Autism and gender: from refrigerator mothers to computer geeks

In a series of five chapters bracketed by an introduction and conclusion, this intriguing and long overdue book attempts to interrogate a variety of ‘gendered characters’ and their role in the rhetorics that permeate current discourses about autism. We meet the original ‘refrigerator mothers’ and their equal and opposite reaction, the ‘mother warriors’; we consider the putative link between the figure of the computer geek and autism; we look at how fathers of autistic children construct roles for themselves that reaffirm or reconstruct notions of masculinity; and, finally, we learn how people with autism themselves have both experienced gender policing and challenged gender expectations.

Jack is a rhetorician, and as such comes at these issues from an interesting perspective. She considers how rhetoric – the construction of forms of discourse that are meant to persuade or motivate – has contributed to the ability of certain discourses to gain and hold power. Gendered characters, she argues, have been deployed in professional, parental and autistic people’s discourse as ways of claiming, denying or diverting power. There are times when the terminology used can be a barrier to clarity for non-rhetorician readers.

The author marshals excellent examples of ways that discourses of gender have been used within, given rise to, or been used to ‘sell’ particular ideas about autism. The section covering gender construction in the development of theory of mind and Simon Baron-Cohen’s systemising-empathising theory is particularly strong.

Other high points include Jack’s use of textual analysis to reveal how examining the behaviour of mothers still takes primacy in much autism research, especially in studies connected with attachment theory. I do wish she had gone further with this line of investigation, digging deeper into the rhetoric of parents (by which, read: mothers) as therapists, and the reconfiguration of motherhood as therapeutic practice. Jack does well in dissecting the figure of the Jenny McCarthy-style ‘autism mother’ who immerses her child in a relentless stream of supposedly therapeutic interventions. I and others have long suspected that this style of extreme autism parenting has its roots in reaction to the ‘refrigerator mother’ figure, which continues to haunt the edges of autism therapies, including in rhetorics linking autism or autism severity with inadequate or inconsistent parenting. These are especially prevalent within the theoretical constructs underlying applied behaviour analysis. Indeed, it was within the world of applied behaviour analysis that the template of the full-time autism mother was first forged, albeit one who was expected to fulfil her role under the direction of scientific experts. The move from looking to experts for direction and validation to forming communities of mother-practice may, as Eyal et al. (2010) and others have suggested, be bound up in ways that discourses of mothering have come to reflect neoliberal economic realities.

Jack also uncovers gendered rhetorics at play in the ‘diagnosis’ of public figures with Asperger syndrome. What knowledge we privilege and how we interpret it matters – so when journalists or parents want to see Asperger syndrome in the successful figure of Bill Gates, they focus on reports that he is not interested in social niceties or makes infrequent eye contact. They avoid factoring in Gates’s reputation as a rather Machiavellian operator whose early success was not based on geeky coding prowess, but on gambits requiring keen knowledge of how to outsmart, ‘borrow’ from or buy off actual innovators and potential competitors – that is, social and emotional intelligence. Having been a computer-magazine journalist in the 1980s, I can confirm that tales of Gates’s skill at communicating ideas and convincing others to go along with his plans far outnumbered those of his social ineptitude in intimate personal relationships (although the latter usually got more laughs at parties).

There are a few key points missed in Jack’s narrative. Although others have written about it extensively (for example, Dawson 2004; Bumiller 2008), Jack does not cover the direct link between applied behaviour analysis and damaging anti-homosexuality therapies. Both originated in the same UCLA laboratory, sharing the same head clinician and theory base. Also, she seems to be unaware of the longstanding intersection between autism and gender reassignment, beginning with the fact that John Money, the discredited clinician most closely associated with this practice, was involved in gender reassignment of several individuals with autism (Money 1992). There is a relationship between the devaluation of people who do not conform to gender norms and the devaluation of those seen as autistic, and it is one that I hoped Jack might apply the same level of incisive examination to as she has to the other areas very ably covered in this volume.

Mitzi Waltz
Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield, UK
Disability Studies in Nederland, the Netherlands
[email protected]
© 2015, Mitzi Waltz
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09687599.2014.995517