The Good Doctor S1E14

[sciatrix]

Oh, goodie, the transgender episode; and Shaun is predictably clueless about all flavors of gender ID and queerness. Really clueless, and not taking hints either, which the show views as him clearly putting his foot in it.

Which does not ring true for me, as an autistic person who grew up talking to other autistic people, and sure this character is clueless and isolated, but--

We are so much likelier to be gender non-conforming or trans or nb than allistic people! Even growing up with Wrongplanet back in the day--that would have been in 2007ish--I remember people talking frankly about gender issues and sexuality issues and being present with those things. Did this kid whose entire social circle knows he's autistic, who never ever passes, just... never so much as think to look for other people who got him?

Did he never have a chance to talk to people like him?

I mean, it happens. T had a class last semester with a boy--and this type is always boys or young men, in my estimation--who would not stop announcing that he was autistic and demanding that T stop and verbally translate everything going on around him, which accommodation he was entitled to because he was autistic and diagnosed: particularly egregious because a) he was ignoring very blunt "I cannot help you here, you are not entitled to my help" boundary signaling from T, but also b) this was ASL 2 and he was being exceedingly rude to their Deaf instructor, who by this point in the course expected them to refrain from verbal discussion as a part of the cultural aspect of learning the language.

There are some boys whose parents appear to view diagnosis as sort of a sort of permanently lowered expectation cum get-out-of-jail-free card, and who decide that their job is to interface with the world for their sons and get them every possible service in spite of the son's... disadvantage. It does not lead to well-adjusted adults, and worse, the kids raised that way tend to have no social skills from an allistic or autistic point of view.

That doesn't mean that early diagnosis is bad for kids, obviously. It just means that allistic parents don't always handle the information right. But it bears mentioning, given the way people tend to take that statement.

What I'm getting at is that one of the things I am missing, looking at this depiction of this man, is that sense of... autistic community exists. I wish that even in a show that is clearly thinking of allistics as its audience, we were reminded that that community exists. I am tired of this idea that autistic people don't talk to each other.

...and okay, the very next episode features a little disabled kid who is gleefully explaining how the Internet lets her make all the friends which she couldn't have otherwise, so. Huh.

Comments

[felinejumper]

I am *so* enjoying your writing about this, fyi, and now I'm on a computer to say so! I've seen a few episodes (while in a social situation + not paying attention) and kind of handwaved it away as being, I'm not sure, a House clone?, but have been following your write ups of it with a great deal of interest that has made those few snippets much more contextually interesting. so, thank you!

(also an fyi i *think* you put the wrong tag on this, The Good Place instead of The Good Doctor; it would bug me terribly on my own dw is the only reason I am mentioning it!)

[sciatrix]

ack! thank you! will fix!

In general it is a weird mix of disability discussion and focus from characters with varying levels of cued in and self-aware--there's a gent in a wheelchair who immediately identified Shaun as on the spectrum who cheerfully said he tries to hire disabled people as a matter of course, for example, and the episode I am watching is a thoughtful discussion of whether surgery with a non-trivial risk of death or brain damage is worth not being able to accurately communicate emotions with your face--and then again the only identified disabled character is this intensely non-self-aware dude who is so clueless I'm impressed, and the POV is clearly assumed to be an allistic person with no idea about any of this.

I am glad you're enjoying my recaps! They have felt very self-indulgent, so I am glad someone else is getting some joy out of them.

[writerkit]

I am also getting something out of them, namely the thought that I might check it out and see for myself. I had just been making the kind of base assumption that clearly it was going to be terrible.

[notasupervillain]

Oh, that explains my friend group in high school! It makes much more sense if being on the spectrum was the thing we had in common and lots of people coming out later in life was a symptom of that.

[sciatrix]

Yes, right? It feels like a particularly common sort of thing to encounter if your social circles run to nerdy queer people later on, too.

[notasupervillain]

It makes sense when I'm older, but I wondered how everyone found each other when they were all in various closets.

[rydra_wong]

I mean, it happens. T had a class last semester with a boy--and this type is always boys or young men, in my estimation--who would not stop announcing that he was autistic and demanding that T stop and verbally translate everything going on around him, which accommodation he was entitled to because he was autistic and diagnosed

Based on a former life as a moderator on an e-mail list: it always gets very interesting when these people get into an all-autistic environment for the first time. And by "interesting" I mean *hollow laughter*.

There are some boys whose parents appear to view diagnosis as sort of a sort of permanently lowered expectation cum get-out-of-jail-free card, and who decide that their job is to interface with the world for their sons and get them every possible service in spite of the son's... disadvantage. It does not lead to well-adjusted adults, and worse, the kids raised that way tend to have no social skills from an allistic or autistic point of view.

I feel like other route that can lead to this is late diagnosis, when people have spent decades without any accommodations, being constantly told to do stuff they can't and punished for things they can't change, and when they finally get a diagnosis there's a sort of rush of blood to the head and they go a bit overboard with YOU HAVE TO ACCOMMODATE EVERYTHING I WANT BECAUSE FINALLY. And being told "no, even if this particular behaviour is related to your autism you still have to stop because it's hurting other people (who may also be autistic!)" can be quite tough.

[sciatrix]

Right? I mean, autistic social skills are just as involved as allistic ones, usually, it's just that the specific expectations on people are different. And autistic people who don't know to lay off when someone sets an explicit verbal boundary (for example) or who are used to being overaccommodated by "helpful" allistics and don't know how to recognize boundaries at all are prone to getting absolutely trounced the moment they blunder into situations with actual autistic people who don't condescend with the tyranny of low expectations.

It is worth noting there that T is also autistic and diagnosed, and that they furthermore have their own disability accommodations, which they immediately told him bluntly in the same breath as telling him to fuck off. This made him assume they were friends, which went quite badly indeed.

The whole thing tends to make me really depressed because the whole presentation means that it's so, so unlikely that the young men in question will ever have actual friendships or relationships of equals that don't have a component of pity. The people they approach who treat them like equals are so nasty and sharp, and how are they going to learn? But on the gripping hand, I am not going to volunteer for asshole rehab duty any time soon.

I feel like late diagnosed folks often have so much anxiety from the years of being told "no it's actually just that you're broken" that the challenges are a little different? Like, it feels like a certain level of fragility responding to criticism about things that might be part of the diagnosis but still require work on their part, or a tendency to gleefully attack allistics and their norms, or a tendency to defensively panic if they feel like they're going back to old expectations. It's not quite the same thing, because there's a lot of fear there that has to be defused rather than confusion and cluelessness.

[notasupervillain]

Yes. As a woman who had to work out social interaction from first principles, I get annoyed at the amount of accommodation made for asshole men who are autistic. I feel like this is a very gendered dynamic of expectations.

Two points.

1. Good on your son for enforcing boundaries!
2. I feel like autistic men make of a portion of the "hating women who don't sleep with them" side of the internet, not to mention the male nerds with that attitude. And like, I was also the weird kid and no one hot wanted to fuck me either in high school. I don't go around saying that boys only want the alphas.

We need an asshole rehabilitation service, but I'm not running it either.

[sciatrix]

Er. *amused* T is actually my spouse, although I see why you might have got that impression. They're non-binary but pass for female, mostly, and at 30 are a few years older than me! It's just they're going back to school for nursing at the moment.

(It's occasionally instructive and weird being in this position of one of us wrangling her PhD and the other one going back to school for their associate's after some time doing odd jobs, in part because the class aspects of where T and I are respectively coming from stand out in sharp relief. There's no difference between the two of us in aptitude or even aptitude for biology, but there's definitely been differences in how well either of us has been able to cope with both of our foul, foul luck that come down to class.)

Anyway, I probably should have made that clear to start! I'm very much with you on the gender dynamics of autism on the internets, and in particular can rant for days on the way autism is used as camouflage for sexual predators without the slightest apparent awareness that autistic people are as likely or more likely to be on the victim side of that equation.

[notasupervillain]

Lol. Oops!

[nami_roland]

I apologize for veering off the main topic of this thread, but as someone in a very similar education/relationship position to you (I am mid-way through a Master's, having taken a couple years off after undergrad, my boyfriend is a couple years older than me and just going back for his bachelor's after a decade+ of job-hopping), with what I suspect are extremely similar class dynamics, I sympathize with the weirdness there.

[sciatrix]

Oh, it's good to see you again! My, it's been ages!

*grin* You might remember T from back on the Yadas, actually.

[nami_roland]

Yeah, I'm part of the Tumblr Exodus. I haven't left yet, because that's where my friends live and because I've never mastered the art of DW-style blogging, but I'm tentatively spreading roots elsewhere, because it's a *mess* over there. And yeah, it really has been a while!

And I am facebook friends with T still, actually, so not only do I remember them, but I get regular updates.