Exploring autistic accounts of sexuality, intimacy, and authenticity

The cultural and scientific context in which autistic people – and autism researchers – are embedded is one of an assumption of deficit and limited or damaged intimate possibilities, omnipresent in mainstream autism research. Autism is constructed as a “disorder of love and of self”, casting a pall over discussion of autistic sexuality, intimacy, and authenticity. The problem, according to the literature, is autism, and social intervention the response. This study used a critical autism studies framework, constructivist grounded theory for data collection and analysis, and a participative, qualitative methodology. In-depth interviews were carried out with 16 autistic adults between 22 and 54 years old with a range of gender and intimate orientations and identities. Early challenges experienced by participants have less to do with “being autistic” than with a hostile social and intimate environment. Difference is punished, intimate identities and behaviors other than cisgendered heterosexuality are rendered invisible or undesirable, and abuse is frequent. The ways participants resolve these unpromising beginnings are interwoven with their autistic subjectivity: an inclination for authenticity, intense interests, accessing diagnosis, and meeting and loving other autistic people. Findings turn the problem proposed by the literature on its head: “social intervention” hampers participants' intimate lives, while their autistic subjectivities mitigate challenges and offer solutions.