Autism, Sex Ed, and Advocacy
When thinking about how to teach young autistic adults self advocacy, it's critical to include this lens in sexual education, as the broad and complex space of sexuality is a crucible for pressures, stress, ambiguity, and risk. However, on the flip side, if you help individuals become comfortable advocating for themselves sexually, they can start to transfer those skills and intentions to their broader life, and feel more confident in their ability to self advocate.
As autistics transition into adulthood, it's absolutely critical for them to learn self advocacy skills, but unfortunately very rarely are these taught. Too often autistics are raised on compliance based curricula, and this can have disastrous effects in their adult lives as they are taken advantage of, manipulated, and easily forced into situations where they are discouraged from speaking up for their own wellbeing. This is a huge problem, and contributes to an epidemic of mental health struggles for autistic young adults. This absolutely impacts their sex lives as well, as autistics are more likely to face domestic abuse and sexual violence than neurotypicals, and very often struggle with articulating what works for them.
As such, it becomes imperative that sexual educators who are teaching autistics teach autistic self advocacy in intimacy. Current autistic sex ed curricula tend to be more focused on high support needs autistics- including social stories of why you shouldn't take your pants off in public- something that many lower support needs autistics likely don't really need advisement on. Many do not include things like complex and explicit conversations about consent, vetting partners, and how to get help if you're in a bad situation.
Some of the ways sexual advocacy can mirror real world advocacy include building financial advocacy (If you are in a position where there is a financial power imbalance in the relationship or you are doing sex work), building self determination (Being able to have better control over who you have sex with, when you have sex, how you have sex), medical advocacy (Seeking out reproductive healthcare, ensuring your partners are getting STI checks, understanding contraception, etc.), social advocacy (being able to identify people who are good matches, communicate your needs/intent, being able to identify when you need to get out of a relationship, asking for help), problem solving (dealing with difficult, messy situations diplomatically), digital advocacy (understanding how to safely engage with sexuality online), asking for accommodation (Working with your partner to find out what works for you, setting up safety tools, exploring kinks, navigating each others access needs, etc.), exploring your autism (Exploring your autistic sexual selves in a positive, healthy, consensual, and pleasurable way), and building self determination/assent (Being able to communicate effectively around what you want and need, and setting boundaries and understanding compromise.)
I think honestly all young adults should receive or have access to some type of sexual education like this. But especially autistics in general should learn this, as through developing these skills for one of the most complex and intimate aspects of their lives. In doing so they can build more confidence having these conversations in general, and really internalize the idea that they are deserving of respect, and are capable of successful advocacy. I'm tired of reading on autism forums, threads like, "I just had sex that felt right for the first time in my life, it was with another autistic person. I'm 45." This needs to change, and it's only going to be once we start really discussing and teaching autistic sexual advocacy that this happens.




















