Gender Copia: Feminist Rhetorical Perspectives on an Autistic Concept of Sex/Gender

The prevalence of nontraditional gender identities in many autistic people raises provocative questions for feminist scholars. In particular, autistic writers often invite alternative understandings of sex/gender as a multiple, rhetorical phenomenon. Autobiographies, blogs, and Internet posts show how autistic individuals view gender as a copia, or tool for inventing multiple possibilities through available sex/gender discourses. Four particular discourses emerge through which autistic people understand gender: identification, neurodiversity, performance, and queer identity.