Asexuality and Autism: Debunking the Myth

I can understand why it seems that way because many of us DO have sensory needs during intimacy that NDs may not leading us to have less s3x or be less s3xual because of our struggles.

No I’ve never heard of other people associating a sexuality with autism I know I’m high functioning logistic and asexual but that because I see asexual personality traits in myself and have autism both at the same time

It's ableism. Because we are different they can't imagine us having loving relationships or children. It makes them uncomfortable. They also perceive us to either be too childlike or too emotionless to be lovers or romantic people. Personally I am married with children, while this is hard at times my autism would never stop me from trying to be the best wife and mother I can be because that's what I want out of life. People with autism deserve to be able to pursue life the way that fits them without major judgment just as everyone else.

Neurodivergent people and people on the ace and/or aro spectrums are both so infanitlized that I think people tend to lump them together. Like they keep expecting us to just “grow out of” these things.

Podcast: Two Sides of the Spectrum episode 46 has some great statistics on how a much larger percentage of the autistic community is lgbtqia+ I agree that perceptions of sexuality and gender about autistics is greatly influenced in America at least by infantilization of several of our expressive and usual traits. We can be seen as not in control of our own consent and bodily autonomy in general. We can be seen as “childish” and adversely as “too logical and unemotional”. In short, allistics are almost taught to not believe and understand that we are nuanced and full of depth. I am demi and queer and had a very long path of not knowing how to navigate sometimes wanting to know someone intimately but not to have sex at the end of that exploration.

Asexuality, and Aromantism, does actually have a link to Autism because our brains are wired differently and may be missing that attraction or fall into another aspec identity bc we have a different perspective on that attraction. But for those same reasons autistic people also have the possibility of being hypersexual, kinky, etc. But there's also an element of infantalization and ableism overexagerating that difference and using it against Autistic people or at the very least using it to assume every autistic person is uncomfortable with sex, undateable, prudish, ect and that effects how they interact with autistic people.

I feel like some of it is that autistic people are more introspective and explore their identities more (at least in my experience and observations). What I mean is that there is more thought put into what things mean- what is sexuality vs romantic attraction, etc. A lot of autistic people I know are somewhere on the asexual spectrum because they have more set definitions for attractions and find that they have a more deep understanding of how they want to label themselves (demisexuality, for example, is an aspec identity that is more specific than, say, homosexuality). It's why people also say there are more trans people that are autistic. We're just more likely to explore identity and also less likely to care about social repercussions (of course this is not always the case, everyone's different). Another thing is that, in general, there's a lot more going on in your brain with autism and less time to be thinking about sexual attraction and all that (in my case and others that I know anyway). Even though I'm not asexual or anything, I definitely don't have as strong of a sexuality- I'm more focused on other things and don't care so much about relationships like that as of right now. And outside of the idea that that prevalence actually exists, a lot of people do just infantalize autistic people, so they might just make the assumption that they are asexual (especially with representation like Sheldon Cooper who is sex repulsed for most of the Big Bang Theory and stuff like that). People tend to see a single piece of representation for something and run with it. "This gay person dresses well and cares about fashion? I guess they're all like that."

To much infantilization, or just not seeing us fully as a human being unfortunately. I am demisexual & demiromantic and its been a struggle accepting the way my attraction and mindset affect each other but it's not nearly as much as people think it does. Idk I have a lot of thoughts on the subject.

Idk but clearly there's at least some substance to it because most of the autistic women I know are also ace. Not men tho, every autistic man I've ever met has been very very Not Asexual

Because a lot of normallers brains are focused on the sexual relationships. It's a basic biology thing to want to find a partner, so they can't imagine a person whose brain isn't obsessed with such things. We think about a lot in a day, so sometimes intimacy or relationships arent the most pressing topics.