There is a saying in the autistic community: when you’ve met one autistic person, you’ve met one autistic person. This sounds trite, because it is, but it’s an important shorthand. There is a tendency amongst neurotypical people to assume autists are a kind of monolith. It’s what leads to comments that fall apart after even the tiniest bit of scrutiny: ‘you don’t look autistic’ – because people assume you can, in fact, look autistic.
They might be thinking of someone close to them, or someone who they’ve seen on the TV. Someone who fits whatever limited definition they’ve been furnished with – inevitably insufficient to capture the breadth of human experience that comes under the heading of autistic. This has only been exacerbated by a shift in diagnostic criteria that subsumes what used to be called Asperger’s Syndrome into ‘autism’ more generally.
However, the reason the categories were combined is the inescapable truth that all autistic people are united in this difference from allistic people (allistic = not autistic). We’re different from each other, true enough, but we’re much more different from allistics.
All this is to put into context the fact that even though Fern Brady and I have extremely different experiences and expressions of our autism, her book still made me feel seen in a way that was wholly unfamiliar to me.
Fern is a working-class woman from Bathgate. She’s a successful comedian. She supported herself in youth with sex work, struggled with university, and being an easy target for an abusive relationship. Brady has faced addiction issues and was in intensive outpatient psychiatric support as a teenager. She recounts these troubling times with candour and humour, making them relatable in a way that I think is very difficult to achieve.
I don’t know what it’s like to be so overwhelmed that I smash up my home, but I know what it’s like to shut down in other ways. I know what it’s like to flunk out of university, but in different circumstances to Fern. And I know what it’s like to be diagnosed as autistic later in life (I was 29). All the similarities have differences, and all the differences have similarities. Her honesty is brutal, in an extremely autistic way – this is what happened. Varnishing or embellishing it won’t change it, and maybe it was bleak and maybe there was humour in it, but it is what it is. She has the effect of someone talking about a horribly traumatic experience thinking they are telling a funny little story, before people start backing away or asking if she’s alright.
Her experiences in trying to get accommodations for her needs, other people’s weird reactions to her fairly simple requests (don’t hug me), and how she relates to others (or fails to) are where I really feel connected to the book.
Fern Brady is not a perfect autism advocate, but that’s okay
A lot has been written about how Fern Brady has some problematic takes. There’s some fatphobia in the book, and she’s spoken against the word “neurodivergent”. But Fern has only been diagnosed with autism for a few years. It took me a long time to unpick my internalised biases (and I am still working on them!), and that was with kind, dedicated people around me who were willing to be patient and call me in. Fern works in showbiz, an industry not exactly renowned for its commitment to political correctness.
I’m not saying these issues don’t need to be solved, but they are Fern’s issues to work on in her own time. The fact that she turned to the most popular sources of information when she was alone and desperate and thus quotes Temple Grandin more than online autism culture wants her to just means that there’s more work to be done. Yeah, there’s better information out there. But we start off not even knowing what we don’t know. Learning is a journey, and when you’ve been thrust uncomfortably into the position of dissecting your whole life and personhood through a new lens, it would be weird if your priority was ‘how do I do this so the loudest people on Twitter approve?’
Like all of us, Fern is learning. The book’s acknowledgments even mention the crucial role young autistic influencers on platforms like TikTok and Twitter play in the spread of knowledge on these issues, especially post-diagnosis. You’re given life-altering news by a diagnostician and then sent off in the world. There’s no support or help, nothing to help you deal with this information. There’s no equivalent to physiotherapy for an autism diagnosis. No one will tell you how to minimize meltdowns, or the techniques you need to learn to reduce how much time you need to rest, or the questions they are really asking during job interviews. Being diagnosed with autism as an adult is isolating and confusing and there is no recourse. The world keeps going on around you, oblivious and unfeeling about the ground-shaking change that has come about for you. You’re meant to just keep going to work and doing the weekly shop and cleaning the bathroom while trying not to drown in the feeling that you are not who you thought you were.
Fern acknowledges frequently the work required post-diagnosis to find a new normal. She pins down with her excellent writing the idea that you have to work hard to identify things that need to be changed. Figure out what changes would work and be appropriate, and then consistently act on them.
I believe that Strong Female Character, while not without flaws, is an extremely accessible way to understand some of the challenges faced by autistic people. Especially late-diagnosed autistic women. It’s also a fascinating insight into sex work (though one of the aforementioned flaws is that Fern fails to really unpack a lot of the other issues the book touches on because it is primarily about her autism) and how that looks from the inside, from the point of view of someone who was a part of it.
There’s a lot of pain in the book, and I think that makes it a very useful tool for allistic people to gain some insight into the autistic experience because that’s one of the things that unites many of us (again, particularly late-diagnosed people). The sense that you are not like everyone else but have no insight into why, and the way people treat you is pervasive. Everyone can sense there’s something weird about me – something not normal. And knowing that people felt that without being able to understand why was agonising. At least now I know why they think I’m weird and can come to terms with it.
Featured image credit: Fern Brady
Student journalist & freelance writer. Check out Quick Play, where I review video games that are 10 hours or less.
