'Round About Sex: Soft Core Autism Awareness

There are all sorts of ways to approach sex. Being a sex educator I tend to take the most direct route (which, ironically, doesn’t always get me there the fastest). But I learn just as much from people who get to sex from a completely different angle.

With over 750 Guides, About.com is a great place to find people talking about sex from diverse and often unexpected perspectives. In this irregular series I’m going to point to my favorite examples of sex on About.com.

This week’s post comes courtesy of Lisa Jo Rudy, About.com’s Guide to Autism. Lisa Jo blogged about a series of short public service videos meant to raise awareness around autism. To the extent that the videos include information about austim it's all from a non biomedical perspective. What is most unique about the videos is that they read like a soft core TV commercial for a hard rock radio station.

Lisa Jo doesn't hold out much hope that the videos will have an impact, writing that while the creator of the videos "may get a good deal of personal publicity for her arty and provocative style...she's also likely to get a lot of flack for her anti-feminist, disrespectful approach to autism education. She's unlikely, however, to make much impact as an educator."

I agree with her assessment of the videos impact, although I think the low impact in part is due to what are kind of amateurish productions (they look better than actual amateur productions, but they're on the nose and lack any irony). What I do like about them though is the juxtaposition of images and text that can feel awkward. How often do you see a half naked woman (who is clearly meant to read as heterosexual) with the word neurodiversity next to her boobs? As one of Lisa Jo's commentors on her blog says, if a few people see this and are curious enough to look up the term neurodiversity (or self-advocacy) then it's hard to argue the videos didn't have an impact.

Read more - Sexy Autism Ads: Clever or Catastrophic?