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.