Actually Autistic. You can’t act us. Without being us… That’s just tourism on the cheap.
Cold Open
Betty White, Seven of Nine & Rain Man walk into a bar…
The bartender asks ’em, “What can I get you?”
Rain Man: “Vodka tonic. 8:30 is Jeopardy! Yes, definitely. Definitely 8:30.”
Seven of Nine sez…?
“This is it! This is it!”
Being married… to the right partner? Means never having to say you’re sorry… for trying to share your guilty pleasures with them.
Ain’t that the whole point?
I want to share my fave Star Trek icon with Kimmie. And it ain’t Picard.
“There she is! That’s her! Season 4, episode 2. ‘Scorpion.’ Part II.” Dramatic pause. “Seven of Nine!”
I can’t contain my fanboy glee. Eyes glued to the screen, I start selling my wife, “You love strong women. You got your badass June Osborne and your killer Baldwin in Counterpart. But you are not going to believe this be-otch!”
And out she struts. Actress Jeri Ryan with all the grotesque cyborg implants circling one eye. More gizmos all over her body. And then there’s that grey-green skin.
The very incarnation of Borg evil. But somehow like all the Star Trek women? Used and abused. By absurdly sexist writers and costume designers. Catsuit. Impossible Barbie figure. A 13-year-old straight male’s wet dream. But… a Borg! Talk about Bad Girl fantasies…
Seven of Nine’s my fave autistic-coded character of all time. Cuz, well…
I’m an auDHD,
gender-queasy,
no-sex without love… if then,
aromantic ACE.
Not full-blown enby. But fucking close. A just over-the-line self-identified male. But I can’t for the life of me fit the role of society’s male- or female-coded roles. Even if I happen to wear a relatively masculine, decent-enough-looking, bedroom-voiced body on the outside. Confusing a fair number of men and women… gay and straight… in my time.
So Seven of Nine is like some really cool, surreal drag queen. To me.
“We are Borg. Resistance is futile.” Her calm, oddly hostile, flat voice… gives me chills. Of self-recognition.
Kimmie rolls her eyes. Naturally that leads me into an embarrassingly defensive infodump on autistic-coded characters. Like I can bury my 6th grade, sci-fi–fueled fanboy adoration under a mountain of detail…
Sparing you all the autistic details I loaded on Kimmie… here’s the highlight reel.
I explain every Star Trek™ branded clone has its own non-emotional, non-human outsider.
They always begin with mixed feelings about humanity.
But eventually they all get won over to the view, “Gee, humanity actually is really swell.”
It all traces back to The Original Series’s sainted Spock. But Seven of Nine stands alone, all-but- naked and weird in that long line of harmless human cheerleaders. Hostile, defensive, an air of violence.
Then I give Kimmie a rogue’s gallery of other characters. All feel like stand-ins for pop culture’s feelings about us, I say.
Nobel Laureate John Nash in A Beautiful Mind… called schizophrenic. But sure looks like a cartoon Aspie to this guy… I once identified as Asperger’s.
And then there’s The Accountant. A movie like a car wreck for me. Revolting stereotypes, but I couldn’t look away from the damage on the screen. Cuz Ben Affleck’s “moment” trying to emote an autistic meltdown? Caused by switching tasks?
“I’m going to finish this job.”
Um, well, I saw myself. Real testy when my hyperfocus gets broken… Ex-wives saw stubbornness, meanness. Me? Trying to keep my brain intact.
Seven of Nine may be the queen of my heart. But she’s the end, not the whole story…
Then there’s Betty White: TV’s Patron Saint of Autism…?
Before The Big Bang Theory, before Atypical, before freaking Rain Man…
Like Forrest Gump, nobody labeled her autistic, but PLEASE…
There was Betty White.
Did anyone ever try harder to be prim, proper, AND liked…?
Was anyone ever so socially inappropriate…?
Did anyone ever deliver such devastating truth, in so few words, when you least expect it…?
Did anyone ever have less of a clue in social situations…?
Was anyone ever so undyingly…
Mocked?
Dorothy: “All right Rose, just the ending, but keep it short.”
Rose: “Splat!”
Um, literal much?
Rose: “And Agnes said you were a lot of hot air, and you said she was just jealous ’cause she wasn’t getting any. And I said, ‘Getting any what?’ And [Dorothy] said, ‘Rice pudding rolls.’”
Textbook missing the unspoken social/sexual layer of a conversation. Dorothy naturally pulls her sardonic mockery move.
It could be Crowe’s Nash is everyone’s secret favorite undiscovered smart autistic. Even if the movie has little to do with the real Nash…
But Betty White’s TV character(s) has got to be my heart’s first love.
But much as I love her, every autistic-coded screen character gives me the creeps. Lives in that Uncanny Valley of close-but-off-enough…
To make my gut tighten… and give me the Screaming Meemies.
See, you can’t act us. Without being us.
Or write us. Or direct us. Or anthologize us.
That’s just tourism to our world… on the cheap.
Picking up manufactured “native” artifacts.
That’s colonialist cultural appropriation at best.
Damaging stereotypes at worst.
But here’s that joke I promised…
And you been waiting so patiently for. Since the title.
Betty White, Seven of Nine & Rain Man walk into a bar…
The bartender asks ’em, “What can I get you?”
Rain Man: “Vodka tonic. 8:30 is Jeopardy! Yes, definitely. Definitely 8:30.”
Seven of Nine…? “Ethanol is an inefficient chemical compound. I am Borg. I do not require social lubricants. Resistance is futile.”
But, Rose… “Oh, in St. Olaf, when three people walk into a bar, we bring freshly squeezed potato juice and a bucket of smoked herring!”
The bartender looks at them, sighs. Rolls his eyes. Turns to me, sitting half-baked, quietly on my stool: “Are your friends here going to order anything, or what?”
I just look at him and say, “Honestly? I’m just relieved I finally found my cool kids’ table.”
Dear reader…
Thanks for hanging in there with me as I took this walk through the funhouse of 20th Century pop culture. And all the many layers of feeling media culture holds for me.
I love layering. I am auDHD. Resistance is futile.
- If this fragment grabbed you… binge them all in order here: The Book: Frag by Frag.
These fragments are from my upcoming autobiography, Autistic Noir: My Life is My Art, arriving Fall 2026.
I’m building a book out loud. Fragment by fragment. Just like I lived it.
The Next Act
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Why I Write My Autobiography
I’m only an expert on my own life. Born 1953, diagnosed at 63. Your mileage will vary.
Individual minority voices speaking truth out loud? They build bridges to mainstream readers. Think Malcolm X. Think Maya Angelou, Think Janet Mock’s Redefining Realness.
This Fall, I hope to deliver that kind of impact, that power with My Autistic Life is My Art. For our neurodivergent community.
Since 2019 I’ve published a quarter of a million words. Over half the size of the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
Gotta be a pony somewhere in that shit.
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