Exploring The Market Place of Emotions (Like Wall Street, but less money)
Welcome back to the Audacious Aspie! Today, we continue to observe the dating world and how those on the spectrum can survive in such seemingly hostile waters (though to be fair, it’s not like anyone else is having much success avoiding the sharks so...everyone strap your life rafts together). As always we will look at a new angle of attack, a new sight on how you, yes YOU, can survive and thrive when dating. Lets begin. (WARNING: post may drastically increase or decrease intelligence, depending on how you see magazines like GLAMOUR)
There are two ways to see this: either your brain is expanding beyond the point of the camera's view after reading GLAMOUR, or your brain is rotting away and this is the last fleshy scrap.
We now turn to GLAMOUR UK, and their segment on being autistic and dating (keep in mind that this, being from the same likes as People or North American GLAMOUR, is probably just hollywood trash. But hey, even lightning strikes twice in the same spot right?) where the article attempts to sink some myths concerning those with autism in the dating world, specifically women. How does it start? By listing some stereotypes like: people assume we are all like Sheldon Cooper from Big Bang (zero social skills, awkward genius) and the beloved 40-year-old virgin, desperate plus sheltered. Oh boy.
But than we get into the fact checking (and dirty secrets, don't forget that this is GLAMOUR) which debunks these myths by saying “some autistic people lose their virginity much earlier than their peers” (GLAMOUR UK, paragraph 2) because of “naivety or curiosity” (GLAMOUR UK, paragraph 2). The writer mentions “the theory of mind”, understanding that people might think differently than you, something that she, as a teenager, had problems with. Thinking that every person she treated nicely would return the favour. You can see how this is problematic.
In a way to bust the myth that autistic people don't get married, the writer claims that she was married at 18 but divorced some time later, it apparently was not a fantastic marriage (but she did enjoy the routine of it all, something which I think we can all agree on). The writer notes that while those with autism might enjoy the routine of marriage, others get bored of it. (whether or not the decision to marry so young correlates with the decision to write for a rag/or/marvel like GLAMOUR is up to you, but I think we can all agree on one thing: at least she did not apply for FOX news).
Can’t imagine Fox News being this clever, probably be more along the lines of “Woman gets Autism from Vaccine, Blames Society!”.
We will continue to look at this document in the next post, as it is interesting to see what it has to say (even if it is GLAMOUR). Regardless of what you might think, we can all agree that it gives us a neat perspective on autism, one that is often ignored and forgotten (no! It is not the “HollyWood rag writer” perspective!), that of the autistic woman. Until next time, this continues to be, the Audacious Aspie.
Sources used:
http://www.glamourmagazine.co.uk/article/dating-someone-with-autism