Letters To My Weird Sisters: On Autism and Feminism

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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.”

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.Overall, an interesting book that covered topics that I have not read about before. I would definitely recommend. Final note: I have Limburg’s poetry collection THE AUTISTIC ALICE on my TBR (& shelves) to read next!

We are, all of us, striving constantly to pass those normality exams, to take our raw and boundless selves and squash them into the forms of neater and nicer girls.” 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. Hun reflekterer også hvorfor den måde vi snakker om folk med intellektuelle handicap på er skadelige, især konceptet mental alder. Forfatteren er selv autistisk og frem for at prøve at diagnostisere disse kvinder så fortæller hun om deres liv og oplevelser og hvordan hun tolker det gennem en autistisk linse. Samtidig deler hun refleksion fra sit eget liv og der hvor hun kan se sig selv i deres liv.I am not autistic and harbour no suspicions that I may be, but I do not sit entirely comfortably within society’s notions of womanhood. I’ve always felt…well, a bit weird, and this book has also granted me some insight of more personal relevance that I will need to dwell on. Then there is the unique structure of the book. I thought at some point I would get used to the second-person letters to various "weird sisters" in history, but I never did. I think it ended up being an impersonal attempt at combining personal stories with those of the people Limburg wrote to. 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. So much to dive into there, and this simply scratched the surface.

The biographical events of Virginia Woolf – the death of her parents, the difficult relationship with her stepbrother, her conditional acceptance of the Victorian conventions of the time – are intertwined with her literary activity. The result are new insights in the figure of the famous writer, whose personal and literary production can help analyze experiences of awkwardness and uneasiness. Limburg does not attribute any diagnosis to Virginia Woolf, but concludes the letter thanking the writer for her ability to accurately and honestly describe difficult moments of shame and embarrassment: ‘If you had not described these awkward moments and unpretty feelings, I might never have recognized my own in them’ (p. 68). 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.Jeg synes det var hårdt at blive mindet om alle de små “double takes” og folk misbilligende blikke om træder ved siden af. Det var en super interessant vinkel at tage at det den manglende villighed til efterleve feminitet på samme måde som neurotypiske der gør folk utilpasse. Today she has learnt that the version of femininity she rejected is equally likely to be “studied and perfectly reproduced by some autistic girls”. This “masking” is often believed to be the reason that so many autistic girls fail to get the diagnosis that would help them understand themselves and get the support they need. Limburg doesn’t buy the theory that women are innately better at masking than boys. It’s just that, given the higher social expectations placed on girls, “heaven help us if we don’t make the effort!”. PDF / EPUB File Name: Letters_to_My_Weird_Sisters_-_Joanne_Limburg.pdf, Letters_to_My_Weird_Sisters_-_Joanne_Limburg.epub