Co-authored with Costas Gabrielatos
Costas Gabrielatos, Ursula Maden-Weinberger & Geoff Beattie. 🧵11/11

Results are also available with visualisations. 🧵10/11

The full paper including many actual quotes (some may be triggering), discusses changes over time and differences between #tabloids & #broadsheets. 🧵9/11

Such biased reporting hinders the public understanding and acceptance of the diverse experiences within the autistic community... 🧵8/11

[4] Mothers associated with autism can be autistic women themselves; however, autistic dads are rarely discussed. 🧵7/11

[3] Both mothers and fathers of autistic children are assigned responsibility for their child's autism. But mothers are blamed for many more reasons than fathers, including genes, labour, nutrition, alcohol and drugs, lifestyle choices. 🧵6/11

[2] There are girl-specific topics in newspapers, including masking and diagnostic difficulties and gender transitioning, discussed only for those AFAB. Boys have a clear presence, they have passionate interests or face/create challenges. 🧵5/11

For example:
[1] Autistic girls are typically portrayed as a group and their autism is contrasted to the autism of boys. Boys are discussed far more frequently and are presented as individuals. 🧵4/11

We argue that #intersectional representations reflect the #interplay between [A] historical #biases in autism #research (extreme male brain, female autism phenotype) and [B] deep-routed #gender #stereotypes (e.g., girl=quiet, boy=noisy, mother=nurturing, father=powerful). 🧵3/11

Here, we contrast #newspaper #representations of autism across gender and family role #intersections.
How do autism portrayals differ for autistic #girls vs. #boys and #mothers vs #fathers of autistic children? 🧵2/11