Love on the Spectrum

Transcript Transcribed by Laura M.

Courtney: Hello everyone and welcome back. My name is Courtney. I am here with my spouse, Royce, and together we are The Ace Couple. And today we are going to be talking about the show Love on the Spectrum. A new season has come out fairly recently, and I was thinking perhaps this could be a show we cover on our series Weird Allo Reality Shows, but I think our experience with it and our opinion of it is very, very different from the typical allo shows we cover. So I think it’s just going to be its own episode and in fact, this – to give you an idea of how different this is compared to the shows we usually do – we don’t suffer through it or slog through it like the others, and I’m not left constantly baffled by what I’m seeing on screen in the same way as those other shows. We’ve been watching Love on the Spectrum since an early season, the two of us, like for fun. So that’s already a vast difference from the you know Love Islands of the world and the Milf Manors of the world.

Royce: Yeah, I don’t remember exactly how this came on your radar when you pulled it up the first time, but it originated as an Australian TV series that ran for two seasons before coming over to having an American production that just finished its third season pretty recently.

Courtney: Yes, and I don’t recall if we’ve seen both seasons of the Australian one, but I know we at least watched one. It came on my radar because a friend recommended it to me. The friend who tends to say that they’ve always been a bit spectrumy, the undiagnosed friend who still knows, recommended it to us, said that it was great and wonderful, awesome to see, and so we checked it out out of curiosity. And my opinion of it has also, I think, gotten more positive over time. It was always enjoyable enough and got me thinking enough that it was worth watching. But I think at least in the Australian season we watched, maybe the first season of the US one, there were just a couple things here and there where I’m like, “Uh, I don’t know how I feel about that portrayal.” But I think I’ve refined my opinions of it over time. And it has gotten generally more positive the more I think about it.

Royce: So the series, both editions of it, it’s the same concept, follows a relatively small group of people who are all on the autism spectrum as they try to date. And usually this is assisted by some form of relationship coach, sometimes, not exclusively. We also see a lot of the people who are on the show like interacting with their close friends or close family to kind of go over and prepare things for dates and set expectations and some of that. So you see a bit of their private lives beforehand and then the dates themselves go forth. And particularly in some of the early episodes, we were complaining about the advice that the relationship coaches or family members were giving, sometimes.

Courtney: Yeah, yeah. And my memory of season three that just came out is obviously very fresh, because we just watched it, so most of the personal like specific instances I’ll be able to quote are from there. So I don’t remember specific instances from early on, but I think maybe in the Australian version, there was perhaps a dating coach that we didn’t love. And there– there’s– The fascinating thing is I tend to love all the main cast members, but they all have very different family dynamics and sometimes I’m left just really upset at their family. And sometimes their family is great and wonderful and supportive. So that’s definitely a mixed bag.

Courtney: Because the dating coach that they had in the US version, in this most recent season, I got to thinking about it and I actually really quite liked her, and it made me even angrier about Later Daters, which we covered on our last episode of Weird Allo Reality Shows. Cause I was fuming that there was a dating coach for, you know, these elderly people who are getting out and dating, and she had the audacity to tell one woman that her glasses were too much. Like she dresses too eccentrically and maybe she should tone it down. And I was like, “How dare you?!” I was so upset at that dating coach. But compare it to– I believe her name was Jennifer Cook, who was diagnosed as autistic as an adult, so a late diagnosis and also has autistic children.

Courtney: Her dating advice to one of the women on this show, and this was a woman who really loves collecting dolls, has a big American Girl doll collection, loves Disney, and she said that her dolls are like a big comfort to her. And she sits down with the dating coach and says, “How many dolls can I bring on my date? Because everyone says I shouldn’t bring any at all.” And then the dating coach straight up says, “You shouldn’t be embarrassed by who you are.” And like helps her decide on a number of dolls. She’s like, “How does two dolls sound? Does that sound like a good number of dolls to go on the date?” And this autistic woman’s like, “Yeah, I can bring two dolls on the date.” So like, now she has a rule that she can, you know, follow for herself that doesn’t totally compromise the fact that she wants to bring dolls on the date. And I thought that was fabulous. And I’m like meanwhile, meanwhile, in Later Daters, they’re telling people to wear boring glasses, because your cool, funky, fashionable glasses might scare away and intimidate the men.

Royce: I do remember, not explicitly enough to set the scene or quote directly, but some advice given in at least earlier episodes or earlier seasons of Love on the Spectrum, where the advice was essentially mask harder.

Courtney: Masking, and definitely that. We definitely have instances in the recent season of like families encouraging higher masking. There’s also an element of scripting which is interesting, because sometimes that’s really really helpful for autistic people. And maybe you can speak a little more to that, because you do that a little more for yourself than I do. But there is definitely elements of dating coach saying, “Okay, if you are feeling this way,” and someone saying, “I don’t know what I would do in that situation, I don’t know what to say.” And she said, “Okay, well, let’s talk through it. This could be an example of a thing you could say. How do you feel about that?” And then we often did actually see those people who sort of got those scripts from the coach for, “Here’s what you say if you’re not feeling the date. Here’s what you say if you want a second date,” kind of a thing. Then we’d often hear them relay that verbatim in one of their dates after they sort of got that script.

Royce: There are also some cases of people who seem to come to the date with a pre-scripted series of questions to sort of break the ice and would just rapid fire run through those to get things started.

Royce: Watching this show was interesting because I am not on the same area of the spectrum as, I think, a lot of the people we saw. Like you mentioned the woman with the doll collection, I’ve never been a collector. I’ve never had a lot of like material comfort items. When it comes to scripting, I don’t think I do that that rigidly, but the way that my mind works, I do find myself thinking through scenarios, like possible scenarios ahead of time. And so I might end up in a situation or a bit of conversation that I have already thought through previously, just by happenstance. Like my mind already went to this topic beforehand and I partially have an answer ready. But I don’t think that I prepped for dates in the same way that you’d prep for a speech, for example.

Courtney: Right. So that– that was really interesting to watch. And it was very interesting to watch after Later Daters because I hated that dating coach so much that now, seeing this– Because I know some people have had critiques about dating coaches on shows like this, and a lot of that does come down to, like, the fear of sort of recommending or demanding masking. Because very naturally that’s something that, you know, the autistic community is very sensitive to. A lot of people are incredibly traumatized by– in rigidly enforced masking for so long in their lives. But that was so, so, very refreshing, to be honest. Because another big criticism I see with the show all the time is, well, they’re not treating them the same way you’d treat, you know, the adults on Love is Blind. But that was one, like, kind of apples to apples comparisons. Like now I’ve seen dating coaches on other shows for allistic daters who quite honestly, I think, have gotten worse advice in those situations.

Royce: Yeah.

Courtney: So that was fascinating.

Royce: I think there are also, I think, a lot of cases on traditional dating shows, Love is Blind, where people could have used a little more advice on how to communicate effectively.

Courtney: Well, the thing is too, dating itself in our society is often very unnatural, and even amongst allistic people, even amongst allosexual people, like, it is very scripted. And a lot of that comes down to a lot of the societal normativities we talk about a lot of the time. Like chrononormativity, like what is the age you should start dating, what is the age people think you should be married by and settled down. Like there are sort of these sometimes spoken, sometimes unspoken rules of society about here’s how you date and here’s the escalation of relationships: here’s how you start courting, here’s how you start dating. And you see that in TV and movies all the time you’ll see like, sort of the impression of like, oh, the third date is the one you have sex on. If you’re like a young 20 something like, and you’re out dating like, you, you sort of have even the base system, like first base, second base, third base. Like there’s an order to things and everyone has their own perceived timeline for which that should happen.

Courtney: So that sort of dating norms are already very forced in a way that I find really fascinating from an autistic perspective. Because amongst the people we know in our lives, there’s sort of two directions that that can go. There’s sort of the– the camp of autistic person that is like, “Rules are ridiculous, damn them all, throw them out the window. Why do these exist?” And then there’s the camp of person who, like, will follow them to a T, like, “To the letter of the law. These are the rules I was told, and this is how it is and this is how it has to be.” Whether or not they understand why people say that they’re just like, “This is what I was told, so this is how it has to be.”

Royce: I exist in the first camp.

Courtney: I know you do. [laughs]

Royce: Firmly.

Courtney: And actually, in the latest season, there was something I was very confused about that I had to do a little research on. Because I just mentioned the base system, so now this is on my mind, which I’ve always thought was ridiculous anyway. But there was a scene where one of the autistic men was talking to his family, like his mom and his brother, and they mentioned the tier system being 15 tiers, and I was like, “Wha– what is this? What is the 15 tiers?!” I was terrified. Because then they were also saying, like, “Definitely can’t do tier 15.” But apparently that’s actually a reference from a cartoon. What was it like?

Courtney: Adventure Time, I think. Yeah, apparently that’s a joke on Adventure Time, which I have not watched. So that made, like, a little more sense to me. I was like, okay, that’s– that’s a joke from a show, that’s a reference from something else.

Courtney: But when I just like googled, like, 15 tier system, I got so disappointed because even if it’s coming from a joke, the conversations that sprout around it is just like: this is how people are brought up to think about dating that there is an order to things and there’s an escalation of things. And I saw people talking about what the human version of the 15 tears is, because apparently in Adventure Time they’re discussing this in the context of, like, dating a non-human person, and they’re like, “Oh, this is the tier where you touch her horn for the first time,” and things like that. So people have actually, as a result of this cartoon non-human joke, they’re like, “Here is what the human version of the 15 tier is: hugging, kissing, making out, neck kissing, massages, playful fighting, boob play, playing with downstairs. Nine is apparently unknown. We don’t get to know what nine is.

Royce: There had to be one unknown level for any list like this.

Courtney: Absolutely. 10 is handjobs, 11 is eating out slash blowjobs, 12 is fingering, 13 sex with condom, 14 sex without condom, and 15 kinky sex. I was like, this is a terrible tier system.

Royce: I’m confused as to why there was something about downstairs and handjobs and fingering, and they were all in different areas separated by other things.

Courtney: They’re different tiers, and you have to do one before you can progress to the next. No, it’s– I, I. I understand it’s a joke and it is all in good fun, and I have not watched the show that that originally came from, but it’s like it’s not that far away from how people already talk about dating. You’ve just hyper compartmentalized everything. And even though it is a joke, and even though I reject the very notion of creating such a tier list, like once you create the list you’re already wrong. I still want to poke holes in it. I still want to be like why is– why is kinky sex like the pinnacle? Why? Why is that the highest one? And why is that after things like penetration. Because that could always come before penetration. Like all of these things I want to poke holes in. But really I just reject the question altogether.

Courtney: And so I’ll– I’ll address a couple other criticisms I’ve heard of the show, because I– I don’t necessarily agree with all of them, but I do, at the end of the day, have my own criticism for the show that I don’t see talked about nearly as much when people are talking about Love on the Spectrum as a concept. Should it exist? Did they do it right? Things like that.

Courtney: There has been a big criticism, widely spread, of infantilization. They say they’re infantilizing the cast in a way they wouldn’t to allistic cast members. And some of those have come from this sort of introduction that they do when they introduce a new cast member. They have like a voiceover that says, “This is such and so. They like this thing, they dislike this thing.” And a lot of people just say like that’s super unnecessary, it’s–

Courtney: I actually searched where it came from. Because it didn’t– It did rub me the wrong way, I think, the first season we ever watched of it. And I couldn’t really place why it was rubbing me the wrong way. But apparently that format comes from a rom-com which I haven’t watched, called Amélie, which I understand also has some neurodivergent representation. Uh, having not watched it I don’t know how overt it is or if it’s coding, but apparently the creators of this show, like, actually took elements of a couple of different rom-coms that they really liked and sort of used that in this docu-series. So, understanding where that reference comes from, I don’t really have an issue with that and the more I watched it, I guess, the more normal it got. So it wasn’t bothering me as much once I was used to it.

Courtney: And then people will say, “Oh, there’s very, like, cutesy music, almost childish music, that they put over it and that’s not the kind of soundtracks you’d hear on other reality shows.” Honestly, I like it better. [chuckles] I mean, I don’t love the soundtrack on Love is Blind. Are you kidding me? [laughs] And there’s always a concern with, I think, any filming is– was the cast exploited at all? But I think people got really, like, hyper protective of an autistic cast, wondering, like, you know, where is the evil here? How were they exploited? And someone did make a big point about, well, they weren’t paid, they should have been paid for their, you know, labor appearing on screen. And that’s a weird one, to be quite honest, because this show considers itself a documentary more so than a reality show. And some people were saying that that is bogus and that’s just a way for them to not pay their cast.

Courtney: However, it really does view more like a documentary than it does a reality show. Because they’re following the lives of a cast of people and they’re all on their own journey. Sometimes, as we mentioned, they’re working with a dating coach. Sometimes they’re going to speed dating events in the park or at a local bar. Sometimes they have family members who are setting up a date for them. Sometimes they met a date online. So they’re all dating differently. They have queer cast members as well. And, whether the dates are successful or not, they are just sort of documenting the journey, which is very different from a reality show. The reality shows we’ve covered in our Weird Allo Reality Show episodes always have a gimmick. Like, oh it’s– it’s moms and their sons who are dating, or you don’t get to see the person until you’re engaged.

Royce: They also have a clear end state, like a clear goal in mind.

Courtney: Yes, a clear goal is usually like, in the case of like Love is Blind, like get married. The goal is marriage at the end of this. But then, on top of that, you have producers who are literally trying to stir up drama. You have the more gamified ones, where they’ll literally have them sit down and play a game of like spin the bottle. Or they’ll have, “Oh, here’s a reunion of all the people from the pods, and we– we invited this one person who almost broke you guys up because you had that, you know, will they won’t they thing going on.” So you have producers who are orchestrating situations where drama can happen and filming it. That is not happening here. So I think some of the criticism of, “This is not how other reality shows do things,” some of those I do not think are warranted.

Courtney: Because this is not from the jump. Whether or not the cast are autistic, you know, adults dating. They aren’t trying to stir drama, they don’t have a gimmick. They aren’t putting all of these people in exactly the same situation and seeing how they’ll respond. They aren’t calling it an experiment. Love is Blind is always like, “This is a great social experiment.” You know? And they aren’t giving them rules. Like, there was one reality show where, like, theoretically, the rule was like don’t sleep with other people, but the show kind of loved when they did sleep with other people, so. And I don’t know. I mean we’re at such a strange stage of capitalism as a society where, in isolation, when someone says, “Pay people for their work,” yes. I do agree with that in theory.

Courtney: But then you have this situation where, whether it’s a reality show or a documentary, if the goal is like to find genuine partnership, whether or not it’s a show that’s ultimately trying to force you into marriage at the end of it, like, there’s always in reality shows the question of like, are you here for the right reasons? And producers even use that as a source of drama. If someone’s questioning, like, “I don’t know if they’re here to find love or if they’re just here for fame and money,” like that’s always a question in the back of the mind of not only every reality show contestant, but every viewer who’s watching it. So do we really, like, genuinely want to add money as a complication on what is essentially an autistic dating documentary? For, like, what about the dates that they bring on?

Courtney: Do we want to be questioning, like, are these dates actually here for this person or are they just getting paid for it? You know? Do we want to add that extra layer of complication? Or do we want to just believe that, you know, love can exist even if it’s filmed. [chuckles] So it’s– There’s no good answer for it, because the waters have already been so muddied by every show that has come before it. Whether they have similarities or not, that it’s like if someone says, “They should be paid.” I want to say yeah, they should. But if someone else says, “No, we don’t want them in this for the money, we want them to actually be more authentic, and money could corrupt that.” I’m also going to say, yeah, you’re right. [laughs] There’s no good answer.

Royce: And to pull back something you said earlier for clarity, is the comparison to other existing forms of media that people who appear on a documentary are not paid, but people who appear on a reality tv show are paid, is that the industry standard?

Courtney: That is one read of it, yes. And, I mean, there have been latest things, like a lot of cast members on reality shows do get paid something, but people are even trying to push the envelope further on that. Like there have been lawsuits against shows where they’re saying, like, “Yeah, we get paid a little bit, but our hours are still really long and we don’t get, you know, the same protections that employees would get.” So there are people who are actually, like, gunning in court to have reality stars actually considered like employees of the show, so that they can get more protections. And also more like– more money. Because sometimes, even if they are paid a stipend of some kind whether it’s like a per week or a per day of shooting, like it doesn’t always equal out to necessarily a fair or industry standard hourly wage.

Courtney: But yes, the show producers of Love on the Spectrum have said this is a documentary, this is not a reality show. Therefore, you don’t pay people who appear in documentaries. And the entire, like, ethics behind that is industry standard. Because they do say, like, well, if it is a documentary, we don’t want money corrupting it, we want the authentic story, we want, you know, the best people to tell this story, things like that, so. So a lot of those criticisms I either outright don’t agree with or I partially don’t agree with. But what does sit in my mind, as someone who does enjoy and watch the show, if they come out with a season four, we’re also going to sit down and watch that.

Courtney: The goal of the show is very clearly to highlight a variety of experiences on the autism spectrum, and that’s something that’s always going to be imperfect. They cannot show literally every single facet of the spectrum, so there’s always going to be room for improvement and more diversity, for sure. But they are able to highlight people with different sexualities, people at different stages of their lives, people of different ages. They have young 20-somethings, they have people in their 40s. In a past season they even had a man over 60, which I thought was great to include such a diversity of ages in one show. Because Later Daters was all older people, which was in itself just a little refreshing, just in concept, as opposed to these 20-somethings or early 30s. But they always tend to group the same ages together, like Milf Manor they have like the old and the young. But to see a diversity of ages on exactly the same show I think is neat.

Courtney: They have cast members with different support needs. They have some cast members who are independent, living on their own. They have some who are living with their parents. They have some who are living with roommates. They have people who are traditionally employed, people who are self-employed. They have some people who don’t work. They have, like, a variety of experiences in a lot of ways, which is very interesting. But at the heart of it this is a representation show, so on some level they are always going to be thinking about what are we showing a largely allistic audience and what are those people going to see. And the very fact that they framed this, “Let’s showcase a diversity of people on the autism spectrum,” the fact that the show we got from that concept is based solely around dating and love and romantic relationships, I know why they did it, I just don’t like why they did it.

Courtney: I know they did it because that is in our society, in our very amatonormative society, saying, “Look at this person who’s different from you, they can still love.” They’re doing that thing where they’re trying to humanize people more by showing them in a quest for a relationship. And does that work on a lot of allo and allistic people? Yeah, it does. Yes, it does. That is probably one of the more effective ways to actually get people to watch an entire docu-series about people with autism, unfortunately.

Courtney: So could someone make a, you know, necessary evil argument for it? Like, this is a stepping stone and it’s not perfect, but it is going to work on a lot of people because society is so amatonormative? Sure, you could. But we are, we are ace people, we– we are, we are on the ace spectrum.

Courtney: We- we understand asexuality and aromanticism, and we understand fundamentally that, like, romance and sex are not what make us human. Despite what nearly everybody says. We know that that’s not the case. So that is my biggest critique of the show. And of course, in a show like this, you will sometimes hear comments like that. Sometimes you will hear, like, “Well, of course I want to find the one, everybody wants to find the one.” So you’re always going to get those little offhanded comments, but you get those in the weird allo reality shows too. I’ve called attention to that plenty of times.

Courtney: However, season three brought us this gem of a quote from one of the cast members. I was terrified in the first half. He got me in the first half. I’m not gonna lie. It started with: “There are only two things that set us apart from the animals,” and I was like, “Oh no, oh, don’t say it.” Then he followed it up with, “We can control our sexual behaviors and we use cutlery.” Oh, my good sir… [laughs] I loved that so much. And even just the– the added caveat about the sex. Like, we’ll– We’ll have people who just say like, “Sex is what sets us apart from the animals.” It’s like, all the animals are having sex. [laughs] Have you never been to a zoo? [laughs] In what world is sex what makes us human?! So, the– I still don’t even know, like, if I literally believe that to a T, but we can control our sexual behaviors, fleshes out that comment in a way where I’m like, “All right, I’ll take it.” And we use cutlery. Oh, it’s so good. And honestly, Royce, you said you were in the camp that’s ‘damn the rules’. [chuckles]

Royce: Yeah, that’s correct.

Courtney: There are also very clearly so many people in this cast that are articulating things that are contrary to – quote – ‘common knowledge’ in a way that I do find very refreshing, and I agree a whole lot. And you can see these elements, even the show itself does not question the normativities of romance and sex. Some of the cast members do, at least lightly in some ways. There is one guy this season who’s been– some of the cast members this season have been on previous seasons as well, so in some ways you get to see their journey, like, continue, which is pretty nice. And this poor guy, I just could not with his family. I want to look up his name. I’m so bad at remembering names on shows like this.

Royce: I believe you’re thinking of James, James Jones.

Courtney: James. Yes. I love all of James’s little quips. And I wish he had a family around him who would actually engage in these conversations he’s trying to start. Because so many of the things he’ll say in conversation are just fundamentally coming from a place of questioning societal norms, in a way that is incredibly relatable, to me at least. Like his dad, who will say, “Oh remember: happy wife, happy life.” And he’ll be like, “Why would you say that? You– you could, you could change it to happy spouse, happy house, and you’d still be saying the same thing. But that’s more correct.” And he’ll talk about on, like, his wedding, he has very, very egalitarian views. He’s like, “Well, I wouldn’t want to marry a woman whose father gives her away because I don’t–” like that’s, that’s a holdover, it’s a relic of patriarchy. And so he’s like, “When I get married, I think my wife and I should walk down the aisle together.” And things like that. He also has, I should say, the exact same cobra handle sword cane that I have. So James is an intense personal call out to me in particular. [laughs] Uh, very, very fashionable guy, wonderful taste in canes. 10 out of 10.

Courtney: But then he’ll– He’ll be like, getting ready to have friends come over for a birthday and his dad will say, like, “I will bring you adult beverages.” And he’ll be like, “Why do you call them adult beverages? Just– just call it alcohol. The fact that it’s alcoholic doesn’t make it an adult beverage.” And he’ll justify it in ways that make sense. He’ll be like, “I know lots of adults who don’t drink alcohol and drinking alcohol does not make you an adult.” These are incredibly good points, but every time he makes a point like this, to his father in particular, his father will just be like, “Drop it, James, you are wrong, you are not gonna win this.” And it hurts me so much. Because, yeah, on the surface it might look like he’s just poking holes in, like, semantics, the vocabulary someone use– is using. But really it’s so much deeper than that. He’s questioning what does make someone an adult. And adults don’t all look the same. Adults don’t all be gay, they don’t all engage in the same behaviors.

Courtney: And these are points that we make within the ace community all the time. Because people will use, you know, dating and sex as sort of a not only a rite of passage, but as a gauge of age. People will look at, you know, the fucked up concept of virginity as like, they’ll infantilize that. They’re like, “You have to have sex to be a man,” or you know, “You’re finally becoming a woman.” These are all things that people use and at the end of the day, that ends up becoming a tool of oppression. Because, at the end of the day also, children are an oppressed class. They may be the most oppressed class. Society doesn’t talk about them as an oppressed class of people, but they are. So it is an insult to call someone a child or say you’re acting like a child. But that’s also just kind of another normativity and another level of oppression that we should all collectively be examining.

Courtney: And I get the feeling that James is thinking about things like this all the time. But at least amongst his family, maybe he can talk more freely with his friends, but his family just cuts him off and just says, “You are wrong,” and tries to teach him the right way to be. And they will do that. He’ll say, like, “No, the wedding needs to be all about your wife.” And he’s like, “Well, I want– It’s my day too. If we’re both getting married, it’s gonna be my day too.” And he’s like, “No! No, you are wrong.”

Courtney: And I do think that in a lot of ways, when you are already outside of the norms of society, whether that be through queerness or disability or neurodivergence, I think if you’re someone who is predisposed to more progressive ideas, it is so much easier to question all of the other norms because you already fall outside of it. And I see that tremendously with James.

Courtney: And I suppose, you know, the– To kind of bring it back to the question of infantilization, a lot of people will look at a show like this and say, “This is bad because they’re infantilizing autistic people.” But the cast members are all talking in interviews or their own social media platforms, saying that they did not feel infantilized at all. They liked their representation, they liked their seasons, they felt respected while they were filming. So that’s sort of a weird way to infantilize someone by sort of saying on their behalf that they’re being infantilized when they don’t necessarily feel the same way.

Royce: Yeah, I think it says more about how an individual person interpreted the show while watching it or what negative feelings popped up, like, in themselves, as a response to that. It kind of reminds me just of, like, the nature of cringe or when people say, like, they– they get the ick, like something just really bothers them. Like it says– it’s a lot more about you than it is about the situation. Like there’s something about this scenario for whatever reason that makes you uncomfortable and you are trying to justify that by saying, “Oh, it’s the show that did something wrong, it’s the producers. It’s not something that I need to look at more in myself.” [Courtney ums in agreement] And at least for people who are also on the spectrum watching this, some of that could just be because we internally have been told this is not the way you’re supposed to act in front of people. And I guess that goes– That goes for neurotypical people as well. I think that a lot of people in general, neurotypical people included, are sort of shamed out of their childhood interests.

Courtney: Oh, absolutely.

Royce: And they might not admit to that, because they justify it as, “Well, this is just what you do when you grow up.” But that doesn’t mean that change is real or justified or that it needs to happen.

Courtney: And you know, probably the strongest aspect of this show is just how different it is from other shows. And I know that that is not a benefit to a lot of people. Some people want it to feel more like other shows. But, to be honest, do you know how many times I have tried to finish the Minneapolis season of Love is Blind? I’ve completely given up at this point. It is so boring to me. I cannot finish it because all the seasons are starting to bleed together, because so many of these cast members follow exactly the same patterns. They have the same conversations, they make the same allonormative talking points. And I don’t actually see hardly anything in them that makes me want to root for them, that makes me relate to them. It’s just a slog.

Courtney: But we watch this show and we have these conversations about social norms and, from our perspective, as two people who were not diagnosed with autism as kids, we fully met each other, got married and then, after a couple years of marriage, started learning more about autism and going, “Oh wait, that sounds an awfully lot like us.” It’s so fascinating to watch this show now. Because, even though we may not be in the same area of the spectrum as the cast members are, there are little things here and there where it’s like, “Oh yeah, that me. Yeah, I do that. Yep, that’s relatable.” And so a lot of people will also say well, this show is just for, you know, an allistic viewpoint; this is just for non-autistic people to watch these autistic castmates. I don’t necessarily think that’s true.

Courtney: I mean, it was an autistic friend of mine who recommended the show in the first place. We tend to– I don’t even necessarily think we learn new things by watching it, but it certainly fosters much deeper conversation between the two of us once the episode is over than any of the weird allo reality shows that we’ve watched. Because, for example, something I imagine is very weird for neurotypical people watching it is just how fast some of the relationships seem to move. On the very successful dates, even if it’s a very successful first date, it is not uncommon for the two of them to start talking about, like, “What would our wedding look like? Should we get married here?” On, like, the first date. Which normally, from, you know, a neurotypical standpoint, it’s like don’t talk about marriage, you’re going to scare them away if you move too quickly.

Courtney: We had instances of relationships where maybe, the second date, they’re saying the L word, they’re saying I love you. It’s only the second time they’ve ever met in person. Or in the case of one of the relationships, actually the– the woman we already mentioned with the American Girl dolls, she had a very, very successful date and a very successful second date and they kissed on that second date. All right, that alone is probably you know, that’s– that’s what people would call a quote a ‘normal’ timeline.

Courtney: But then, third date, is meeting the parents and they also just started making out right in front of the parents. And the parents were very uneasy about it. They were happy for her, but they were also like, “Whoa, what is going on?” And then they are, you know, saying I love you already and that had us talking about like, mh, so autistic relationships, they can be really strong really fast, huh? That kind of sounds like us. And that actually ended up turning into a broader conversation about neurodivergence and queerness. Because we have had lesbian friends tell us that we are better lesbians than them because we U-hauled harder.

Royce: Yeah, there’s been this whole conversation that has happened a few times about just the identifying aspects of different queer groups. And I think the first time that this came on our radar was occasionally hearing some people say that they’ve never met a bisexual person who could sit in a chair properly. [Courtney laughs] And it’s like, no, that is a neurodivergent trait. But then, thinking back on it, there’s the whole “if not straight, must be gay” sort of thing, where any anything that is clearly not a– what’s seen as a sort of– not even just a straight attribute, but a status quo attribute, like a masculine man, feminine woman sort of archetype.

Courtney: Must be queer.

Royce: Well, in this instance, you know, early binary thinking, must be gay explicitly. And so there are a lot of things like…

Courtney: The gay hand! [chuckles]

Royce: The relaxed wrist, like arm out, hand sort of flopping sort of thing. Which is all over like the autism areas of TikTok or Twitter.

Courtney: Yeah the T-rex hands.

Royce: Right.

Courtney: Floppy hands. But like, yeah, think about it. Like, that was a visual cue that was culturally associated with gay men in particular. Like you’ll, you’ll see tv shows or cartoons where, like, the gay character has the gay hand, like– And– and usually like the gay accent too, and you’ll probably– Like, I picture him saying like, “Sister.” Like, while doing the floppy hand. And then you learn like, well, that’s a very common, like, autism posture.

Royce: Yeah, and so the thought was how many of these other little visual or social cues that are associated with an orientation or something like that actually have some kind of roots in neurodivergence, knowing that there is a statistically significant correlation. Like there are more people who are queer, who are also neurodivergent, than there are that are, you know, heteronormative.

Courtney: Yes, amongst the neurodivergent population, like if you separate the neurodivergent from the neurotypicals, the percentage of queerness in the neurodivergent population is higher. There are many studies that say this. And I hate that sometimes it’s still controversial to say that, because a lot of queer people also still want to be like, “Well, we don’t want to inherently be associated with a neurodivergence or a disability.” You know these are issues we’ve talked about a lot in the past.

Royce: Yeah.

Courtney: But it is true and it should honestly be celebrated. That is a great thing.

Royce: I also think that there’s a– I mean this is speculation, no studies have been done at this point, but I also think there’s a very logical reason for that, in that we said earlier, there’s a whole neurodivergent approach to social views that’s like, “Fuck the expectations, I’m going to be the person that I am.”

Courtney: Yes.

Royce: And it might just be that there are a significantly higher percentage of queer people in the world and it’s harder for neurotypical people to break away from those societal expectations.

Courtney: So you’re saying it’s the neurotypical ones who are masking, masking the queerness. But yeah, we, we. The further we rode that train of thought it’s like, yeah, we’ve got the gay hand, we’ve got the bisexual chair sitting, we’ve got the lesbian U-hauling. I can equate all of these to neurodivergence. Oops! The one thing I don’t think we have is a neurodivergent body piercing. But I would like to propose that we create one, because you’ve got like, the gay ear, right? The ear piercing. We talked about that.

Royce: Who knows which ear it’s supposed to be?

Courtney: Who knows which ear it’s supposed to be anymore. [laughs] But yeah, if we’ve got a gay ear piercing, I think we need a– Although, I’ve got a lot of neurodivergent friends who are heavily pierced, so. Maybe it’s more of a quantity than a placement.

Royce: Yeah, I mean, I think that there are some facial piercings that seem to be correlated with the idea of a non-binary person. Different group, but–

Courtney: Non-binary nose piercing. Because, yeah, and as I have made the case before, the attempt to distance the intersectional nature of a lot of these conversations, the attempt of the queer community to distance from neurodivergence, the attempt of, you know, the asexual community to try to distance from disabilities. A lot of those are a fear for a perceived lack of humanity. The queer community might say we’re already fighting for our humanity, we’re already fighting for our rights and to be seen, dare I say, as valid. But that fundamentally reinforces the fact that, well, neurodivergence or disability does diminish one’s perceived humanity and that’s not good. We should all be standing together and say you are all equally human, regardless of what any of your identities are or how many of them you have. That may be intersectional.

Courtney: So it does at least make me very glad that they do have queer members of the cast and that you do see people going on– In this recent season we had a bisexual woman who said that she’s currently more interested in dating women, and she went on her first date with a woman. And had her first kiss with a woman. So you get to see that. And I’m glad that the show did not shy away from queerness, because that would have been a glaring hole if they have an entire cast, multiple seasons, of autistic people and they’re all straight. No, that’s not how that works. Although, putting a pin in that, I’m going to bring this back around to asexuality and aromanticism.

Courtney: On that date – and I loved her and I loved them and I loved their date – she has the ‘loves trains’ brand of autism in a way that was so infectious. She almost had me loving trains. But she said something offhandedly that I have seen misinterpreted in conversations about this show after the season. She said something about, like, being diagnosed with Asperger’s and then she said, very validly, “But we don’t say Asperger anymore because of the Nazi.” Beautiful, perfectly said. I know exactly what you’re talking about. However, there were some neurotypical audience members who do not actually know the history of that word.

Royce: Oh, I see where this is going.

Courtney: They were saying– Like some people– It’s funny when people try to explain this like, “Oh, for any of you who didn’t understand this comment,” and then they say something wrong as an explainer. They chalked it up to Elon Musk.

Royce: Yeah.

Courtney: And they’re like, “Because Elon Musk has Asperger’s, so now we don’t say that word.” It’s like you’re correct in the sense that Elon Musk is a Nazi.

Royce: Yeah.

Courtney: You are incorrect which Nazi we’re talking about when we say Asperger’s. And that’s because Hans Asperger, for whom Asperger is named, was a Nazi. And the whole idea of like Asperger versus autism is like, you know, if you have Asperger’s, maybe you get to live, maybe you’re just normal enough. Like it was very much rooted in ableism and eugenics. And so, very naturally, as we start to reconcile with this history, a lot of people in autism conversations say, you know, first of all, we’re separating Asperger’s as if it is a completely different thing, and if it’s, you know, quote, ‘less autistic’, and they’re not only trying to reframe it like you are not more or less autistic, but there are– It is a spectrum. There are different manifestations, there are different autistic traits that you may or may not have. People have different support needs, but you are not more or less. So that’s one reason to reframe it.

Courtney: But also, yeah, do we really want to be saying people have Asperger’s when the guy who coined that term didn’t have particularly scrupulous reasons for even creating the term in the first place? And so that is in fact, the Nazi that she was talking about. I kind of found it funny when I saw people saying, like, “Oh, what was that comment about? Oh, it’s because Elon Musk has Asperger’s.” No, no. Which I, despite the fact that it clearly went over the heads of a lot of viewers who aren’t privy to these sort of inter community conversations, I was glad to see that because they also have, you know, cast members who have very controversial opinions, like some– Some have a very positive view of Autism Speaks, for example, which a lot of people in the autistic community consider to be a hate group. And I can never know what sort of conversations they’re having in the editing room about what conversations to keep in versus what to leave out.

Courtney: But in the instance of one couple, they both like, volunteer or work with Autism Speaks on various things. And they will say that, you know, Autism Speaks helped them and their family and they want to give back. And if that’s something that a couple ends up connecting on, that the two of them both work with Autism Speaks, then that kind of is an important part of them forming a connection with each other. But a lot of people will be upset seeing Autism Speaks framed in a positive light, without any other sort of context that other people would not be aware of. So I can’t say it’s a perfect balance, because then you have someone saying, like, “We don’t call it Asperger’s anymore because of the Nazi.” That’s also not adding a lot of extra context. So kind of in both senses, an audience member who doesn’t know much about Hans Asperger or doesn’t know much about Autism Speaks will still need to, at the end of the day, do their own research if they’re going to come to any real conclusion on how they feel about conversations like this.

Courtney: So sometimes I’m able to see other sort of social parallels in the show, showing different points of view that can complement each other, but not always. To go back to the alcohol instance, for example, I was really glad that they left in James’s commentary about, like, not all adults drink alcohol. And because then there were a couple other instances, Dani is another cast member we’ve seen for multiple seasons now, in this season she’s been in a relationship with a man for a year now and she has a really, really difficult conversation with him. And she comes back home to her family, who I don’t recall how they’re related. They aren’t mom and dad, but I think they are family, I don’t know if it’s like aunt and uncle or something. And she comes home after like a really bummer of a date. She’s like, “I’m questioning the future of this relationship now,” and you know her family’s just like, “Keep talking, I’ll make us margaritas.” And just like makes margaritas, and like hands it to her. Which is like that’s a very specific type of alcohol culture.

Courtney: Like someone has a bad day. You’re like, “I’ll get you a drink.” You know? So you have that, which you know is the – quote – more societal norm about it, so. But then you have a couple who have been together three years and they’re on their three-year anniversary, and they’re going to a wine tasting and neither of them likes the wine. And one of them even– He’s– Someone asked him how he liked the wine and he’s like, “I’ve been pretending to drink it.” He was just putting the glass up to his mouth and wasn’t even drinking it. So it was really fascinating to see, here’s the couple that don’t actually like alcohol but are either trying to drink it anyway or at least pretending to try to drink it.

Royce: Well they were– They were pretending specifically for, like, cheers and photo ops and things like that. Like there was a social reason to have a glass in hand and be participating.

Courtney: Mm-hmm. And then we have Dani, who’s like, “Man, I had a rough date, I need a margarita.” And then we have James, who does drink, clearly, but he’s like, “It’s not that deep, it’s not that big of a deal, it’s just another type of beverage and has nothing to do with adulthood.” So I like that sometimes you’re able to see a theme across multiple stories. However, to take it back to Dani’s story, she is with a man named Adan, and I have very complex feelings about their relationship trajectory this season. And it’s made even more complex by the fact that they’re really the only couple this season who have had any type of conversation about sex and therefore this is the one story we get about that. So we don’t really have the same diversity of opinions or experiences that we might get with other aspects of a relationship in a show like this.

Courtney: And essentially, she and Adan seem to have a great relationship. They’ve been together a year. They seem very happy. However, Dani wants a sexual relationship and Adan does not. Adan never uses the word asexual, nor do I know whether or not that word would mean anything to him if it were presented to him as an option, but I’m still obviously watching this relationship from an asexual point of view and it becomes a relationship dynamic that we are often very critical of in other contexts. I mean, we’ve done like r/DeadBedrooms and we’ve had conversations about the type of allonormative relationship where someone might say, “Literally everything is perfect except we don’t have enough sex,” and sort of questioning why that sometimes becomes a deal breaker for people. Because it’s certainly not a perspective that we can directly relate to.

Courtney: And I do like Dani, however. And I do ultimately feel like I empathize with her the way it was presented. I empathize greatly with both of them. I was really heartbroken for them in this season, both of them. But they ultimately end up walking away and breaking up. But all the steps leading up to it, the conversation was basically Dani is an animator and she, like, made a little cartoon for their one year anniversary. That ended with them, like, jumping into bed, and then you see, like, the covers moving up and down and it says like, “Is it time to do the deed?” And so like, what a fascinating way to ask someone to sleep with you. Honestly points for creativity.

Courtney: And Adan seems pretty caught off guard. She asks, “Would you be open to it?” And he kind of says like, “Yeah, I’d be open to it.” Uh, which was a bit of a miscommunication because he meant I’d be open to thinking about this and she thought he was open to having sex. But that was not his final answer.

Courtney: He still needed to think about it and ultimately his justification that he puts forward is based in religion. He says he doesn’t believe in sex before marriage, and that’s always a tricky balancing act to talk about when talking about asexuality, because people are very quick to say asexuality isn’t celibacy, asexuality isn’t for religious reasons. Sometimes asexuality is dismissed as not a valid sexual orientation because people will say, “Oh, you just have religious trauma and that’s something you need to get over.” But I mean, I don’t want to totally dismiss the possibility that this is just, you know, the second camp of autistic person who takes the rules and is like, “These are the rules and this is how it must be,” because that could always be a facet of it.

Courtney: I don’t know Adan personally, but he does seem very uncomfortable with things that are physical, even outside of sexual activity. Like there’s a moment when Dani tries to, like, kiss his ear and he’s like not having it. He’s like nope. He’s like, “That– that is a boundary of mine, please respect.” And so she backs away. She’s like, “Okay, I respect your boundaries.” So it’s really like anything physical outside of, just like a kiss on the lips. He starts really shying away and asking to take it back a step. And oftentimes we know there are people who are raised very religious and some people who are in fact very religious. But if there is a situation of even a religious person with, say, someone allosexual with a very high libido and does enter into a relationship, we know that things do happen outside of marriage anyway. Tale as old as time. We know that just because someone holds a religious belief doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re going to stick to that to the letter of the law.

Courtney: And I’m less interested in like– I certainly don’t want to analyze, like, “Could Adan actually be asexual?” That’s not the point of this conversation at all. But I do think it’s very, very telling in the way they talk about sex, the two of them. Just the language they use. Because Dani will use phrases that we often heavily criticize, that many people in society will say. She’ll, for example, use the word intimacy as a stand-in for sex. When she says intimacy she means ‘to have sex with’. And we often talk about how that’s not the only kind of intimacy. You can have an intimate relationship without sex. But she will sometimes take it a step further. She’ll even say, “What is an adult relationship without intimacy?” So, as she’s asking these questions and as she’s talking about it, it’s clear that not only is this something that she does personally want, but she has this, like, existential concern about this is not a real, like fully fledged relationship without sex.

Courtney: Which we know better than anyone to not be true. However, very, very subtle difference – I’m sure most people watching this show went right over their head – when Adan is talking about it, he specifically says sexual intimacy. He doesn’t just say the word intimacy to mean sex, and that to me feels like a very clear intention, a very clear perspective he’s coming from. It’s a very subtle way of telling me that he does believe that intimacy can exist separated from sex. Now, whether or not that means he truly does want sex after marriage, or if he never does, these are questions we don’t know about him. But we know he’s still fundamentally thinking about a romantic relationship from a different perspective than what she is. One that I can relate to a lot more, because I’m always saying that sex and intimacy are not synonymous.

Courtney: I also found it very interesting because Adan does have a conversation with his father at one point about this. And since he’s from a religious household, and he’s citing religion as the main reason why he does not want to, as they say, do the deed, at least not yet, I was wondering if his family was going to have a really harsh stance on that. But I actually got the impression from his dad that his dad was not externally pressuring him one way or another. It actually seemed like a pretty balanced conversation and instead of steering him toward, “Yeah, don’t have sex before marriage.” He sort of was saying like, “Well, what do you want? How are you going to tell her?” And when Adon says, you know, “She’s gonna be really upset when I tell her.” He’s like, “Well, don’t speak for her. You know, you– you two have to have this conversation yourself.” So it was, to me at least, what was shown on camera, an internal desire more than anything to wait until marriage than external from the family.

Courtney: That doesn’t necessarily mean that that couldn’t have been impressed externally from the family, like earlier in life at a time where that just really stuck, but in the here and now that was not the impression I got. And when they have their final conversation that ultimately leads to them breaking up, Dani will say things like, “Well, I want an adult relationship and I want to go on trips with you.” And everything that isn’t literally sex, he’s like, “I want that too.” He’s like, “I want to go on trips with you too, and we can still go on trips without having sexual intimacy. That’s still a thing we can do.” And she ultimately kind of says like, no, she’s like, “I get that this is your boundary, but you know, my boundary is I want to have sex in a relationship,” kind of a thing. And so he very dejectedly just kind of says, “Well, it sounds like without sexual intimacy, you think we can only be friends.” And she basically confirms that.

Courtney: And so that question alone also– Like, he’s understanding that she can only ever see this as a friendship if it doesn’t go to what I’m sure she’s thinking as the next level, even though we try not to think about relationships in terms of level or tiers. I can just tell that that is not how he views it. That is not fundamentally how he’s framing a relationship. And since Dani is kind of the cast member who’s been around the longest, we’ve seen a lot more of her story, it’s weird to call someone like a main character in a documentary like this, because Adan is very much an equal cast member in this season in isolation, but we’ve seen a lot more of Dani over time. It does kind of concern me, just perspective wise. Considering, the show is already coming from a point of relationships, romantic relationships, dating long-term in some cases, often with the eventual end goal of marriage for a lot of these folks. I don’t think what they did was bad. Because you saw them both completely devastated. And you saw them both sort of alone with their feelings after this conversation. It wasn’t that they just exclusively focused on Dani.

Courtney: But we know that sex in relationships is the societal norm. People who don’t have sex in relationships or don’t want sex in relationships are the weird ones. And so my concern is that the average viewer will empathize a lot more with Dani. And the comments of, you know, what is a relationship without intimacy. And the overall framing of the show also being very, you know, monogamous as well. They might show queer relationships, but they’re all showing people who are monogamously minded, it really never strays too far outside of the ordinary. And I think it would be a much more well-rounded show if there were more conversations about sex and probably a wider variety of sexualities as well. Because we have a relationship that doesn’t work, they break up, because they’re not having sex. We don’t really have a parallel story of you know: here’s an autistic couple who have a thriving sex life. You know? And part of that could just be personal, like maybe they don’t want to talk about that aspect on camera, you know, but.

Royce: Part of it’s also like they’re– Dani and Adan had been together for a year. There was another couple, Abbey and David I believe, who were talking about getting married. They had been together for three years.

Courtney: Yeah, they’re the ones from the wine tasting.

Royce: Yeah. But aside from that, almost everyone else on the show is dating and getting into early relationships, and we don’t see much more past the first couple of dates.

Courtney: Right. And we have, for example, James with his, you know, just sort of talking about whatever progressive opinion he’s got on his mind, like with a group of friends and his like brand new girlfriend, he did just start talking about like contraception. And he’s like, “They should make a, like, a pill for men for contraception, because I would absolutely take that, because it’s as much a male’s responsibility as the woman’s and–” But he doesn’t want a vasectomy, so he’d rather have a male birth control pill. And so like, he’d have that conversation. But that was absolutely only phrased as like, “Here’s a wider societal observation I have an opinion,” and not an interpersonal conversation with someone he’s in a relationship with. So that wasn’t like we’re actively planning contraception in the context of our own relationship. That was just him talking about broader society.

Courtney: But it would just be awfully nice if they do have a relationship that’s going to end because one party is not ready for sex and the other is, if they also had a sexless relationship that was going very strong. And like we never really have that conversation with Abbey and David, so I have no idea what their deal is, so I don’t particularly want to speculate one way or the other because it’s just not made clear to us. But I also know a lot of autistic asexual people. And as far as I can tell, there’s at least no one who’s coming on to the show saying, “Yes, I am asexual and I’m trying to date.” Because that would also, you know, could present a new perspective or set of issues. Or it could lead to them finding a happy relationship and showing what that would look like. And that would be groundbreaking for television to see something like that.

Courtney: Because even the story of Dani and Adan, it was never presented as a perfectly valid option to never want sex in a relationship. Because, regardless of what Adan’s future or, you know, desires actually end up being, it was no sex until marriage, no sex until then. “I’m not ready for sex, yet.” We don’t have an example of someone who is saying, “I don’t want sex, maybe forever.” And we just– we know very, very well that the average viewer has never considered such a thing. So, especially in a show where I know a lot of people are, perhaps even for the first time, watching a show with a huge cast of autistic people and really starting to maybe even confront their own biases about autism, I know they’re doing it from a frame of, “Look, they’re just like us, they want a relationship just like us. They want love just like us. They want sex just like us.” I can’t help but feel that the ultimate takeaway from the show can’t veer too far away from the status quo.

Courtney: And I do think, because they sort of recap at the end of the season like where everyone’s at now and it’s like, oh, Dani’s, you know getting back out there, or this couple is still together, that couple is still together. I believe Adan was the only one where it was like he’s not dating, he’s decided to focus on his studies. Very, very interesting to me. Because, of course, even though we can sort of look at that from an asexual point of view, it’s a lot more bleak to look at this show from, like, an aromantic point of view. Because there is just absolutely no room for this, for aromanticism in a show like this.

Courtney: We can, at least theoretically, wish for asexual representation, and we can say, hey, it actually would fit in and it would complement other storylines, and here’s what they could do, whether or not we think they will.

Courtney: But there’s no room in a show like this for a romantic representation, because the point is romance. And the point is a very specific type of humanizing romance that can be very, very alienating to aro people. And here’s an interesting little anecdote also, because I think a couple years ago I looked up a casting call for Love on the Spectrum. And at the time I looked at a casting call, they were looking for autistic people looking for or in a relationship, and it kind of said we’re looking for people at all stages of relationships. And at that time I was like, “Oh, that would be interesting.” What if they had, you know, autistic couple who’s been married for several years, like show– show autistic, just like, domestic married life. They’ve been together 10 years and they’re just living their life. That would– That would be a cool supplement to the people who are, you know, just going to speed dating events and trying to find someone to start dating.

Courtney: The latest casting call I saw was specifically for autistic singles looking for love. So over time they have changed what they’re looking for. And even from that original casting, what they were saying, the only long-term couple here, the couple that was here three years, we’ve seen them in previous seasons. So we’ve been with them in their journey on this show for a while, so it’s not as if they came on the show already being in a three-year relationship. So it seems like the only long-term relationships they have are ones that were newer, ones that were made on the show, and now we’re just sort of watching their story as it plays out. So I also think that says something very interesting about, maybe, the change in priorities of the show and the fact that they didn’t have relationships cast from all different perspectives. They didn’t cast someone who’s, you know, engaged and we didn’t get to see their wedding planning, you know.

Courtney: I’m sure they’re probably hoping that a couple will get married and they’ll get to follow that in a previous season. I’m sure that would be, you know, enjoyable, not only for the producers but the audience. And so if they’re not even interested in a new, like pre-established, stable, happy, healthy couple, to maybe just show a different place in one’s life, in a different stage of a relationship, people in different areas of the autism spectrum, then it really just shows that they’re narrowed in on looking for– looking for love, new relationships, new love. And that’s not only a narrow view of love, from an alloromantic point of view even. But there would never, ever be any room for, you know, here is an aromantic autistic person who is happy being simple but has– there would never, ever be room for, say, an aromantic autistic person who is happy being single and doesn’t want a relationship but has a really close knit group of friends.

Courtney: We don’t– we don’t even get to see any autistic people raising children. The– the coach is autistic and has autistic children, so we know those people exist, but we don’t see that. We don’t see that on the show.

Courtney: So it is still a narrow and normative view, and that is my biggest critique of it. But at the same time it does just make me happy in a way that other shows about love and dating don’t. Other shows about love and dating make me miserable, they make me cranky, and I couldn’t even finish the latest season of Love is Blind. I heard there’s a new Love is Blind: Sweden coming out, though, so I will be watching that one. But that will be the last one. No more Love is Blind, unless I can also get my Swedish language practice in.

Courtney: But I do come away really rooting for these people. And even Dani, who I will absolutely critique the way she talks about intimacy and the way she views romantic relationships as being synonymous with sexual ones.

Courtney: Those things I can critique, but I still started crying when she got off that phone call breaking up with Adan, and she just burst into tears. I was equally crying for Adan, who was completely broken up about it. The way it was presented it’s like I feel bad for these two people. I really, really do. I was rooting for them and I’m still rooting for both of them. I hope Adan gets whatever type of relationship he wants and I hope Dani can have the sexual relationship of her dreams. I really do. And I just don’t feel that way about other couples on other shows. I really don’t, so. And like, [sighs] what’s the name of the two, the two women? The one who loves trains? Pari and Tina, I love them. I love them so much and like I was rooting for them so hard. Pari was like, “I want to have my first kiss with a girl, like that’s what I want.” I’m like, “I hope you get that baby.” I am, I am rooting for you. I want you to have that first kiss.

Courtney: And then– then they have their first kiss. They have a couple of lovely dates. And she’s also, because she loves trains so much, and she’ll– like her train system is called The T where she lives, and so she’ll tell people like, “Have a T-rrific day.” And as she’s just totally twitterpated with this new woman, she’s like, “Do you think she’ll ride The T with me?” And I’m sitting here and I’m like, “If I don’t get to see these two ride The T together, I will riot. I want that for them so bad.” And then in the little after thing, “Where are they all today?” They’re still together and it did show footage of them getting on The T together. And I was like, “Yes! She did it!” [chuckles]

Courtney: So absolutely a show that does not deserve to be lumped in with the other weird allo reality shows. It’s not fully above critique but it is enjoyable to me. And, I think, fosters more conversation and introspection than the average show about love and dating does.

Courtney: So, on that note, I have the perfect MarketplACE vendor to feature for today’s topic, and that is Queer Autistic Things. A queer autistic store by a non-binary, multiracial, Black, neurodivergent, DID, plural system on the ace and aro spectrums. There are all sorts of very cool designs here that you can get in a variety of things. Like you can get stickers, get it on a t-shirt. Of course, for us, we got the design that says Autistic Ace in purple with some little flower flourishes. But you’ve got all sorts of Pride colors. You’ve got Aromantic Pride colors. You’ve got, you know, rainbow colors, and then you’ve got Trans colors as well. You’ve got designs that say Trans and Ace. You’ve got a lot of the infinity symbol, which certainly the more progressive side of the autistic community has adopted, especially in lieu of the Autism Speaks puzzle piece.

Courtney: And for those of you listeners who are not autistic, not everything here is about neurodivergence. They have just some straight Pride designs. So they’ve got a little something for everyone too. They have aroace, they have demisexual, they have ace space designs with a UFO. And, ooh, even an ace and disabled sticker. I don’t think I’ve seen that one yet. I might need to get that one too, to be perfectly honest. So definitely check them out. Links to Queer Autistic Things will be in the show notes on our website, as well as the description on YouTube. So, as always, thank you so much for being here, and we will talk to you all next time. Goodbye.