![Sample our Geography journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5937/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Geography.jpg"})
Abstract
The term autism derives from the Greek autos (meaning ‘self’)—it connotes separation, aloneness—and descriptions of those diagnosed with autistic spectrum disorders (ASDs) frequently suggest they are very much apart from the shared, experientially common space of others. The subjects of clinical literature are very often male children, perhaps unsurprising given the recognized need for early intervention and the fact that studies suggest four times as many boys receive an ASD diagnosis as girls. This understandable bias does, however, mean that a significant minority are often overlooked. This paper focuses on the experience of those girls and women who frequently struggle to obtain recognition and support for a predominantly male disorder. Drawing particularly on autobiographical accounts—including the narratives of Temple Grandin, Dawn Prince-Hughes and Donna Williams—the paper reveals a strongly felt need to communicate and thus connect their unusual spatial and emotional experience with others in a manner not typically associated with autism. It explores the complex challenges of ASD life-worlds, focusing in particular on the prevailing and powerful sense of alienation, and the ways in which ASD women use social and spatial strategies to cope with and contest the expectations and reactions of neuro-typical others.
El término ‘autismo’ deriva de la palabra griega ‘autos’ (significando ‘una misma’) y connota la separación y la soledad. Las descripciones de los afectados por los trastornos del espectro autista (TEA) sugieren con frecuencia que las personas están separadas del espacio común, compartido y experiencial de otros. Los sujetos de la literatura clínica son la mayoría de veces niños masculinos, lo cual no es sorprendente dada la necesidad reconocida de intervenir en las etapas tempranas y el hecho de que los estudios sugieren que cuatro veces más niños que niñas reciben un diagnostico de TEA. Sin embargo, ésta tendencia comprensible significa que a menudo se pasa por alto una minoría significativa. Este papel se centra en la experiencia de niñas y mujeres que luchan con frecuencia por el reconocimiento y el apoyo para un trastorno predominantemente masculino. Haciendo uso en particular de relatos autobiográficos, (incluyendo las narrativas de Temple Grandin, Dawn Prince-Hughes y Donna Williams) el papel revela un fuerte sentido de la necesidad de comunicar y luego conectar las experiencias espaciales y emocionales inusuales de las personas con el TEA con otra gente de una manera no típicamente asociada con el autismo. Se explora los desafíos complejos de las vidas de gente con el TEA, enfocándose en particular en el sentido prevalente y poderoso de la alienación, y las maneras en que las mujeres con el TEA utilizan estrategias sociales y espaciales para saber sobrellevar y disputar las expectativas y las reacciones de otros neuro-típicos.
Acknowledgements
I would like to acknowledge the contribution of all ASD authors whose work informs this research, in particular Donna Williams, who has read and responded positively to a draft of this paper. Thanks to Deborah Dixon, Victoria Henderson, Leah Huff and three anonymous reviewers for helpful comments and advice. Pamela Moss, Chris Philo, Kathy Teghtsoonian, Mick Smith and Nichola Wood also provided much appreciated insight and encouragement in response to earlier presentations of this paper.
Notes
1. Neuro-typical tends to be used by ASD women in preference to the term ‘normal’. While the term emerged in the context of ASD support groups and literature arguing for greater recognition of and respect for ‘neuro-diversity’ (Gevers, Citation2000), it has since entered ‘mainstream’ clinical literature (Cashin, Citation2006). Such evidence of intertextual influence demonstrates that bodies of literature affect and are affected by others in complex, changeable ways (Fairclough, Citation1992). Moreover, conceptualizations of autism circulate beyond their intended disciplinary or literary contexts, and have implications for future representations and indeed experiences of the disorder. Extensive genealogical discourse analysis would be required to reveal the extent to which, for example, metaphors of isolation and alienation circulating in the clinical and autobiographical literature discussed in this paper have cross-fertilized and contributed to constructions of the other. Clearly, context is important, and self-stories and world-views can never emerge in socio-cultural or historical vacuums (Butler, Citation2001; see Jurecic, Citation2006 for an insightful account of rhetoric and narratives of autism).
2. Many such disorders, including, for example, anorexia, phobias and obsessive compulsive disorder, have in fact been among the misdiagnoses obtained by ASD women (CitationDavidson, in press).
3. Oliver Sacks (Citation1995) used Grandin's self-description to title his popular book of case studies of clinically divergent world-views.
4. There is a sense of similarity with Gerland's description of spatiality that can be ‘worn’: ‘I liked being in small cramped spaces where it was quiet and calm, especially when I fitted exactly into the space. I wanted to put on a space, put on a sort of cave, like a garment’ (Gerland, Citation2003, p. 24).