenty of autistic people who are mentally/intellectually competent. Many, if not most, autistic people are aware of their autism (unless they aren't because they were never diagnosed, for the reasons above). They are aware of how it impacts their life, and they do work to cope with being autistic in a hostile world. Many autistic people care about being socially accepted, because being ostracized and rejected sucks. Many, if not most, autistic people do give a damn about their loved ones, and not in *difficult-to-understand, alien, robotic* ways, either.

This book reinforced damaging stigmas about mentally ill people being violent, autistic people being violent, and autistic men being misogynistic creeps by nature of being autistic (since Keir was described as being "obsessed with girls," so Cal has to keep him away from girls). I don't care if Cal and Avery's love story eventually rivaled Romeo and Juliet, Rose and Jack, or whatever other famous love stories exist—there's nothing that can make up for reinforcing these stereotypes.

A quick glance at the top Goodreads reviews have only reinforced my belief that the narrative of Cal's struggles to care for Keir doesn't actually engender sympathy for autistic and mentally ill people. Readers have said things like "Cal's life is so sad" and "I'm glad I'm able-bodied and neurotypical."

It's, honestly, pretty dehumanizing.

Autistic and mentally ill people deserve better.

This article sums up what I've been feeling lately pretty well. My brain is 100% at the "lol no" stage regarding anything that requires planning/memory.

"Should I leave my apartment?" "lol no" "Should I clean my room and throw out my trash?" "lol no" "Should I start on the damn research paper I need to write in order to graduate??" "LOL NO"

It's really, really frustrating to know that my executive functioning fluctuates and it's hit rock-bottom because of law school. I handled college fine; I was stressed most of the time, but I could get things done. And yet nowadays I'm just sprawled on my bed with my brain on vacation 24/7.

Sigh.

This is a difficult topic to talk about because autism is such a variable condition that it's often difficult to criticize autistic "stereotypes" while also trying to acknowledge that of course there are autistic people who do fit that stereotype. So far, though, I've found almost no autistic characters in fiction that I identify with (though, of course, there aren't a ton of autistic characters in fiction to begin with) even after I've included some autistic characters written by autistic authors/considered "good" autistic representation, with possibly one or two exceptions, and there's a particular reason why that is.

There's a great article that talks about behaviorizing vs. humanizing autistic characters, and the gist of it is that negative representations of autistic characters tend to "behaviorize" them, or reduce them to a list of traits, rather than humanize them. I've been finding this predominant even in autistic characters who are written by well-intentioned authors: that the emphasis is, first and foremost, on the rocking, the stimming, the complete lack of social awareness that causes them to come off as rude.

I feel particularly passionate about this because it was my mistaken belief that autistic people were always rude and unable not to be rude—from the depictions of autism that surrounded me—that caused me not to think I could possibly be autistic for many years.

In a way, these depictions of autism feel like representations of autism in a vacuum—in other words, autism completely untouched by interaction with an allistic world. And, again, I know I'm walking a very fine and difficult line, because there are autistic people like this, and I don't want to denigrade that. But there are also many autistic people who aren't—or not to that degree. Autistic people lack allistic social intuitions; however, we're certainly aware of how allistic people react to us, and social humiliation/ostracization is a strong motivator to try to modify our behaviors to conform. Autistic people can learn manners and rules of politeness. I know I have had moments when I probably came off as rude (particularly if I'm tired or stressed), but for the most part I have a memorized bank of social scripts and what circumstances I'm supposed to pull them out for, like a mathematical input-output machine. Most of the time, I know better than to voice my bluntest, most honest opinions.

I've basically never read an autistic character like that, even though I'm pretty sure I'm not unique among autistic people in this way.

This is not to say that I can act perfectly neurotypical (I definitely can't), nor is it to say that this pressure to conform to allistic standards is necessarily a good thing. It's tiring and exhausting. But I think it's kind of an odd attitude for writers not to acknowledge (or even realize) that autistic people are subject to these pressures due to the sheer necessity of trying to get along with and make friends with allistic people (since we are the minority).

I just feel like there has to be a way to write autistic characters without introducing them as just a collection of traits, because that naturally leads to the emphasis on "Look at how different this character is from (presumed) you and me!" instead of humanizing the autistic character. Humanizing an autistic character involves diving into the character's head and thought processes—because autism isn't abnormal from an autistic person's own point of view.

So, for example:

This feels behaviorizing:

"'I'll make you guys cabbage soup for dinner. I'm sure you'll be hungry after a long day of school,' said the kindly neighborhood old lady.

'My brother doesn't like cabbage soup,' said April. She walked away without noticing the upset expression on Mrs. Dodd's face."

This is more humanizing:

"'I'll make you guys cabbage soup for dinner. I'm sure you'll be hungry after a long day of school,' said the kindly neighborhood old lady.

'My brother doesn't like cabbage soup,' said April, thinking about how much Austin hated the taste of cabbage but was too polite to tell Mrs. Dodds so. Hopefully she'd make something else for dinner this time, something Austin would like better."

Even though this situation is one I can relate to, I'd find the first example much more alienating than the second. The first example focuses on April's rudeness due to total lack of social awareness. The second example presents April's logical thought process that leads to her saying something that may be considered rude by an allistic person, but to April makes perfect sense. By delving into April's head, it humanizes her, rather than conveying the impression of "Wow look how rude this person is because of autism!"

Obviously, what it comes down to is that we need more depictions of autistic characters, and depictions that acknowledge the diversity of the autistic spectrum. I don't know if it's just me, but another thing I don't like about the fact that there's a behaviorized autistic "stereotype" currently most represented in fiction is that it leads me to anxieties about "not being autistic 'enough.'" For example, I see the protagonist in my current novel as autistic, but I'm far too afraid to explicitly say he's autistic in the book because he feels not autistic "enough" compared to the other autistic characters I've read about. I know that's an untrue and unhelpful way of thinking, but I can't help it; it's hard to deviate from a seemingly established norm when you're the only one.

These are just some thoughts I've had recently in my frustration with reading most fictional depictions of autistic people.