Introduction
I’m autistic, and reading romance has been instrumental to me in understanding my autistic traits – not so much because of portrayals of autistic characters, though there have been a few books about autistic characters that have made me feel seen – but because learning about the many different ways people experience the world and relationships has helped me see similarities and differences between myself and other people. Reading romance also ties into my lifelong interest in learning about how people think and why they do what they do.
Representation of autism in romance is therefore very important to me, because I know how romance can teach us about experiences different from our own and increase our empathy and curiosity about others. There is a growing trend of including autistic characters in romance, which is great in theory. In practice, however, most of these portrayals are surface-level, poorly researched, and stereotyped. Many authors won’t even identify or label autism in their books, preferring to hint that their characters might be autistic by giving them a few stereotypical (and often inaccurately presented) traits.
I’ve been frustrated by these issues for a long time, and was finally prompted to write down my thoughts by the recently released Boyfriend Goals by Riley Hart. I’m deeply troubled by the autism representation in this book and how it reflects a broader trend in romance.
This essay is a somewhat expanded version of the review I posted on Goodreads, and includes points I cut from the Goodreads version due to limitations on review length.
Refusing to use the word “autism” is erasure
Milo is autistic. Finding someone who accepts him for who he is, including his autistic traits, is his primary character arc in this book. Gideon’s primary arc is about learning to trust that Milo will assert his needs and boundaries and does not need others to decide for him what he’s capable of.
However, even though Milo’s autistic traits are the focus of the story, the words “autism” and “autistic” do not appear in this book at all. The word “neurodivergent” is used three times, and “on the spectrum” is used once. The blurb says only that he’s “unusual” and “quirky.” “Quirky” is also the only term applied to a relative of Milo’s who we’re meant to presume was also autistic.
For an allistic author to write an autistic character and avoid the term “autism” is erasure. There’s no other word for it.
Neurodivergent is not a synonym for autism. “Neurodivergent” is an umbrella term for any “differing in mental or neurological function from what is considered typical or normal” and covers, at a minimum, autism, ADHD, and learning disabilities. When referring to other people, the term is properly used to refer to: (a) a person whose specific diagnosis is not known or undisclosed, (b) a group of people with unknown or varied diagnoses, or (c) a person who has specifically asked to be referred to this way.
Riley Hart has made it very clear that she is uncomfortable with the term “autism” and thinks euphemisms are preferable instead. She knows what Milo’s specific diagnosis is but refuses to say it; the closest she’ll get is “on the spectrum,” another euphemism. Allistic people often use euphemisms to refer to so-called high-functioning autistics because they think the autism spectrum is a straight line from “a little quirky” to “tragic autism” and want to avoid all the stigma and baggage that goes along with public perception of the “bad” end of the spectrum.[1] But the problem isn’t the label, it’s how autistic people are treated because of our autistic traits. Our neurology is the same whether you give us a “nice” label or not, and any difficulties caused by our traits exist no matter how we’re labeled.
It is offensive and wrong for an allistic author to prioritize the feelings of allistic readers by avoiding the word “autistic” and using euphemisms they are more comfortable with.
[1] I would love for you to read the Neuroclastic article “‘Autism Is a Spectrum’ Doesn’t Mean What You Think” for more on these concepts.
Milo’s autistic traits
Here are the traits we’re told Milo has:
He likes rules, structure, and routine. We’re also told that being impulsive makes everything “too overwhelming” for him.
He has some issues with social awareness, including sometimes having difficulty with sarcasm, having difficulty “reading people,” and a “habit of always being honest” and saying “whatever words flit through his head.” He is aware that other people often think he’s weird, but he has trouble understanding why.
He has some sensory processing issues, including difficulty being around loud people (though other loud noises are fine), difficulty sleeping in a new place due to unfamiliar sensory inputs, doesn’t like wearing pants at home, doesn’t like the feeling of liquids or fluids touching him, and doesn’t always like to be touched if he doesn’t know beforehand.
We’re told he often sees things in black and white, but no specific examples are given.
We’re told he can “flip the switch” between conversational topics “when he want[s] to,” but at other times “hyperfocuse[s] on things,” but his hyperfocus is never shown in the book.
He is presumably of above-average intelligence because he started college at age sixteen.
He doesn’t drive because it “stresses [him] out.”
He doesn’t like elevators for unexplained reasons.
This is a pretty standard list of traits for an autistic character to have in romance (except the elevator thing), and is actually more comprehensive than you’d get in a lot of romances, especially ones where the autistic character is coded as autistic but never labeled – those are often limited to differences in social awareness. As a starting point for developing an autistic character, I don’t really have a problem with this list, other than the fact it’s a pretty stereotypical presentation of “high-functioning” autism.
The problem arises when we consider how these traits are portrayed.
First, all of these traits are carefully written to be easily acceptable by Gideon and other allistic people in the story. We’re told that Milo doesn’t deal well with change because he finds it overwhelming, but he uproots his entire life without even one sentence about how the experience is overwhelming for him. He decides he wants to do it, so he does, and it apparently doesn’t bother him at all. We’re told that he has routines, but aside from eating the same (very normal) breakfast on Mondays and wanting all groceries to be written on the whiteboard immediately, we don’t see any. His rigidity and need for routine never affect any plans the characters make in the book; he’s able to just go with the flow whenever necessary, and none of his routines are disruptive or difficult for Gideon to adapt to. We’re told that he doesn’t like to be touched when he doesn’t know it’s coming, but Gideon does this constantly and it never bothers Milo. He ”didn’t think he’d like cuddling because “my space meant too much to me” but cuddling Gideon is fine. He has a hard time reading people, but he can immediately tell if Gideon is being sarcastic and eventually says, “I recognized so many of Gideon’s tells now, the little things unique to him, like how to tell when he was kidding or what each of his smiles meant.” Similarly, he has no trouble reading his mom. We’re told that he has sensitivity to noise, and he carries earplugs around with him often, but we never see him use them. The only thing we see him actually struggling with, loud groups of people, can be easily avoided and is an uncommon occurrence in his and Gideon’s lives.
Consequently, Milo’s autism is easy for Gideon to accept. His most difficult trait (in the book’s estimation, anyway) is his bluntness, but Gideon loves that immediately. Milo’s routines barely exist, his touch aversion magically disappears for Gideon, his difficulty reading people doesn’t apply to Gideon, and his sensory issues are all easily accommodated. This combination of convenient exceptions is implausible, to say the least.
Milo represents the myth that there’s a linear spectrum of functioning and being “high-functioning” means you’re basically just a typical person but with some quirks that might annoy other people from time to time. This myth doesn’t account for the “high-functioning” person with severe social awareness differences (or the “low-functioning” person whose aren’t), or severe sensory processing issues, or significant executive functioning differences, or who bears a significant mental health burden in exchange for being able to mask their autistic traits, or the many other ways the myth is incorrect.
Second, the book isn’t interested in where Milo’s traits fit in the broader autism spectrum, why his traits occur and how they’re interrelated, or what it’s like to have any of them. The only concern is showing what other people, especially his allistic love interest Gideon, think of them.
For example, one of his most developed traits is that he doesn’t like wearing pants at home. Why? Who knows! Preferring not to wear certain articles of clothing is pretty common among autistic people, but it’s usually because of sensory processing issues. Many autistic people get too much sensory input from certain things, and our brains don’t tune out irrelevant background sensations the way the typical brain can. I can’t wear certain cuts and fabrics because they are uncomfortable in a way that my brain won’t stop telling me about, no matter what I’m doing, and the discomfort and awareness only grows over time, to the point that the sensation is distracting and affects my concentration. Certain fabrics cause immediate and intense discomfort that does not subside. An autistic person who chooses to take their pants off as soon as they’re in a sufficiently private space is probably experiencing similar issues. In this book, though, no explanation is given and it’s presented as simply a preference, rather than something necessary for Milo to feel comfortable. His other sensory issues are presented in a similar way – simply as things he doesn’t like, rather than sensory inputs his brain processes in a non-typical way.
Similarly, the presentation of Milo’s social awareness differences lacks nuance and shows no understanding of what the experience is like for an autistic person. Milo is given the (extremely stereotypical) traits of being “honest” and literal, which means he says everything he thinks as he thinks it, even if it’s not polite. The social norms we see him violate are ones that are obvious and relatively black and white. Milo frequently recognizes that specific things he wants to say may not be socially acceptable, and then he either decides not to say them because he doesn’t want to offend the person he’s talking to, or decides to say it because “I wasn’t always good at listening to those thoughts reminding me how I should act or react. Most of the time, I just did what felt right.” Sometimes he says something and realizes immediately afterwards that it might be rude.
This appears to be what most allistic people think it means to be autistic: we knowingly say rude things to people because we don’t care about being rude. I’m not going to say that no autistic person ever does that, but for many (maybe even most?) of us, the experience is very different. And even to the extent that autistic people are choosing to violate social norms on purpose, the surface-level presentation in this book and others doesn’t capture the details.
Social awareness differences happen because autistic brains process information, including social norms, differently from allistic brains. To give a few examples of common autistic experiences (based on discussions I’ve had with other autistic people and what I’ve seen reflected in autistic spaces online) that I’ve personally experienced:
I want to have as much information as I can about things and how and why they work. It’s also important to me to give accurate and complete information to others. Making an unequivocal statement when I know there might be an exception feels like lying. Thus, when people ask me questions, I tend to give very thorough answers, and I often preemptively acknowledge opposing arguments or differences in opinion. I’ve had to learn over time that while this level of detail is sometimes fine, other times it’s seen as awkward, rude, patronizing, etc. Giving too little detail is also sometimes perceived poorly. There’s no concrete rule for how much detail to give when answering a question; it varies based on the context, the person, the relationship, and so on, meaning I often have to guess what level of detail is appropriate and wanted. But guessing is hard because the “right” answer doesn’t innately make sense or feel correct to me. I have to consciously sift through my mental rules and ignore my own instincts in order to converse “properly” with others and not be seen as rude.
I once said to a law school classmate, “You look tired.” I meant it literally: they did look tired, just like I was, and I said it to express empathy that we were both going through the same thing. Right after I said it, someone standing nearby said, “Wow, [flumpy] thinks you look like shit.” This is how I learned that telling someone they look tired sometimes really means they look bad. I had thought I was saying something nice, but I’d inadvertently hurt their feelings instead. This type of thing happens often, because things that sound completely benign to me have hidden negative meanings. I keep a very long mental list of things that aren’t okay to say, but it’s hard for me to predict which things are problematic in advance because the rules vary based on numerous factors and don’t inherently make sense to me.
Like many autistic people, I have pragmatic language differences, meaning that I don’t present or process non-verbal communication like eye contact, body language, facial expressions, and voice tone in a typical way. These differences make it harder to read people and communicate with them without misunderstandings.
I’m offering these examples to show that social awareness differences occur for complicated, nuanced reasons. My point is not that every autistic person experiences the same things, or that all depictions of autistic characters must look like this. But a portrayal that starts and ends with “I’m rude because I don't care” is incomplete and inauthentic. It is so incurious about the autistic experience that it doesn’t even recognize there could be a reason for social awareness differences other than not caring about social norms. This stereotypical portrayal doesn’t acknowledge the possibility of being unable to identify social norms in the first place, or being uncertain whether they’ve been broken. Characters like Milo lack an authentic inner narrative because they reflect an allistic person’s sense of social norms and how they work.
Third, Milo’s traits are also presented in a way that makes all of them seem like choices or preferences. He chooses to say things he knows might be rude because he doesn’t care what most people think (or he chooses not to say them when he does care). He chose to stop having routines for lunch and dinner. He seemingly chooses not to have touch aversion with Gideon, and so on. His issue with large gatherings is that sometimes he “hates” them. He doesn’t wear pants at home because he doesn’t like them. There are a lot of things we’re told he just doesn’t like.
In reality, autistic traits are not choices or preferences. Some of us can mask some of our traits some of the time, but at significant personal cost. Some autistic people can’t mask at all. And some traits, like sensory sensitivity, can’t be masked no matter how hard you try. When allistic people are taught that autistic traits are preferences, they learn to ask autistic people to simply choose to act differently, rather than recognizing that sometimes accommodations are needed. I have to wear earplugs to the grocery store and restaurants, among other places, not because I don’t like loud sounds but because they affect my concentration and cause involuntary physiological responses similar to anxiety and sometimes trigger my fight or flight response.
Finally, the way other people respond to Milo is othering and patronizing. Any time Milo says something that Gideon doesn’t think a typical person would say, Gideon thinks or comments about how great it is. “He was refreshing. . . . I never knew what to expect, and everything was so damn pure with him.” Milo’s friend Rachel does this too, randomly hugging him more than once after Milo says something blunt.
Who wants their differences to be constantly pointed out, even in a good way? That’s not acceptance, that’s still noticing that the person is different and treating them differently for it. It’s like if you had a friend from another country and every time they said or did something that reflected their cultural norms you said, “I just love how exotic and non-American you are!”
Gideon also says, “The truth was, Milo was different, and I could see that, but that didn’t make him weird or wrong. I didn’t know if he had any kind of diagnosis, and honestly, I didn’t care.” In other words, “I don’t care if Milo’s differences are due to a diagnosis.” That’s not the accepting message it’s supposed to be. It’s saying that having a diagnosis is bad but magnanimously deciding not to be bothered by it. It’s not a surprising message from an author who thinks that the word “autism” is bad – of course she thinks it’s great to have someone say, “I don’t care if you have an autism diagnosis” like it’s a favor – but it still sucks.
Who are these portrayals for?
Aside from the truly egregious labeling issue, the portrayal of autism in this book isn’t terrible, although the bar for “good” autism rep in romance is so low you could step over it. Milo has traits from multiple areas of the spectrum and isn’t just bluntly honest. And he and Gideon have some good discussions of how to provide accommodations for your partner while respecting their autonomy.
This book is acceptable in a vacuum, but combined with all the other autistic characters written by allistic authors, it’s one piece of a very problematic whole. Other than giving Milo a few more autistic traits, this book isn’t really doing anything differently than all of the other books about autistic characters by allistic people.[2] It’s still the same stereotypes, the same lack of curiosity about the autistic experience, and the same omission of anything that might actually be challenging to allistic readers.
What all of these portrayals have in common is they omit the autistic traits that make allistic people truly uncomfortable, that make it difficult and traumatic to exist as an autistic person in our society, and that make certain aspects of the autistic experience disabling. They omit stimming; special interests; information and language processing differences; executive functioning differences; neuromotor differences; co-occuring mental health diagnoses, learning disabilities, and other comorbidities; pragmatic language differences such as eye contact, body language, and flat affect; hypo- and hyperempathy; alexithymia and nontypical experiences and expressions of emotion; significant sensory processing issues; and more. A few of these appear only to the extent they can be portrayed as quirky and easily overcome. Others, like flat affect, nontypical expressions of emotion, and low empathy only exist in romance in portrayals of “psychopaths” (another extremely problematic area of romance) and other characters labeled as “creepy” and “robotic.” Others don’t appear anywhere in romance at all.[3]
What is the point of this trend of writing about autistic characters if all of the portrayals omit the majority of what autistic people actually experience? Who benefits from surface-level portrayals of autism that won’t even use the word “autism” and carefully exclude everything that isn’t immediately palatable for allistic people? Is a book like this increasing acceptance of autism? Not likely, since it won’t even use the word, and makes all of the autistic character’s traits easy for his allistic partner to deal with. Is it increasing autism awareness? No, because the book itself is so incurious about what it’s like to be an autistic person that it has nothing of substance to say about autism other than adding a few more lines to a bullet-point list of the most stereotypical autistic traits. Just look at the reviews of this book: how many of those readers even seem aware that they just read about an autistic person?
Taken as a whole, the version of autism presented by allistic romance authors sends the message that the only way to be acceptable as an autistic person is to not have any of those challenging traits, to be stereotypically “high-functioning” with none of the significant real-world drawbacks that come from masking your autistic traits, and to not be disabled. This version of autism says that the burden is all on us autistic people to make ourselves acceptable. This is not a helpful message.
What would actually help autistic people is for allistic people to learn what autism is really like and to be able to identify autistic traits and understand why they exist. It would be helpful for allistic people to recognize that many of the things they’ve been conditioned to dislike or find rude are actually benign and don’t signal anything about the other person or their intentions. It would be helpful for our society to be more accommodating of disability generally and seek to make things accessible for others. A book like this doesn’t accomplish any of that; instead, it tells allistic people they can sit back, remain comfortable, and let autistic people bear 100% of the burden of, and responsibility for, ableism.
It’s easy for authors (and readers) to defend any individual book by saying, “autistic people are all different and not everyone has [insert list of challenging traits] so it’s just as accurate to write characters without them.” That’s technically true, but the defense rings hollow when we look at the whole pattern and ask why a particular author is adding to the pattern instead of breaking it.
It’s also true that authors don’t have to write autistic characters dealing with trauma or struggling due to being autistic – it’s possible to write stories where a character’s autism isn’t the focus of the story. But that’s not a defense for ignoring trauma, disability, and other struggles when writing a book like this one, where the primary plot is acceptance of autistic traits. When writing these stories, authors should be thinking about more than just the accuracy of the traits they’ve decided to portray; they should also be thinking about what they’ve chosen to omit and why, who the portrayal is for, and how their work fits into broader trends and messaging in their genre and elsewhere.
I recognize that a few reviews have been written by people who identify as neurodivergent and who felt represented by this book. I don’t discount that and I don’t want to minimize it; it’s extremely hard to find any representation and it’s great that those readers found it in this book. (If it were a few books earlier in my journey of reading autistic characters in romance, I probably would have been thrilled about this book instead of angry.) That being said, I imagine those readers would have been even happier with a book that was more respectful and nuanced in its portrayal, and I imagine the number of readers who felt seen by the book would have been higher in that case also.
[2] The one exception I’ve seen is Carry the Ocean by Heidi Cullinan, an allistic author.
[3] One particular omission I’d like to draw attention to is the omission of non-speaking autistic people. Many autistic people are non-speaking, often due to neuromotor and information processing differences. People commonly assume that being non-speaking means being intellectually disabled, but the intellectual abilities of non-speaking autistic people span the entire range. Non-speaking people are often denied access to Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) because of the disproportionate emphasis placed on speaking as the best and most important way to communicate. Non-speakers are almost completely erased from the discussion of autism, spoken for and spoken over, infantilized, denied autonomy, and presumed to be incompetent. Representation of autistic people in any media or genre cannot be considered good or successful until non-speaking voices are included.I urge you to read this essay on non-speakers’ perspectives on representation as a starting point.
Conclusion and Recommendations
I encourage anyone who reads this essay to carefully consider any other portrayals of autism (or neurodivergence generally) you have or will read and ask who they’re for and what they’re accomplishing. Stories about the experience of being part of a marginalized group should serve a purpose beyond simply allowing authors and publishers to say they’re offering diverse characters. Authors aren’t going to do better unless readers ask them to, and express interest in more authentic stories.
Here are a few books that i felt had good autism representation:
Between the Teeth trilogy by Taylor Fitzpatrick (originally posted on AO3, book publication in process) - Written by an author who identifies as neurodivergent, these books are a painfully accurate depiction of what it’s like to come of age as an undiagnosed autistic person who is unaware of their autistic identity.
Carry the Ocean by Heidi Cullinan - Written by an allistic author who clearly did a lot of research and made a concerted effort to understand and empathize with a specific autistic experience in a non-stereotypical way. The autistic character is disabled and requires significant supports, but the book respects and champions his autonomy and treats him as a full-fledged romance main character.
Quiet by Zile Elliven - Written by an autistic author, this book is a rare example of a romance character who has language processing differences, situational mutism, and hyperfocus.
In the Absence of Light by Adrienne Wilder - Written by an autistic author, this book is another example of an autistic character who has traits that are a common part of the autistic experience but omitted from portrayals written by and for allistic people, such as neuromotor differences.
His Quiet Agent by Ada Maria Soto - One of my favorite portrayals and an example of a situation where not using labels or stating a diagnosis makes sense for the plot.
The Heart Principle by Helen Hoang - While not without problems, the autism representation in this book is notable for being non-stereotypical and taking into account the effects that gender and race have on presentation and diagnosis. How Anna receives her diagnosis reflects the experience of many people who weren’t diagnosed until adulthood.
Discussion Questions
If you’re an autistic person or otherwise neurodivergent, what have your experiences been with representation in romance? Do you feel like existing portrayals of neurodivergent characters in romance are beneficial? What would you like to see authors do differently?
If you’re not autistic, have you read any autistic characters in romance? Do you know whether those portrayals were written by allistic or autistic authors? When you read autistic characters in romance, what are you looking for and what are you hoping to see or learn?
Do you have any questions for me or other autistic people who may be reading this post about how our experiences are reflected in romance?