Transcript | You Don’t Look Autistic

SARAH: Um, initially it felt good, but then I, I kind of started to think like, I, I haven't told anyone, my husband, my parents, like I haven't talked about it with anyone because I'm just — I don't have an official diagnosis, so I feel like I would have to argue my point or prove it, or that it could potentially be used against me. But it's kind of lonely cause I can't really talk to anyone about it, or I don't feel like I can.

[UNLADYLIKE THEME SONG]

CRISTEN: This is Unladylike. I’m Cristen, and that was a listener named Sarah. Last year, at 47, Sarah self-diagnosed as autistic. And a quick FYI – I’m gonna be using identity-first language to talk about autism this episode. So I’ll be saying things like “autistic women” instead of “women with autism” or “women who have autism” since identity-first language tends to be less pathologizing. 

Back to Sarah. For a while, she didn’t really consider autism since she isn’t a boy who love trains and schedules. Then, Sarah learned that autism spectrum disorder, or ASD, is a developmental and neurological disorder that can affect how you learn, behave, interact and communicate, and she saw her traits – difficulty with eye contact, social awkwardness, and sensory issues – making sense for the first time on the spectrum. 

The first place I remember seeing an autistic woman on screen was in 2007.

It was season 9 of America’s Next Top Model, and my college roommates and I were pulling for a gangly brunette named Heather Kuzmich.

CLIP: [00:01:49] Tyra Banks: Okay. Tell me, you at 13 years old, you were diagnosed with something. What were you diagnosed with? 

Heather Kuzmich: Actually it Asperger’s and ADHD. Asperger syndrome is basically, like it’s described as a mild version of autism. It's also includes the person being very awkward in social situations.

Jay Manuel: How are you dealing with the other 30 some odd girls here? 

Heather Kuzmich: I'm like trying not to step on too many toes, but if I do, it's like oops.

Jay Manuel: She can give you all of that awkwardness you want. Now let me ask you this. Can you be a top model and not do runway?

Tyra Banks: She’s fine. Clunking just like this every now and then.

CRISTEN: Heather is visibly nervous and fidgety. Her eyes are kind of darting all over the place, but she's charming. She doesn't look unhappy to be there. You can tell that Heather is trying really, really hard. Also side note, Asperger syndrome has since been reclassified as just part of autism spectrum disorder, or ASD. Its namesake, Hans Asperger also collabed with the Nazi-occupied Vienna, so truly good riddance. 

Also, “mild autism” is an outdated term for what’s now called autism spectrum disorder level 1. These days, autism is diagnosed as ASD level 1, 2 or 3, depending on the kind of support you might need. So, level-1 Heather could’ve definitely used planning and socializing support on the America’s Next Top Model challenge where contestants literally have to make it to as many appointments as possible. In Shanghai. Alone. She was ultimately eliminated for – kid you not – poor communication skills.   

It was cringier than I remembered, but what surprised me in revisiting Heather was her age. She was diagnosed in her early teens, which is already on the older side. The global average age of autism diagnosis is hilariously imprecise between 2.5 and 10 years old. But today, the group that’s getting diagnosed like never before are adult women who’ve spent their lives trying to navigate a neurotypical world like Heather in Shangai.

LAUREN OBER: Especially for women, it's a very lonely place to live in a brain where you are like, you don't feel like you fit. But you, because you're by dent of being female, you have to fit.

It's just written in your DNA that that is what you're supposed to do as a woman is like bend yourself into the perfect societal shape. And so you're already deal doing that. And then you have a brain that functions differently and you know, it's so, it's so lonely, I think.

CRISTEN: Lauren Ober is host of The Loudest Girl in the World, a podcast about her middle-age autism diagnosis and journey of self-discovery.  

LAUREN: There are a million ways you can tell yourself you're not autistic because you know you don't fit into some stereotype or something. But then you're like, actually there are a million ways of having, of presenting as autistic or neuro, neurodivergent.

I mean, it's just like, it's, it's a called spectrum for a reason, you know? Um, but it's more, it's more like a wheel, you know? With lots of spokes, you know? It's, it's really, it's hard cuz it's mushy, right?

CRISTEN: Yeah.

LAUREN: And it's hard to put your finger on the idea that like, I get a diagnosis and all of a sudden like I'm fixed or I'm cured, or I have all the answers. It’s not true, but it allows me to think about myself in a different way.

And I think that that's really important for me and for everybody who is feeling some shitty way about themselves to be able to reframe it, as you know, OK, like I'm not like the worst person ever. Unless you are the worst person ever, in which case, like continue feeling shitty about yourself. But most of us were just like carrying our own little sack of rocks down the street, and we're just trying to figure out how to live a nice and decent life.

CRISTEN: Could you talk a little bit about how the pandemic kind of just ripped that bag of rocks right to shreds for you?

LAUREN: Oh yeah. Yeah. I mean, it made it like 3000 pounds heavier,

I knew I was a person before the pandemic, I knew I was a person who cared about routine. You can see in my closet, I have like five, all of my jeans are the same brand, and they're all in different washes.

I have like three brands of shoes that I wear, but I buy them in lots of varieties. I have set ways of doing things, and before the pandemic I pretty much had a routine, And I didn't really diverge from that routine all that much. And that involved, you know, going to a coffee shop, doing my work there, like coming home for lunch, walking the dog, whatever.

The upending of, of that with the closure of everything during the pandemic. Really was like very hard for me to take because now what do I do? Do I just sit in my house? Like, when do I do my laundry? How do I go grocery shopping? Like all these executive functioning things that, you know, previously had been quite, um, established in sort of like when you would do things.

I've always worked on a deadline and I work very well on a deadline because it's like, there's an end point and you back time from the end point and you get all of your work done. Like I'm not a procrastinator or whatever. I was, you know, an athlete in college. Like, I had a very rigid schedule, like practice, class, write paper, play game. Like, you know, and I really flourish in that. And when you have all of this sort of unstructured time, like I felt like my life fell apart and I could not, I just could not function. Um, And obviously, I mean, the pandemic up upended a lot of things for a lot of people, and that was certainly the case for me. But it was not without like major trauma of like, what am I doing?

I don't want anyone to think that my routine fell apart, and then I was like, I must be autistic. It was like a thing that I had been thinking about way before. I had been talking about it with my therapist for a while, and then it felt very pressing during the pandemic to like have answers to questions I had.

CRISTEN: So what did it take for, as an adult woman specifically, to get a diagnosis ultimately?

LAUREN: Oh my god. So many emails and phone calls and, you know, I mean, I'm, I'm luckier than most in that, you know, because my partner had a child who had been diagnosed when they were 13. My partner — the system like where we live in Washington, DC — like knew resources could point me in the right direction.

My therapist helped me, although it's not her area of expertise. So I was, you know, sort of set up for success. But, you know, success is really hard to come by when you're looking at a multi-thousand dollar evaluations, when you can't figure out who to go to — like is it a psychiatrist, is a psychologist, is it a neuropsychologist, is it the guy down the street like, you know, at the bodega? Like, I don't know who you're supposed to talk to.

And so, um, I mean luckily, you know, I just sort of hopscotch my way to various people. Um, and I had a lot of people say yeah, I could talk to you, but I'm doing only telehealth right now, and, uh, you have to be in Virginia, but you're in DC, and I can't see you. Or I don't have any space in my schedule right now, but like, you know, talk to me in three months. Or, you know, it'll be four grand. I felt like offended, uh, at the price tag. Like, I have insurance and I pay a lot for it, and I should be able to access care, um, for many thousands of dollars. And it took a really long time. And then I finally landed on someone who was in Canada of all places, But it was really hard. 

And it just gets worse, Like the more sort of marginalized you get. We talked to people who, who were, you know, Black and brown and queer and low-income, and it was just like, you can't, it's impossible. It's so hard. And people are emailing me now like, how do I do it? And I'm like, oh god, I don't know. I wish I could help you. Like, I wish I could just tell people, like, yeah, just like believe yourself, like believe your brain. Um, but I didn't do that. I felt the need to get a formal evaluation.  

CRISTEN: Tell me a little bit more about about that desire for a formal evaluation because you do mention, you know, self-diagnosis, and that can be satisfying for some people. Why was it important for you to pursue a diagnosis? 

LAUREN: You know, I think, um, I think for the same reason that other people are like, I don't want to take up space isn't mine. I don't wanna claim an identity that isn't mine. Like, I need somebody else to tell me my identity. 

It felt very pressing and maybe it was because at the time it was one thing that I felt like I could control in a time when everything felt like it was spinning out of control. Like, OK, I actually can get answers to questions I've been having. Like that is one proactive thing that I can do. Um, I don't know. I mean, I, you know, who knows if, uh, if the pandemic hadn't happened, if we'd even be having this conversation, or if I would've been able to make that show, because I'd be trundling along in my life as it was.

CRISTEN: How do you think that being a cisgender white woman shaped your experience with it in navigating the world, but also navigating the diagnostic process? 

LAUREN: Yeah. You know, it's hard for me to, to answer that.

For a couple of reasons, not least of which is that like I am like real gay and like I like look, you know, like I do not, you know, like I'm not walking down the street in a dress. Like I, I love a suit, you know. Like I'm, I am masculine of center, but just barely. Um, uh, and so, you know, I have already sort of flouted gender norms. So I haven't felt a particular sort of gender pressure because like society doesn't really care about me. I'm like a lesbian, like nobody cares. You know what I mean? 

But I do know that no matter your gender presentation as a person who identifies as female, you still can't be loud. And you still can't be pushy and you still can't exercise strong opinions, and you can't correct people. 

But also I think, you know, autism has always been framed, or at least it was framed by Sasha Baron Cohen's, um, you know, cousin, um, who is a very well known psychologist, and who deals a lot with autism, is that like autism is like a “extreme male brain.” Autistic people, meaning men or boys are, uh, you know, they, they operate as if they're the most extreme man. Like they, they don't pay attention to other people's feelings and they have hyper interests that only they're interested in. They're sort of closed off from other people, and it's like, OK, you're missing 50% of the population there. And there's a reason why women and girls and people who are not men are, are, are, you know, um, criminally underdiagnosed is because their presentation is very different. Like there's an acceptable way of being a girl in our country. So you're already trying to do that, and you're trying to deeply mask whatever weirdness or eccentricities you have, and boys like don't care.

You know, that is the idea of like, well, like, you know, with this extreme male brain thing, and I think that like autism in women and girls is extreme female brain, which is like you're trying desperately to fit in. You're trying desperately not to upend anything or, you know, make waves, um, and to like your great detriment because not being able to be who you are it creates meltdowns.

It creates mental health problems. It creates all of these issues. When you're just like, you're trying to be somebody you're not.

It's just a very different experience moving through the neurodivergent world as a woman or a girl or somebody who is not a boy than it is going through as a man or a boy where all of the tests, all of the research, everything is about boys and men. There's very little about girls and women. And nonbinary people, forget it. So you're working off of like a script that was not written for you, and it's hard. 

[AD BREAK]

CRISTEN: Unladies, before I get back to my conversation with Lauren Ober, I need to acknowledge the women that the clinical history of autism never forgot, and they are the mothers of autistic children. From the 1940s through the 70s, moms took the blame for their child's autism. 

Leo Kanner who was a pioneering autism researcher is also discredited with coining the term “refrigerator mothers.” And it was based on this very Freudian idea that these children were being raised in too cold of an emotional environment, and their social withdrawal was actually them trying to detach from these frosty, cold refrigerator mothers and self-soothe instead. And in fact, some experts, like leading experts of the day, recommended what they called “parent-ectomies,” separating autistic children, removing them from their homes and putting them in a sanitarium essentially to raise and kind of train them behaviorally, train them away from their cold-ass mamas. 

And while that theory might be completely and utterly debunked, there's still a lot of mother blame to go around, and even this idealization of the autism mom who makes it their job, their 24-7 job to be their child's essentially like professional caregiver and advocate. And on top of that, there are a number of moms who recognize, start recognizing their own autistic traits and pursuing a diagnosis when their kid is first evaluated and diagnosed, which was also a theme that came up in our previous Unladylike episode, ADHD All Grown Up.

And on the patient side of things, study participants are still disproportionately men and boys. And little is still known about any physical health implications for autistic women. Like, did you know — I did not — that autistic women, have elevated rates of polycystic ovarian syndrome or PCOS, irregular periods and acne? 

A lot of times the symptoms that they are exhibiting often get misdiagnosed as social anxiety, eating disorders. Borderline personality disorder is a big one.

But what about getting diagnosed as autistic? What does it mean when you’re well into adulthood?

Lauren is still figuring that out.  

LAUREN: You get to choose, like, how you want to show up in the world and how you wanna engage with your identity. I don't necessarily feel that need to turn autism into a positive thing because I don't think that it's a negative thing. It just is how I am. It's just how my brain functions and I don't wanna spend a lot of time being like, well, that's autism, or whatever. And it's like, no, it's just me. I'm just like, can't it be neutral? You know? And maybe it doesn't get to be neutral in a world where people don't allow difference to be viewed neutrally.

My friend Alice Wong wrote this really beautiful book that just came out recently called The Year of the Tiger, and she's a disability rights activist. And she's like, look, the reason why I'm an activist is because I have to be, because it's what keeps me alive, you know? And she uses a power chair and she uses a ventilator to breathe. And like, if she's not out there, like demanding change, like she can't be incidentally disabled because her life depends on sort of change being created, and noting her own exceptionalism because society isn't, you know what I mean?

Um, and so if all things were equal, like if everybody got what they needed, then yeah, you do get to be sort of incidentally whoever you are. And it is a privilege to be able to say like, I just am, or to be even think I wanna be incidentally autistic. Like I don't want it to be the sum total of my identity, and I get to move through the world in a way where it doesn't have to be, you know?

But for some people it does. They need to be loud and vocal and advocate for all of their needs. My needs are, you know, societal, they're sort of personal. Like, I need, you know, I need my friends and family and my employers and my colleagues to understand the ways in which I operate.

I don't necessarily need like broad-scale accommodations, so I recognize that others do. It's just, you know, like I am not an expert by any means in anything other than my own experience.

But what I do know is that we live in a world that is very averse to difference, and we have very limited, you know, boxes that we need people to fit in, and society at large is willing to do not even the bare minimum in many cases to make sure that everyone is seen and heard and taken care of. And um, and that really sucks and I hope that, you know, there are neurotypical people and non-disabled people who listen to the show and are like, oh, I could expand my thinking a little bit in terms of like, what is “acceptable” behavior. Or like, “acceptable” — again, like in quotes — work schedule or, or whatever.

It's like we just have this very narrow way of defining people, and it's so boring. Like why do we all wanna be the same? So stupid.

[AD BREAK] 

CRISTEN: Last January, listener Anna emailed Unladylike with a story and a request. She wrote: “This past October, I was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. At 20 years old, I was taken aback. I had lived two decades without understanding my disability and how it affected my day-to-day life. Since then, I've become incredibly passionate about researching autism's manifestation in women, the relationship between being autistic and queer, and how that's been for myself and others, and how misunderstood ASD truly is, especially among various faiths and cultural groups. I'm Middle Eastern and getting my immigrant father to understand my disability was,,, challenging.

With everything you discuss. I think an episode on adult women slash nonbinary folks being diagnosed with something like autism and navigating those waters would be incredibly enlightening to an audience.”

Well, guess what, Anna? It's hopefully enlightening to an audience because it's certainly been enlightening to this host!

ANNA: So for the majority of my college career, I had struggled — I think like a lot of college students do, and I think a lot of college women — intense feelings of anxiety and depression. And in communicating those feelings with some of my friends who had gotten diagnoses of anxiety and depression, what they were telling me they were experiencing was not what I was experiencing.

A lot of their anxious tendencies and anxious thoughts were vastly different than mine. And so, this was right around, it was in 2020, right around COVID, and there were a few TikTok creators who specialized in kind of, um, talking about their experience with autism and how their, uh, autism, I guess not symptoms, but how they're autism manifested.

And I got invested in some of these creators and some online creators in their blog posts and their webinars that they were hosting. And I finally was able to hear people talking about what I was experiencing, and I was in a lot of denial because I was thinking maybe I'm searching for something that isn't there. Maybe I'm placing myself in this category of women that I shouldn't be placing myself in. 

CRISTEN: So when you were — you mentioned how your friends' descriptions of their experiences with anxiety and depression, like not matching with yours — how so?

ANNA: I guess the manifestations of that anxiety and how they were able to identify that anxiety thinking. Things like, you know, just self-isolation and you know, having to make to-do lists and making out sure everything was planned. I've kind of always been like that, but my anxiety wasn't really coming from those type of external things. My anxiety was coming from my shirt is so tight that if I don't change it, I can't focus. My hair, my ponytail is too tight or too loose, but I can't fix it because I'm in an interview. I did speech and debate in college, and so public speaking never made me anxious, but wearing a suit did, and it was so uncomfortable that I thought that that's why everybody was anxious.

CRISTEN: I'm curious if, for you, just about that timing, if all of the destabilization that had happened, if that contributed also to, you know, you kind of falling down the TikTok rabbit holes and starting kind of seeking this information?

ANNA: Yeah, so when COVID first hit, I went back to my childhood home from college. I was really happy to be by myself, and I never — you know, a lot of people were like, I'm so excited to be back in person. I wanna go back to the office. And I was like, no. I like kind of being by myself because autistic individuals do this thing called masking, which is putting on a performance or a different personality to kind of fit in with the crowd. And I hadn't really realized that I'd been doing that until my evaluation and until I had words for it.

But when I was home, I was no longer exhausted and I was no longer, you know, just fatigued at the end of the day. I could log into all my classes, I could get all my work done. I had an internship over the summer that was like I was, I was like doing really well and I couldn't understand why during a time of so much like somberness and just so much sadness and so much hopelessness, I was not struggling.

And I think it was because I didn't have to pretend to be somebody. I could just my unmask myself. And that was very liberating. And I think that coming back after COVID to school in October, I had all of that come back cuz I had to go to actual classes with a mask on. And I was like, that fatigue is back, and it shouldn't be. And I think that that's what pushed me to start investigating. 

CRISTEN: So it sounds like it was a fairly straightforward process for you to seek out the evaluation and diagnosis since you know there's already, resources in place it sounds like on campus, which is great.

What was the time period, kind of like, how long did it take and how much did it cost?

ANNA: That's a great question and I've, so a lot of like what I do now is helping people through social media to explore their own diagnoses. And that's a question I get a lot because I was extremely fortunate that I was in the right place at the right time, essentially still on my parents' insurance. I go to a university that is actually a hub in the South for autism research, the University of Alabama.

But for me, I think that the whole process took a month. It was three different evaluations. So, one was a two- hour Zoom interview, just answering questions.

One was an actual in-person, like I took a test, I did different, um, I had to, they had to, uh, analyze me in a relationship. So I brought, um, my partner with me, and we like sat down. We were talking and they were watching us through like a two-way mirror. It was very interesting. And then the third was a more one-on-one with one of the psychiatrist's assistants and taking another exam.

It was initially going to cost maybe upwards of $2,000, but I think that my insurance took it down to around 400, which for me is incredibly affordable for the value I think I've gotten out of knowing.

CRISTEN: Yeah. How did the diagnosis kind of recontextualize your life up to that point?

ANNA: I, it, it really made me take a closer look at a lot of things that as a kid I would do or struggle with and take it out of the context of, oh, I was just a weird kid, and put it into the context of, oh, I, I was a kid struggling with an undiagnosed disability and disorder. And so, you know, as a kid I would, I was meticulous about just random things and I had really, I had, um, terrible issues spending the night at other people's houses, I had terrible, um, separation anxiety for no reason. It's not like my parents had ever done anything to create that. I just, and I think it was because I didn't like being at other people's house because I couldn't control where I slept or what clothes I was wearing.

Um, just things like that. Things in school where I would just have meltdowns. Like if a kid had ripped my paper or something. So going back and being like, you know, I think I was bullied a little bit for being kind of out there, but I think that it was, it was because of this.

I mean, in my current relationship, it completely reconciled a lot of differences and a lot of difficulties because it's not like I'm shifting the blame onto autism, but it's looking through a new lens on, you know, this is how my identity, this is who my identity is, and how my brain works, and how can we use that to go forward instead of just thinking it's something weird and not talking about it.

CRISTEN: How, how was that initial kind of period for you and the emotional impact of it?

ANNA: So, when I first got out of the meeting where they basically told me point blank, you have autism, you're on the spectrum, I remember calling first my mom and then my girlfriend and telling them yeah, I have autism, and they were both like, Anna, I'm here for you. Like, that's such a big deal.

To me it wasn't, it wasn't that it wasn't a big deal, but it was just like I kind of already knew. And so initially I was just like, well, I'm kind of glad that month of meetings is over. Now I can finally get back to what I was doing.

CRISTEN: Um, one thing that you mentioned in your letter is the difficulty that your dad had accepting it and sort of the intersection as well of being Middle Eastern and also he's an immigrant and like all of these kind of identities. Could you unpack that a little bit?

ANNA: Yeah, so like the traditional immigrant father dynamic, um, my dad and I don't really talk about a lot of serious things. So to this day, him and I have never had a formal conversation like, hey dad, I'm on the spectrum. But mental health and taking care of your brain was not a concept for him at all.

For him growing up — he grew up in a village in Turkey — physical health was the priority, and, you know, making sure you were doing well in school to kind of get to bigger and better places was the priority. If you struggled along the way, that was expected. And so the, the struggle was never really investigated.

I don't even know the language that he would use to describe that. So for him it doesn't, it literally because of his upbringing, doesn't exist in his worldview.

And so I think it was very hard for him to think that his, one of his children, first of all, was struggling — because I think that really hurt him, that he didn't help me when I was struggling — and the second is that he didn't have the background or words to stop the struggling, which was his priority. And so because of that, we've never really discussed it, and I, I'm OK with that. 

CRISTEN: So I also wanted to ask about the intersection of autism and queerness.

ANNA: And you would be surprised at that intersection, that Venn diagram is basically a circle. That was another thing that I learned in a lot of my research was the percentage of people who are queer and autistic is, I, I, I can't even put a number to it. [It’s] huge. And I'm not, I'm not a hundred percent sure why that is, but I think that it's just because, like, we think of things very differently. And so even before I came out, I was a, I guess I was a huge ally, um, but I never saw a problem and I grew up in the rural South and I never saw a problem with gayness and queerness at all. I just didn't understand why I never thought that was an issue. And a lot of, you know, autistic people will explain that's just how it is.

It's a really interesting phenomenon that there's such a big intersection. 

CRISTEN: Did, uh, your, did kind of putting all of these pieces together, give you more perspective on yourself?

ANNA: I think so. I think figuring out I was autistic kind of was the last piece of the puzzle of who I am and what really matters to me. And I think that understanding that a lot of the, a lot of the non-accommodations for autistic people — be it, you know, problematic autistic organizations or not having disability accommodations, things like that intersect interestingly with people being super heteronormative.

And so having both of those identities, it's, it's glaring sometimes how these spaces are created and occupied, and that's become a huge part of my identity.

CRISTEN: Um, I'm also curious about the particular stigma and misunderstandings of autism and women and did you encounter any of that, like in, in the process of seeking a diagnosis or, or in, in navigating everything since?

ANNA: Yeah, in most of the, most of what I've experienced came after the diagnosis in the form of, well, you don't look like you have autism. You don't seem like you have autism. And I think honestly, it probably only happens to women, and I'm not trying to generalize, but the most that I've heard of people having those words said to them, almost all of them were women or nonbinary people, and it's because it just manifests so differently. And so yeah, that's been something that I've really tried to debunk among people, but it still persists that, that almost squinted look — like you don't look like what I know autism looks like, and it's just a matter of you don't know what autism looks like. 

And I mean, autism manifesting in women is one thing. And then autism and race is a whole nother because autism in, you know, folks of color also manifests very differently, and I think that for a lot of women of color who have autism and a lot of men of color who have autism, their autism is discounted maybe as just behavioral when in reality, it's a disorder that they have no control over. And because they don't fit the, the mold of what people expect, they are never given the environment and space that they need to explore and actually learn and grow. 

CRISTEN: What would you say to any unladies listening who have kind of suspected that maybe they are autistic, but kind of like as you expressed earlier, like don't want to necessarily like claim space that isn't theirs?

ANNA: I say take up that space because there's so much of it for you. I'm a big advocate because of the barriers to diagnosis of, um, and this might be unpopular, but self-diagnosis. If you are seeing all of these traits, I mean, I don't think anybody goes around and, and parades that they are the autistic.

But it's OK to to take care of yourself and realize, you know, oh, maybe I am autistic. I'm gonna see what other autistic people do when they feel overwhelmed. And I'm gonna do those things and I'm gonna tell my family members like, this is how I've been feeling. I want to identify as having autism. And I think that that's — I think that that's OK.

[OUTRO]

CRISTEN: Thank you so much to listeners, Anna, Sarah, and to podcast extraordinaire Lauren Ober. Go listen to her podcast, The Loudest Girl in the World. A couple of recommendations from Anna are the Autistic Women and Nonbinary Network and activist Lydia XZ Brown. And I also recommend checking out the Autistic People of Color Fund.

I would so very much love to hear from y'all @unladylikemedia on Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok. Go there. You can DM me. You can also email me at hello@unladylike.co.

To support me and unladylike directly and get Extra Unladylike, head over to patreon.com/unladylikemedia, where for $5 a month, you get a bonus episode every weekend, as well as uncut interviews and a surprisingly emotional retelling of my homeschooling childhood. I don't know if that's worth $5, but it's there if you want it. 

Unladylike is a Starburns Audio production, written and executive produced by me, Cristen Conger. Tara Brockwell is our senior producer. Katherine Calligori is our associate producer. Engineering and post-production is by Ali Nikou. Our music is by Flamingo Shadow, Amit May Cohen and Sarah Tudzin.

And til next time.

CRISTEN: Um, I have just one last question for you. What is the most unlady like thing about you? Lauren

LAUREN: Oh my god. I mean, we could have done an entire episode about that Christ. Oh man, you should have led with that. Then we wouldn't have had to talk about any of this boring autism stuff. , I could talk to you about my love of burping or my love of watching videos of children just like eating it on dirt bikes or like on, you know, swings. Like I love watching people fall. Like, what is wrong with me? That doesn't seem very lady like. Also, we're. We're, we're literally, I'm literally sitting in a closet full of like men's wear, you know?