Autistic Celebrities

Who did we look up to as autistic little kids? The answer is tricky- and we’re sharing it with you on this week’s episode of Aces Up Your Sleeve! We’re covering “good” and “bad” autistic representation and where to find it. (Hint: it might be both harder and easier than you think!) Join us in reminiscing about special interests and all of the autistic traits we notice in media.

On Upping the Ante, we're critically examining the darker side of neurodivergent celebrities and autistic influencers. We're focusing on harmful behaviors, accountability, and the impact of misusing a platform. Join us to hear more about why it'd be great to have more autistic celebrities and how tough fame must be for autistic folks.

A list of neurodivergent celebrities: https://www.imdb.com/list/ls545872590/

To ask us questions, fill out the form at www.neurokink.org/auys

Find more content on Patreon (18+): www.patreon.com/AcesUpYourSleevePodcast

Sabrina at www.radicalingingishtsconsulting.com or @radicalinsightsconsulting on social media (FB, IG)

Kade at www.cryptidlearns.com or @cryptidlearns on social media (FB, IG)

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:06

This is the Aces Up Your Sleeve podcast, and we're the Aces Up Your Sleeve in relationships from romantic to workplace, parental to platonic, your relationship with yourself, and everything in between. That led us to autistic aspect kinky therapist to be your secret weapon in neurodivergent life.

SPEAKER_00 0:24

And here's your disclaimer: this is not therapy or therapeutic advice, and we're not on the clock. What you'll hear are our thoughts on different topics, what we might do in your shoes, and how we've supported others through similar situations.

SPEAKER_01 0:47

Hello and welcome to the Aces Up Your Sleeve podcast. I'm your host, Cade. And I'm your host, Sabrina. And today we're talking about autistic and neurodivergent celebrities. We're also gonna hopefully cover the importance of representation because that is something we both platform quite a bit when we're doing trainings and talking to colleagues and clients.

SPEAKER_00 1:07

Yeah. It's really important and unfortunately uh sparse in some ways.

SPEAKER_01 1:14

Yeah. Yeah, it's tough. I mean, we'll probably talk about things like this, but when I get parents of clients and I'm trying to explain to them, like, hey, your kid is autistic, here's what that means. It's really hard. And especially in the past, it was really hard to be like, hey, there are there are happy autistic adults, there are successful autistic adults in however they define success. When my only examples I could give were like Anthony Hopkins from Silence of the Lambs. Do you know him, parents? He's successful and kind of happy, I think. Uh is the actor or the actor. I mean, probably the character as well, but the actor for sure, yeah. Uh but then he goes on to say some like, well, it's actually Asperger's and da-da-da, you know, so don't really want parents reading his stuff. And then Dan Aykroyd from SNL, who I believe struggled with substance use for a really long time. Uh, and Ghostbusters, of course he did Ghostbusters, which canonically I would assume in the canon they're all autistic, but uh there's also Oh, who is it? Oh, and of course Temple Grandon.

SPEAKER_00 2:28

Yeah. Although it is she famous enough that like a random parent off the street would know. Like, I I do know that she's talked about in like school settings, which I had never heard of her until I like entered into the autism spaces as a professional.

SPEAKER_01 2:44

She is very big with parents who have some awareness of autism. So if they've ever donated to autism speaks or have, you know, uh I've got a cousin with who has a kid with autism, and so we know about Temple Grand and how great she is. Gotcha. Which when you get more into the autistic community for listeners who don't know, she said a lot of very problematic things and has some beliefs that are pretty harmful to autistic people, especially autistic people with higher support needs. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:14

Yeah. Yeah. I like so my best friend growing up had two autistic siblings, but like it was weird, and we were young and we like didn't really know all the stuff. And so, like, outside of that, I think the most that I like knew in terms of representation was like fucking big bang theory, um, which isn't even actually representation because they're not and then uh in community, Abed. Um, right, and like the closest that they ever get to saying that he's autistic is the like on the spectrum, none of your business uh line in one of the Christmas episodes. And so like that was pretty much it. And I was like pretty well into like teenagerhood and early adulthood when when some of that came out, so oh same.

SPEAKER_01 4:01

Yeah, yeah, definitely did not know about that as a a kid or middle schooler, and I had also an autistic friend who was formally diagnosed and just yeah, had no clue what that meant. Uh I don't like I've never even seen Rain Man, which is the other thing parents, especially of older generations, usually know. Never even seen that, but I know enough to know not to recommend that either.

SPEAKER_00 4:26

Yeah, or uh what is what's eating Gilbert Grape when uh Leonardo DiCaprio tries uh acts oh god, just a mess. A lot of allistic actors playing autistic uh characters and yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:44

Well, yeah, our first yeah. I was gonna say our first question is when you were younger, who did you look up to as autistic role models or celebrities? That's tough.

SPEAKER_00 4:54

Yeah, I think we were talking about it a little bit uh before we hopped on of like it is also hard because we neither one of us were identified early um in life, right? And so I don't know that we were seeking it out. I don't know if that if we sought it out, it would have been there. Um, like I was a child in the early 2000s and a teen in the mid-2000s and early 2010s, and um I don't know that there was much.

SPEAKER_01 5:27

No, no, I graduated in 2009, and I don't I mean, one, I didn't know to look for it or really what it meant or was, but secondly, I don't think anybody was talking about it like that. Yeah. So I but I will say a lot of the celebrities that I gravitated towards and had like some hyper focus or special interest related to some of them passed away, like Prince and Kurt Cobain. We'll never know. We'll never know, but we could maybe take a guess, you know? Uh and then celebrities like uh there was a time frame where I was like, let me like lean really hard into femininity and just see like, can I do this at all? So Paris Hilton, some of the like Hugh Hefner Playboy Bunny uh girlfriends who now, like Holly Madison, one of those ladies, she is openly autistic, and Paris goes and talks about how she's an ADHDer, and a lot of the people the comedians I used to be really into, like Mitch Hedberg, also has passed away, but his jokes are so literal and like yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:33

His hold on, now I have to look him up because if he's who I think I fucking loved him. Last like the Hedgeberg Hedberg. Yes, he's the one with the one of my favorite fucking jokes ever about how like when you're wearing a backpack um and like a turtleneck, it feels like you're being choked out by like a person on your back, and that is exactly how I feel all the time, which has nothing to do with autism, but yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:58

But like so many of his insights and jokes, and like some of his bits on like receipts and why do we need them, just the absurdity of like holistic society and the societal norms. Everybody is capable of doing that, but I do think when that is the bulk, if not exclusively all of your comedic work is focused on that.

SPEAKER_00 7:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:19

You know.

SPEAKER_00 7:20

Yeah, it's uh it's interesting. I also was super into him. I I think it's less for me about like who I was looking up to when I was young, because again, like I was just didn't know, and I was caught up in a lot of other kinds of things. Um, like all this stuff with America's Dex Top Model is happening right now, right? Because the documentary came out. And I was talking to a friend um about how like we would sit outside of our elementary school and like talk about like, oh, did you see last night's episode? Like, da-da-da-da. And like what that did, especially because I had like a lot of gross spirits really young, and so like I was head and shoulders bigger than everyone in my class. I wasn't looking back at photos, like I've been looking back at old photos of me as like a teen and a kid, I was not fat, but like up until I sat down and looked at those photos, you wouldn't have been able to convince me that I was not a fat teenager and child. Um, but I was bigger than everyone else around me. And uh, so like a lot of what I was watching just wasn't really about like role models and things like that. I think once I started going on my autistic journey, it was more okay, this is like what am I finding? And so, like, you know, early on it was the like, oh hell yeah, like Lilo from Welo and Stitch is very autistic coded. Um, and more so finding like autistic coded characters. Um, there was a character in Degrassi who had Asberger's. Um, you know, uh it's just nobody should have watched Degrassi had that show. Um, but like um he was like a black kid too, which was kind of cool, like now thinking about it. Oh um, but yeah, there was for that time frame.

SPEAKER_01 9:18

For yeah, that's cool. That's cool.

SPEAKER_00 9:19

Yeah, like yeah, it was like uh probably like mid-2010s, like early 2010s when when that was out, yeah. Because he was like not part of the first group of the thing. He was like part of the next one, but um DeCrassi ran for so long for no reason. But yeah, I think it I was really like looking up to like autistic role models more in person, and then unfortunately there have been some like autistic celebrities who have really, really let the community down in some ways, right? Um so yeah, it's been an interesting, it's hard because like even now there's just not it doesn't feel like there's that many out there, and especially when it comes to autistic folks representing autistic folks in media, uh, you know, versus like an Autistic person playing an autistic person. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:19

Yeah, and I'm with you too on like as I look back at what I was drawn to in shows and stuff, I can easily pick out like, oh, that character has a lot of autistic qualities, even though they never say that they're autistic. Definitely community with Aubed, but also like Yeah, a lot of the cartoons I used to watch as a kid. Now looking at like Bob's Burgers, I think they have explicitly said it now, at least about Tina and Bob's Burgers.

SPEAKER_00 10:45

Well, because so they have an episode in like season one, and season one of Bob's Burgers is trash. Um, but because they're still trying to kind of be family guy too much, they didn't quite like settle into there. And so they have that episode with like it's a really viral clip now where Tina's talking about something and she like drops or she's talking about something and she's like, Oh, I don't want to have to do it. Like, what if they're I don't want to have to go over there? What if they're pedophiles? And then Gina's like, Well, I don't want to do it, and Louise is like, Well, you're the autistic one or the artistic one, like there's like a confusion in the word there, and then someone drops a bunch of uh toothpicks on the ground and they're like count them, and Tina goes 40, and there's like three of them. Oh and it's just like uh a kind of funny mockery, but it is interesting that like that's where they started, and they're really far away from that as a whole, like they're not in that kind of like mean mockery place anymore. Um, but that like the characters have grown more and more to to represent some like neurodivergencies.

SPEAKER_01 11:55

Yeah, it's cool to see the growth there, and I think in a more recent season they've alluded to it again, if not outright said it. So it's neat that they've kept some of the threads and yeah. And same with like, you know, Power Rangers was one of my first special interests, and when they did the remake, the Blue Ranger is autistic, it's also black, and I was like, I love the Blue Ranger, and yeah, that's just very cool to see some of that like full circle, and I like when the creators will uh say this is an autistic character.

SPEAKER_00 12:25

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's I will say it feels like it's happening more and more now, which is nice. Like I know there's an autistic uh Sesame Street, my bad.

SPEAKER_01 12:34

Yeah. And then uh I I don't think you you haven't seen Heated Rivalry, have you? No. Okay, one of the two main characters is autistic, like canonically author has said so, actor knew so. Is the actor autistic? I don't know. I don't know if he said one way or the other. Fair. Interesting. And I think that's the hard part too, you know, because sometimes there's a lot of debate on should you should you assume somebody's neurotype or take guesses at it, or is that private? I mean, would you do that with their sexuality or their gender identity or da-da-da. I think it's hard when we are so desperate to see ourselves represented to not make some guesses, you know, like I had just said about like Kurt and Prince.

SPEAKER_00 13:19

Like Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:20

There's just so many things that resonate so deeply that I'd be surprised if the answer was no, they're not. But I also understand how it's uncomfortable to have people speculating about you.

SPEAKER_00 13:30

Yeah. I mean, I also think like this is uh um one of those things kind of like, hey, would you would you do this about their sexuality, whatever? I think people have forgotten the 2010s. Because fuck it.

SPEAKER_01 13:46

People do it about sexuality, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:48

People still do it about sexuality, but like, especially back then, like that was huge all the time. Absolutely. I'm not agreeing with it. I don't think it was a good thing to do. But like, yes, people would do that all of the time. I'm also personally of the opinion that like if you're going to play something on TV, I would like you to be secure enough in whatever identity that that is to be out with that identity for yourself. Like, if you're not out, that's I don't want to force anyone out of the closet ever for any identity that they like part of it. I also recognize is that like being black, being fat, like I hold identities that aren't hideable, like they're not massive, they're not right. And so like that gives me a different relationship with the identities that I hold, I think. But I do think that like if you're feeling confident enough that you can portray this on TV, then either deal with whatever criticism you're going to get for not being an out, whatever that identity is, gender or neurotype, or be out. Like, I don't really have a lot of like space for like, well, I want to be able to play it because I am it, but I don't want to have to take responsibility for being it and like whatever that comes with outside of I want to keep my privilege in real life and have the privilege of playing this character and continue on that like characters people who are out don't get these roles, right? Like and play into that that issue. And so, like, yeah, it's not my favorite. And I I respect celebrities a lot more who only take roles with identities that they actually hold and are out about holding.

SPEAKER_01 15:36

Two things popped into my head as you said it. Like, the first is say I went and deep dived and learned everything there is to know about OCD, and I'm someone who may have OCD. It's tough to know for sure. Uh, but would I go and do a presentation and be like, hey, I'm gonna give you six hours of education on OCD, and then be upset if someone was like, Well, I think Cade might have OCD because like he just did the six-hour presentation and claimed to know all this enough to teach us all about it. Right. And then the second thing was the whole Sia movie. Do you recall that at all? Yes. Where she wrote the movie for listeners who don't know, she wrote a movie about an autistic, I believe that was like the main character and whole storyline was around this autistic young woman girl. And then she got real upset because people were saying your representation isn't good and this and that, and you know, why wouldn't you use an actual autistic actress? And she apparently she had had one hired and just thought it was like too intense for the person or something.

SPEAKER_00 16:36

Yeah, my understanding, and I could be wrong, it was a long time ago, and like I struggle a little bit keeping up with celebrity news, but like my understanding was that it was essentially like I don't think that you're like fit to do this role. Yeah, which uh only enraged people more, which makes sense.

unknown 16:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:55

Yeah, and it really also drew into question well, why are you not accommodating your like the people you're hiring to do this? But I digress. Uh so turns out a year or two later, after she struggled with some substances, she ended up, I believe, going into sobriety and then saying, Well, you all believe me so bad, but I'm actually autistic, and da da da da. Well, maybe if you had led with that, maybe if you had done some w internal work before trying to like put out this huge movie about I believe it was a non-speaking autistic with the like character.

SPEAKER_00 17:30

It also just goes to like it is possible to hurt your own community. Oh, yeah. It is possible to be an ableist, disabled person, a like racist black, brown, or Asian person, two other races. Obviously, you can't be racist white people, but like uh an anti-fat, fatty, like all of these identities exist. Um, and is usually the default. Like it's usually that like if you have not done some amount of unlearning and relearning, that that's what you're going to start out as because like those are the baseline of what society teaches. And so, like, great, you're actually autistic. You also did harm.

SPEAKER_01 18:12

Yep. And that needs to come with some actual accountability and apology and repair instead of just uh quit bullying me, I hold that identity as well.

SPEAKER_00 18:22

Right. Like your identity is not your shield against accountability, and like it's hard to like even if she had been upfront about being autistic at the time.

SPEAKER_01 18:32

Like, still, is that her story to tell about a non-speaking autistic person as she's out there singing and making music and talking? And maybe I think we would want to know a little more about her own experience before spending money to go watch that.

SPEAKER_00 18:46

Well, and even if it is her story to tell, if you tell it harmfully, like I have a my personal story is of being a like light-skinned black woman raised in the American South by a white lesbian. If I decided to make a movie out of my life and I cast a fucking white person as me, that's like not okay. Like, that's still a problem. Yeah. So it it's the same thing that gets uh, and I'm sure we'll talk about this a little in a little bit more depth. Um, but it's the same thing that happened with uh Kaylin, whatever the fuck.

SPEAKER_01 19:24

That like from Love on the Spectrum, yeah. No, no, no. Is she on Love on the Spectrum? I think season one, and then they didn't invite her back because her I forget how they phrased it to her, but essentially her type of autism is not the one they want to highlight. Interesting. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:41

At some point we'll have yeah, because Love on the Spectrum is definitely something that we should talk about.

SPEAKER_01 19:45

Uh yeah, if the new season comes out, or at this point when folks are hearing this, I think April 1st, so we'll have plenty to talk about.

SPEAKER_00 19:53

Yeah, I've never seen it. Um I struggle with reality shows already, but there's something about it that gives me doesn't sit right with my spirit.

SPEAKER_01 20:02

It's yeah, it's interesting. It's very interesting. I've watched all of it and lots of great people on the show. The way that they film it though, yeah. And the narratives they give sometimes interesting. But that kind of leads us to our next question, too, which is how do you find good autistic representation in media? I know it's out there, but don't know where to start.

SPEAKER_00 20:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:27

And we've talked a little about some of the bad representation. I mean, you mentioned community in Abed. The as far as I know, the creator Dan Harmon is also autistic, but I think I don't know a lot about him, but I think it's arguable as to whether or not he's a good representation of an autistic person. If Abed is a good representation, uh Dan Harmon, uh writer. Because he also did Rick and Morty, which, you know, again, I believe there's some canon around one or both of those two characters being autistic. And I haven't seen it, but I've heard about it, and I don't know if that would necessarily be great representation.

SPEAKER_00 21:07

I think it depends on what you're trying to represent. Like, so my feeling on representation is that like it should be in the hands of the community being represented. And representation of lots of kinds can be valuable. Like, it also doesn't work for representation to just be like, look at all of the bestest besties who ever bested, um, you know, and and set this standard of like all autistic people must be XYZ, all of this great stuff and never anything negative, like all these things. Like, I don't think that that works very well. I do think that like I like Ahmed. Um I could understand even how like the Rick and Morty guys could make people feel seen, which I think is important. I think the hard part is that like it is going to be seen by people in the community and outside of. It and so that is also a consideration. But I think if you have a wide enough like pool of representation, then you get to have your like everything's positive and joyful and whatever, and you're like, there's some like kind of toxic motion. Like this reminds me of um the Christmas movie that came out with Kristen Stewart like a couple of years ago, where she's dating this girl, and then they go to the parents' house for Christmas, and the girl that she's dating is like, My parents don't know I'm gay, I'm not out, like we can't talk about this, we can't do anything about it. Like, that's I think a really important story to be had. Like that movie itself has some issues, but like I think that we need representation like that as well as representation of like a family, like a person coming out and everything well. You know what I mean? Like it's gotta have all of it.

SPEAKER_01 22:55

And I think that can be the hard part too, is where when a community doesn't have much representation, and this is very true for the trans community over the last 20 or so years, all the stories that come out, if they all follow the same storyline of like for trans people, it's always we die or something tragic happens to us. Uh so when you see like 10 movies like that, it really starts to cloud you as a trans or non-binary person and people who are cis. Uh, everybody's kind of like, okay, so it's just tragic and you just you're gonna get hurt, or you know. Yeah. And I think we were seeing that for autism where there was just like kind of one thing being portrayed, usually the like smart but bullied person, whether that's a kid or an adult. And I think we're moving away from that. Um don't know a ton about Rick and Morty, but I believe whichever one is the older one struggles with substances. That's a very real autistic experience, you know.

SPEAKER_00 23:53

Yeah, uh the older one is Rick. Okay. Yeah. And yeah, like I think it's it it's important to try to capture the fullness of the experience, right? That like A, there's billions of autistic people, of queer people, black people, like all these things, right? And so like you're not gonna have it doesn't work to have one-dimensional stories where it's only ever like one thing. And so, yeah, like I I don't know, like, again, it goes back to like did the writers intentionally make them autistic? I don't know if Dan Harmon did or did not intentionally make Rick and Morty autistic. I don't I've seen most episodes of that show. I don't remember them ever saying it outright that they either one of them is or is not. Um but I do think that like having characters that are going to speak to something, right? Um, and so like I think I mentioned earlier, like Lilo from Lilo and Stitch what is one of those that like a lot of people are like, oh yeah, like everything about her, look at her, she's fucking autistic. Um and that's just not where media was at the time that that movie came out, um, to to own that. Um and I I doubt it was in anyone's mind, but I also think that that's indicative of the way that autism has existed for a while, is like um a lot of people wouldn't have classified a lot of things as autistic that are. Um and so within that, right? I really like Lilo, I really like um a lot of the kind of like oh, like this weird individual character. Um, I will say Asia and I are watching The Pit right now. Um and there is a It's like ER type show. Yeah, it's like ER, but like there it's not ER. It's it's a little like ER. It's also like uh 24 because each episode is one hour of the shift. So you watch an hour of the show and it's one hour of shift um in this hospital. And the main reason that it gets the ER stuff is because Noah Weil is in both. Um so but it's not like actually super, super similar more less so less so than any other like medical show, right? Um but in it there is a character, uh Dr. Mel King, who has an autistic sister, and there is every sign in the world that Mel is going to identify that she is also autistic at some point. Like um, she shows a lot of like autistic traits. Um and there's an episode in the first season where she gets a patient who's autistic, or no, someone else, Dr. Langdon, gets a patient who's autistic and is like, I can't figure out what the fuck to do with him. He won't answer any of my questions, like this da-da-da-da-da. And so Mel's like, Can I try? And he's like, Yeah. And so she goes in and she like turns the light off and like closes the like little things and closes all the doors because it's loud on the yarn, like basically meets the person's sensory needs and then asks him about like, How did you get hurt? Well, I'm doing this thing, and okay, so it's important to you to get back to doing your competition, like tell me some about that, like, okay, and is able to like meet this person's needs and then teaches Dr. Langdon how to do it. And so I think right now Dr. Mal King is one of my favorite autistic um like role models or uh like representation, uh, because it's really different feeling to me than like the good doctor, where it's like okay, and I am like quite uh a like stereotypical white male, like you know, genius, but like disabled, like you know, like all of that kind of stuff. Um, Mel is just a person, an autistic person, likely, um, who cares for other autistic people and other people and like is just doing her job and is good at it in some places and struggles with it in others, and like I think that kind of representation is my favorite.

SPEAKER_01 28:16

Yeah, yeah, where it's like a full human, not just a trope that it's following. Exactly, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 28:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:24

Not that this is like if someone's asking this to show to their their children or something, this is not who I would recommend. But as you're talking about that too, House is one of those, like been around for a long time, and you cannot convince me that character's not autistic. Yeah, you know, and it shows a side of autism that doesn't really get talked about. So it's interesting.

SPEAKER_00 28:47

Asia and I are also watching that because like the pit comes out each week. Um, and so we needed a show to watch in between. Um, and so we're also re-watching House Right Now, and yeah, it's we just restarted. Um, I haven't watched it in years, and it it's just very interesting because yeah, there's the like and I think especially again, like we need complex autistic characters. It doesn't work to have every autistic character be hyper empathetic and da da da and all of these things that like on the pendulum, right? Like there were all these kind of negative views of autism, and I think a lot of people early in their like autism advocacy journey are trying to like swing it, but they they go too far, and so it ends up over here of like we don't have no empathy, we have all the empathy ever. And it's like, well, no, there are autistic people on every single inch of this pendulum, right? Who hit anywhere along that line, and no one of them is better or worse than another one, yeah. And so, yeah, I think that uh there's it's really important to have like complex and harder to love autistic characters as well as like Mel is also just my favorite character in the pit, period. Like she's just great. Um and so yeah, I think that there's there's room for all of them, and all of them are important.

SPEAKER_01 30:13

Yeah, before we hit record, we were talking about the residence, which I couldn't remember the name of, and like Uza, like a main character, I don't think they ever say is autistic, but that's like an easy-to-love autistic lots of autistic traits, and yeah, you know. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. It's nice to see those. So good representation, I think. You can kind of find it because many characters are like autistic coded. It just depends what you're looking for and what would represent you or whoever you're hoping to show it to or read it to. There's a lot of books now that have autistic characters.

SPEAKER_00 30:48

Yeah, I also think that there's like nothing actually wrong with finding a part of a character that you really resonate with, even if they're not autistic, even if like they're not canonically autistic or like uh, you know, whatever. First of all, make a headcanon. Yeah. Like make an ancient example. Someone has written a fic of it, I promise you. Um we're getting to the point where like in the same way as uh what is it, rule 24? Uh 34, I think, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're gonna have to have like a fucking rule something else because whatever the I was trying to think of, I'm so bad at chemistry. The like um gold, cause is AU, right? And then whatever the atomic number for that is, rule whatever that number is, is that there is definitely a fic out there of that character but autistic.

SPEAKER_01 31:41

I totally agree, and I think you should make that saying a thing for sure, because that's so true. And it goes back to that piece about Dan Harmon as well. Like when we're autistic and we're writing, can we not write aut like is it possible to not write an autistic character unless you're consciously making choices to take away autistic traits from them? Because the way we default write humans, like it'd be very interesting to see what that would look like.

SPEAKER_00 32:08

Yeah, I think it's hard. Like it also gets down into like in general, it's the same way that like when my clients are like, Oh, well, is is it normal for like a non-autistic person to do that? I'm like, I don't know. I'm not a non-autistic person, like I'm just not holistic, and I I don't have that brain, and I never have. And so, you know, I could tell you what like other holistic people have told me, um, but I can't speak directly to an holistic experience. And I think that like in the same way that I believe that like we should write our experience and not write non-Our experience. So, like, I don't really love it or find it to be helpful when like, for example, white people try to write specifically a black character in a black like situation, like that's your main character, that's what your story is all about, blah blah blah. Um, and I follow like a really good sensitivity reader who talks a lot about that. Um, but I also think that in that same way, like it doesn't really make sense. I'm not gonna write a character. All of my characters are gonna have some neurodivergent traits because like that's just the only way that I know how a brain functions. Like, I don't even know that I would be able to write a character well that like could see in their mind's eye because I've a fantasic and I can't, and I don't know what that's like. And so, like, oh, and they vividly saw the like that's the other part is like my writing is not very visual because I don't really know how to like I'm not thinking in that way. And so yeah, there's just I think that we need to radically accept like our experience holds the limits of what we can then export into the world in whatever medium we choose.

SPEAKER_01 33:54

And I think uh we didn't talk about this one yet, but I feel like it's called Heartbreak High with Chloe Hayden, who is actually an autistic uh person, was an autistic YouTuber for a long time. That character, I believe, is written by an allistic writer or writer's team, but they took her feedback to adapt and let her have some like liberty in how she acted things out and what she would add lib, which makes that a little bit more of an authentic autistic character versus if it had been written kind of in a in an allistic vacuum.

SPEAKER_00 34:25

Yeah, I watched the first season of that. Um Chloe Hayden had some uh some drama um being just fucking white autistics. Um, you know, uh I don't even remember what was happening, but it was something. Um But yeah, I I do definitely like think that there was it there was like a scene in one of the episodes where she like gets really overwhelmed, um, like um sensory overwhelmed kind of thing, and like that felt very realistic to like experiences that I've had or that clients of mine that have had or friends of mine or things like that. Um so I think that that is one of the powers of having like someone who's actually autistic and who's actually experienced things. It's the same way as like someone who's been drunk before is going to act drunk better than someone who's not. Someone who is tripped acid is gonna act tripping acid better, someone who's been pregnant is gonna act pregnant better. Like you get things out of having lived something that those who have not lived it don't have.

SPEAKER_01 35:32

And it's interesting too. I would love to kind of compare actors who are autistic versus allistic in the same role. What would that look like? Are there just some inherently innate communication differences or body movements? Or because the other person that comes to mind the character is not canonically autistic, I don't think, but have you ever seen Prison Break with Wentworth Miller? Yeah. So Wentworth Miller came out as bi, and I'm like, that's awesome, queer representation, and then later came out as autistic, and I'm like, that's doubly awesome. Yeah. But that character, like, I bet, you know, going back and watching clips, you'd be like, Oh. Outside of the whole concept of the show breaking out of prison and strategizing and all those things being like appealing to our maybe sense of expectation sensitivity and planning and structure. I wonder what else is there, you know, if you go back and watch.

SPEAKER_00 36:23

Yeah. Well, I can let you know because Age and I are thinking about re-watching that at some point soon. Um it is a very good one. And we thought of it because uh the guy who plays Went With Miller's brother in that, who's like the one in prison, um, is in an episode of House that we just watched. Oh we were like, oh, we should we should watch that. We haven't watched that in a while.

SPEAKER_01 36:44

Um I love when you watch something and it's like, oh my gosh, that's that person from all these other things. Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_00 36:51

And so like I just watched the uh ER for the first time, which is what led us to watching the pit. And uh that show is real good for it. Like it has more than half of the main cast of uh West Wing in it at some point or another, and there's like just so many different different things, but there is in uh NER one of the characters has ADHD, and it's interesting to watch too, because like that show I think starts in like 94, 95, something like that. Oh and so like this is the really early 2000s when this character is on, she's like an intern and she has ADHD, and uh actually No While's character is like you cannot take at all. Like you can't take a stimulant, like you need to figure out how to be a doctor without needing that, like that you can't be a doctor and ha need that, which is really funny because his character later has a fucking addiction problem. Um but so she tries to like figure out how to like be a doctor without her meds, and she's like scrambling and like just uh you know, fucking ADHD. And it's just so interesting, like how far some of that has come and how far some of that has not come at all, you know.

SPEAKER_01 38:11

Yeah, absolutely, and I bet if this is one where we could probably talk for hours on this, maybe we'll have to do it a part two sometime because we didn't even touch on like fantasy media, science fiction, all the places where openly and out autistic people hang out and create.

SPEAKER_00 38:28

Yeah. And yet I feel like I almost would struggle more to figure out because I don't know that there's as many like canonically autistic characters in those spaces. I think that people are just writing like what they feel and then aren't really putting that label there.

SPEAKER_01 38:42

Absolutely. It probably goes back to what we're saying, where like when you have a certain experience, it kind of translates into your art. Yeah. Well, we are gonna wrap up here and we'll move over to Upping the Ante, which is our bonus segment over on Patreon. Um, we're planning to talk about ways autistic people use their platforms for evil, and uh that should be interesting, especially if we go the love on the spectrum route and talk about some of those folks. Yeah. So uh thanks for joining us, and we'll see you over there. You can expect new episodes weekly on Tuesdays. You can find me at Cryptid Learns and Sabrina at Radical Insights Consulting on Facebook or Instagram or at a dot com at the end of either of those for our websites. So follow the podcast on Facebook or Instagram at AcesUpyourSleeve Pod. That way you can interact with us and you can see when new episodes release. If you have any questions for us, visit neurokink.org slash A U Y S and send it our way. We're going to jump over to Patreon to record upping the ante. It's over at www.patreon.com slash aces up your sleeve podcast. But you can also listen to it wherever you stream once you join our Patreon. We'll see you there.