likeacrime asked: If you could tell all TV writers (or movie writers or book writers) five things about writing autistic characters, so as to to make them explicitly autistic, not offensive, and actually empowering for autistic viewers, what would those things be?
This is a really good question that I hope my other A/autistic (are we all capital-A at this point?) who are much smarter than me will answer too, because I’m sure our answers will differ.
So, my five.
1: Say their diagnosis.
Don’t dance around it. Say it. Maybe not in the first 30 seconds, but give the audience the correct vocabulary. Don’t make a huge deal out of it, don’t make it sad, don’t make it change anything. Just have the character (and yeah, Outing is wrong, no matter what it’s about, so, let your characters come out as Autistic on their own unless you’re going to do a plot about Outing,) disclose in a relevant context, and move on. Don’t give your audience a chance to squirm out of it if they feel like being assholes.
2: Autism is not a character trait.
You know that post that’s been going around on tumblr, about how being female is treated like a character trait, and that’s fucked up? And it’s true for just about any minority group, because our culture is stupid. You have characters who are smart and funny and strong, or charming and a little douchey and secretly depressed, or A+ bullshitters with hearts of gold….and then you have a female character, a black character, a gay character. And now, apparently, an autistic character. You know they’re autistic because they rock, and flap, and they have a Special Interest that they talk about all the time, and they are so adorably terrible at people, and they cover their ears for loud noises and do bizarre things and they’ll even ask to count your toothpicks. They do everything you’ll find in the DSM, and they don’t do anything else.
This is lazy writing!
Autism is a really basic, fundamental part of who someone is, and it colors everything else. But! So is their gender, their age, their height, where they’re from, what kind of education they’ve had, where they work, who they live with, who their friends are, etc. No person is just one thing. Please don’t forget that you’re writing about a person.
3: Autism is not a social disability.
If you don’t know that, you probably shouldn’t be writing autistic characters. You should probably be doing research and learning about sensory differences and motor issues and executive function and language processing and joint attention and the rates for anxiety and abuse and how every interaction takes two people.
Everyone knows that autism is a failure to connect, that autistic people are robots, that we don’t have feelings or theories of mind or any desire for companionship. This is all flat-out wrong, but it’s a familiar story. Tell a different one. Tell me a story about an autistic person who isn’t a robot, a burden, an innocent, or an emotional vampire.
Tell me a story where the autistic character has friends. Tell me a story where they fight, where they negotiate, where things are imperfect and messy and human. Tell me a story where they have value. Tell me a story where the autistic character has different relationships to and with different characters. Tell me a story with joy and jealousy and empathy and intimacy and affection. Tell me a story where the neurotypical friend hands the autistic character headphones when its needed—and also one where the autistic character remembers a birthday and throws a party. Tell me a story where the friendship maybe looks a little different, and that’s okay—but tell me a story where the friendship is real and mutual and complicated.
Oh, and if you really want to blow me away?
Tell me a story where the autistic character fucks.
4: Autism is not a metaphor.
Every. Possible. Metaphorical. Use. Of. Autism. Has. Been. Explored. Already.
Write something else.
5: Let us do things.
I mean, it’s what this whole screed boils down to. Give us stories, give us choices and personal power and relationships, let us affect and be affected by others, and let us do things. Have what we do be colored, quietly and subtly, by autism when it’s appropriate—have us covering our ears in a crowd, or hanging a visual schedule on our bedroom wall, or fiddling with a stim toy while we wait, yes, please. But give us things to do.
