Neuroqueer Heresies: Critiquing ‘tame autistics’

As an autistic and queer student and librarian, I’m interested in creating an Autistic Book Club. So I was intrigued by a statement in a related area, that of class curriculum, by Nick Walker, author of Neuroqueer Heresies. Walker stated that “At least 80% of the assigned readings should be by autistic authors” (pp. 405-406).

Walker went on to add, however, that works by “tame autistics” can’t count toward this percentage and should be approached with the “explicit intent” of critiquing these authors’ “internalized oppression” (p. 406).

Walker defines “tame autistics” by a variety of characteristics: “they are heterosexual, asexual, and/or fairly closeted about their sexuality; they grew up fairly affluent and have never faced extreme poverty or homelessness; they are highly capable of oral speech; they are ableist, and have no problem with pathologizing non-speaking autistics or other autistics who are significantly more disabled than themselves; they regard disability as shameful and tend to avoid describing themselves as disabled; they rarely contradict non-autistic ‘autism experts’ or ableist autism organizations run by non-autistic people; they have few (if any) close autistic friends and have never been deeply involved in the radical activist autistic culture and communities from which the Neurodiversity Movement emerged; they have appropriated the term ‘neurodiversity’ now that it’s becoming a well-known buzzword, but their thinking remains rooted in the pathology paradigm” (pp. 402-403).

I want to question Walker’s bias regarding the sexual orientations of so-called “tame autistics,” e.g. that they are all heterosexual, asexual, or closeted.

Aside from being a vast over-generalization, 1) asexuality is under the queer umbrella, 2) a person may not have the psychological safety to feel that they can “come out of the closet,” and 3) a person’s sexual orientation has nothing to do with those other traits or attitudes.

Citations are from an eBook, read on the Hoopla platform.

Posted to Goodreads and to Sonoma County Library’s Bibliocommons platform