Alex Plank--What the @#$% is this crap?

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"1 in 54 boys have a diagnosis here in the United States. Children who receive the diagnosis are given intensive education at an early age in order to gain skills required to succeed. In France, Autism is viewed as a psychosis and no help is given. In fact, if a child does get a diagnosis, he risks being thrown out of school."

Seriously. On the Shameful website:



"1 in 54 boys..."

"if a child does get a diagnosis, he ...."

Why the f**k would you even entertain such a sexist and biased portrayal autism? You of anyone here should know what we women and girls with autism deal with, how we are overlooked for treatment and for diagnoses and early intervention, how we get excluded from media reports and stats released to the public, that even research is so biased as to exclude any female participants from studies on a regular basis--something that greatly undermines the scientific accuracy and reliability of such studies.

You should know how language about autism is loaded with the false presumption that the default autistic is male and how such gendered language erases female, trans and queer autistics from the public consciousness (and I can vouch for that, because I have had that "You're autistic? Oh I just didn't think...cos you're a woman..." conversation more times that I can recount).

You should know that we female, trans and queer autistics have to fight just to be seen, by the public, by autism charities, by researchers (and apparently by you--hello!).

You should know that autistic themselves don't always fall into the either/or categories of the conventional gender binary and so saying X number of boys are autistic means jack sh** because it is forcing gender distinctions onto a group of people who, by definition of being autistic, often do not fit such neurotypical conventions.

And finally, and more importantly, you should know that singling out male autistics and ignoring female and non-gender conforming autistics reinforces that very harmful "boys are more valuable" bias that directly contributes to the social obstacles that female, trans and queer autistics face when seeking a proper dx and finding the support and understanding that is more readily available to their "more valued" cis male counterparts.

This kind of blatant sexism and bias is unacceptable, offensive and yes, shameful--especially from someone who thought he needed to go and make a film to criticize other people for their biases about autism.

We absolutely need to stop referencing gender whenever we talk about autism. Autism is not a gender-based condition, yet far too much of the language used to talk about autism suggests that it is. We should be more enlightened than this. There is just no excuse for falling to the trappings of conventional (neurotypical) sexism and gender bias and for not using gender-neutral data and language when talking about autistics. If you dare go around speaking on behalf of autistics, you MUST speak for ALL autistics, not just boys and men while treating the rest of us like we're invisible or not worth the effort to include in the discussion.

The word "he" is often used instead of repetitively using "he or she" etc. I highly doubt any offense was meant by it.
I'm female, too.

YOU OPPRESSOR OF THE TRANSVESTITE/TRANSEXUAL/GENDERQUEER/BLAH BLAH BLAH FISHCAKES MOVEMENTS! YOU SHOULD BE ABSOLUTELY ASHAMED OF YOURSELF YOU CHAVINISTICIST!! !! !! !

THIS THREAD IS FULL OF DEFENDERS OF MISOGYNY AND THE IMPLICIT RULE OF MEN!! !!

(goes away to howl at the moon)

Spot on though, by the way. There really isn't an easy way to merge he and she properly in English. The attempts at trying seem contrived and ridiculous.

The word "he" is often used instead of repetitively using "he or she" etc. I highly doubt any offense was meant by it.
I'm female, too.

The statistic is for boys specifically, not children. For whatever reason the male statistic is higher and thus looks better when used to argue how common it is. "He" can be used as a gender neutral pronoun when referring to someone of unknown gender, it's not implying anything.

It's not something to get your panties twisted over

Oh, so let's talk as though only boys have autism -already a common misconception- so we can make it sound more common. Yeah, that's just fine.


Well, that's not sexist at all...