Autistic Girls and Gender Stereotypes

My Mom just got this book about feminism, intended for teachers of women and gender studies, and told me I could read it. It had a section about disability, but I was dissapointed to find they were only talking about physical disabilities and body image. Pretty much every feminist analysis of disability is about physical disabilities and body image. So I thought about what I'd write about in terms of autistic girls and women.
The thing that came into mind was 'gender roles and gender identity'. So here's what I think about autistic girls and gender stereotypes:
Firstly, there are rules about what kinds of things boys and girls are interested in. Boys are supposed to be interested in war games and sports and so on, girls in 'playing house' and being beautiful and nurturing. Both transgender and autistic kids don't fit that, but in different ways. Transgender kids fit the general framework, they pick from the same list of standard interests, but they pick from the other side. A girl who likes transformers, like my brother's tomboy friend, or a boy who pretends to be a mommy. Autistic kids have interests that don't fit either gender. I heard of one autistic boy who was asked by some girls to play the daddy in a game of house. He decided he'd rather be the radio, and stood there reciting radio things. Gender roles underestimate the variety of things children can be interested in. Is pretending to be a radio a boy thing or a girl thing? Neither. It's an autistic thing.
Gender roles are also defined by disinterest. Boys aren't supposed to be interested in babies, girls aren't supposed to be interested in sports. Autistic girls may be thought of as boy-like because they aren't interested in girl things, while autistic boys are considered effeminate because they aren't interested in boy things. Once, I told a girl I was a tomboy, and she said I wasn't. I was thinking of the girl things I wasn't interested in, like my appearance, she was (I think) thinking of the boy things I wasn't interested in, like sports. Autistic teens are often thought of as gay because they aren't interested in the opposite gender, never mind that most of them aren't interested in the same gender either.
Autistic girls are more often thought of as boyish than autistic boys thought of as girlish, it seems. This is because there is a space in the gender roles for a male nerd. A smart, socially awkward boy is more typical than a smart, socially awkward girl, because boys are supposedly smarter and less socially skilled than girls. Math and science are supposed to be boy things to be good at, but they are also common autistic strengths. The 'mad scientist' is generally a man, I haven't seen many depictions of a female mad scientist. I've often indentified with the mad scientist stereotype, understanding the obsessiveness and delight at discovery ("It's alive! It's alive!") and dreaming of making my own monsters (which I wouldn't be scared of, unlike Frankenstein).
Lastly, autistics are less likely to absorb social norms (not that we don't - I've seen the same attitudes towards physically disabled or developmentally delayed people from both NTs and autistics) and autistic girls are often natural feminists, since gender roles are so illogical, especially if you're a girl with 'male' strengths.

Victim of Who?

Recently I was trying to post a response to a parent of an autistic child who said that despite all the bad stuff about the Autism Every Day video, she liked it. She compared it to feminist consciousness raising. In trying to write my response (which was lost due to computer problems) I kept trying to get at what really bothered me about that comparison, without being able to figure out what it was.
After the computer error had happened making me loose my response, and I'd had a meltdown exarcerbated by the fact that my brother had been pestering me to give him a turn on the computer, I realized what the basis of the problem was. Both Autism Every Day and feminist consciousness raising are about speaking out about how the people feel victimized. The important distinction is who they think are victimizing them.
The parents in Autism Every Day seem to think that they are victims of their children. But in reality, both they and their children are victims of society. It's like an abused child blaming her mother for not pleasing her father sexually and 'causing' him to abuse her, taking for granted that he has sexual 'needs' that must be fulfilled and he can't help himself.
I think I've written before about the problems of taking society for granted. If you assume that society's view is correct, and are being victimized by society, you end up either ignoring your victimization or blaming the wrong people/things. My mother told me some feminists had the idea that women needed to be liberated from pregnancy and childrearing. Thay hadn't challenged society's view of those things.