Stop Politicising Bisexuality and Autism

(Audio version here)

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I seldom tell people I encounter that I am either bisexual or autistic because it isn’t usually relevant to anything I am talking about. Additionally, I have been in an exclusive heterosexual relationship for 25 years so I do not continue to face the difficulties on the dating market that many bisexual people do. Also, I do not think that people who are profoundly disabled by autism are best-served by people like me who are essentially fine representing it.

Nevertheless, both of those labels are factually accurate for me. People generally become aware of these in the following ways.

Me: (references an ex-girlfriend in an account of something that happened in the past)

Other person: Oh, I didn’t know you were bisexual.

Me: Yes. I am also attracted to women.

Me: (addresses in a very literal or systemising way something which is not typically addressed in such ways)

Other person: Has anybody ever suggested you might be autistic?

Me: Yes, psychiatrists, neuropsychiatrists, psychologists, my school, my GP & two clinical assessments. Seems to be confirmed.

I was born in 1974. The decade in which these aspects of me most came into conflict with the external world was the 1990s when I was becoming an adult, getting a job and starting to have sexual relationships. I had been identified as a bit weird before this, obviously, but fortunately for me, the ‘90s offered the goth/grunge/alternative music scene where this need not necessarily be a problem and I made a good circle of friends there. There were also a significant number of bisexual people in this social circle so this was not really a problem either. There was space there to be oneself without making it into a politicised identity requiring moral performance, and difference could exist without being sacralised. I frequently feel very thankful to have grown up as Generation X.

I was particularly interested in care work and was soon found to be particularly well-suited to roles working with people with ‘challenging behaviour’ due to brain disease, brain injury or learning disability. I am, apparently, quite a soothing person who is not easily daunted by agitated or volatile behaviour and good at detecting patterns in what makes people become this way and devising ways to order their lives that minimise these.

Nevertheless, there were, of course, still some difficulties with prejudiced attitudes towards bisexual women that came from a variety of angles. Some heterosexual women could be silly about this. On a group holiday with three female friends shortly after I had had my first girlfriend, one friend I’d known for years felt the need to start changing in the bathroom (she really wasn’t my type). Some heterosexual men could also be very tiresome about this seeing it as akin to a ‘kink’ that they would potentially like to be involved in (no, go away). Lesbians could be particularly scathing, seeing bisexual women as fake or part-time lesbians usurping their sexual identity or using it to attract men (see the tiresomeness of some heterosexual men). I was referred to as a ‘lipstick lesbian’ and as ‘heteroflexible’ and also told I was just highly promiscuous (yes, guilty) and that this was not attractive to lesbians (oh no).

What all these views shared was an assumption that bisexual women are actually heterosexual women either having a phase or with a kink. In reality, most of the people I was attracted to were men but some were women and I don’t really think it goes much deeper than that. It is true that I was exposed to high levels of testosterone in utero and my digit ratio reflects this and that this is related to a higher likelihood of being attracted to women, but so what? Many women with a male-typical digit ratio indicating androgynes in the pre-natal environment are not attracted to women and many women who are attracted to women do not have this digit ratio. Causes of same-sex attraction may be scientifically interesting given that it is not beneficial to biological fitness, but I have never accepted that there was any need to justify it by proving it to be natural. If people naturally want to do a thing, it is clearly natural and what matters is whether it harms anybody else or not. No? Leave them alone.

I also faced problems in my early twenties with psychiatrists trying to work out what was wrong with me mentally because I clearly still struggled socially and had a tendency to become overwhelmed easily (interestingly not by somebody with a brain injury screaming at me, but by more complex and normal socially-demanding events) and by a strong need to systemise and order things. I was quite reclusive outside of my safe zones of alternative music spaces and work with elderly and disabled people and suffered with anxiety and overthinking. I was diagnosed first with depression due to low affect (I was not depressed) and then with social anxiety, then with a mood disorder, then with OCD (that one actually fits) then with Bipolar Disorder (that one definitely does not) and with them all came a whole cornucopia of psychiatric medications, none of which helped in the slightest but did have quite disabling side effects. I also had my hearing tested many times because I could not hear people speaking if there were background voices. I was regarded as a bit odd and not very sociable by people outside my chosen social circle and I was frequently misunderstood as argumentative or rude when, in my own mind, I was simply trying to clarify and understand something.

Like many women who are less profoundly affected by autism, mine was not properly picked up until I was in my forties. My primary school had flagged it with my mother, but at the time, a common belief was that autism was caused by neglectful parenting so she angrily dismissed this and sent me to drama school to ‘bring you out of your shell’ (I have forgiven her for this now but it took some doing). It was when my daughter was much more clearly and visibly affected by autism and questions were asked about her family history which required explaining that my father was also very typically autistic that this possibility arose. I said that I knew myself not to be autistic because autistic people have the profound social difficulties that my father and daughter did/do, but supporting my daughter with her struggles and reading to understand them changed my mind about that. This was also suggested to me by psychiatrists and psychologists helping me with the OCDish symptoms and by neurologists and neuropsychiatrists advising me on managing the epilepsy I have had all my life.

I share the concerns of many people who feel that autism may now be overdiagnosed. I no longer doubt that I merit that diagnosis but I also feel it was useful on some levels that I was not given it as a child. I understood myself simply as somebody who was not highly socially skilled or sociable and who had a tendency to overthink things sometimes to the point of becoming mentally unwell and also to develop very intense interests in very specific topics. I found hacks to make my brain do things it found difficult to do but which were expected of it. I am not sure I would have done that so well if I’d known the difference were neurological and had them accommodated. However, I’d also challenge those who say that this is how all people currently diagnosed as ‘high-functioning autistic’ should have been told to think of themselves. Because I did not consider that I might be autistic, I took the very real difficulties I did have (I was hospitalised on 7 occasions in the 1990s) to a psychiatrist instead and was diagnosed with and medicated for psychiatric conditions I did not actually have. I was also diagnosed as hearing impaired. Those diagnoses are gone now (except for OCD) and I have an understanding of weirdnesses my brain has and practical strategies that are highly effective rather than psychiatric medications that were not. I also have earplugs that block out background noise and there is nothing wrong with my hearing at all.

Despite some difficulties, being bisexual and maybe even being autistic have not been terribly difficult for me and, more importantly, they are not defining of me. I do not have an identity as bisexual or as autistic. They are words that usefully and accurately describe some aspects of me. This adds clarity and understanding, including self-understanding, but we are more than the sum of our parts. My identity is defined by what my values are - liberal, humanist, empiricist, rationalist - and by what my roles in life are - mother, wife, friend, writer, tea-enthusiast. I have appreciated that, in my lifetime, I have seen bisexuality become more accepted as simply a variation of sexuality and autism more fully recognised as a neurological difference rather than conflated with mental illness or intellectual disability. However, I am concerned that we are now seeing a reversal of this progress.

I began this piece by saying that I seldom mention being bisexual or autistic both because it is seldom relevant and because I am not the best spokesperson for the experiences of either. However, I now also have to fear that doing so will be interpreted as stating a political identity or laying claim to a marginalised one. This is then likely to result in one of the following responses:

From adherents to the Critical Social Justice movement (the woke)

Sympathetic understanding of me as part of the queer or neurodivergent ‘community’ and attributing a whole set of principles and beliefs to me that I do not, in fact hold.

or

Angry refutation of me having any right to such an identity given that I have been critical of Queer Theory and Dis/Ability studies.

From Opponents of the Critical Social Justice movement (the anti-woke)

Unsympathetic understanding of me as part of the queer or neurodivergent ‘community’ and attributing a whole set of principles and beliefs to me that I do not, in fact hold.

or

Indignant remonstrances at me for wanting to demonstrate such an identity given that I have been critical of Queer Theory and Dis/Ability Studies

This is just not how happening to have a particular sexuality or slightly weird brain should work. At all.

There is no reason why being attracted to people of the same sex should make anyone have any particular epistemological commitments or political views. Nor does being so mean that anyone is obligated or inclined to take on any particular political or epistemic stance. That we have, historically, seen same-sex attracted people gravitate much more to the left is a reflection of the right having been more hostile to them. As mainstream conservative views became more accepting of same-sex relationships, we saw the emergence of gay and lesbian conservatives. The same pattern exists in relation to racial minorities.

Having a particularly literal and systemising brain is not likely to lead anybody to any particular political position either. It could affect their epistemology but this, I would suggest, is likely to make autistic people less drawn to identity-based movements rooted in postmodern theory on average, not more. At the height of ‘woke’ when people were being cancelled for not keeping up with the rapidly changing criteria for what was and was not socially acceptable to say, autistic people were particularly vulnerable to falling foul of it.

It is nevertheless, true that people who do identify as bisexual or autistic and use this identification as a politicised and marginalised identity overwhelmingly do so in support of the Critical Social Justice movement. I would suggest that this is because, while being bisexual or autistic does not cause someone to adopt the politics or epistemology of the CSJ movement, belonging to the CSJ movement can cause someone to claim to be bisexual or autistic. This is due to a combination of two factors that I addressed at length in Cynical Theories.

1. A disbelief in objective truth and strong reliance on social constructivism. Within Queer Theory, this allows for gender, sexuality and even sex to be infinitely malleable and defined how the individual chooses. Within Dis/Ability Studies it allows for self-diagnosis on the same grounds.

2. A belief that having a marginalised identity brings with it both knowledge and the right to speak on issues of social justice. This strongly incentivises people to use the expansiveness of Queer Theory and Dis/Ability theories to claim a marginalised identity for themselves.

Bisexuality and autism are two identities considered marginalised that are highly adaptable for these purposes because they are not permanently visible in the same way ‘black’ is, nor expected to be easily demonstrable by evidence of one’s romantic partner as ‘gay’ or ‘lesbian’ is. If accused of not having a sufficiently intersectional (marginalised on more than one basis) identity, an individual can expand having occasionally contemplated a same-sex relationship into a bisexual identity or experiencing social anxiety into an autistic one. Importantly, this may not be a cynical status grab or a deception. Queer theory and Dis/Ability theories encourage such expansiveness as both valid subjective experiences and a form of political activism to blur categories between heterosexual/homosexual and disabled/able-bodied and thus make society more accommodating of people who do not fit heterosexual or neurotypical norms.

However, when these identities are used to claim a position of moral authority and superior knowledge as they so often are by particularly zealous activists, this is liable to annoy people who then become disinclined to be charitable and instead see it as invariably narcissistic posturing using a fake marginalised identity for victimhood status. This is particularly the case when the person identifying as bisexual is a woman in a long-term heterosexual relationship or the person identifying as autistic is doing well in a sphere that requires significant social skills and executive function. That would be me. Consequently, I am highly incentivised to never mention ever having had relationships with women as well as men or having a slightly weird brain for risk of being identified as a ‘special snowflake’ with a desperate need for attention.

I am of an age and in a position now where I don’t have to care very much about this. Also I wrote a book explaining why Queer Theory and Dis/Ability studies are so desperately flawed and harmful to real progress for sexual minorities, the gender-nonconforming and disabled and neurologically atypical people, so accusations of being a postmodern Critical Social Justice activist are not very plausible.Nevertheless, I am worried about young men and women who are bisexual or ‘high-functioning’ autistic people.

I am concerned for young bisexual people who now don’t only have to deal with the usual assumptions that they are actually both secretly exclusively attracted to men, but men are still semi-closeted and women are going through a phase. They now have to deal with pressure from the ‘woke’ to perform ‘queerness’ correctly politically and epistemologically and pressure from the ‘anti-woke’ to prove they are not doing that and, in both cases, they are likely to fail to meet their purity tests.

I am concerned for young people who are impacted significantly enough by autism to find life difficult but not so profoundly impacted that they cannot function independently in the world. They no longer just have to deal with navigating social situations that can appear opaque to them, finding workarounds for areas of life where they may have executive function gaps, mitigating any sensory issues and finding employment and friends who are compatible with them. They now have to deal with the neurodivergent branch of Dis/Ability activism speaking for them politically and presenting them in ways they likely to do not agree with and elements of the anti-woke assuming they do agree with it and are also dramatising some perfectly normal personality quirks in order to get attention they almost certainly do not want.

When definitions become infinitely elastic, they stop serving the people they were meant to describe and when identity is politicised, everyone is pressured to perform authenticity tests. That harms real people who did not sign up for any of that. We can, however, speak about these issues in ways that don’t make life harder for people simply because of who they are attracted to or how their brains are wired.

If you are somebody who is sympathetic to Critical Social Justice approaches to ‘queerness’ and/or ‘neurodivergence’ and understand yourself to be a bit bisexual or neurologically atypical, please do not merge these two things, politicise them as an identity and make your conception of either the authentic way to be. Recognise that this speaks for people who have not agreed to be spoken for by you and that it is presumptuous and unwarranted to turn a sexuality or a neurological difference/disability into a political orientation or epistemic commitment. People are dubious enough about whether bisexuality is actually a real thing without having it removed to the realm of metaphorical imaginings with political implications. Autism is a very serious disability for many people and, on the least impactful end, something that requires self-understanding and specific strategies for management. It is harmful to blur the concept out of any identifiable shape and centre yourself as a spokesperson for people whose experiences and needs are likely quite different.

If you are somebody who is not at all sympathetic to Critical Social Justice approaches to “queerness’ and/or ‘neurodivergence’ please recognise that neither are many of the people they claim to speak for. It is important not to conflate the values of the CSJ movement with those of the members of identity groups it has theorised about politically and epistemologically. Please do not contribute to this politisation of sexual attraction or brain differences by politicising those who have them unless they, as individuals, are presenting those aspects of themselves to you as political identities. Whatever identity you yourself have, you should recognise that ideologues with whom you do not agree - white supremacists, Men’s Rights Activists, Black Nationalists, radical feminists - will claim to speak for you and that you would rather they did not. Bisexual people do not take on a ‘queer’ political identity simply by finding that some but not all of the people they are attracted to are the same sex as them, and berating them for it won’t do a thing to critique the movement. Autistic people do not become postmodern Dis/Ability activists simply by having somewhat different brains. Making it harder for them to be recognised as such won’t make them any less autistic either. It will just make them more likely to be misdiagnosed as mentally ill or intellectually disabled.