Love On What Spectrum? Love the people, critique the show

56 min readApr 5, 2025

It is 2025 and Season Three of Love on the Spectrum (USA) just dropped. As a heart-warming, cosy watch for allistic (non-autistic) audiences, this reality show ticks all the boxes. However, Love on the Spectrum is not a pedagogical tool. This show is not a valuable learning resource, teaching the wider public Autism acceptance. I don’t even think the show helps the Autistic participants themselves all that much. In fact, it’s actively coercive, feeding into the Autism Speaks version of Autistic ‘acceptance’ — “We’ll accept you, so long as you conform to our version of what a good life looks like.”

I’m far from the only Autistic viewer with criticisms. Autistic people have been critiquing this show thoroughly and sagely since it first dropped here in Australia, 2019. Have the creators listened to Autistic voices when filming subsequent seasons? Yes and no. The show is a little more diverse now than when it first started in Australia. My issue is they haven’t changed the format. Why would they? Love On The Spectrum is a ratings winner (for allistics). They’re sticking to the formula. They’re doubling down on the formula.

For all that’s been said already, there is an aspect of this reality show which I haven’t seen critiqued yet. So, as an asexual Autistic, I want to focus on how Love On The Spectrum doesn’t seem to know the asexuality and aromantic spectrums exist.

But the more my thoughts coalesced, the more I realised: If the creators did school themselves up on the aroace-spectrum, many other big problems with the format wouldn’t exist, either. It’s all connected. And that, in a nutshell, is why it is so important that people understand what the a-spectrum looks like. Whether you think you know any asexuals or not, you don’t understand humans until you understand sexuality, and you don’t understand sexuality until you understand A-sexualities. Adding: You don’t understand your own dominant neurotype until you understand minority neurotypes. A show which makes a spectacle out of earnestly made social missteps does nothing for anyone’s self-exploration.

The very title of this show suggests there is only One Spectrum. Which is why I dislike “The Spectrum” used as euphemism for “Autistic”. In this case, the producers have decided to deal with only one spectrum. Hence, Love on THE Spectrum, not Love On A Spectrum. This is not a show about the sexuality and romance spectrums. But as a show whose very focus is love and romance, it should be.

Note, I will sometimes use “a-spec” or “asexual spectrum” as shorthand to refer to the common combination comprising a mixture of: asexual, greysexual, demisexual, aromantic, greyromantic etc. which oftentimes co-occurs with a degree of gender detachment. (Romantic orientations are separate from sexual orientations but, for many of us, cannot be entirely disentangled.)

Demisexual: Someone who can only experience sexual attraction or desire after an emotional bond has been formed (or the adjective describing a person as such). This is different from the choice to abstain from sex until certain criteria are met.
— (See this page for other explanations of asexual/aromantic language)

Those of us who experience gender detachment may call ourselves non-binary, genderqueer, agender and similar. Basically, it means we don’t feel a strong sense of internalised gender the way most people do. Love On The Spectrum doesn’t seem to know genderqueerness exists either, or how society’s compulsory gendering doesn’t impact Autistics in the exact same ways it impacts most allistics, but I have to limit my scope or I’ll end up writing a book. (. I did do that.)

Why Mainstream Commentators Don’t Want to Acknowledge Asexuality in the Disabled Community

Autistic people, alongside other disabled communities, have been desexualised since forever, even before our neurotype had a name. There is a long, troubling history of abled allistics denying disabled adults the full scope of our sexuality. Disabled people are still routinely infantilised, doubted, and we have personal freedoms removed. To many viewers, that’s why a show like Love on the Spectrum feels like a breath of fresh air. Especially compared to the era when Autistics were routinely institutionalised, drugged and given lobotomies, it sure is.

But in the early 2000s, asexual community started to form. There were two reasons for the timing: The first was increasing ubiquity of the Internet. Finally a socially disconnected group of people realised we weren’t alone. We could even develop a shared language to describe our experiences. The second was that Western culture had entered the “Compulsory Sexuality” phase of the backlash against centuries-long sex negativity. Now, an active sex life was compulsory, even for single people. We had entered the age of compulsory sexuality. Asexuals wanted it known that we weren’t to be fixed. The hard work of asexual activists meant the DSM was modified in the right direction. Asexuals aren’t broken.

The disabled communities were also busy teaching the abled majority that disabled people are sexual beings, and that sex is a fundamental need that makes us human.

Eventually, some asexual Autistics started raising our hand to say, “Ya know, some of us are asexual, actually? Is it okay if we don’t force everyone to have sex they don’t want?” Also: “Asexual people are human, too, thanks.”

This still feels a bit dangerous to point out. Asexuals are pushing back against compulsory sexuality before our allosexual (normatively sexual) Autistic comrades have had a chance to be fully accepted as sexual beings. So now we have these two forces push-pulling against each other.

Until the disabled community achieves full sexual liberty, including access to supported and respected sex workers as allied health professionals, the very existence of a-spectrum Autistics feels dangerous. Disabled asexuals are in a tight spot, straddling an impossible line. This informs our view on shows like Love On The Spectrum.

In one version of allistic version of binary, black-and-white thinking, dealing with more than one identity at once is too much for mainstream viewing. At first glance, Love On The Spectrum looks sexually inclusive. Each season has included participants who are gay, lesbian, bi plus or questioning. Gay is fine now, though it wasn’t fine until very recently, but we’ve memory-holed that, mostly, in the more privileged parts of society. People can deal with gay, because being gay is still about love and partnering and even possibly a nuclear-family kinda set-up with children. Gay is fine… so long as it looks the same as the straights, except for one little gender switcheroo.

Love on the Spectrum is a visual document of the most privileged of Autistics, with the more legible (palatable?) intersectionalities. Viewers saw much of the Pinterest-worthy houses. Look a little closer and you’ll realise, Love On The Spectrum probably does feature poverty as well. But… audiences are not shown the backstory of, say, Callie, who eats chips and exclaims it’s the best food she’s ever had in her life. “My Mom stays at home and looks after me and my mentally ill grandma who fell and broke her neck last year,” she tells Tanner, whose family has significantly more resources… and so we see Tanner in his home. We do not see Callie in hers.

We are shown the home of Connor, whose parents are planning to build him his own annex. We are shown Madison, who sells beadwork at a weekend stall, and whose father owns a boat.

Likewise, we are shown Abbey and David, whose extended families refer to themselves as their ‘support system’ — which irks me in a way I can’t quite articulate — except isn’t everyone’s family a support system? We call that family… unless you’re disabled. Abbey and David are contemplating marriage. Their ‘support system’ would love to see them living together, even though Abbey in particular would prefer, at this point, to stay in her natal bedroom where all her possessions are arranged as she likes them. “I’m not allowed to touch them,” her mother tells David’s family with an audible eye-roll, when Abbey and David are not present for the conversation, but the camera crew is.

This season we do get a glimpse of entirely Autistic families living less luxurious lives — with different experiences due to widespread family neurodivergence. Pari’s story is especially welcome. Via Pari we see the significant health issues and early parental death which so often touches Autistic families, for many, complicated reasons.

But this is a cosy show by design, focusing on The Positive(TM).

Love On The Spectrum Fails To Illuminate The Invisible

To create a cosy show, producers cannot focus on poverty. I believe this was an editing decision, deliberately made.

Another form of invisibilisation is not made on purpose though… precisely because it is so little understood, even among people who purport to Teach the Public about Autism (which would include minority sexual orientations).

I’m talking about asexuality now — the entire asexuality and aromantic spectrum.

When asexuality is seen as a nothing rather than as a something, this is what happens.

Asexuality aside, the very title of the show “Love On The Spectrum” is anathema to aromanticism — at least to showrunners and audiences who have no idea what it means to be aromantic. Note: Aromanticism is not an absence of love, but rather, a queering of what it means to love. Aromanticism flattens the hierarchy which mainstream culture assigns to various types of love, which always places romantic love at the top.

How Many Autistic People Are On The Asexual Spectrum?

Regardless of neurotype, no one knows how many asexuals exist in the world. That is just not something anyone can know.

But, if you’ve looked into asexuality at all, you have probably heard “one per cent” bandied about, as in “one percent of humans are asexual”. Be suspicious. Aside from looking far too neat and tidy, that figure comes from a British study by a professor called Anthony Bogaert, who decided for himself which participants counted as asexual. There are numerous problems with his increasingly outdated study, .

We do know that the Autistic population is significantly more likely to be a-spectrum than the allistic population. However, no one has yet tried to study asexual Autistic people. Asexuals are called for good reason.

With that caveat, anyone who is in the asexual and Autistic communities meets many others with the same set of identities. I am Autistic, asexual and agender. Within the Autistic community, I get to feeling this is a very common combo. I certainly don’t feel alone. In fact, my asexuality is a good reminder that I am, indeed, Autistic, even on days when I have Autistic imposter syndrome.

In fact, speaking for myself, I believe this triad of labels is simply three different words to describe the same fundamental thing about me. All of these identities roll into each other. They cannot be separated from my self. Autism affects my experience of sexuality; my experience of sexuality affects my sense of gender. Autistic people, in general, have a different sense of self. This impacts pretty much everything about us.

Though not all demisexuals are Autistic, I have noticed that many Autistic comrades are demisexual. In fact, until everyone knows and understands what demisexuality even is, and until someone does a study on demisexual Autistics which passes muster, no one is in a position to argue with the following bold statement:

Demisexuality is a default Autistic orientation.

I predict various reactions, including: “Who are you to speak for an entire community?”

Well, guess what. The allosexuals and alloromantics (non-asexuals, non-aromantics) are already speaking for an entire community. They have been for decades. The predominant neurotype and sexual orientations speak for you, too, by the way, no matter your identity.

The assumption is that we are all normatively sexual until ‘proven’ otherwise. After all, everything expected of everyone revolves around whiteness, patriarchy, heterosexuality, cisgender, monogamy, procreation, and capitalistic participation.

In short, Autistic agender asexual aromantics are about queer as queer gets. Our existence challenges what others take for granted, and asks everyone to reconsider what it means to live a fulfilling, meaningful life. For us, it’s not always about family. It’s not always even about love, as love is most commonly understood. To challenge the family… to challenge everyone’s concept of love itself… That ain’t cosy. That does not make for cosy viewing. But… that’s exactly what everyone needs to do before they have Buckley’s chance of understanding Autism. Autistic people, as a group, love expansively, and oftentimes differently. Until mainstream neurotypes understand the extent and breadth of this difference, we will continue to be misread as ‘lacking empathy’ and so on.

Autistic Sexualities

I could talk about Autistic ‘special interests’ at this point and sensory joy and the personification of loved objects, which all come under the banner of Autistic love. But today I’ll focus on love as it pertains to sexual expression. That’s what Love On The Spectrum is about… though we certainly see genuine love for dolls and beads (Madison) and trains (Pari) and swords (Connor) and country music and and and…

There are some things we can broadly say about the Autistic community and sexuality, while also acknowledging that every single Autistic person is different.

I haven’t heard anyone argue the toss about this: We don’t find change easy. That’s reasonably universal, with variations within the cohort, especially perhaps for sensory seekers and AuDHD folk. Generally, though, it takes us a while to get comfortable in new spaces. We often need to self-regulate before our nervous systems settle and cortisol levels drop. We are known to preference our ‘safe spaces’. We also have our ‘safe foods’ and… our ‘safe people’.

For example, we prefer to enjoy a nice dinner at a familiar eatery rather than at a new one. If we go to a regular place, we can dive straight into enjoying the food rather than forcing it down while our nervous system is screaming, Beware!

So… it follows logically that many Autistics would prefer to have sex only after feeling very comfortable with a new partner. To make use of language from within the Autistic community, sex tends to be enjoyed most deeply with ‘safe people’.

Moving to language from the a-spec community, that’s basically what it means to be demisexual.

The usual caveat: Whenever we say anything about “Autistic people”, there will of course be Autistic people who fall within the normative range of any continuum of human experience, just as there are always allistic people who have things in common with Autistics.

There are notable examples of Autistic people who are not demisexual in the slightest. I’m thinking right now of certain supersexual allosexual Autistics who have shared their autobiographies with the world. Some Autistic people make use of sex as a self-soothing activity, describing sexual sensations as a type of stim. When you’re wired to find especial joy in sensory sensations, sex can be mind-blowingly good. Some Autistic people do not need to feel anything emotional for their partner at all, just like the predominant neurotype. It’s very individual. There’s a joke within the Autistic community that Autistics either love or hate sex. While this is far too binary to be true (and is ultimately unhelpful, in my opinion) there’s a reason the joke exists.

Let’s Not Default To Normative, Allosexuality When Talking With and About The Autistic Community

All that said, I still think demisexuality is a default orientation (contra allosexuality) when it comes to the Autistic community as a whole.

(Note: Demisexuality does not describe someone’s enjoyment of sexual behaviour. Nor does it describe behaviour at all. Demisexuality describes one important aspect of how someone’s attraction works.)

Here’s why my proposition is less dangerous: If we start with the assumption that Autistics are demisexual rather than (normatively) allosexual, we will inflict less traumatising damage to Autistics overall.

I don’t think compulsory, allosexual-mimicking sexuality does allistics any favours either — nothing compulsory is ever good — but let’s stick to Autistics today.

It is far more dangerous to coerce someone into sex and relationships they’re not ready for than to encourage self-exploration, respecting everyone’s highly individualised sexual and romantic timelines.

Also, for allosexual Autistic adults with truly adult freedoms (rare), there’s no slowing down allosexuals. Allosexual desire is the most abundant resource in the universe. Allosexuals who feel happy and free to have sex generally do so. This includes Autistic allosexuals. We see that in this show, too. There’s no slowing Madison and Tyler.

It would, however, be an abuse to pair a supersexual, high-libido Autistic adult woman with an asexual-spectrum man, then broadcast that spectacle for (a)sexually-illiterate audiences worldwide to cringe as the pair try desperately to navigate sexual activities together.

CONNOR

Connor is the young man with the Hot Mom. (I know this because I read the Internet.) He lives with his mother (Lise), his stepfather, and two of his three younger siblings. Connor appears to be the only Autistic in the family, which is kind of unusual. (We never meet Connor’s biological father, but Connor is proud of his father’s UK heritage, which has become a special interest for him.)

Connor has an adorable way about him, and stole many hearts last season. Not many guys can get away with saying, apropos nothing, “I feel I am quite the looker” and get away with it, but Connor can.

His first date is with a young woman who fell in love with him after watching the show. Connor is uncomfortable with this parasocial imbalance. Also, she is not his type. His mother has encouraged him to consider a blonde even though he has a strong preference for brunettes. They agree to ‘remain friends’. This is what participants are coached to say when the date is not a ‘success’.

A note about that: Allistics will understand not to take this literally. “Let’s be friends” is a euphemism. A soft letdown.

I’m not particularly concerned that the Autistic participants on this show will take it literally, either. Although Autistic people have the reputation for taking everything literally, it’s far more complicated than that. All of the Autistic participants on this show, like everyone watching, have been conditioned by allistic culture. However, this particular allistic, allosexual dating script tells a bigger story, which isn’t apparent unless you’re asexual and Autistic and have a ‘flattened’ concept of the mainstream relationship hierarchy. In this scenario, friendship is implicitly relegated to a spot below the coveted ‘romantic partnership’. If Autistic asexuals were society’s default, this little euphemism wouldn’t exist. And that’s just one example. I’m saying the world would look so completely different, mainstream viewers can’t begin to imagine. Rather than setting up the show to learn how an Autistic world might look, we get the inverse: Autistic people coached to look and sound ‘normal’.

Back to Connor, and another ‘script’ which isn’t called a script because it’s an allistic, allosexual one. (Only Autistics use ‘scripts’, apparently. It’s part of our ‘stereotyped’ behaviour… or something.)

This season we meet Connor’s other brother, who has perhaps come home from college. In the kitchen, Connor’s family gathers to give Connor dating advice. Last season, Connor’s (wonderfully supportive) mother told Connor that her other sons could learn something about dating etiquette from Connor. She said something true, there. Instead of ghosting a woman, Connor prepared a kind and considerate phone call to call things off.

As Connor’s mother Lise pointed out, that’s unfortunately not typical young adult allistic-allosexual dating behaviour. But Autistics are held to higher standards. (We also hold ourselves to higher standards — we know the ambiguous loss of mysteriously ended friendships, before we even get to the dating world.)

But this season, the “joke” is Connor’s brother introducing him to “the tier system”.

“This is my other brother,” Connor tells the camera. “He’s pretty smart and experienced in dating.”

The tier-system, as it turns out, is an idiosyncratic alternative to the ‘base’ system which I wish would hurry up and die already. Seems like it has, largely, but has been replaced with something with more steps. I have no idea how widespread the fifteen-step “tier system” is (with hugging at tier one, kissing at tier two etc.) but when presented in this way on popular shows, it’s only likely to proliferate further.

“What are all the other steps?” Lise asks, laughing along.

“I would also like to know this!” Connor says, with recognisably Autistic stress-timing — deceptively deadpan, but accompanied by much facial animation which contributes to Connor’s overall adorableness.

The family all agree that Tier 15 is “off limits!”

To these allosexual “advisors” and “supporters”, there is a hierarchy of socio-sexual behaviours. Lise jokes that she has no idea what the steps in the tier system are — despite having been married (at least) twice and giving birth to (at least) four kids. The joke here is that the tier system is ridiculous. But does Connor know this? Does he know the Tier System is a joke?

I don’t believe he does. Out on his date, he sees a duck pecking another duck’s beak. It’s unclear if he means ‘violence’ or ‘kissing’, but he tries to reassure his date that he is a gentleman and definitely won’t be doing the same to her, because that would be bad, and he would never do that. The date doesn’t appear to know what he’s talking about, but audiences have seen the scene in the kitchen, where the hierarchy of physical intimacy was discussed. Later, when he meets a great match whose sense of humour is wonderfully compatible with Connor’s, Connor asks for a kiss. His date agrees that a kiss on the cheek or hand would be lovely. But at home, he chastises himself for ‘failing in his mission’.

This time, his family tries to reassure Connor that the date was a raging success. “You’re so hard on yourself,” Lise says. Despite knowing her son very well, she seems unaware, in this case, that Connor took The Tier System seriously. Though he isn’t taking the steps themselves literally, perhaps, he’s not the only young man in this family to have internalised that there is a hierarchy of physical contact on dates, and that the notion of hierarchy gamifies sex in the worst way possible.

In a later episode, Cian is asking Tanner about ‘rules’ around physical contact. Positioned as ‘preparing’ him for his first dates, the scene makes a joke out of Tanner’s naivety. “No tickling,” Tanner says, “Definitely no tickling.” This is for laughs, of course. For laughing AT Tanner, not with him. When quizzed further, Tanner asks, “Can you kiss them? I actually don’t know if you can.” Whatever Tanner has internalised about the rules of dating has resulted in him treating ‘dating rules’ as more important than asking his date directly. This is a problem for young men in general, not just Autistic young men.

Likewise, Connor’s “family joke” about the tiers is having a real impact on his confidence anddating life.

Here’s the important thing: One of Connor’s brothers is clearly immune to The Tier System rubbish. He tells Connor so in a later episode. But I’m not convinced the allistic brother home from college considers The Tier System a joke, fully. It stinks like Manosphere bullshit to me, and if we don’t start taking young men who take this seriously, seriously, we’re all in big trouble. Toxic dating advice doesn’t impact all young men, not even all young men from the very same family. But Andrew Tate-esque stuff is reeling far too many of them in regardless. When young men are looking for some kind of script — whatever their neurotype — we’re all in trouble, because allistic scripts are uniformly bad.

When Autistic people make use of scripts it’s stuff like: What to say to the mechanic and how to book a doctor’s appointment.

The Tier System rides roughshod over what people really want, replacing communication and consent with a something premade and externalised. See, it’s not just the Autistics who make use of scripts. This is an allosexual, allistic script — and those are almost always the fucking worst. They’re about domination, not getting things done.

And because Autistic people rely on scripts in all sorts of situations outside sexual and romantic ones, to suddenly expect Connor to know this script is only sorta-kinda half serious, is negligent at best.

There exist in mainstream culture various other “systems”* like this which are highly imperfect. The degree of damage/usefulness depend largely on how they are used. If used as a kind of “menu” between two (or more) people, especially when partners are Autistic, I can see a genuinely positive use for a list of physical intimacies. It would look very different from this one though, and wouldn’t be a tier (hierarchy). The very fact this brought-home-from-college crap is called a “system” suggests universality, and the Autistic people who star on this show do seem to have one thing in common: They have all been coerced (to smaller or greater degrees) into appearing ‘normal’ for the comfort of those around them. Hell, we all have. Some of this year’s participants have moved beyond this, leaning into genuinely acceptance of self, which is why I love Pari, Tina, and also Pari’s sister. Tina was identified as Autistic as a young adult, so has not been pushed through the ABA/full-time therapy pipeline. There are huge disadvantages to late identification, but that’s not one of them. Likewise, Pari and her Autistic sister exemplify genuine self-acceptance — not the packaged version sold to Autistic people by their Autism Speaks parents.

A number of participants on this show come from families who have chained their horse to Autism Speaks, . When Tanner tells his mother, “I’m gonna keep looking at you, Mom, and I’m gonna keep smiling,” I see Autism Speaks-culture written all over Tanner’s childhood. Although I won’t get deep into this, it’s all of a piece: Autism Speaks-culture rides roughshod over what Autistic people really want, removing innate desires and loves, replacing them at times with the desires of their parents and caretakers. (I’m using ‘caretaker’ here, not ‘caregiver’.)

*Other examples of “systems” are The Five Love Languages and Learning Styles (which many educators take seriously despite there being no good science behind it).

In the asexual community we have The Split Model of Attraction. Many people in the asexual-spectrum community find this useful, but this also has its hard limits — not least because ‘model’ suggests something far more scientific than it really is. However, as conversational openers, as a way into finding out more, these can all work as valuable starter tools. They’re can-openers, not hammers.

Can ‘Love Language’ Talk Be Dangerous?

“Gifts are my love language,” Madison tells the camera. Her cowboy-hat wearing date gifts her an American Doll. This seals it. She has met her match. In this case, the gift is cute and heartwarming. I felt my heart swell.

But it’s worth pointing out that nine out of ten Autistic women have a history of sexual and/or partner abuse. Sexual abuse and coercion is more sickeningly rife among all neurotypes than most people imagine, so I’m not just worried about the Autistic population when I say this. (Like all things, if we better understand Autistic people, we better understand everyone.)

When we teach young people ‘systems’ like the love languages, and encourage them to lean into broad statements like ‘gifts are my love language’, are we really doing them any favours? Perfectly targeted gifts can be used as a tool of coercive control. When a gift garners Autistic levels of love, in and of itself — because love can operate more expansive for Autistics — coercion is a snap for the evil-inclined. Not everyone watching this show is watching just for the cosy.

What Is The Tier System, Dare I Ask?

Love On The Spectrum never explains what The Tier System entails, but if the Internet serves me right:

Hugging > Kissing > Making Out > Neck Kissing > Massages > Playful fighting > Boob Play > Playing With “Downstairs”.

The middle steps are mystery boxed, perhaps with humorous intent.

Then it’s Handjobs > Blowjobs > Fingering > Sex with condom > Sex without condom > Kinky sex.

So much to unpack there. I hope anyone reading this far can see the many, many problems with it… But I’ll point out a few anyway.

From ‘Boob play’ it’s clear that this is a list for straight men who would rather rely on a script than talk to a woman. Talking to her, to check if she even likes boob play, isn’t on the list. (Perhaps she doesn’t have ‘boobs’. This list also implies cisgender.)

The hierarchical, sequential nature of this is a 20th century, style of sex guidance.

I’m sad it exists. I’m sad to see it joked about without televised critique, in which the butt of the joke is, partially, inevitably, Connor himself, not the actual ‘system’. Connor can’t be expected to know the extent to which other young men are making use of it. In this case, the brother he loves and respects seems to offer advice genuinely. (It’s worth noting we are not told Connor’s brother’s neurotype.)

We never see the face of the Cian O’Cleary (pronounced Key-in), the Australian interviewer, producer and director. In Episode One, Connor sits in front of his bed. Cian’s disembodied voice summarises Connor’s stated desires with this: “So… you wanna get laid.”

Sexuality Is Especially Compulsory For Men

I recognise Cian’s response as unambiguously allosexual and allistic. This might elicit a hearty laugh from anyone in mainstream culture. Eliciting a laugh after saying something risqué is neurotypical culture. Instead, Connor responds earnestly. Autistic-ly.

Cian won’t quit. In Episode Two, with the interview again conducted near Connor’s bed, interviewer and subject discuss the possibility of Connor’s parents building him his own flat on the property, so that Connor can have guests come and go as he pleases, living an adult life under slightly less surveillance.

“So… you want to get jiggy-with-it,” summarises Cian, after listening to Connor’s socially acceptable, respectful description of the life he would like for himself.

Once again, Connor responds earnestly — deadpan — which is hilarious and adorable to the allistic viewing public. “Well, if that’s how you must put it,” Connor says, without the expected blushing and embarrassed laughter.

That’s what the interviewer wants, of course. If he can’t visibly embarrass these Autistics, ‘deadpan and earnest’ is just as good for ratings. When Autistic people respond in unexpected, earnest (‘literal’) ways, that’s peak comedy for Basic Bitches.

Laughing At, Not With

Here’s the thing, though. Either way, the audience is still laughing at Connor. Autistic people are very familiar with saying ‘unexpected things’ in earnest and eliciting a laugh. “When I make a joke, no one laughs, but everyone laugh at me when I’m not making a joke,” is a common Autistic experience. It’s another form of exclusion. And this particular exclusion is taking place inside Connor’s safe space — his own bedroom— and is broadcast to the masses.

Once you start to notice how the show has been edited to laugh at Autistic participants (and not at their allistic families), you notice it in every episode. In another scene, Madison is wondering which ‘toys’ she might take on her date. The bigger situation has of course been edited to suggest that Madison is talking about sex toys, when we all know by this point she means her American dolls, for calming purposes. Jennifer has told her that two dolls would be appropriate. Meanwhile, I’m yelling at the TV, “Take all the dolls you can carry, Madison! Who gives a flying fuck! Your date is Autistic too!!”

When Connor (mis)uses the phrase ‘cop a feel’, then feels ashamed after his own mother explains it to him, he asks the camera, “Can we cut that? I did not know that.”

The show did not cut that. They were never going to cut that.

Connor is ‘adorable’. There’s no denying that. But what’s behind that assessment? Adorable at what cost? And if an Adorable Autistic Man were to take The Rancid Tier System seriously with a young woman off-camera, would he still be adorable? What if he were one of those more invisible Autistics, who go to college and struggle to the point where he is scooped up into the Manosphere? That happens too, in a very different iteration from this one.

We are yet to see such a thing in popular media, but a truly wonderful show about Autism would avoid the low-hanging fruit. The producer would have to be Autistic, I imagine, if we’re to ever get a product which avoids turning Autistic communication styles and sexualities into spectacle for heart-warming fodder. The Gaze is unambiguously allistic.

There’s heartwarming and funny, then there’s truly groundbreaking. A groundbreaking show of similar type would instead showcase all the ways humans can be different, resulting, finally, in audiences understanding something new about themselves. The epiphany would not be, “Aren’t these Autistic folk cute.” It would be, “Okay, so maybe I see the world a little bit differently myself now. Maybe I, too, can unleash a less indoctrinated version of myself.”

What Is Kink If Not An Intense Sensory Pleasure?

Another thing worth pointing out from that nonsense Tier System: ‘Kinky sex’ is not necessarily more sexual than (penetrative) sex, with or without a condom. In fact, the asexual-spectrum community understands that kink isn’t necessarily even sexual in nature. This experience of kink doubly applies for Autistics, allosexuals or asexuals alike, because of the way sensory pleasure works, often in a heightened way when your brain underwent less pruning than usual.

See: , November 30, 2022

The broad point I’m making is this: The show Love On The Spectrum is far more normative than most viewers can even imagine. When it comes to Autistic dating and sex, Autistic people would do well to turn instead to the asexual community. Our ranks include many Autistics, even if you are not asexual yourself.

We have far more to offer you than… whatever this show is.

MADISON

Moving now to Madison, who reminds me of Margene as played by Ginnifer Goodwin in HBO’s Big Love. Madison self-describes as “a girly-girl” and loves beadwork. She owns a large collection of dolls. Beads and dolls are all arranged perfectly in her apartment where she lives alone. Cameras focus on the ‘lining up’ of these dolls and beads, illuminating the organising which mainstream audiences have learned to associate with Autism. This is the kind of thing audiences think they’re learning about Autistics when they watch the show. Ah yes, Autistics love to collect and line things up. That’s what that looks like. That’s fine, but does nothing to explain to the mainstream that to have a systemising brain is an internal experience as much as an external one. This is Autism 101, even as a fifth season.

Madison describes her early childhood, in which she used to ‘put anything in her mouth’. She didn’t talk until she was four, but she does talk now. She describes herself thusly as ‘an Autistic success story’.

This is the narrative she has crafted for herself… except I highly doubt this is the narrative she crafted alone. I bet she’s heard her mother say that many times over. Possibly teachers, and Autism Speaks advocates as well. As the parent of an Autistic child who also didn’t speak until quite late, and then spoke very well, I can personally say my own child’s ‘success story’ had nothing to do with anything anyone did on purpose. No language therapy was involved.

Of course therapy can be helpful, sometimes vital. For everyone, not just for kids diagnosed with Autism. The point I’m making is this: Autistic kids get put on the therapy train. Abbey’s mother tells the story that when she received Abbey’s diagnosis, the psychologist told her, “You have many hours of therapy ahead of you.” Well, Abbey’s mother took that and ran with it, but in the moment she felt overwhelmed.

People who become parents aren’t typically scared by profesionals with, “You have many hours of parenting ahead of you.” But that is indeed the case. All kids are work, and I personally believe parents of neurotypical kids need to be putting in as much work as we are. So many kids could do with some intensive anti-bullying parenting, for instance. Anti-clique parenting. Anti-herd mentality parenting. All of that stuff falls on the parents of the kids who are bullied.

Many organisations are building their businesses around the money that parents and insurance pays them to push all manner of therapies onto Autistic children, turning ‘therapy’ into the kids’ full-time jobs, oftentimes alongside full-time school.

When those therapies are all about making Autistic kids fit-in for the comfort of allistics, they’re abusive rather than helpful.

Autistic people themselves are told that they are ‘success stories’ because of the therapy their families paid thousands for. That’s part of the narrative, and Love On The Spectrum has recruited disproportionately from a pool of Autistic young adults who are the product of ABA-adjacent therapies, if not ABA itself.

Note that it is not infantilising to point out that the Autistic participants of this show are products of their upbringing. Every single one of us is a product of our upbringing. It’s just a lot more obvious when you’re Autistic and you’ve undergone extensive therapy with organisations who have very clear stated goals.

Madison is entitled to call her own speech fluency a ‘success story’. However, I don’t think this should have been aired. The producers seem unware that this framing positions non-speaking Autistics as failures. Again, I don’t blame Madison for this narrative. This is the dominant narrative, and she has been acculturated by her family’s involvement with Autism Speaks, as we learn later. Talking equals ‘overcoming Autism’, and this show chooses to broadcast that message, because speaking is more humanising to mainstream audiences.

Positioning certain forms of Autism as ‘success’ describes this show as a whole.

What else does this show position as ‘Autistic success’? Romance, sex and monogamous long-term partnership, of course. But, like the Shrek movie franchise, it’s important that Autistics ‘know their level’. Success means partnership with another Autistic person with about the same support needs, though importantly, from a feminist standpoint, if the female partner has lower support needs that’s even better, because women are caregivers. I suspect some of the mothers of young men on this show are especially keen for their sons to marry women who can take over many of the caregiving responsibilities. This is not explicitly said, but it comes out in other, subtle ways. Tanner says he is looking for a woman who can counterbalance his emotional dysregulation, though he doesn’t put it exactly like that. It’s fine to look for a partner who complements you, but look a little closer. Expectations are gendered in an asymmetrical way.

A ‘full, healthy, sexual’ relationship for every participant is the unspoken, but still very evident goal of the show.

Mimic Allistics, Be A Success Story!

Who would white, Southern, Christian-boy Tanner be… if his mother and sister weren’t staring unblinkingly with massive grins plastered across their faces whenever they engage with him? We’ll never know.

“We come from a very smiley part of the world,” his mother and sister Midge are in full agreement about everything Autism. They, themselves, are products of Southern Femininity. If they have to smile, everybody gotta smile, dammit.

“When you’re quiet, it’s because of your Autism,” one of them explains to Tanner… and because they are Affirming(TM) they make sure to add: “And that’s COOL!”

The only person I know who does that in real life is fully immersed in the Church of Scientology. The word ‘cult’ is overused these days, so I won’t use it. But make of that what you will.

Tanner has been told that talking means friendly. Talking equals success. Tanner has now got to the point where he chatters nervously at breakneck speed, and apologises for failing to fill every tiny lull in his conversation with Callie. We see him search painfully for something to say. He has a reservoir of stock jokes for such occasions.

It is an abuse to tell Autistic people we must perform in such ways. For Autistics, especially, to be quiet is to be observant, and observing is learning. We don’t internalise social rules. We learn them in more ‘manual’ fashion. When we are allowed to be quiet and observant, when we are allowed to focus on others in the room rather than stress about how we are perceived by those others, we are in the best place to learn… by our very own steam. We don’t benefit from the intense ‘fit-in-at-great-personal-cost’ interventions that Tanner is so clearly an adult product of.

In contrast, Madison has perhaps been afforded a little more leeway with regards to eye-contact. Or perhaps she not a complete ‘success story’. Whenever Madison is required to speak to camera, she does not look into the camera as allistic subjects typically would. Madison is clearly, recognisably (to me) uncomfortable with allistic levels of eye-contact.

So when (actually) Autistic expert, Jennifer Cook enters the picture and sits at the counter facing Madison for camerawork purposes, then whips out her pen and paper to illustrate ‘safe spaces’, I feel very uncomfortable for the both of them.

is a massive step-up from the Australian ‘expert’, whose psychology expertise begins and ends with basic, infantilising advice for participants. Jennifer is herself Autistic, and also a parent of Autistics. However, Cook is still bound by the oppressive requirements of the show, which is allistic and normatively sexual(ising) in nature.

So instead of, say, walking in nature for her pre-date chat with Madison, or lying together on the floor among dolls — scenarios in which they might avoid eye-contact altogether — the director has instructed them to sit basically facing each other, which is the general preference of allistics, or perhaps only white allistics, or perhaps only woman allistics when it comes to social situations. I have observed that men of various neurotypes generally prefer to chat while doing something. And when there’s nothing to do, they’ll chat side-by-side rather than lean into each other. There may be homophobic reasons for this, I don’t know, but Autistics of all genders also tend to prefer non-face-to-face and non-normative ways of sitting and looking, not that anyone would learn this from watching the show.

This expectation of allistic eye-contact may seem like a small thing if eye-contact comes naturally to you. But the expectation comes on top of a requirement to sit at eateries where high-stress dates are conducted for filming purposes.

Some Autistic people love restaurants, and feel fully at home in new places full of strangers chatting happily. Madison herself seems to be one such example. But once again, I am asking this show change the default. Going out to eat at a new place, staring someone in the eye from the other side of a table, is the definition of neuro-ethnocentricity. It’s also what anyone does by default, when they’re following a dominant cultural script, giving no thought whatsoever to what they’d really, truly enjoy. Ideally, this show would be queering-up what it means to even ‘Go On A Date’. In other episodes, this has happened. I remember watching a date to a sunflower field, for instance. More of that, please. Gardens can also be great, and we do see that this season. I’m sure there are many other things to do and places to go, if people were to put on their brainstorming hats. Noisy restaurants ain’t it.

For many Autistic people, visits to new places deplete valuable resources. New places can be overwhelming. Pair that with the high stress task of a televised first date, a new venue can be literally impossible for someone with an Autistic nervous system. That situation would test almost anyone. These days, many restaurants are built in that open plan way which leaves nothing in the budget for consideration to lighting and acoustics. Though not clear to viewers due to the microphone set-up, I can imagine exactly how noisy this restaurant is. There are no soft surfaces. Madison sits with her date next to a massive window, with no option to manage the amount of light coming in. Many restaurants are like this. From behind camera comes a mutter: “It’s busier than we expected.”

Do they not have access to the Internet? There’s a Google app which tells you how busy a restaurant is likely to be at any given time. It’s pretty reliable. Aside from that, did they not ask Brandon what he wanted? If so, did they listen when he told them, perhaps not in words, but by the means he had available to him?

Brandon’s highly dysregulated date is an excellent example of someone who struggles with sensory overwhelm— and yet no one thought to offer an alternative location. The producers have been making this show for two seasons already — four when we include Australia — and have learned nothing. Former Autistic participants have struggled in restaurant environments, and have had to leave. I’ve witnessed a lot of pain on this show, for no good reason.

Brandon is asked numerous times by Cian if he is okay. He is Very Clearly Not Okay. He is literally shrinking into his seat, until eventually, his head is on the table.

I must conclude that the producers want Autistics to struggle on dates. Audiences need to be educated, you see. Audiences need to see Autistic people put on ear buds under noise-cancelling headphones. Belt and braces. Hilarious. Worse, I know how storytelling works. Once, for work purposes, I even attended a seminar by someone who crafts scripts for reality TV shows. Here’s how it works: The heart-warming bits feel even more heart-warming to an audience when they come on the back of the dark and the cringe. Reality TV needs the ups-and-downs, otherwise it doesn’t ‘work’.

Next we’ve got Mr Magoo-type humour in which Madison is talking and her overwhelmed date is not hearing.

Camerawork can never get to the truth: That Brandon is in pain. He is doing his absolute best. His brain works differently. For him, this restaurant is like standing under a jet engine.

Eventually, without a word, he leaves the table. Cut to Madison’s baffled and disappointed face.

At this point, the camera crew decide to conduct the date al fresco, which is where they should’ve done it in the first place. And if Brandon hadn’t literally gotten out of his seat, I wonder if they would ever have accommodated for the pain he was very clearly in.

I do know that accommodations are happening behind the scenes. Abbey says in interview elsewhere that she was unable to sit still on a chair in her bedroom for the initial talk-to-camera scene. The camera crew had to come back another day, and then they conducted the interview while walking.

This is how school works, too. Rather than abolish 19th century outdated school system and build them from the ground up, accommodating far more students, schools remain basically the same, with the addition of IEPs. Kids have to sit in their seats. Oh, your kid can’t sit in their seat? Okay, here’s a wobble stool with five minute move-breaks every half hour.

This show is not a behemoth of a school system, though. This show got to be anything it wanted. Instead, the producer doesn’t seem to realise what an imposition it is for his participants to sit still on chairs, to sit face-to-face, to brave noisy environments regardless of sensory sensitivities. He knows how dating documentaries are normally made, so he’s going to make it normally… until it doesn’t work… and then he’ll rethink it.

Madison and Brandon’s date has already been ruined, though. After differently painful minutes outside, at a table overlooking the sea, Madison uses the exact script offered by Jennifer Cook: “I’ve really enjoyed our date but we are not a romantic match.”

“I think we are a romantic match,” her date counters, “but I just don’t like being places with lots of people.”

At first glance, this is that same-old gendered issue wherein a man rides roughshod over a woman’s actual words, insisting there’s potential where there isn’t. In this case, there’s far more to it. Brandon was not given the chance to showcase his personality. He was too overwhelmed.

Aside from that, I don’t blame Madison for ending it there.

“There are plenty more fish in the sea. By fish, I mean men,” Madison adds, redundantly. A largely allistic audience will understand the idiom.

Here’s what else audiences understand: The cut to a view of a pelican swallowing a fish whole. The visual metaphor is clear: Producers consider Madison has ‘eaten this fish alive’.

But it wasn’t Madison at all. It was the tortuous situation producers set up for Brandon.

What might an Autistic-friendly dating show look like?

I don’t think ‘Autistic dating’ and ‘televised’ is a natural fit. But let’s do a thought experiment anyhow. Let’s assume there are enthusiastic Autistic dating-show participants out there who would engage the services of a reality TV crew even if there were no such thing as Autistic discrimination.

What if it wasn’t a ‘dating’ show at all, though? What if we followed Autistic people getting to know each other in typically Autistic fashion?

Well, it wouldn’t be a show. For many Autistic people, we get to know our long-term partners from a distance first. By ‘distance’, I don’t necessarily mean geographical distance. Hypothetically, two Autistic pepole could live right next door but still get to know each other via non face-to-face means.

In the days of the Internet, many Autistic people get to know each other in chatrooms, in fan groups, in Discord. Perhaps after a few years of increasingly intense chatting online, we might meet in person. This is not universal. However, it is a very common trajectory.

Or, we might know someone for a long time as friends. Without the high-stress pressure of A First Date, things progress far more naturally. This is a common demisexual experience. For demisexuals, it’s very difficult to feel sexual attraction by any other means — hence the unacknowledged difficulties of partnership-forming while demisexual.

This wouldn’t make riveting TV, either. Audiences need the highs and lows — not two people swapping constant in-jokes about their respective passions.

Australia’s most popular (and reviled) dating show, Married At First Sight, will never engage an openly asexual participant, even though I wish they would for activism purposes. (I do believe MAFS has featured participants who don’t know they are on the asexual spectrum. This is always a disaster for those people.)

However, there are dating show formats which feel slightly more Autistic-friendly to me.

The Nevermets follows couples as they meet for the first time after lengthy, long-distance friendships online. By no coincidence, this also feels demisexual friendly. By the time couples meet, they have already formed a close emotional bond.

Most popular dating shows involve televised dates followed by a statement to camera about whether there was a ‘spark’ or not. These shows inevitably prioritise speed of attraction over the slow burn. (I have critiqued one such show here.)

Here’s another thing about being Autistic: Social events require post-processing. Expecting Autistic young adults to make a decision on the fly about whether a date was successful or not? Fruitless. Instead, in very allosexual fashion, these Autistic participants are advised to check for ‘spark’. This is a binary way of thinking about love and relationships. Since oher dating shows also require fast, post-date processing, I deduce that’s how many people date in the real world.

No immediate spark? > Date went badly.

That’s neuronormative. It’s also allosexual and alloromantic in nature. Autistic participants must be given more time to process whether or not they want to meet a second or third or fourth time. They are not afforded this time and space.

We see this very clearly in Season 3 of Love On The Spectrum when James goes on a date with Sonia, the self-described ‘vampire woman’ with the telephone handbag that is an actual telephone. Sonia loves men who are different. To those of us at home, the date appears to be a (mostly) raging success. I really, really wanted them to have a second date. But James seems to have internalised that ‘there must be a spark’.

“I’m not feeling the spark, sorry.”k

This pressure comes from every direction, and I’m not just blaming the show. However, I am saying the show could do much better. They could start by NOT asking Autistic participants how their date went before they’ve even had time to make it home safely afterwards. That is anti-Autistic.

It is also anti-demisexual. As I keep saying, this show does not understand Autism, and also does not know asexual sexualities exist.

Sonia herself seems to describe herself as demisexual, but using terms everyone is more familiar with: “I’m just different. I’m picky. I have to find a connection. I have to be comfortable.” I cannot possibly speak for Sonia, and I do not wish to replace Sonia’s own words with my own. However, in a show with this number of Autistic people, at least a few of them would find supportive community among aces and aros.

If producers were truly interested in ‘helping’ Autistic people find love, they would avoid such a normative dating format. Cameras might follow Autistic participants to other regions as they meet their long-term loves in person for the first time. Film-crews could offer sensory and moral support, if (and only IF) they were truly knowledgeable about Autistic experiences.

On that note, advice to participants from Jennifer Cook feels like preparing someone for marriage by focusing on the wedding day. None of the advice dished out (on camera) goes beyond ‘How To Do First Dates’. But there will only ever be a few first dates. I don’t think Autistic people should date. I think the sort of environment which suits most Autistic people seeking partnership is so far removed from alloromantic notions of ‘dating’ that it would no longer look (from the outside) like dating at all. Talk to long-term partnered Autistic folk and you’ll learn many of us never really ‘dated’ in any widely-understood sense of the word.

Of course, when it comes to Jennifer Cook’s advice, audiences can deduce there was a lot more talking that happened off-camera. For instance, participants were surely asked basic questions such as “Are you interested in men, women or both?” They were definitely asked about likes and dislikes, because every participant gets an infantilising, quirky little intro to that effect.

I doubt participants were offered little beyond this surface-level stuff. But there are questions we should all be asking, especially if you’re Autistic, because when you’re Autistic, being non-normative is the norm.

These questions do not have easy, quick answers. Therein lies the mismatch, for a reality TV show.

To offer a few examples:

What’s your relationship to gender?
Do you experience sexual attraction? If not, what other forms of attraction do you experience?
Do you consider yourself a romantic person? If so, what does that look like to you?
Is it important to you that your partner finds you sexually attractive?
Do you tend to experience attraction to people you don’t know, or do you need to form an emotional bond first?
Of the gender/s you are attracted to, what does that look like? (Do you prefer ‘manly men’ or ‘girly girls’, or perhaps someone who breaks the binary mould?)
Do you expect to get all of your emotional, romantic and sexual needs met inside a monogamous relationship, or would you prefer to explore a polyamorous configuration?
Is religion important to you? How does religion affect your relationship style and sexual expectations?
What kinds of care would you expect from a partner? What kinds of care are you willing and able to give in return?
Do you want kids? Pets?

Some of these questions are basically never asked, ever. Others are asked, but it’s socially unacceptable to ask them right at the beginning.

But a dating show can work differently. A dating show can make its own rules. A dating show can get questions like ‘kids or nah’ out of the way, much like a dating agency can. There is no need to try and partner a man who does not want children with women who do, other than for dramatic enjoyment of an audience.

With that, let’s move on to James, who does ask women at speed-dating if they have or would like kids, or dogs (which he does not like at all). Hang convention. James is working as efficiently as he can, given his odds in this ridiculous dating regime.

JAMES

James, whose speech pattern reminds me of Rick from Rick and Morty, is almost 40. He lives with his parents in a small flat. His parents have built him his own quarters on the same property. (We know this from last season.)

Alongside Pari, who is into trains and girls, James strikes me as the most gender expansive. He takes special care of his wavy blonde hair — unfashionably style — paying no attention to what ‘men’ are supposed to care about. He wears a gold necklace over a pink shirt when dressing for a date.

“I’d lose the necklace,” says his father. Then, perhaps because cameras are there the father adds, “But that’s all right.”

James wears the necklace just as he pleases — over his shirt, and at a length seen far more commonly on a middle-aged woman. James is his own person. I love this.

I don’t love his situation. And I sure don’t love the situations producers put him in.

I’m sure there’s an Autistic person somewhere in the history of the world who met the love of their life at a Speed Dating event. But I’d wager Speed Dating has inflicted more collective harm than good on Autistic people, because Speed Dating is about as normie and normie gets.

The audience is never told how speed dating for James has been set up. Are the women also Autistic? Without explanation, it appears three random women were plucked out of the dating pool, and consented to spending a few minutes on camera for the purposes of teaching an Autistic man how to speed date.

James has been armed with a plethora of ‘helpful’ advice. His mother has told him not to yawn, for example.

Here’s the unfortunate thing about James: He yawns when he’s anxious. It seems to me that when he is in a highly anxious state, he forgets to breathe in normal fashion. Eventually his body takes over and requires him to take in a big breath at once. He yawns, basically.

Now, lack of oxygen is just one of numerous reasons why humans yawn, but allistic culture is — once again — black and white. If you yawn in front of an allistic person on a date, they will find this very rude. Yawning equals, “I’m bored.” Sure, it might mean you’re tired, but unless you apologise for it, yawning will be perceived as a social mis-step. I have been told I look bored when I’m fully engaged, so I am particularly attuned to this pressure.

Instead of addressing why James yawns, or advising him to tell his dates about it (explaining that he is not bored, just low-oxygen), James is instead told “Remember, no yawning!”

I don’t know about you, but stifling a yawn is about as impossible as stifling a sneeze. You can do it for a while, but then it happens anyway. And then you have even less control over it.

James’s mother does not seem to understand why he yawns. This offers just one small insight into the many ways in which James is misunderstood by his parents, who find him quirky and funny, but also annoying.

Back home after his speed dating experience, James tells his parents he felt two of the women were good matches. Next, for camera, the phone call. Sorry, James. No matches this time.

“That’s okay,” James says. He assures his parents he is used to rejection. There will be other opportunities. That was just one event.

But his mother starts to weep.

For fuck sake.

James retreats to his bedroom. Without his knowledge, the camera gives audiences a keyhole view of James inside his room, arranging folded washing on his bed. But instead of asking James what it feels like when you have to manage your mother’s emotions as well as regulate your own after a less than successful dating experience, his mother gets the air time.

Look, I get it. I, too, am parent to an Autistic young adult. I know exactly how it feels from both sides of this equation. It hurts when your child is rejected. But… this is not about the mother.

Here’s what I’d tell my adult son in the same situation: “Yeah, you’re right. That was just one event. You’ve framed it perfectly. There’s no pressure on you. Your timeline is your timeline. You’re fine as you are, son.”

But not these parents.

James has told us that he definitely wants to be partnered by the age of forty. Now we’ve seen his mother’s tears, we can deduce where it’s coming from. These two are scared of dying and leaving behind an Autistic son to live alone in their home. It’s a harrowing thought. I know it well.

In a later episode, James and his father prepare for a birthday. James is about to turn 37. James makes a complaint that he wishes his father would quit calling ‘alcohol’ ‘adult beverages’. James’s stated reason: Not all adults drink. By equating alcohol with adulthood, the father is helping to reinforce compulsory drinking culture, basically. I get this completely and I’m with James here — adding, it’s also infantilising to be talking about ‘adult drinks’ in relation to your middle-aged son.

“I really wish you’d stop calling them adult beverages,” James says.

“Your inference is ingenuous, James,” counters his father. Then adds something along the lines of, “We have to start doing videos about our pet peeves. Thirty-six-year-old son who still lives with us!”

This little dig is far, far more than just a ‘joke’ when you’re disabled. If James could leave home, I have no doubt he would. I’m sure this is not the first and last time his father has ‘joked’ in this way.

I do appreciate how this scene is edited to follow a contrasting situation in which another Autistic participant (Dani), who I think lives with her Uncle and Aunt Sandy. Dani is offered a martini after sharing that her boyfriend won’t have sex with her until after marriage. This is a great example of adults treating an Autistic adult as a fellow adult. It helps, I think, that Dani is not living with the people who brought her up from babyhood. They are well-positioned to see her as the adult she has clearly become. (They also give her good advice).

James is not in that position. James is under coercive pressure to partner up. But as parents, we cannot make ourselves feel better about dying by forcing our disabled adult children into romance and sex as an endgame. That helps nothing and nobody.

It’s impossible to know from watching this edited show how much of James’s desire to partner comes from an intrinsic desire versus how much pressure is coming from his parents. Either way, producers favour the parents’ point of view over James’s. The parents’ feelings about James’s singleness are positioned as at least as important as his. This show is ultimately about allistic comfort, Autistic discomfort, framed as “Autistics need to be pushed out of their comfort zone to achieve the bliss of sex and romance”.

What if our comfort zone is comfortable forever? What is wrong with living a comfortable, single life forever?

In asexual and aromantic spaces, all types of relationships are given equal weight. Romance and sex is not at the top. Friendships can be as satisfying as romantic partnerships… and let’s face it, they so often are, even for people in ‘normative’ marriages.

I would love for knowledgeable, queer-literate producers and actual relationship experts to guide all participants in a deep exploration of what they really want, versus what their families— and society — want for them.

DANI AND ADAN

Dani has long dark hair and wears glasses. (Dani is the participant who was offered the martini, respected as an adult.)

Last season we learned that Dani is very interested in sex, and she is not shy about saying so. I recognise a tendency to ‘overshare’, and worry a little about producers perhaps exploiting that. It is very difficult to say what counts as Dani being herself, and what counts as exploitation. As I say, Dani is an adult. The real answer to that will only come in 20 or 30 years time, when Dani looks back on her time as a participant in reality TV. She will either feel comfortable with the amount she shared, or she will feel a bit icky about it.

For the last year, Dani has been in a relationship with Adan. The pair featured on last season.

When asked where the relationship is at, Dani shares that the physical aspect of their relationship involves kissing and nothing more.

In short, supersexual Dani has been paired with the least sexually motivated man on the show.

Adan is the sort of guy Eugene Levy seems to model most of his characters on. Adan is reserved, polite, respectful, religious.

As a sort of anniversary celebration, Dani and Adan are sent to eat al fresco at a restaurant, where the camera watches as Dani broaches the topic of physical intimacy with Adan.

The pair perform exactly as producers must have predicted: Dani is a very clear communicator and tells Adan exactly what she wants now that they’re entering the second year of their relationship. She wants to have sex with him.

It appears Adan has not been prepped for this conversation. Or perhaps he has. Either way, he says he’s open to it. In a later episode he will clarify that he meant he was ‘open to thinking about doing it’, not ‘open to doing it’. This is a very good example of why post-processing is so necessary for Autistic folk.

For now, he adds, “Protected [sex], of course.”

“Of course.”

Next, Adan launches into a very un-arousing spiel about the risks of sexually transmitted diseases. It seems unlikely Adan received any meaningful sex education beyond STDs, and now he’s hung up on the dangers of sex.

“I know,” Dani says.

Then she changes tack. In a scene I could not actually watch — I listened instead with audio description turned on — Dani kissed Adan right there at the table, with tongue, and then moved to his ear.

Adan tells Dani he would prefer if, when kissing, they stuck to the mouth.

Dani assures Adan she respects his boundaries. She stops kissing his ear.

Like most young people today (fortunately), Adan and Dani have been schooled-up in consent — or, at least a version of it. Well-cared-for Autistic young people get extra tuition in the way of consent training. When you don’t internalise social expectations, everyone sees the need for it. Everyone finds negotiating sex fraught. Personally, I think all young people should get the levels of consent training Autistic people get, because society is nowhere near good-enough in that regard.

Consent training all too often leaves out the part where you get to say no to everything forever, and still be considered okay.

I would love to know if Adan has heard about asexuality, and other words under the umbrella, like demisexuality.

I have no idea if Adan would find those labels useful or not. We don’t know how his attraction works because he’s not in a comfortable environment. I can’t tell how much of his awkwardness comes from the pressure of the camera, for starters.

Later, when talking to his father about his decision to wait until marriage before having sex, he speaks in terms of ‘premarital’ sex, and positions his decision as in alignment with his faith.

When asexual people come from a devout background, it is even more difficult to know how much of our asexuality is from our religion, and how much comes from within.

Adan’s father, alongside Dani’s people, impresses me with his response. And I did notice that the pressure to stay away from premarital sex did not come from Adan’s father. That’s Adan.

“She’ll be disappointed,” Adan laments, predicting Dani’s emotions when he tells her he won’t ever be having sex before marriage.

“You don’t know that,” says his father. “Don’t speak for her.”

Although Adan very much did know that, and was in a very good position to know that, his father’s response tells me that he is the sort of father who is careful not to speak for his son.

Audiences don’t know how many hours Dani and Adan have spent together in the year since they’ve been dating — it appears from their televised date/ear-kissing scene they still barely know each other at all.

Dani is heartbroken when Adan tells her he will not have premarital sex. She has waited so long to have partnered sex. She’s now in her mid-twenties, and nowhere near it.

“For some people that’s important, for others less so,” says the relative she lives with as they drink their martinis.

This is sage advice, and I really, really wish the show would put a name to it. Even if Adan is not asexual, someone needs to talk about it, at some point, and position asexuality as a fairly common and very normal aspect of being a person, especially when we’re talking about the Autistic community.

“What if I ask him when he wants to get married?” Dani asks.

“No, don’t do that… He’ll think you’re asking him to marry you!”

What if Dani understood asexuals exist? Everyone deserves that information. People need to get their heads around this: Some people will just never want to have sex. Not with you, not with anyone. Nothing you can say or do will change them, Nor should they be changed.

Most of all, Adan needs to be set free from all pressure to perform sexually, premarital, marital, all of it. Adan deserves all the space he needs to not perform sexuality for the sake of being ‘normal’.

And Dani deserves all the frequent and satisfying sex she desires.

I don’t trust the creators of this show to take care good emotional care of this couple. Instead, Dani and Adan are being played for cringe comedy. I’m just glad their family are good.

The Season Finale

When it’s not about fish in the sea

Although I have watched this show with my critical faculties switched on, I too was overwhelmed with the sentiments expressed by participants in the final episode. I felt for every single one of them, very deeply.

Dani and Adan broke up on camera. Dani shook as she made the phone call.

A few things stood out to me about that phone call. Once again, I felt uncomfortably voyeuristic watching this couple in particular. I’m not sure why… perhaps because Dani puts everything out there.

I’d like to make the point that having to break up with someone because you’re not receiving physical affection is very painful. And being broken up with because you cannot give someone physical affection is equally painful.

I’ll go a bit further, actually. Dani is heartbroken because she hoped she’d met her match, but she hadn’t. Better luck next time, she is told. Her aunt is able to offer genuine, meaningful consolation. However, when ‘being unable to have sex with the person you love’ is your permanent, lifelong state, there’s no consolation for you.

I’m not talking about Adan, necessarily. Adan may meet someone different and his sexual attraction and desire may kick in big time, perhaps. Especially if he feels far less pressured.

However, to be rejected for your innate sexuality is a rejection of self that operates at a much deeper level.

It suspect Dani’s situation is more relatable to an allosexual audience. Adan, himself, appears to be making an active choice to deny Dani sex. However, for him it does not look like a big-ole-meany choice. I suspect audiences will see Dani again next season, if she doesn’t find love and sex on her own very soon. I hope she does.

Adan, though? I suspect he has a different struggle ahead of him, because I know how the world treats people who ‘withhold’, even if it’s ostensibly for religious reasons. Religion is not about abstinence at all. It’s about control. All of the major world religions require sex after marriage. It’s compulsory.

Dani eventually says, “Without intimacy, it sounds like we can only be friends.”

For Adan, who would love to go on holiday with Dani — if sex weren’t a requirement — friendship isn’t an ‘only’. But for allosexual, high-desire Dani, romantic relationships are superior to all other forms.

One further note about Dani and Adan: Like almost everyone, Dani uses the word ‘intimacy’ as a shorthand for ‘sex’. She also uses ‘adult relationship’ as a euphemism for ‘sexual relationship’. This infantilises asexual people, or people not having sex for any reason at all, feeding into compulsory sexuality culture.

But when Adan speaks, he is very specific. He uses the phrase ‘sexual intimacy’ when he means sexual intimacy. I suspect Adan fully understands that intimacy does not just come from sex. This is asexual culture.

Adan is right. Let’s all be like Adan.

Autistic vs Allistic Humour

James met someone on his own — a young woman with a British accent called Shelley. His friends gather for his birthday. We all meet Shelley for the first time, though she doesn’t speak much.

Among his friends, James has a male friend called Johnny, who presents as allistic. I’d like to highlight a particular interaction they had which highlights how, in a social situation, even our ‘friends’ can take the piss in a way that doesn’t feel quite right.

It’s likely the pressure to be sexual and romantic is weighing on James. Without segue, James has a communication style in which he just starts talking at length about something he’s been thinking about. First he asks the women’s permission to say something about birth control. What he says about birth control is, as usual for James, very progressive. He feels birth control is not just the responsibility of the person who can get pregnant, and he would take a male contraceptive if he could, though he would rather not have a vasectomy because he doesn’t like sharp objects in that area, and women bear a much higher consequence for falling pregnant, unlike the man, whose input is a pleasurable half hour.

“Half hour?!” interjects Johnny.

James looks at him, unsure.

“James! You the maaaan!”

At this point James looks away and says, “I think we should change the subject.”

Yes, we all know why Johnny’s joke is funny. But the joke rests on the idea that the only ‘real’ part of sex is the penetrative part, which frames ‘sex’ as phallocentric. I’m sure James was talking about the entire experience when he said ‘half an hour’. But Johnny is clearly a more experienced, sexually confident person. He defers and deflects.

There are certain ‘jokes’ which Autistics don’t necessarily find funny, and it’s not because we are humourless, and it’s not because we don’t get the jokes. It’s because they so often rely on a premise which is repugnant to us. I really felt for James in this interaction.

What does it mean to ‘treat someone like an adult’?

Earlier I mentioned the contrast between how Dani’s aunt offered her the margarita, in contrast to James’s father who calls alcohol ‘adult beverages’ — for whatever reason.

To me, ‘being treated as an adult means being afforded the freedom to make your own choices, even if your choice appears infantile. I’m sure my asexuality informs this definition.

In the finale, Abbey and David are chaperoned to a winery for wine-tasting. It is very clear from Abbey’s facial expressions that she is not enjoying the wines. The allistics find this cute, and keep offering her more wine until she is eventually less disgusted by the chardonnay.

A throwaway line of Abbey’s sticks in my mind: “I’m old enough for this.”

Abbey loves Disney. She loves princesses. She loves a wide array of ‘childlike’ activities and objects. I get the strong sense that the trip to the winery is for the allistics in Abbey’s life to reassure themselves that they are treating her like an adult.

David has a better poker face. But when asked afterwards outside what he thought of the wine, he tells Cian, “I was just pretending. I was pretending the whole time.”

It’s a small imposition when you’re out somewhere fancy and you pretend to like something a little more than you really do. But when you’re Autistic, so much of your life is about ‘pretending to be okay’ with something when you’re really not. I Abbey and David’s winery outing as a metaphor for a big bigger imposition, which the Autistic community often calls ‘masking’. It’s exhausting. And we now know that the degree to which Autistic people are required to mask correlates negatively with life satisfaction.

Abbey’s mother appears frequently in media, talking about Autism with Abbey. I’m not sure if Abbey ever appears without her mother. But when they appear together, the mother is a very heavy editorialiser. Abbey routinely defers to her mother’s superior knowledge about How Conversations Go. Abbey will say, “Is it okay if I talk about this now?” Her mother might say, “No Abbey, I think we should keep the conversation on track, because we’re talking about X right now,” and I wish Abbey would be allowed to talk because one great thing about Autistic conversations is seeing where they go.

I have mixed feelings about Abbey’s mother, of course. She’s an amazing ‘warrior mom’ for her children. She’s a brick wall. All parents of Autistic kids have to become a bit like that. She has worked to secure her daughter some amazing opportunities, including vocal tuition with someone renowned. When Abbey sings that love song to David in the finale, we see that Abbey not only has an amazingly resonant speaking voice, but also an amazing singing voice. I’d love to know if she wrote the lyrics as well. One stand out line: “Will you be my boyfriend forever?” Not that she didn’t say, “husband.”

In an earlier episode, while enjoying a boat ride, Abbey shows she has been giving significant thought to what non-normative relationships can look like:

Abbey to David: “You know Ernie and Bert? Do you think they’re gay or just room-mates?”

David: “They’re just roommates to me.”

Abbey: “I think they might be a bit of both.”

Abbey appears to be less sophisticated than she is because even when making a thoughtful point, she does it through the lens of, say, Sesame Street. I don’t believe Abbey needs her mother editorialising for her as much as she does. One particularly grating thing I’ve noticed in the dynamic between them: The mother will ask Abbey a simple question and Abbey will respond with a single word answer in the enthusiastic intonation of a five-year-old. Abbey, in these situations, sounds to me like her mother’s performing monkey.

What I do appreciate about Abbey’s mother: She’s not forcing Abbey and David to live together. Obviously, they have the financial resources to open up living options. The mother says in interview elsewhere that marriage can look like anything. I heartily agree. She herself would not want to be married again because she doesn’t want to share her double sink, ha ha ha.

However, from the mother’s phrasing, the end goal is still Abbey and David living together eventually — but in their own time. You may know that the (recently coined) Māori word for Autism means ‘in their own time in space’.

This word encapsulates the contemporary extent of Autistic accommodation and understanding. Best case scenario, Autistic people are ‘given more time’ — in exams, in romantic expectations, all of that.

My argument: Autistic accommodation is about more than a different timeline. It’s far, far more than that. A truly accommodating world would look so very different, and this show is like any other media made by allistics.

Also in the season finale, Madison invites Tyler to her home to Meet the Parents. Until now, Tyler has presented as someone with a more invisible presentation of Autism. He has ‘good’ (normative) eye-contact, he hugs, and he knows exactly what to say in any light-hearted social situation. In Madison’s kitchen, though, we get a glimpse of his social difference — right in front of the salad, Tyler leans in to kiss Madison passionately.

I recall as a kid, walking around the supermarket aisles with both parents (it was a family holiday — our whole family went to the local supermarket this one time) and right there in the middle of the aisle, two visibly disabled adults, middle-aged, were engaged in a passionate kiss. Not nobody nor nothing was going to stop them going right at it.

I had forgotten that scene until watching Tyler initiate the same with Madison, who didn’t seem to mind one bit herself… insofar as we can guess someone’s feelings from body language. (We can’t.)

Just when we all think their pashing sesh has wrapped up, they’re at it again. Note: Tyler has only just met his girlfriend’s parents.

“Whoa! Okay!” exclaim Madison’s Nice White Southern parents. Her father can’t bear to see it — he faces the other way. At the same time, they’re delighted for the young couple.

Later, to camera, Madison’s mother is asked to talk about what she just witnessed.

“I didn’t even know if Madison was going to be able to feel like this about anyone,” she tells us.

There’s a lot in that statement. I recognise that feeling as a parent — she’s right — you just don’t know. Perhaps, in our culture of compulsory sexuality, it sounds infantilising. But Madison’s mother is right, in a sense, not to assume that every single person (Autistic or not) is ‘ever going to be able to feel like this about anyone’. Not everyone is allosexual and alloromantic. I doubt Madison’s mother has the language and understanding around our asexual-spectrum community. We can’t even know if Madison has been sharing with her mother previous times in her life when she did privately feel ‘like that’.

But once again, what looks at first glance like ‘infantilisation’ of Autistic adults may in fact be acknowledgement that sometimes Autistic people aren’t the slightest bit interested in performing ‘adulthood’ for others. And that’s one thing I love about the Autistic and asexual communities as a whole.

As exemplified by Abbey’s mother and also by Madison’s mother, it’s typical and expected for parents of Autistic kids (and adults) to look at their children’s individualised developmental timelines and wonder, “Is my child ever going to get there?” From eating with cutlery to tying shoelaces to speaking in full sentences to managing finances… This worry influences how Autistic people are parented.

But what Autistic people really, really need — what everyone really needs — is a complete rethink of societal expectations from the ground up.

When it comes to rethinking love, sex and romance? Take a hard look at what the asexual and aromantic communities are talking about. That’s where you’ll find the innovation.

Until everyone is free to (not) to [X], no one enjoys true [X-ual] freedom.

End Note

You may have noticed me comparing the very real Autistic people in this show to certain fictional characters. Just adding a note to say this may be read as a form of dehumanisation. This is kinda my point. Participants were selected for the show based on how they could be edited and guided to behave as familiar archetypes, who audiences already decode as Autistic, or at least as quirky, relatable and loveably weird. A reality TV show can never show a rounded person. That’s not how they work. This show picks and chooses from many possible (unaired) scenes to show audiences what pretty much everyone already thinks they know about it.

One or two of the Autistic participants from previous seasons have pushed back against the ‘infantilisation’ charge by saying that they fully consented to being on the show. They found it fun and helpful and it’s more infantilising to call them infantilised.

Consent is complicated. Choices never happen in a vacuum. When I say the show is infantilising at times, I’m not saying that the participants, in real time, feel infantilised. The feeling of being infantilised is very different from an infantilising cultural phenomenon which reaches the masses and influences how Autistic people are treated in real world scenarios. My infantilisation charge concerns the show’s editing and format choices.

And no piece of media gets to escape critique, especially when it is regarded ‘educational’.

Larre Bildeston is the author of a contemporary (aromantic) asexual romance (2023), set in Australia and New Zealand. (.)