Intersectionality & Autism
Disclaimer: Any views, opinions and tips on this blog are personal and belong solely to myself (Kyra) and don’t represent the views of affiliated professionals and organisations. Additionally, I’m not a professional advisor regarding Autism and the content produced on this blog is solely from my own experiences.
This blog post contains affiliate links, meaning I will receive a small commission for the advertised products.
Not everyone belongs to one identity. Society constructs different identities that are placed upon each one of us. Thus, our experiences of discrimination will be different due to the different identities we have on ourselves.
This phenomenon is known as intersectionality, when different levels of social inequality intersect, such as race, class, gender, sexuality, and disability.
Crenshaw first used intersectionality to describe the double discrimination of racism and sexism experienced by Black women. However, intersectionality can also be used to understand the experiences of Autistic people who fall into multiple identities of discrimination - for example, race, gender, and disability.
These identities create what Suzy Rowland refers to as multiple “isms” that intersect with one another:
Ableism - the negative belief that disabled people are inferior or less capable than non-disabled people.
Sexism - the negative belief that one sex is superior based on their biological characteristics.
Racism - the negative belief that races possess distinct characteristics that distinguish them as inferior or inferior to one another.
In this blog post, I want to share my experience to understand further how the intersection of different identities can lead to the experiences of further inequalities and discrimination within societal institutions.
Healthcare System
Before my Autism diagnosis, similar to many other Autistic people, I was diagnosed with depression, anxiety and OCD. Although I was grateful to have these diagnoses, I still didn’t feel validated with what I felt emotionally. It didn’t explain why I always felt empty after social interactions with my peers or physically and emotionally exhausted after long social commitments.
After years of feeling this way, I went to my doctor to fully explain these feelings. For example, I told them that I felt the need to “go back to my old self,” as the younger could express herself more freely than the current Kyra. Instead of understanding my feelings, the doctor dismissed my disclosure with “Of course, you cannot go back to your old self.”
It’s common for late diagnosed Autistic people to say that they either “didn’t feel complete” or “there’s an emptiness inside of them.” And this key sign was missed by my doctor which could have prevented further trauma in the future.
This is only one example of an Autistic woman of colour being dismissed by the healthcare system after years of trying to explain their feelings.
According to the Black Equality Organisation, it revealed that 65% of Black British people experienced discrimination in the healthcare system. This number would double with the experience of late-diagnosed Black women, in which it was found that 80% of Autistic women are misdiagnosed with mental health conditions before being diagnosed as Autistic.
What Next?
This is one example of the intersectionality of disability and other identities and how it can impact the level of discrimination experienced within society. There are many different perspectives on how intersectionality can impact an Autistic person’s everyday life, for example, how a racialised Autistic person is regarded by their teacher or how an Autistic trans male is viewed by the policing system.
As Ujima says in Omeiza's (2024) book Autistic and Black, ‘intersectionality is about recognising the necessity to acknowledge everything about an identity that marginalises a person.’ It’s important to understand that every Autistic individual is different, what one Autistic person experiences may not be the same as another Autistic person. What counts is how we as a community (both Autistic and non-Autistic) learn from one another's experiences and how we can prevent this from happening in the future for other Autistic people.
There are many ways to contribute to the growing conversation about intersectionality and Autism. This includes following Autistic people who share a variety of perspectives, reading books about Autism from racialised communities, and challenging negative perceptions of Autistic people from different identities.
Further Information
The double-discrimination black autistic children face in education - Rowland (2023)
Black and Autistic - Omeiza (2024)
Recently on the Blog
There’s limited research on the intersectionality between race, disability and gender, and how it amplifies stereotypical images of specific groups, especially for Black Autistic women.