I’ve started sharing a new manuscript with beta readers to get early feedback. The main character of this manuscript is autistic — like me! And while I’ve gotten some great suggestions on the manuscript as a whole, I’ve also gotten some feedback that is…not so great.
When an autistic person shares their fiction featuring autistic characters with you, a neurotypical person, here are some things to keep in mind.
- DO NOT SAY that the author should read a book by a neurotypical person with autistic characters for an example of good autism rep!
- There’s a high chance the depiction of autism will be not only wrong but actually offensive (see: The Rosie Project; Miracle Creek).
- Often, these books make the difference between autistic and neurotypical people a chasm that can barely be bridged.
- We’re not eternal children or aliens, much as some autistic people might seem that way to you. Autistic people in these books are unfeeling robots. Nonverbal autistic people are shown as unthinking objects. Neither of these depictions are remotely accurate.
- DO NOT SAY that autistic characters should not be labeled “autistic”, because more people will enjoy the book if they can see themselves in the character, or that the label will scare them away.
- It’s critical that neurotypical people learn to see themselves in autistic characters, the way autistic people have spent all of history finding themselves reflected in neurotypical (or unlabeled, autistic-coded) characters.
- This is empathy! If you can relate to an autistic person in fiction, that’s wonderful — it means you’re empathetic and also that the author did a good job.
- You should not be threatened by relating to autistic characters!
- DO NOT SAY that autistic characters should not be labeled as autistic, because people will figure it out with context clues and the label doesn’t add anything.
- Would you say the same thing about never explicitly saying a character is Black or gay? If you would, please reconsider.
- Representation is important, and labeled representation even more so — if something is stigmatized but not bad, it’s very important that it be named.
- Many people would not recognize it as autism if it’s not labeled, because most people don’t know what autism actually looks like!
- DO NOT SAY that the character should be aged up or down, because the characterization seems wrong for the given age.
- It’s very common for autistic children to play on their own and to communicate better with adults than children, thus seeming older than they are.
- It’s very common for autistic adults to miss nuanced cues and be naive or gullible, thus seeming younger than they are.
- Reflect on whether you know what developmental milestones look like for autistic people before you make this point — chances are the autistic author knows better than you do!
- DO NOT SAY that the depiction is not accurate because it doesn’t resemble an autistic person you know.
- It’s a cliche that autism is a spectrum, but the reality is that it’s many spectra, and all of them are rife with common co-occurring mental and physical differences.
- The chances that the autistic person you know also has another diagnosis are very high, complicating any presentation.
- Like all people, autistic people are extremely varied—if you’ve met one autistic person, you’ve met one autistic person.
- Because autism is often most visible in children and most diagnosed in boys, it’s quite likely that the person you’ve met with autism is a prepubescent boy. If the depiction you’re reading is anything other than that, it makes sense that the character is very different. How similar is a 25-year-old neurotypical woman to a 10-year-old neurotypical boy?
- DO NOT SAY that the autism depiction should be modified to include — or not include — other mental or physical diagnoses that you associate with autism.
- Most autistic people also have ADHD, but not all.
- Many autistic people also have CPTSD, but not all.
- Some autistic people also have intellectual disabilities, but not all.
- There are autistic people with chronic fatigue syndrome or who use a wheelchair or who have asthma or—you get the point. Autistic people can suffer from and/or thrive with any of the things that afflict neurotypical people, and you should respect the author’s choices of which aspect of the autistic experience to include.
- DO NOT SAY that people won’t be comfortable with an autistic character falling in love, consenting to sex, being successful in a career, etc, or that these things are unlikely/unbelievable.
- Autistic adults are not essentially children.
- Maybe you don’t think you could fall in love with an autistic person, but people do! Maybe you don’t think the autistic person you know could manage a team, but plenty of neurotypical people can’t either!
- Romance and sex and success can and do happen in our lives, and it’s offensive to assume they don’t.
- DO NOT SAY that the rudeness the character experiences is unrealistic.
- People can be quite mean, especially when they think the target of their meanness doesn’t notice or care.
- Since autistic people often miss social cues or don’t properly show emotions on our faces, it’s easy for people to assume we don’t notice or care how they treat us. Some bullies take this as license to keep on going. Others take it as a challenge, and keep prodding until they get a reaction!
- This doesn’t stop when you grow up.
- It’s as ignorant for a neurotypical person to say there’s no bullying in a workplace as it is for a popular cheerleader to say there’s no bullying at her high school.
- DO NOT SAY that the autistic characters should struggle more with their autism.
- I struggle all the time with things that would be easy if I weren’t autistic, but I’m not mad about it.
- A lot of autistic people view their diagnosis as a revelation, a wonderful explanation of themselves.
- It’s possible to love yourself and be frustrated by aspects of yourself at the same time.
- It’s not wrong for a character to be depicted at the stage in their journey toward self-understanding where they see how autism makes their life harder without disliking the autism itself.
- DO NOT SAY that the author should show the social cues the autistic character misses so a reader understands why other characters are laughing.
- It’s natural for the reader to want to be let in on the joke, but as an autistic person, you’re usually not!
- There are a lot of depictions of autism where the character is the butt of the joke. The character is funny — but not on purpose. (see: The Big Bang Theory)
- It’s critical that people learn to laugh with us instead of at us.
- If an autistic person has written an autistic character without this familiar framing, they have done so intentionally.
I think a lot of this extends to representation in general. If you do not share an identity with a character and the author does, you should trust that the things you find unbelievable/inaccurate/unlikely about the character are actually things you misunderstand about the identity. If you do share an identity, feel free to engage in the conversation, but remember that there’s a lot to any identity. There are so many ways to be autistic (or queer, or disabled, or from any specific ethnicity, or …). No character can represent all of them. No character should try.
But if you are not autistic, you do not know what it means to be autistic. Your mental image of what an autistic character should look like is almost certainly wrong. This doesn’t mean you can’t criticize a book — or even a character — but you can’t criticize the depiction of autism on the grounds that it isn’t a good representation of autism. If you’re an author, it doesn’t even mean that you can’t write an autistic character! But you can’t write a book about being autistic and expect it to be accurate.
I’m sure my depiction of autism isn’t perfect. This is an early draft! I’d like to hear where my character does things that don’t make sense, or where readers fail to connect with her, just like I would with any other character. And I’d love to hear from other autistic people if anything I’ve written is offensive. But so much feedback is offensive itself, and not at all helpful to me. I’m not going to make my autistic character the butt of a joke, and I’m not going to make her less autistic.