[Pride 2021] Bug People: The Pitfalls of Dating While Autistic and Finding Myself in Sick Girl

There isn’t a lot of great autistic representation out there. As autistics, we are still very much at the mercy of big corporations who seem to think that all autistics fall into one of a very few categories: burdens for our families, walking computers or magical creatures who speak in riddles. If Power Rangers (2017) counts among the best autistic representation in media, something is wrong. Most representation of autistics present us as male, cisgender, straight, young, white and sexless. Other depictions are rare. But because autistic people tend to be more regularly queer or genderqueer than the neurotypical population, it is a bit of a surprise that film representation does not really follow suit. So autistic people tend to seek representation where it isn’t specifically stated out loud: we tend to headcanon certain characters as autistic. I’ve seen Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation, Will Graham from the Hannibal TV series and The Crystal Gems from Steven Universe mentioned as examples. I, for one, headcanon Ida Teeter and Misty Falls of the Lucky McKee film Sick Girl as autistic, because the performances and narrative lend themselves particularly well to a discussion of the pitfalls of dating while autistic. 

Ida Teeter (Angela Bettis) and Misty Falls (Erin Brown)

You see, dating while autistic, especially when you are queer, can be fraught. In queer circles, a lot of the normal dating experiences—including dating apps, clubs, hook-up culture, a focus on appearances and first impressions—run counter to the comfort zones of autistic people. Dating apps are a minefield of unspoken social rules. For example, the first time I was ghosted, I really did not know what was meant to be happening, socially speaking. Clubs, meanwhile, run counter to my sensory distress, as spaces where I can filter out neither sounds nor light textures. Every club looks like a particularly drugged out rave scene in Trainspotting to me, even when sober. Hook-up culture trips complicated social traps when one has a tendency to react unpleasantly to being touched unexpectedly. And a focus on appearances and first impressions isn’t ideal when your bodily control is different from others and you tend to have behavioral characteristics that society deems unnatural. Stimming, for instance, like flapping one’s hands or rocking back and forth, is a stress-regulating behaviour that is shunned by society — so much so, that an offshoot of gay conversion therapy called ABA (Applied Behaviour Analysis) is used to abuse autistic kids into not stimming anymore.

All this is to say that when autistics start dating, we tend to mask. Masking is a way to not show our autistic behaviours because society has told us again and again that we are unworthy of love if we act like ourselves. This is the dilemma Ida Teeter finds herself in at the beginning of Sick Girl. Ida is a lonely woman with a specific interest in bugs, which is also her field of work. When we meet her, she is dancing with excitement, another common type of stimming. In short order, however, she is stood up by her date, who says that bugs freak her out. So, when Ida later goes on a date with a woman named Misty Falls, she does not mention bugs at all, and tries to follow all the social rules that her neurotypical dude-bro colleague has tried to teach her. 

Masking isn’t feasible in the long run, because it tends to exhaust autistic people. Someone’s true nature will always shine through. Luckily, after Misty’s first night staying over, she finds Ida’s bug collection and is beyond ecstatic. Not a wonder, since both women have a lot in common, including a love for bugs. They are both very, very, very autistic.

For me, as both a neurodivergent viewer and a queer viewer, Misty and Ida are well-sketched examples of both autistic and queer characters. It’s in minor details, like both of them having a so-called special interest: a hobby that is more of a way of life, and all they can talk about. For Ida it’s bugs, for Misty it’s fairies. As another nice touch, if you follow online autistics, both of these special interests are very common subjects for autistic people to hyperfocus on. The other main giveaway seems to be the characters’ speech patterns. Ida talks slowly, with unusual inflections, emphasizing the wrong syllables and projecting her voice very deeply. Misty talks without pause, like a train of thought that keeps running and running and running and running. I tend to be both a Misty and an Ida when talking: Ida’s unnatural inflections combined with Misty’s word salad. 

One of the initial misunderstandings between the women occurs when Misty invites herself over, and Ida tells Misty that she is going too fast. Misty fears that Ida means to say that Misty is being too forward. However, Ida simply meant that she didn’t understand what Misty said because she was talking literally too fast. It’s a sweet and instantly recognizable misunderstanding for an autistic person, because the bluntness and honesty of the conversation, communicating very clearly, to make sure no misunderstandings remain? Yeah, that’s autistic culture. Because if we don’t, we get flack from neurotypicals. The shyness and the social awkwardness scan as autistic, as does the time Misty takes to establish eye contact, not doing so before she trusts Ida. Eye contact can be very difficult for autistics, as are social interactions with neurotypicals, which is why we tend to gravitate toward the company of animals—like Ida and her bugs.

The pitfall of dating while autistic is the question, “When do you disclose that you're autistic?” I’ve been ghosted once the word got out. I was told that this was a dealbreaker. That they didn’t want to date a “charity case.” But when not disclosing, will people think of your autistic traits as weird? Is it better that they know from the beginning? If you talk too much about your special interest, will that turn them off? Should you even talk about your special interest at all? That’s the case with Ida and her bugs. And, sometimes things work out, like with Ida and Misty — at least initially. I have thought that things worked out with someone who was destined to become an ex. But that is where the second part of Sick Girl comes in, and while the metaphor becomes a bit more gnarly and problematic, it’s also relatable in very specific ways.

You see, Ida is sent a very special bug, which she dubs Mick. Mick is a creature unlike any other bug out there, combining both male and female traits (furthering the queer metaphors on display here) and having other characteristics that are not normally found in one, single bug. Most importantly, Mick has the power to mind-control mammals by laying eggs inside their brains. Misty is Mick’s first major victim, and the brain-altering characteristics of Mick turn the shy, cheerful Misty into a loud, foul-mouthed, angry person. She is the “Sick Girl” from the title, and as the sympathetic monster at the center of the piece, has been cited by critics before as a metaphor for the othering of queer people. The monstrous other in horror films can be read against the grain by marginalized people, where the symbol of evil and anger becomes a liberating metaphor for letting go of the inhibitions imposed by normal patriarchal society. I would take this one step further: Misty’s undoing can be read as a metaphor for what autistic society refers to as “unmasking,” as seen through a predominantly neurotypical lens

For an autistic person, unmasking while dating can lead to unfortunate circumstances. When I decided to start actively stimming to regulate stress, my ex wasn’t as accommodating as I would’ve liked. He tried to pressure me back into masking, into acting ‘normal,’ even when it was just the two of us indoors. Eventually, in our last fight before I broke up with him, he held my autism against me, saying that he felt trapped when, as he put it, I became more overtly autistic. According to him, I had catfished him, basically. And that is the pitfall of masking and then subsequently unmasking. 

Misty’s behavioural changes can be seen as a metaphorical exploration of unmasking: the idea that someone changes personality overnight when the honeymoon phase of the relationship is over is something that has been held against autistics by neurotypical people time and time again. This is an overtly monstrous version of the same ordeal, but the fact that Misty and Ida come into conflict when true colors are shown once they move in together? Yeah, that rings familiar. Don’t get me wrong: this is not because masking is in any way deceitful. It is because masking is difficult, and no one can live in a way inconsistent with their very natures 24/7, and yet neurotypical society bullies autistics into attempting exactly that. 

One thing this leads to are meltdowns: involuntary fits of anger or fear, that can look like either panic attacks or tantrums. They are not tantrums. Essentially, meltdowns are the brain shutting down and going into a fight-or-flight mode, because the brain capacity has been overextended by effort, stress, or too much sensory input. Call it a short circuiting of the brain that results in either lashing out or shutting down. Misty’s brain bug does the same when Ida confronts her: Misty lashes out in anger and then shuts down, before becoming a literal monster. I’m not saying that meltdowns themselves are in any way actually monstrous. They aren’t fits of abusive anger, like in the film. I do, however, say that they have been painted as such by neurotypical culture, making the phrase ‘autistic temper tantrum’ a meme. Thus, the film becomes a metaphorical exploration of the dichotomy between what a meltdown is, versus how it is often perceived.

Sick Girl’s first half is a neurodivergent’s dream, featuring both great autistic representation—and queer autistic representation to boot! The second part of Sick Girl seems by design to be a neurotypical nightmare about autistic characters: showing neurotypical depictions of autistic culture through a monstrous lens, exaggerating it to horrific extremes. If queer people have found liberation in monstrous others I think Sick Girl can do the same for autistic queer people: showing how utterly absurd neurotypical notions of neurodivergent culture can be. Showing how the pitfalls of dating while autistic can turn into a horror show, not because autistics are the monstrous other, but because it is society that makes us feel like aliens. Bug people.

Which brings us back to actual representation versus headcanon. I asked Lucky McKee on Twitter if any of this was intentional and here was his response: “The original script was created by the great Sean Hood. I rewrote it in my own style. Wanted Angela as the lead, so I turned that character into a woman & followed where the change took me. Autistic coding wasn't intentional, but reading it that way makes total sense.” And for a genderqueer, neurodivergent audience, it does make total sense.

The grotesque ending, where both Ida and Misty have turned into such ‘bug people’ and can live together in bliss, outside of the people who push them into neurotypical or straight social molds, might be seen as horrific by some viewers. They have transformed into monsters, how is that good? But, for me as a queer autistic person, it is an absolutely defiant ending. Society treats us as less than? As bugs?

Well, here’s an image for you. Feast on it.