In thinking back to the time I was figuring out that I was autistic, it reminded me how crucial it was for me to read books about autism at that time. It educated me and gave me a framework for understanding the way my brain worked. And most important were the books that centered on the experiences of autistic women and anyone assigned female at birth.
There are so many misconceptions about autism based on the idea that autistic people are primarily male and that someone is not autistic if they don’t conform to the stereotypes we have of autistic men and boys (See Big Bang Theory and Rainman for examples). This is why the book Women and Girls with Autism Spectrum Disorder: Understanding Life Experiences from Early Childhood to Old Age by Sarah Hendrickx was so life-changing for me.
I think the piece that makes this book so much better than others out there is that the author is a late-diagnosed autistic woman who got her Master’s Degree studying autism years before she figured out that she was autistic. Just listen to this excerpt from the introduction:
“It seems ludicrous even to me that someone so immersed in both the theory and practice of autism could not ‘spot’ it in herself. The reason that it took me so long to do so was that I was guilty of doing exactly the same thing that everyone else had been doing to women with autism for all these years: I was comparing myself with the male presentation, and I didn’t fit.”
This is exactly what I was doing for most of my life as well! This book is so effective at helping autistic women recognize their autism because the author went through this process herself at age 43.
Women and Girls with Autism Spectrum Disorder covers experiences during all life stages as well as through many areas of life such as relationships, parenting, gender identity and sexuality, and employment. My favorite pieces are the personal accounts from autistic women on nearly every page. These accounts allow the author to share a wide range of varied experiences. And these experiences gave me something to relate to in a way I hadn’t experienced in my life before. This book gave me answers in the context of autistic adults who have learned to mask heavily, tend to have special interests that are more mainstream, and have rich emotional lives.
And though Hendrickx’s book helped me realize that I was autistic, it does so much more than that. It can help anyone understand autistic women, girls, and all those assigned female at birth. It’s for those like me, who want to understand their own autism, and for those who want to understand their loved ones better. And it helps shatter the common stereotypes about autism that keep so many of us in the dark about ourselves and others.
I think Women and Girls with Autism Spectrum Disorder can help a lot of other women and people assigned female at birth to recognize and understand their autism. I hope it can do that for you! And now I want to go read this book again!
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