Amanda Baggs (2005), in Getting the Truth Out, a parody of an Autism Speaks campaign originally dubbed Getting the Word Out, circled this duality surrounding those at the “higher-functioning” edges of the autism spectrum. Because many autistics can speak, marry, write, and hold jobs—and, gasp, procreate—we’d rather label them as “eccentric,” still within the comforting folds of the normalcy text, preferring that only slightly screwed-up genes, as opposed to hugely screwed-up genes, are proliferating in the DNA swimming pool. This de-sexualization has so permeated narratives of disability that any sexual being who, on outward appearance, does not scream with the bling of scarlet A must not be autistic.

Autistic people can’t have sex—because of acute sensory dysfunction, because they lack personality and emotions, because they dislike other people, because they’re too vapid to discern what sex is. While spending my requisite Aspergian-authored hours on the computer, I often come across links on aspie forums to Ivy League specialists, many of whom maintain that any shade of autism, by definition, precludes long-term intimate relationships and/or marriage. Successful romantic relationships either signal misdiagnosis, fakery, or the dissolution of one's autism. Consequently, either I will get divorced fairly soon, or I have been entirely misdiagnosed and must write to Michael Savage post haste.