Published on 12, July, 2020
Though anatomically a male (this sounds awkward) and straight. I have had some messed up sex life in my youth (I am 77),but no stable relationship. I understood very lately that if I could have some success in the field of romance it was only because I was attractive. I was also sweet, though my sweetness derived from my fear and lack of aggressiveness. I was shy. I was also literate, so for some kind of women, I had many qualities that might make me, mistakenly, desirable. This brings me to the core of the point I want to make. You may know a language (say Finnish) enough to talk to a Finn, but if for this you have to keep in your bag a dictionary (or to search in your mind for the right word), if you are not fluent in reading in others' mind you only are brought to fake some competence you don't possess. You become a showman, you cannot really be sincere. Many performers in cabarets, impersonators, are people lacking identity (Alec Guinness, Peter Sellers, and many others less famous or simply considered eccentric, bizarre). Traces of mannerisms in social behavior are an indication of a non consolidated and not self assured personality which is one step in the direction of autism. I would say that in the field of attractiveness, the problem is how to manage your attractiveness. At the far away times of my youth I didn't even know about such built in deficiencies as may exist for the “miswiring” of your mind, and I read tons of psychoanalytic literature (which I now consider garbage) that might only mislead me and have mislead millions around the world. Bettelheim (which I read and studied) is still reprinted twice a year in my country. Not to talk of Freud and his epigones.
I'm glad you've raised this one abloner. I think it is one of the issues NAS needs to look at. As you say sexuality differences involve some degree of concealment and putting up a false front - "leading a double life". And before anyone says "what's this got to do with autism?" well, apart from the fact that many people on the spectrum experience ambiguous sexual orientation (just its not done to talk about it), many people on the spectrum, just on account of the spectrum, are forced to lead double lives.
To be able to survive in the NT world, many people on the spectrum act up a more competent profile, learn to mimick the expected mannerisms, use the right words and phrases, and gestures, so we can get on with our lives. But NT expectations of "fitting in" are very high, and one of the factors I suspect makes it hardest for people on the spectrum is that many NTs see trying to put on an act as deceit. They'd rather see disabled people act inadequate or stupid, so they can type-cast them and salve their consciences.
There is a very real need to campaign to make NTs aware that people on the spectrum trying their best to fit in should at least be tolerated (and preferably congratulated) for trying.