How Doctors and Queer Culture Are Failing LBGTQ Autistics

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“Autistic people, and people with other developmental disabilities, often do not have access to even basic sex ed in school, particularly if they are being served through the special education system,” said Julia Bascom, executive director of the Autistic Self Advocacy Network. “Behavior that is considered gender-nonconforming can be targeted for behavioral modification or perceived as a social skills deficit in need of correcting. Most social skill curriculums and support groups for autistic adolescents and adults presume all participants will be cisgender and heterosexual.”

These concerns were echoed by Steve Silberman, author of NeuroTribes, a best-selling account of the history of autism and the growing neurodiversity movement.

“There's a pernicious misconception that people with intellectual disability are incapable of feeling sexual attraction,” Silberman told me. “The mother of an autistic teenager I know, who is quite evidently trans, said that she wouldn't even consider giving her teenager sex education, because they have ‘the mental age of a child.’ This is a very dangerous way to think, because that teen could end up in jail if they're not taught about the limits of appropriate sexual behavior. A teenager is a teenager, no matter what their diagnosis is.”

“There's a long history of blatant ableism among gay men, unfortunately,” said Silberman, who is gay but not autistic. “Certain aspects of the gay male urban subculture are so caught up in looking young and fabulous, working out a lot, and coming across as sexy and supercompetent, disabled folks have to struggle for visibility and respect.”

Events that cater to mainstream gay audiences are often inhospitable to autistic people. “When I go to LGBT events, I am still berated by people using the r-slur freely,” I was told by Emmanuel, an autistic, trans gay man. “Many LGBT events are not accessible to autistic people. LGBT events are often crowded, have live and/or very loud music, food stands, and clubs often have bright flashing lights, all of which are sensory inputs that the vast majority of autistic people are hypersensitive to. There is often no ‘quiet zone’ for us to retreat to when we experience sensory overload.”