The non-disabled community has a long history of desexualizing disabled people. No matter the disability, it is assumed that they will never be able find love, have a relationship, or engage in sexual activity. Troubleshooting, by Selene dePackh and The Kiss Quotient, by Helen Hoang, both novels with autistic, female protagonists, break this stereotype, showing that these women are, in fact, capable of having and maintaining sexual and romantic relationships. Troubleshooting tells the story of an autistic woman navigating the dystopian deterioration of the United States and heightened discrimination against persons with disabilities. The Kiss Quotient is a romance about an autistic woman who wants to overcome her awkwardness with intimacy and sex, so she hires a male escort to give her sex and dating lessons, only to fall in love with him. Though the protagonists of both novels break the stereotype of disabled persons being asexual, only Scope from Troubleshooting finds empowerment in the intersections of her gender and disability, whereas Stella from The Kiss Quotient buys into the submissive stereotypes that accompany her gender and her disability.
Scope finds empowerment in testing the limits of traditional gender roles, while Stella’s femininity makes her frustratingly submissive. In working for Bern, Scope embodies a dominatrix persona which she continues to perform in future relationships. In all of her relationships and sexual liaisons, she is the initiating partner and, with both Angie and Chill, she is the penetrating partner with an artificial apparatus. In intercourse with Angie and Chill, they are restrained—by choice—but Scope is never restrained, giving her the clear upper hand. She is also on top during intercourse. Scope describes herself as a lesbian, a deviant sexuality in which the power dynamics are unclear. Scope, who might be described as Butch, takes on the traditional role of the male in her relationships with Petra, in initiating and ending it both times they get together. In her relationship with Chill, he and Scope switch gender roles, he following the more submissive script and she following the more active script. In their first sexual encounter Scope “held him down by his neck, straddled him, and told him to unzip” (dePackh 178). Later in their relationship, Scope notes, “[h]e moved into the most submissive position he’d ever offered me, urging me to take what I owned, raising his skinny bum with his inked arms stretched back so I could grip his wrists” (207). Though Scope identifies as female and Chill identifies as male, in their relationship, their gender roles swap. Despite living in a dystopian society that tries to dehumanize and disempower her, Scope asserts herself in her relationships claiming power when she can.
In The Kiss Quotient, though Stella gains a degree of empowerment by being the initiator and paying client, Michael’s masculinity and higher level of sexual experience gives him more power in their relationship. The power dynamics of sex work are complicated. In discussing the power relations of the money exchange for female sex workers, Anne McClintock points out that the moment of money changing hands is “a ritual exchange that confirms and guarantees each time the man’s apparent economic mastery over the women’s sexuality, work and time. At the same time, however, the moment of paying confirms the opposite: the man’s dependence on the woman’s sexual power and skill” (Anne McClintock 1992, 72). In this case, Stella is the one paying for Michael’s services and her money is her only source of power in the novel; in fact, by the end of the novel, Stella has donated enough money to the medical center to cover all of Michael’s mother’s bills, the reason he was escorting. She says that she wants to give him the choice to escort or not (Hoang 309). But, as McClintock notes, after the transfer of money, the power dynamic shifts back to the sex worker as the client relies on his experience. Throughout their relationship, Stella is always asking Michael if she is doing the right thing when it comes to their sex lessons. Despite being a sex worker, which is traditionally seen as a disempowering job, Michael’s masculinity makes him feel that he has a responsibility to take care of Stella, even though she has way more money than he will ever have. Even during their first meeting, Michael acts overly protective of her, feeling anger and jealousy when he hears about other men she has been with. Toward the end of the novel, Stella and Michael have broken up and Stella is trying to date other people. Michael sees her and punches the man she was with. Stella attempts to go home alone but Michael follows her. She asks him to leave her alone but he ignores this and basically stalks her until she gives in. Although she is in love with him throughout this and does really want to get back together with him, it still demonstrates how little power she had in their relationship.
Though both Stella and Scope face challenges and discrimination as a result of their autism, Scope is the only one who claims the identity and uses it to her advantage. Scope is institutionalized because of her disability and the violent perceptions people have about autism. While in the institution, she is asked to prostitute herself for the enjoyment of Sam, a prison guard, and Angie, a fellow inmate. Though Scope doesn’t want to do this, she manages to spin the situation to her advantage, improving her life at Thunderbird Mountain in exchange for sexual acts. The only time the reader sees Scope as not in control of her relationships is when she is with the Mistake. Here Scope is taken in by his kind offers of help after they have both lost their jobs. The Mistake manipulates her until he is in control of her house, money, and new job, and then he begins to abuse her. Scope is aware that he is using her, but she also recognizes that her disability makes it impossible to free herself from him: “As a solitary autistic, I needed him and he knew it” (dePackh 115). After enduring several years of abuse, Scope comes back into contact with the Dark family, whom she thinks can protect her. This gives her the support she needs to beat the Mistake senseless and leave the house, after which she is taken in by Chill. After the Mistake, Scope makes the vow that she “will never be touched against [her] will—ever, by anyone—again” (177), and then she is the one to initiate a relationship with Chill in which she is the penetrative partner and the one calling all the shots, deciding if they will remain together, deciding when and if they will have sex. Scope claims her autism. Though she recognizes her limitations, she never denies that autism is part of her identity. When Petra first meets her, she thinks Scope is faking her disability. Scope tells her, “‘Mild’ autism isn’t how I experience being, autistic, it’s how you experience my being autistic” (78). She also uses the stereotypes about autism to her advantage, managing to get the passwords to hack into the her work’s computer network: “He muttered something about me not being smart enough to use it…I bowed my head and followed Luce Dark’s advice about letting people think I was as dumb as they wanted to” (131).
Conversely, Stella feels a lot of self-doubt and self-loathing because of being autistic. She doesn’t think she is good enough for Michael because of her autism. She does not believe he would want to stay with her if she was not paying him. Throughout the novel she refers to herself as “nuts” with a negative connotation when she thinks about her obsessions and other tendencies that come with autism (Hoang 57). She thinks “[sh]e’d be less” in Michael’s eyes if he found out about her autism (136). Although Michael and Stella end up together at the end of the novel and he doesn’t reject her when he finds out, Stella never comes to a place of self-acceptance independent from Michael’s love, which is overprotective and infantilizing. There is one moment after Stella and Michael have broken up that she claims her autism: “She saw and interacted with the world in a different way, but that was her…she would always be autistic,” but when she tries unsuccessfully to be with someone else, and then goes back to Michael, her self-acceptance seems hollow (287). Instead there is the insinuation that Stella ‘overcomes’ her autism to find intimacy, love, and good sex.
The female, autistic protagonists of Troubleshooting and The Kiss Quotient both demonstrate that disabled people can be sexual beings. But while Scope finds empowerment through defying gender norms and using the limitations of her disability to her advantage, Stella slips into the submissive stereotypes that accompany females and people with disabilities.
(Word Count: 1490)
Sources
dePackh, Selene. Troubleshooting. San Francisco: Reclamation Press, 2018.
Hoang, Helen. The Kiss Quotient. New York: Penguin Random House, 2018.
McClintock, Anne. “Screwing the System: Sexwork, Race, and the Law.” boundary 2, vol. 19, no. 2, 1992, pp. 70–95.
I pledge…Krista Beucler
