Ladies, I'm going to give you a couple of scenarios, and you tell me if they sound realistic.
Say you're in your late teens, early twenties. You're at your boyfriend's house, making out on the couch. His autistic cousin walks in on you. Boyfriend leaves the room. What do you do?
You invite the autistic dude to sit down, move inappropriately close to him, and proceed to confuse and confound him with your teasingly seductive remarks, am I right?
Or how about this. You're the stay-at-home mother of two young adults, with nothing better to do all day than get manicures and ruin dinner. Your neglectful husband adopts his autistic nephew and senile parent, expecting you to provide round-the-clock care and supervision for both of them. You quite unjustifiably behave like a raging bitch, dumping senile grandpa in a home, and emotionally abusing the nephew. But then you find that autistic nephew can cook! So you admit you are a raging bitch, he teaches you to cook, your husband pays attention to you again, and you all live happily ever after.
Note to all ambitious writer/directors: if you are incapable of imagining a female character with a personality, nuanced motivation, complex emotions or an inner life, what in the world makes you think you can depict the experience of a non-neuro-typical person with anything approaching verisimilitude? What makes you think you have the right to try?
Say you're in your late teens, early twenties. You're at your boyfriend's house, making out on the couch. His autistic cousin walks in on you. Boyfriend leaves the room. What do you do?
You invite the autistic dude to sit down, move inappropriately close to him, and proceed to confuse and confound him with your teasingly seductive remarks, am I right?
Or how about this. You're the stay-at-home mother of two young adults, with nothing better to do all day than get manicures and ruin dinner. Your neglectful husband adopts his autistic nephew and senile parent, expecting you to provide round-the-clock care and supervision for both of them. You quite unjustifiably behave like a raging bitch, dumping senile grandpa in a home, and emotionally abusing the nephew. But then you find that autistic nephew can cook! So you admit you are a raging bitch, he teaches you to cook, your husband pays attention to you again, and you all live happily ever after.
Note to all ambitious writer/directors: if you are incapable of imagining a female character with a personality, nuanced motivation, complex emotions or an inner life, what in the world makes you think you can depict the experience of a non-neuro-typical person with anything approaching verisimilitude? What makes you think you have the right to try?