in treatment i and the other autistic women present were pushed into being, essentially, unpaid live-in maids for the autistic men we lived with. i and other autistic women had personal belongings stolen and broken by autistic men for stepping out of line. there was a period of time lasting several months where i refused to eat with my housemates because i was sexually harassed almost every day at dinner. i was followed around the house, deliberately intimidated, and threatened by an autistic man, and this was not enough on its own to either assign me or him to a different residential location within the program, which would have protected me from being targeted. i retreated into myself after being constantly shouted down, humiliated, and mocked, all in a specifically gendered context. breaking objects and punching walls was part of this campaign of terror. my history of bad experiences with autistic men, explicitly because i am an autistic woman, goes back much further. in certain ways, i think the widespread poor treatment of autistic people as a group has intimidated me into silence around the phenomenon of misogyny and misogynistic violence among autistic men; they are certainly no more misogynistic or violent than allistic men, but they are a group whose misogyny and violence will always be excused and prioritized over the safety of autistic women.
every demographic of man on earth has a sizable portion who will say harm towards women comes from every other demographic of man except for theirs. the thing you’re perceiving as misogynistic danger is really something else, often something socially marginalized, so what does that make you for noticing it? if you don’t hear from women in these demographics you can safely assume they agree with the men; it’s more comfortable than wondering what is done to the women who disagree.
