Letters To My Weird Sisters: On Autism and Feminism

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While most women might occasionally fail to meet the stringent rules of femininity, the experience is much more common and painful for autistic women. In many ways, autism constitutes a failure to embody with docility the norms of femininity as, for instance, sensory sensitivity can make difficult to wear certain clothes, jewelry, or to use make-up. In social situations it can also be difficult to engage in small talk, smile and comply with the idea that women have to be warm and welcoming. Many of the women presented in this book cannot resort to the protection of benevolent sexism that the adherence to feminine norms could grant. In the foreword, Limburg underlines that she wanted to write about weirdness rather than rebellion, and that she was ‘less interested in women who chose to be difficult than [she] was in women who couldn’t help being weird’ (p.15). The author tells us about her own attempts to adhere to social norms by exercising a strict control on her way of appearing and speaking when in public. Such attempts are so extensive that she describes feeling a different person, for which she uses the acronym SGJ – Socially Gracious Joanne. It is difficult not to see in SGJ a reference to the camouflage (or masking) practices that many autistic people and especially women use to hide their autistic traits and pass for neurotypical. It is important, from a feminist perspective, to understand how and to what extent autistic masking is influenced by the strong gendered expectations imposed upon women, and what is the impact of these expectations on autistic women. Letters To My Weird Sisters illuminates the unfiltered nature of Virginia Woolf serving as validation for many women’s truths, providing a self confidence in the rawest expressions of inner experience.

Letters To My Weird Sisters by Joanne Limburg | Waterstones Letters To My Weird Sisters by Joanne Limburg | Waterstones

It's possible to save these lives—all we need to do is get everyone to agree that it's worth the effort.” There are things in the world that need fixing, and you cannot fix them without pointing out that they are broken; the fact that both the pointing out and the fixing makes comfortable people less comfortable is no reason not to do what you know to be right."

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CW // the holocaust, eugenics, state-sanctioned murder of disabled people, suicide, bullying, miscarriage, pregnancy (Please feel free to DM me for more specifics!)

Letters To My Weird Sisters: On Autism, Feminism and Letters To My Weird Sisters: On Autism, Feminism and

I have not read much on autism and I felt like this was a good starting point for me as it was easy to digest but was still powerful and sometimes harrowing. The authors experience of her feelings of fear, and guilt that she went through during pregnancy and after birth was really vulnerable.That sentence you just read—it is not only part of a text, but also part of you, and part of the person who wrote it, all at the same time.” Although feminist and gender perspectives have been employed to analyse a number of disability-related topics, autism––and neurodiversity more generally––occupies a limited space in the literature. The experiences of adult autistic women, in particular, have been largely under-explored and un-theorised by feminist frameworks. In this lacuna, British essayist and poet Joanne Limburg’s recent book, Letters to My Weird Sisters: On Autism and Feminism (2021), establishes the foundations for a much-needed conversation between feminism and neurodiversity.