ONTD Original: 7 'Totally Not Autistic' Female Characters That Are 'Definitely Autistic'

[parachuteending]

Disclaimer: I decided to do this ONTD Original after reading many misconceptions regarding autism in recent posts on here. Just so we're clear, I'm a Black woman who have been diagnosed with the Asperger syndrome in adulthood. Asperger syndrome (or Asperger's) is the high-functioning form of autism which means that I can work, live, engage in

Comments

[nudrive]

Thank you for this op! Great post and very informative, I'm still learning about autism, honestly I didn't know much until I made a friend who is on the spectrum >_

[new_peteland]

This is a great post.

My friend found out just a couple years ago, well into her 30s.

[she_slips_away]

I haven’t seen many of these but I def agree about Beth Harmon! I felt like that was pretty strongly implied across the series, especially with her visualizing the chess boards, kind of felt like showing her non linear thinking as you said, along with a lot of other hints. But most importantly, I loved that Beth is portrayed as both autistic and sexually/romantically desirable. She has agency over her sexuality (even if she uses it in maladaptive ways sometimes) and I think that’s not commonly shown in portrayals of neurodivergent or disabled women.

[sugarcrawler]

OP just so you know a lot of autistic people reject the “functioning” label and it’s considered offensive to a lot of us. the label of functioning was created by neurotypicals and if you research you’ll see why a lot of autistic reject self identifying as high functioning or low functioning the same with aspergers which is now an outdated Dx

[parachuteending]

Sorry I didn't know that a lot of autistic people rejected that term. I'm not American (I'm French) and this term is accepted in our circles...

[ginainabottle]

Interesting how it varies from language to language, isn't it? For example, I know the term disabled person is accepted in the US but here in Brazil the correct term is person with disability.

[ishumy]

I was shocked when I moved to Spain and saw that the use of "minusválido/a" (which can literally be read as "less valid/valuable") as a noun to refer to people with disabilities is still normalized and widespread. It's very fucked up.

[galactoze]

Oh yes, Cassie is a good choice. Great post op!