Stereotyping Autism
Unless you know someone who has autism, you likely only see it portrayed in the media. However, it is important to examine how the media influences the medical world. Doctors and nurses and psychologists and teachers all consume media, they do not live in a vacuum, so the media’s presentation of autism can actually impact real people.
The most common, and pretty much only, representation of autism that is shown (positively or negatively) is a white cis/straight male with low support needs. This is commonly known as the Sheldon Cooper effect. If you think of autism, most people conjure an image of a little white boy who knows more about trains/superheroes/cars than most people. These characters are normally presented as comedic relief and are made fun of by the main characters. What image does that send to autistic people? To diagnosticians?
In reality, the rate of autism is (likely) no different among sex/gender/race/ethnicity but that is not what is shown to people. What happens when a black girl goes to the psychologist for an autism evaluation? Are they taken seriously? Usually not. AFAB people are significantly under-diagnosed for ASD because the symptoms tend to present differently. This is the same for other groups as well. The symptoms are being presented but they do not fit the media’s standard of autism so they are not evaluated.
Some people would say that getting a diagnosis does nothing to benefit a person. I agree with this to a degree, but being a late (early 20’s) diagnosed autistic AFAB person, I spent my formative years knowing I was fundamentally different from my peers while being told that I wasn’t. This gaslighting created a distrust in myself that has stopped me from getting a physical diagnosis for other conditions in adulthood because I feel that I can’t trust my own mind saying something is wrong.
Once intersectionality is introduced to autism, people with multiple marginalized identities are even more oppressed due to simply having more than one oppressed identity. Depending on the person’s communication level, they may or may not portray this to a doctor. There could be (valid) reasons some communities feel uncomfortable speaking with doctors or psychologists. We need to start evaluating people for autism and other conditions in a culturally sensitive manner before we can decide what autism truly looks like. Right now we only have a tiny part of that picture.