The Intersection of Queerness and Neurodivergence: My Story
By Ethan Gregoire he/they
Navigating Childhood Stigma and Sensory Sensitivities
Straight. That’s what they called me, and that’s what I called myself. I was diagnosed with autism at age 2, a privilege typically reserved for those who align as closely as can be to a certain set of diagnostic criteria – and those whose families have the resources to get the diagnosis. Now, given that I was a cisgender, able-bodied white boy growing up on Los Angeles’ Westside, I really wasn’t marginalized by any other means.
So I was highly averse to touch and eye contact, preferred to sit alone on the playground and stack building blocks atop one another just to see how high they’d go, and insisted on wearing a green shirt and eating buttered noodles for lunch off of a green paper plate every day? All of that could be accommodated, since they were eccentricities that weren’t doing any harm and that I could be taught to outgrow. And from preschool through high school, I eventually did. What I couldn’t outgrow was the stigma.
I was still hypersensitive to loud noises and bright lights, especially those of which I hadn’t been warned in advance. I still couldn’t make small talk with anyone, not even my own family, without it becoming awkward. And though my short-term memory was selective, my long-term memory was nothing short of incredible. Every negative social interaction I’d ever had, I could recall it as though it was the day it happened. Needless to say, I was exhausted and on the verge of collapse from all of these demons.
The Impact of Isolation on Sexuality and Identity
And to make matters worse, because I internalized all of the ostracization at school, I was too afraid to put myself out there and make any friends. It follows that all I had really learned about sex, sexuality, and gender up to that point had come from a 45-minute crash course on puberty at age 11 (with some crude jokes and memes passed around the cafeteria table to boot).
So when I occasionally developed a crush on another guy, no, I didn’t. Because I recused myself from most social interaction in high school, I missed most of the overt homophobia. But it was there, though not as much as peer pressure to conform to straight, allosexual [i.e. not asexual] expression. That’s what got me. I envied the prom king and queen, and I envied the “popular” kids gossiping about romantic and sexual encounters. I couldn’t wait to graduate, and used my cynicism as fuel to power me through to the end.
When I arrived back in Los Angeles (having lived in Denver since age 10) for my freshman year of college in fall 2018, I was socially burned out and still didn’t put myself out there enough to make any friends. I was thus detached from the dating and sexual scenes, but nonetheless taken aback by the lack of bigotry and stigma. It was a tiny, tight-knit liberal arts college in the hills, after all. But there was still intense peer pressure to have sex, especially when it meant losing one’s virginity. Hanging onto mine into the COVID-19 pandemic, I was actually rather relieved when my classes became virtual in March 2020.
Questioning My Sexuality During the Pandemic
Being back home in Denver cursed – nay, blessed – me with plenty of time to get down on myself for not having had sex. But it also left plenty of time to question my own sexuality. I’m straight. I mean, I must be. I mean, I think I’m straight. Well, actually…was the way it went. I don’t know exactly what prompted it, but I slowly began to accept the fact that my crushes on guys were not only valid, but real. By May 2021, I was certain, at long last, that I was bisexual. So I observed my family for the next month for clues on how they might react, just based on how they talked about LGBTQIA+ identity and people. Finally, on the last day of Pride Month, I came out to my immediate family.
Coming Out and Finding Support at Home
Bisexual. That’s what they called me, and that’s what I called myself. To this day, I’m deeply, deeply fortunate that both of my parents and my younger sister have been accepting and supportive from the second I came out to them. I came to realize that it was my autism that had stopped me from exploring my sexuality for so long. Not only did it render me socially awkward and lonely – it taught me via observation through those lonely lenses that I had to be straight to fit in. My next step, upon returning to campus for senior year in fall 2021, was to undo that. All of it.
But upon my return, I came to realize that maybe I hadn’t been ready to come out, and had pressured myself into doing so before Pride Month was over. Everyone else seemed much more confident in their sexualities than I was, and more sexually experienced. So I’d retreat into my dorm room – this was the only year of college I was fortunate enough not to have any roommates – and sit there feeling sorry for myself.
Cara Delevingne and the Journey Toward Self-Love
By late October, I was severely burned out. It was 2 a.m. on a Friday night, and I had a research paper due the following Monday with a 10-page minimum requirement. As you might have guessed, I hadn’t even started it. I shrugged off the impulse to begin and opened the YouTube app on my phone to scroll through my recommendations, only to stumble upon an old video of Cara Delevingne being interviewed on a late-night talk show. Up to that point, I’d known little about her, so I clicked…and was immediately inspired.
Cara motivated me, from that very moment, to become more confident in my sexuality, to stop caring what other people thought about it, and to queer my wardrobe. She taught me radical self-love – that is, not loving myself in spite of my neurodivergence and queerness, but loving those parts of myself and loving myself for them. I started to dress a bit more effeminately, stopped going to get my eyebrows plucked and kept them natural, and even applied eyeliner from time to time. And instead of trying too hard to find romantic and sexual partners, I dedicated my focus solely to pushing through the rest of college.
The Intersection of Autism and Queerness
Autistic and queer. That’s what I call myself, and that’s what they call me. I’m no longer bound by pressure to prioritize being one or the other – I’m both. Being both has clearly come with its own challenges on top of those associated with being “just” autistic or “just” queer; my identity is intersectional. But it’s taught me not to predicate my self-esteem on how sexually experienced and confident in my identity I am (though my confidence may ebb and flow from day to day, the goal is to keep it on an upward trajectory), and for that I’ll always be grateful. I hope, dear reader, that you can do the same.
Love, Ethan
