Autistic Women Understand Society's Insane Expectations of Women Better than Anyone
We don't measure up compared to men, and we don't measure up compared to women so let's try and stop comparing ourselves.
Autistic people are at high risk of suicide, and for women and girls on the spectrum, this risk is even higher. This is sad and shocking, but it doesn't surprise me.
It's soul-eroding, feeling that you don't measure up. Women get this message a lot. Simone de Beauvoir wrote about it in 1949 in her seminal second-wave feminist text The Second Sex. Kristi Coulter wrote a seriously viral essay about it in relation to how women use booze to numb this feeling in 2016. Women bear the brunt of human nature's judgy side. Ask Britney Spears or Meghan Markle or Chrissie Teigen. Being female in the public eye is a risky business. The most privileged women on earth cannot escape endless shaming, trolling and hatred from society. 1 in 3 women will experience domestic abuse in their lifetime. 137,000 girls and women are living with the consequences of FGM in the UK. That number is closer to 200,000,000 worldwide.
I recognize that I have a lot of privilege. My disability is invisible, and I'm white. My gender non-conformity can be hidden. I have savings, and friends and family I could ask for loans. I own my flat.
I am an autistic person who people don’t believe is autistic, and so there are many people who have it much worse than me. I hope in future I can advocate for them too. I hope I don't sound too tone-deaf as I attempt to write about the autistic AFAB (assigned female at birth) experience. Here goes.
All my life I have been told - directly and indirectly - I am weird. Clumsy. Awkward. Slow. Annoying. Cold. Turns out I'm not the only one. Many autistic women are sharing their experiences on social media and in books. Their voices are talking in unison and beginning to be heard.
Another damaging part of the messaging I received as a girl/young woman was that I was not a real girl/woman. So, I was second-class to boys, and I was second-class to girls too.
#blessed
This social rejection doesn’t help the often ephemeral nature of the autistic sense of self. As a kid I was pushed out of boys games for being a girl. And pushed out of girls games for not being girl enough. This left me in a precarious position. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I sought refuge in beer and recreational drugs.
Lately, I wonder, did I enjoy being alone because I am autistic? Or had rejection by neurotypical society made solitude feel safest?
As an unknowingly autistic woman, I compared myself to proper girls (neurotypical?) and found myself lacking. I was half-female, at most. Skirts and heels made me feel like I was in fancy dress. A part-time woman, perhaps?
When I was finally diagnosed last year, I discovered that gender dysphoria is often part of autism. Something that felt essential to my self, and which had often made me feel like an outsider in friendship groups, was actually commonplace within the autistic community. There was something very comforting about this. Belonging beckoned. Maybe there was a place I could fit.
Reading for the first time that suicide ideation is more common among autistic adults than so-called ‘neurotypicals’ I found myself feeling validated and compassionate. So it isn’t just me. I thought. It’s tough living in a world that rarely plays to your strengths.
As one of many women who have remained undiagnosed because autism is still widely considered a male-affecting disorder - this stems from the now controversial extreme male brain theory, created by Simon Baron-Cohen, FYI - I found it reassuring and alarming to see some of my most troubling traits on a list together titled: autism.
I had no idea that certain factors of my identity (AFAB, autism, ADHD) meant I was a high risk for suicide, but this knowledge feels as helpful as it is alarming. Life is difficult when you have sensory differences and executive functioning issues and social anxiety to navigate. It is essential to be kind and gentle with yourself.
So that’s my main message to you today. And every day.
Be kind to yourself.
Try not to belittle yourself so much.
Try not to make jokes at your own expense so often.
Be proud of how much you have overcome.
Oh, and I love you. <3 <3 <3
Ironically, although I now have a diagnosis of autism, for the first time in my life I no longer feel like there’s something wrong with me. I believe Temple Grandin when she says: “different not less.”
I don’t have Generalised Anxiety Disorder.
I’m not depressed.
I don’t have cyclothymia.
I’m autistic.
Knowing this has given me increased insight and understanding into how to take care of myself. It’s a bit like realizing that you take diesel, and you’ve been trying to run on unleaded. No wonder the drive has been bumpy!
This is why diagnosis, no matter how late, can be life-changing for autistic people. It can help them to understand why it has been so very very difficult to make progress in their lives.
Six months after my diagnosis my self-perception has changed in a radically positive way. I forgive myself for the many mistakes and sloooow development and the odd decisions and I view myself with sympathy and pride. My struggles and confusion make more sense and I can see how far I've come, often with very little useful support. Often while experiencing abuse (which I didn’t even recognise, bless me).
I don't know how it feels to be a non-autistic woman, but from my perspective as an autistic woman, the expectations of females have always seemed unjust and insane.
Men often do less and are appreciated more. WTAF! And if women are angry about this, then we are labeled bitter, as though that isn’t a perfectly logical and sane response to the predicament we find ourselves in.
OF COURSE, WE ARE MOTHERFLAMING BITTER.
Especially when people (okay, some men) deny that sexism even exists. It’s like the perfect recipe for insanity. My mental health looped around that doomy pinball machine for years.
So yep, first world problems. But these lesser evils stopped me from being a useful and functional member of society for decades.
So if you are a woman, then please today, put your feet up. Praise yourself for how amazingly you are navigating this world which endlessly underestimates and gaslights and criticizes and judges you.
And if you are an autistic woman, then put your feet up twice. Give yourself another pep talk. Tell yourself all the things you long to hear, and work on believing them.
You are valuable and lovable, and respect is the bare minimum you deserve.
<3
Let me know your thoughts on my thoughts : )
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Read
Changing the story: How diagnosticians can support a neurodiversity perspective from the start in Autism journal
Autistic women twice as likely as autistic men to attempt suicide at Spectrum
Memory and sense of self may play more of a role in autism than we thought at Spectrum.
Gender dysphoria felt like being insane by Devon Price
Listen
Gender and sexuality in autism, explained at Spectrum.
For more information, connect with the Autism community on Twitter. If you have a question, use #ActuallyAutistic or #AskingAutistics (or both). You can also visit The Autism Self Advocacy Network and the Autistic Not Weird Facebook page and website.
Chelsey Flood is the award-winning author of Infinite Sky and Nightwanderers, and a lecturer in creative writing at Falmouth University. She writes about freedom, addiction, nature and love at Beautiful Hangover, and is also working on a non-fiction book about getting sober, and a new YA novel set in the forest.
Thank you. I'm 57....just diagnosed last year ..also ADHD and have a lifetime's worth of shame inducing non belonging and feelings of otherness that even my therapist has struggled to understand....newly sober and always struggling but the truth helps....thanks so much for this very relatable writing.