A review by gia0203
Women and Girls with Autism Spectrum Disorder: Understanding Life Experiences from Early Childhood to Old Age by Sarah Hendrickx

Did not finish book. Stopped at 50%.

The author makes sweeping generalisations that become frankly disrespectful in the sexuality and gender section. There was little nuance when speaking on autistic women’s relation to gender, and at times the author betrayed her internalised misogyny to the extent that it became uncomfortable. She used anecdotes from autistic women who hated and rejected other women, and while I understand this is one perspective, there weren’t any opposing views or arguments to this. Hendrickx seemed to cherry pick anecdotes that validated a particular theory that she had (cough it had hints of terf cough), but there has been and always will be feminist autistic women. 

She also started to turn away from the facts and research that made the first half of the book actually good, and began to use expressions like “in my experience…” and “it appears that…” which suggested she was speaking from personal bias rather than fact. It also did feel at times that she was dismissive of the trans autistic experience. I think some of this can be chalked up to the time period, but even still I couldn’t continue reading considering all of this…