Letters To My Weird Sisters: On Autism and Feminism

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Times Literary SupplementIt seemed to me that many of the moments when my autism had caused problems, or at least marked me out as different, were those moments when I had come up against some unspoken law about how a girl or a woman should be, and failed to meet it. Psychologists and psychiatrists sometimes like to argue that their language is value-neutral, but I don't believe that language which people use to describe other people could ever be. If you don't register someone as a fellow human being, you are less inclined to treat them like one. through letters to women considered 'weird' (limburg arguing who may in fact have autistic traits making them considered 'weird') she explores her own autistic experience and experience of womanhood, and the intersection of ableism and sexism, and therefore disability rights and feminism, throughout history.

Some of the data that are collected include the number of visitors, their source, and the pages they visit anonymously. For someone on the outside (but not entirely), I am - and others, too, I’m sure - often thirsty for more understanding and insight than a Twitter post can provide.The book wouldn't have been something I'd pick up if I'd have known that it would have a text bookish feel to it, but I'm glad I did kind of pick it up. Facebook sets this cookie to show relevant advertisements to users by tracking user behaviour across the web, on sites that have Facebook pixel or Facebook social plugin. I imagine this book would have been a thousand times more compelling if it was a memoir of the author's experience as a late-diagnosed autistic Jewish mother. In media (social and otherwise) I find there’s often a focus on sympathy/praise for the parents rather than on the experiences of autistic people. I did feel the letter writing aspect lost it’s way a little, each letter started strongly, but then moved into a tangent that was more focussed on Limburg than on the recipient of the letter.

How as women we are held to certain expectations of how we act and behave and are constantly reminded and policed on that.

The book touches upon eugenics, psychodynamics, nazism, mum-shaming, being weird and different, social isolation, and of course, not dressing well.

autistic = perseverating on details others discard, as in a poem: the tension between the poetic line and its grammar'.

The author’s reinterpretation of scientists who thought mothers were cold to their autistic sons, as unobservant males who couldn’t see mothers who were well-attuned to their sons’ strong preference for increased physical distance and decreased conversation, was eye-opening. Just that I personally felt their perspective/experience held more space than perhaps appropriate on those pages.

Seriously, all six letters covered the main themes and topics associated with womanhood/femininity and neurodivergency/disability (esp. This heartfelt, deeply compassionate and wholly original work humanises women who have so often been dismissed for their differences, and will be celebrated by ‘weird sisters’ everywhere. I have been waiting to read something like this for a very long while, and I know I will keep coming back to it many times now that I have finished it. Men forfatteren ser også på hendes egen lyst til at separere sig fra specifikke typer af autistiske mennesker, såsom dem der er hjerneskadet eller lignede, hun reflektere over det.Any girl or woman who suspects herself to be anything other than perfectly pretty, nice and odourless inside and out risks not being a girl or a woman at all. Hotjar sets this cookie to know whether a user is included in the data sampling defined by the site's daily session limit. Even as Limburg refers to the work of non-binary activists within the text, she fails to acknowledge her non-binary and trans male siblings who have lived a lot of the same formative experiences as cis women.