I have been watching several videos of autism and gender. Well, not exactly. I have been watching the first five minutes of several videos on gender and autism. The reason I haven’t made it past that is–there are several. In one, the woman repeated called herself ‘a female’ and women in general ‘females’. As a noun, not an adjective. In 2023, nearly 2024. This is not on because many people who do it are doing it as a slur or a way to undermine women. I am not here for that. At all. I winced every time she said, “I am a female with autism or anything similar.” In addition, I am not a woman. I am woman-adjacent, but not a woman. At least not as defined by society. Which is part of the whole point. If society’s rigid definition of a woman includes must wear makeup and a bra, have children, not laugh too loud, or just no take too much space in general, then burn it all to the ground. And I’m not just talking about the bra.
I also quit watching some of the videos because of the hypercuts. I can’t deal with flashing images, which some of the videos bordered on. One person kept making air quotes with their fingers, which I could not handle. Not only was the visual bothering me, but so was the meaningless of the air-quotes. I knew why they were doing it, but they were doing it wrong. And that annoyed the fuck out of me. Another person was spinning a ball or something. I get why they were doing it, but that also bothered my brain.
Side Note: I hate ASMR. It makes me rage. Insta-angry. It wasn’t, “Listen to the ASMR. Note that it was irritating me. Then, become upset about it.” It was, “Listen to the ASMR. RAGE SHUT THAT SHIT OFF AHHHHHHHHHHH!” with me scrambling to turn off the video. I’m saying this because some of the videos had the same insta-rage in my brain.
Here is what I like in my content creation. Chill people. Natural reactions. No forced shouting and forced outrage. Dare I say it, boring? Yeah, other people might find it so. No flashing lights. No spikes in sound. And no jittery camera work.
Here’s the other realization. Just because someone has, say, autism, it doesn’t mean they can talk about it in a way that is compelling or understandable. It’s like anything else, really. And, despite the intimate nature of most YouTube channels, it’s still a performance. Or at least public speaking. Which not everyone can do.
Side Note Deux: It’s the same with writing. Most people think they can do it because they do it on the regular. Write, I mean. Most people can write. Many people do write daily. Whether it’s email, texts, messages, reports, professional writing, etc. People write in their jobs or just as a way of communicating, then erroneously think that means they can write a novel or a script. Or poetry or whatever. By the way, those are all different things. I have written novels, poetry, screenplays, scripts (for theater, different), scripts for one-person performances, and professional papers (copywriting). These are all very different ways of writing, and they should not all be lumped into one group.
Anyway, it’s the same with content creation and public speaking. Yes, most people can technically speak in public, but that doesn’t mean they are good at it. YouTube is the great equalizer. this is a good thing in many ways! It means that anyone can post content to the platform. On the other hand, it’s bad because anyone can post to the platform. Yes, I just said that was a good thing, but it’s a double-edged sword.
One issue with the internet is that the laws are so woefully behind the times. The people who make the laws don’t understand the internet, clearly. They’ve kind of thrown up their hands and said, “Welp. What can you do?” when it comes to the internet, so we’re in this weird Wild West-ish situation with the web.
Anyway. I’m currently watching a video on gender nonconformity and cisgender whilst being autistic. By a dude. It’s interesting. I will include it in this post. It is above. And I really relate to what he’s saying about doing what feels comfortable and practical. His argument is that since he’s a guy, anything he does as a guy, is a guy behavior. In other words, he’s reclaiming ‘man’. Which is similar to my Taiji teacher and ‘woman’.
I’m endlessly fascinated by this because of the different shades of gray, so to speak. K, my Taiji teacher, my nibling, and I all are AFAB. We all have similar feelings about gender (not being stereotypical women–in fact, being pretty far from it),but we’ve ended up with very different labels. My Taiji teacher has defiantly claimed woman as her own; K is woman by default but has told me that if she were twenty to thirty years younger, she probably would be nonbinary; my nibling is nonbinary; and I am agender.
But the guy in the video, his main point was that people with autism look at things different than neurotypical people in general. So why is it surprising that there might be a spike of GNC beliefs in autistic people?
In other words, if you’re used to being the outsider and questioning the way of the normies, it makes sense that gender would be just one of those things you question. And if you don’t see why you should do the things normies do, then gender could easily fall into that same mentality.
I am still trying to come to grips that I may be autistic. It would explain so many things if I were. I do want to get tested, but that will probably have to wait until after the holidays.
When it comes to gender, for now, I’m going to do what I often do after thinking about these issues for a long time–mentally throw up my hands and wave them around like I just don’t care. Because I don’t. Not really. My gender isn’t important to me, and I will just leave it at that for now.