by Eric Garcia
Marble said that coming out as gay informed his own experience of understanding his autism. “I’m glad I had that coming-out experience as gay first because it gave me a reference point,” he told me. It taught him that it is okay that he is different and that, much like being gay, he would find people like himself. But at the same time, “You don’t have to get super-enthusiastic and go to like every autism march. It was like a tap on the hand,” he said.
M. Remi Yergeau, the autistic University of Michigan professor, said that often, the world questions when autistic people identify as nonheterosexual or anything other than cisgender, and they chalk it up to autism. “So, if you’re trans, if you’re queer, if you’re anything under the LGBTQ umbrella, clinically it’s seen as, “Well, that’s because you’re autistic, and you just don’t know better. You don’t have a social compass, because you’re autistic. So why would you know that you want XYZ?” Yergeau said this questioning is backdoor homophobia and transphobia.
Incidentally, efforts to force autistic people toward neurotypical standards and LGBTQ people toward heteronormative standards share the same DNA. Ole Ivar Lovaas, the researcher who pioneered work on applied behavior analysis and who ran the UCLA clinic where autistic children were slapped, also assisted with UCLA’s Feminine Boy Project and coauthored four papers on atypical sexuality.
In the first study, released in 1974, Lovaas and George Rekers conducted their work on a five-year-old boy they called Kraig whose real name was Kirk Murphy. Early in his life, Kirk displayed a tendency to dress in girls’ clothes and play with dolls. When Murphy’s mother saw a television ad for a program promising to “fix feminine boys,” she took Kirk.
During the treatment, Kirk was given the option of playing at one of two tables. One of the tables held traditionally masculine objects, like a rubber knife, cowboy and Indian toy sets, handcuffs, and a dart gun; the other table held girls’ clothing and grooming toys. When Kirk played with feminine toys, Kirk’s mother was instructed not to speak to him, but when he played with the masculine toys, she would praise him. At home, when he displayed masculine behavior, he was awarded blue poker chips that could be used to watch TV or get candy; when he exhibited feminine behavior, he was given red poker chips that meant he would be spanked by his father. Kirk’s brother Mark later told CNN that seeing his brother’s abuse was so unbearable that Mark would occasionally hide the red chips to prevent his father from giving Kirk spankings. The effects on Kirk were so devastating that in 2003, he killed himself, which his brother and sister blamed on the traumatic experiences from his treatment.
All the while, Rekers and Lovaas hailed “Kraig’s” transformation from a boy who would wear girls’ dresses and even improvise by using towels when they weren’t available to a boy who wore sneakers and blue jeans. Rekers later cofounded the Family Research Council, the socially conservative group that opposed same-sex marriage. In 2010, he was photographed at an airport with a male escort from Rentboy.com.
Kirk’s story and his subsequent desire to mask his homosexuality through traditionally masculine acts such as joining the air force mirror the stories of autistic people who felt they had to blend in and be neurotypical or jump through the series of hoops to please other people. In both cases, they were desperately trying to please others and their parents were doing what they thought was best. But when the parents of LGBTQ or autistic children prioritized their own fears and anxieties over their children’s happiness, they wound up losing their children.
Much of the language of those who discriminate against LGBTQ people matches the rhetoric of those who discriminate against autism. Joseph Nicolosi, one of the most notable practitioners of conversion therapy, told CNN in 2011 that “homosexuality is an adaptation to an emotional breach with the parents,” usually with the parent of the same sex. Listening to Nicolosi, one cannot help but hear parallels to Leo Kanner, who in 1960 said that parents of autistic children just happened “to defrost enough to produce a child.”
But in both cases, parents, clinicians, and researchers were trying to make these children worthy of love by removing the very things that defined them. When parents make autistic kids not flap anymore or boys wear jeans instead of dresses, they replace the child that exists with the one they wished existed. They sentence them to the misery they allege they want their children to avoid.
The fate of autistic and LGTBQ people are intertwined (to say nothing of autistic LGBTQ people), as both groups’ right to happiness on their terms are regularly suppressed. They are told they cannot be loved unless they abide by the terms the world has prescribed. But they are worthy of love as is. It is when they come to accept themselves that they recognize this truth. In the same way, I can say that when I finally shed my own disgusting homophobia—which was a means to protect myself from other people’s torments and was fostered in chat rooms on social media sites like Myspace—and befriended LGBTQ people, I began to hate the autistic parts of myself less. None of us are failed versions of normal. We can love and be loved as is.
“Come Mothers and Fathers Throughout the Land”
In the same way that people worry about autistic people’s capacity for consent in sex, there is also this belief that autistic people are incapable of raising children or being good parents. The idea that autistic people could even be parents was dismissed for years; in 1988, researcher Edward Ritvo published a paper called “Eleven Possibly Autistic Parents.” He told Spectrum in 2017 that if he hadn’t included Possibly in the title, the paper would likely have been rejected. “Nobody believed it. They didn’t believe the parents had it, that autistic people could grow up and marry and have children.”
Sadly, the idea that autistic people can’t be parents persists today. In 2016, the writer Judith Newman released the book To Siri with Love, an extension of a 2014 New York Times article about how the iPhone personal assistant Siri helped her autistic son Gus navigate a neurotypical world. But in the book, Newman wrote, “I do not want Gus to have children,” adding, “if I had to decide based on the clueless boy I know today, it would be easy: Gus should not be a parent.” Newman said this not just because Gus was “still shaky” about where babies come from “but because of the solipsism that is so much at the heart of autism makes him unable to understand that someone’s needs and desires could ever be separate from his own.”
While the book received rave reviews and was named a 2017 Notable Book by the New York Times, multiple autistic people criticized it for this very argument. The way Newman talks about reproduction is horrific because she considers it her decision to make rather than her son’s. This infantilizes Gus and assumes he cannot comprehend a world outside of himself, denying the reality that he could ever care about anyone other than himself. By writing that Gus could never be a “real father,” Newman assumes that his disability automatically prohibits him from being a parent. Autistic writer and parent Kaelan Rhywiol wrote in a review for Bustle that she’d vomited twice while reading the book, adding, “I cried myself to sleep after finishing it. To know, without any hedging, what people like that think of people like me—it almost broke me.”
In 2014, the Iowa Supreme Court ruled that parents with guardianship of autistic children could not arrange vasectomies for them without court approval. The case was raised after a mother in West Des Moines arranged one for her twenty-one-year-old son, Stuart, after she suspected he was engaged in a sexual relationship with a colleague. Stuart and his coworker both denied the relationship. In the end, although the Iowa Supreme Court ruled against the mother, she defended herself by saying, “When I went through guardianship originally, I was never told what I could and couldn’t do,” adding that her son had the mind of a ten- or twelve-year-old. The fact that this mother believed this decision was her prerogative is indicative of how autistic people are viewed and how their capacity to have real relationships is constantly questioned.
When I am with the Williamses in their home with their kids, there is no doubt in my mind a
bout whether autistic people can or should be parents. To the contrary, Chris and Cori being aware of their autism makes them better parents to their three children; it makes them especially attuned to their kids’ needs and also willing to advocate for them when others assume they are not entitled to the same things neurotypical kids are.
Throughout the interview with Chris and Cori, I watched their kids go up to them. At certain points, their son, Calvin, came by asking for help with some gadget. When Cassidy Luna went up to Chris in her pajamas looking for Cori, Chris told her, “Hey, sweetie, Mom is right there,” which reassured her because Cassidy is incredibly close with her mom. Still, Cori emphasized that Cassidy’s need for more support doesn’t diminish her intelligence, competence, or capacity to live the life she pleases.
“The one thing that I do find myself repeating is the assumption of intelligence and competences necessary in raising her,” Cori told me. “We don’t have any idea what she’s capable of yet. She’s not going to say very much yet, she’s not going to say very much now. But she’s got a lot to say and she’s going to say it one day. It might not be bubbly but she’s going to say it.”
Occasionally, Calvin asked for Chris’s help with something or one or the other parent left our interview to solve something for the kids. In other words, it was just a normal suburban family with three autistic kids and two autistic parents.
“You’ve Got a Friend”
Growing up, I had few friends besides JohnPaul, my guitar teacher. His family became friends with my family, and we are still incredibly close. Other than that, save for a handful of people from high school, like my truly close friends Tim and Geoff, or the occasional garage band mates, like my friend Jay, and other Boy Scouts, I felt isolated. But even though my circle was small, it was incredibly valuable.
The first time I developed a tight-knit circle of friends was when I moved to Washington, DC, during my White House internship. This was largely thanks to one of my roommates, Greg, an Irish Catholic guy from Buffalo who was a few years older than me. He would convince me to join him at happy hours after work or parties at our coworkers’ homes on Saturdays and then brunch on Sunday. Greg didn’t inhale politics the same way I did back then, so we had an unspoken deal that I would give him tips about work and in exchange he would teach me how to enjoy myself socially and talk to women.
Greg and my other roommate, Travis, introduced me to their circles, and eventually their friends became my friends. Those friends loved that I had an encyclopedic knowledge of American politics; all the things that back home in California made me a geek or an oddball were well received in Washington. My friend Raj actually wanted to check out embassies on a Saturday, and my friend Gurwin and I would spend Sundays at a Barnes and Noble reading, ending the night on the steps of the Capitol, where he would teach me economic terms like short-selling and bull and bear markets. To this day I am still close with many of them.
Still, throughout my life, I often shied away from disclosing that I was autistic to my friends. The first time I did so wasn’t until college, when I joined my campus newspaper, the Daily Tar Heel. Once again, it was a place where I learned what it meant to have healthy friendships based on a mutual connection; in this case, a love for journalism. Furthermore, most of my colleagues at the paper were women, so it taught me how to have healthy and fulfilling friendships with women, and I ditched the odious idea that solely being friends with women was a death sentence.
Most Thursdays, after we’d put out the paper for the end of the week, we’d wind up going to Linda’s, a classic college dive bar with greasy food called Drunchies, a clear nod to the fact students would consume them with some level of inebriation. One night after one of our underage friends was thrown out for sipping beer, we went back to the DTH office with booze from the liquor store. It was in that context that I mentioned to my friends that I was on the spectrum and that’s why I didn’t drive. One of my friends responded, “Me too.”
This acquaintance and I had classes together, but I knew him only tangentially. But as soon as he disclosed, I went over and high-fived him, and suddenly opening up became less scary. I realized that my friends would not ostracize me. I would always be welcome at Linda’s. Furthermore, these were friends I could trust, and once they knew I was on the spectrum, I no longer had to worry about masking or pretending to act more neurotypical.
The good news is that there are indications that culture is changing and people understand that autistic people can marry, lead fulfilling lives, and have children. In 2019, comedian Amy Schumer revealed that her husband, Chris Fischer, was autistic in her comedy special Growing. What was heartening was Schumer did not say that his autism was an impediment to her loving him.
“Once he was diagnosed, it dawned on me how funny it was because all the characteristics that make it clear he’s on the spectrum are all of the reasons I fell madly in love with him. That’s the truth,” Schumer said. She went on to say that he “keeps it so real” because he does not care about social norms, noting, “If I say to him like, ‘Does this look like shit?’ he’ll go, ‘Yeah, you have a lot of other clothes. Why don’t you wear those?’ I’m like ‘Okay.’”
Watching Schumer’s special, I could not help but nod along and laugh because I recognized so many things in myself, whether it is the idea that autistic people can’t lie (here I must protest; we can lie, we just suck at it) or the fact that we don’t always have the right reaction when someone we love is in pain but it is not for a lack of empathy or caring.
None of this is to say that being with an autistic person is easy, any more than having a relationship with a neurotypical person is easy. Davin and Yates disagreed with each other during our interview. Nebeker and Hamrick also discussed their points of tension. Chris Williams noted that there are clashes between himself and Cori.
But autistic people desire intimacy and love all the same. We don’t want people to love us out of charity or pity. Pity is born out of sorrow or obligation. We want to be loved as equals and for who we are. We want that knowledge that we are loved.
7
“Not Sure if You’re a Boy or a Girl”
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Gender
It’s the Fourth of July 2019, and I am sitting with Eryn Star (preferred pronouns are they and their) at a Starbucks in Northeast Washington as they talk about how other people reacted to their being autistic.
Star, who identifies as nonbinary, is in DC to intern at the National Council on Independent Living (NCIL), a disability advocacy organization. They are wearing a gender-neutral T-shirt and glasses. I wanted to meet with Star after I read the piece they had written about how when they were in high school, their choir director verbally abused them. Star is younger than I am and is part of a generation that is much more vocal about discussing the trauma that autistic people face daily and more willing to discuss how autism intersects with other parts of their identity like gender.
The teacher often would say Star was “slower to get things” and berate them for being a few minutes late to class because they were seeing the school psychologist. The teacher knew they were disabled and yet continued to abuse them.
“I think that my experience with that teacher, among other things, may have complicated my relationship with my gender identity,” Star told me. “I had other cis-women in my life trying to regulate how I dressed, how I presented my body. And because of that, I do feel disconnected to what womanhood is.”
The trauma from their high-school music teacher remained with Star; they didn’t listen to choir music or sing for many years. “I’ve never really been able to let go,” they said.
Eventually, Star started taking lessons with a private voice teacher, though they were so tense that their knees shook every time they performed. But interestingly, when Star played the roles of both a man and a woman in a public performance, their knees didn’t shake when they sang the male roles.
“My brain was like, ‘Maybe you and your gender need to h
ave a chat,’” they said. For Star, their identities as an autistic person and a queer person are inextricably tied. And while Star may not be who most people picture when they imagine an autistic person, their story is not an isolated one.
For years, autism has been viewed as something that exclusively affects cisgender boys and men. To this day, women and girls—not to mention trans and nonbinary people—are overwhelmingly underrepresented in studies about autism, leaving them underdiagnosed and ignored. But overlooking their stories often has horrific consequences that make their lives that much more difficult.
So, for all my difficulties navigating the world as an autistic male, I still get off pretty easy compared to women, transgender people, and gender-nonconforming people. Once it is out that I am on the spectrum, my idiosyncrasies are more or less understood. I’m treated with much more social grace than if I did not inhabit a male body. Autistic women and queer people, however, either face much harsher scrutiny and have their autism questioned or go completely ignored.
“Undercover”
Women have long been involved in autism history. The first major memoir from an autistic adult came in 1986 when animal scientist Temple Grandin published her book Emergence. While Grandin’s book was hailed, she herself was touted as a source of hope and inspiration for parents of supposedly hopeless autistic children. Grandin’s book made her one of the most prominent openly autistic people and, for many years, perhaps the most famous autistic woman in the world.
Still, conventional wisdom is that autism affects cisgender men more than it does other genders. And while it is true that there is a higher occurrence of autism in men—the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that 26.6 out of every 1,000 boys are autistic, compared to just 6.6 per every 1,000 girls—it likely stems from a gender gap in diagnoses, not from any biological predisposition.