How I F*ck as an Autistic Woman

NATALIE RIVERA: Amy Gravino is in the 10th grade. It’s the late 90s’, and that week, 16-year-old Amy had turned in a writing assignment to her English teacher. The writing assignment could be about anything, so she turned in a story she wrote not long ago that her friend Diane begged her to write. Back then, Amy’s closest friends were always asking her to write fan fiction. She had a talent. All of her friends knew it. Her English teacher though...

AMY GRAVINO: My teacher was not happy. Not not happy at all.

NR: You see Amy’s fan fiction was actually erotic fan fiction. Really steamy, borderline ridiculous, fan fiction.

AG: It was a threesome story with my one friend and a Backstreet Boy and a member of NSYNC. I used probably, what is the least sexiest word in the history of the English language, which is moist. I use the word moistness to describe a vulva, which is absolutely game over.

NR: But it wasn't game over for her friend, Kevin Richardson of the Backstreet Boys, and Joey Fatone of NYSNC. For them, the game was only starting...well, at least in Amy’s story. 

AG: The next thing Diane knew all three of them were without a stitch of clothing. Diane broke her kiss with Joey as she and Kevin started French kissing. Diana voiced her pleasure into Kevin's mouth. As they continue to kiss deeply. She ran her hands down his firm back letting her nails gently scrape his baby soft skin. Joey moves his hands to her buttocks caressing each cheek gently pinching a bit just to get a rise out of her and giving each cheek a pinch turning Kevin on more and more. The three descended onto the bed so they could make their actions more predictable and well planned…if not entirely spontaneous. 

NR: Amy’s paper didn’t get a grade. Instead it got her suspended. 

AG: I think I just felt confused and hurt because I had misread the social situation yet again. 

NR: This is How I F*ck, a podcast about how we have sex, sponsored by Fembot magazine and produced by Kodiac Productions. I’m your host Natalie Rivera. If you’re like me, you spent hours and hours watching Netflix during the pandemic. One of the many docu-series I watched during the pandemic was “Love on the Spectrum” which follows a group of people on the autism spectrum as most of them try to date for the first time. It’s a great series, and while it did answer a lot of questions I actually never really knew I needed the answers to, it did leave me with a lot of questions as well. I think you know what one of the questions are: What about sex? Well, that’s why we reached out to Amy Gravino, former teen erotic fan fiction writer you met earlier, and current certified autism specialist and autism sexuality advocate.

AG: I never had that kind of sense of shame around sexuality. I think a lot of people on the spectrum don't naturally feel shameful about things until we're told to feel ashamed.

NR: Amy was diagnosed with Asperger syndrome when she was 11— The same year, Asperger syndrome was added to the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders as a separate diagnosis.  It wasn’t until 2013 that Asperger’s became part of the autism spectrum. Even though Amy is autistic, she did spend most of her life using the term Asperger’s, so you might still hear it in this episode from time to time.

NR: And so Amy, how would you describe autism? 

AG: In many ways it is… autism is a disability. It's a developmental disability that affects a person's ability to relate socially in the world and to deal with sensory input. But in other ways, it's also just the lens through which people view the world. It's not only something that we have, but it's part of who we are. 

NR: Can you walk me through how you see things? 

AG: I think I just I have a hard time seeing when people have negative intentions. I take things at face value a lot of the time, because I speak very forthrightly, I say what I mean, I mean what I say. And I'm straightforward. And it always gets me when people are not or….or actually, even more so when someone is nice to me, and then starts to display behavior that shows that really, they're not such a nice person. It's the hardest thing in the world for me to reconcile that somebody is just not a good person, when they've been so good to me in the past. 

NR: Growing up in Port Jefferson, New York, Amy was introverted as a child, yet her brain was always moving. She had so many thoughts and questions she wanted to share with the world. Instead she kept to herself. 

AG: I felt everything very deeply. But I tried not to show it on the outside. Although I call myself a failed masker. Because I was never able to really camouflage and be anything other than myself. I think I tried. I would copy my peers, I would copy the things that they did. But it was always wrong. When I did…even if I did exactly what they did. And they knew it and they never hesitated to point it out to me. 

NR: Amy was regularly bullied as a child. The bullying started when she was in the second grade. By the fourth grade, Amy was already idealizing suicide. It was like everyone else noticed something different about her that she didn’t know about herself. 

AG: I had a consciousness from very early on that the way I was was not acceptable, that I was weird. I was a freak, psycho loser, retard. Those were all names that they called me, because they didn't know me. And they didn't want to know me. 

NR: Amy is an only child so of course her parents worried for her. Seeing their pre-teen daughter struggle to communicate and in social settings pushed them to visit different doctors and specialists. 

AG: At first, my parents thought that something was wrong with my hearing because I wasn't listening to them when they were telling me to do things. And my hearing was absolutely 100% fine. And we ended up at Stony Brook University on in the child psychology department, which is where I was diagnosed, ultimately. 

NR: It wasn’t long after her diagnosis that Amy started noticing books on autism around the house. She had always known something was different about her and now there was a diagnosis.

AG: And the social expectations that came around at that same age kind of shifted my perspective from, from being “other people don’t see things the way that I do, what's wrong with them” to “why don't I see things the way that everybody else does, what's wrong with me.” So that was happening right around that same time, the beginnings of puberty and the, you know, middle school…all the expectations coming into play.

NR: Amy’s parents enrolled her in some social skills programs, but it didn’t really do much for her. While there are programs that can help autistic people manage their symptoms, there isn’t a universal treatment for autism. There also weren’t that many studies done on autism and its effects on girls back then either. Amy didn’t really have resources growing up, and on top of that the bullying didn’t stop. She started taking Prozac at 12, struggling with the teasing and name calling well into high school. But regardless of all this, Amy was still living a regular teenage girl’s life. She had crushes. She wanted a boyfriend. She really wanted a boyfriend. 

AG: I was absolutely desperate to have a boyfriend. I more than anything I wanted, you know, attention I wanted. I wanted validation, I wanted affection and wanted to know that I was okay that I could be loved. That I was, that I was lovable. For so long, I carried with me the belief that I was too difficult to love, which I think many autistic individuals often feel because of, you know, the messages that come from society. 

NR: Amy didn’t really have the talk growing up. Her understanding of how the body works was pretty limited, so much so that she actually didn’t really understand what was happening to her the first time she got her period. She went through about five pairs of underwear before her mother noticed she was bleeding  

AG:  I was disconnected from my body…because my self-esteem was so low because I just hated who I was. Whatever my peers said my body was was what I thought it was, you know. Roses are red, violets are black. Why is your chest as flat as your back,” kind of thing, you know. 

NR: Yeah, Amy’s classmates were cruel.

AG: I had a crush on a guy, and I thought that I was being subtle about it. And I still wasn't because I was wearing my heart right on my sleeve. And, you know, one of my classmates was saying, “Oh, you're not allowed to like him.” You know, this idea of being allowed of needing permission, you know, to somehow have a crush on somebody, it was just, when people see you as less when they see you as different, and this other, it places you in a different category, you know. That those typical experiences that everyone else has, are somehow closed off to you, you know, because, like, you're not normal, like, so how could you dare want something that is normal?

NR: This didn’t stop Amy from still having crushes though. From still having friends. From writing erotic boy band fan-fiction late at night. Even though Amy’s erotic fiction was coming from a person with no sexual experience at that time, Amy was still determined to explore human sexuality even if it was through fictional characters and not herself. 

AG: I didn't masturbate for the first time until the summer before senior year of college. So 12,13 starting to feel feelings of arousal. Didn't start touching myself till 21. This is a big, big, big, big discrepancy there. And that was for a lot of reasons that existed, not the least of which was just not being in touch with my body literally and figuratively, not being aware of my body.

NR: Amy started dating her first boyfriend at 19. While the relationship didn’t last long, it was still a pretty transformative experience for Amy who was finally exploring her body and someone else’s for the very first time. 

AG: I was so happy to have this boyfriend and to, you know, be able to do this to to suddenly see myself as a sexual being as somebody, not only who someone wanting to do something sexual with, but as someone who could provide sexual pleasure to someone else, which I had never seen myself as before. I didn't think I was capable of that. And I don't know if this was exactly the first time but I remember we were fooling around in his dorm room, and I looked down while he was in between my legs. And all of a sudden, I realized that I have pubic hair and it has a function. 

NR: Because sensory issues are often a symptom of autism, some autistic people like Amy can be hypersensitive to things like smell, sound, tastes, and touch. For Amy, who is super sensitive to touch, this meant experiencing sex in a more heightened way.

AG: I often say that my back is the biggest erogenous zone on my body. It's just…it's just very, very sensitive, like those light touches, and then so just all of the, you know, everything…the more of the sensory stuff that I was paying attention to that first time was with him more than myself. Again, I still wasn't so familiar with my own body yet. At that point, I didn't still quite have that awareness and understanding. But I remember when when he came, and, you know, just like, what is this fluid and it has a smell and it has a feeling to it. And, okay, I don't really want it in my mouth, but I'm okay with it on my skin. I think I like it on my skin. You know, just realizing that, for example, and then the cleanup involved and, you know, seeing the end result of what I had done, it was such an extraordinary experience. Like knowing that I had caused this to happen was extremely powerful and moving to me to know that I was capable of that. Also, of course, the sensations of that as well… extraordinary all at once.

NR: It was this relationship where Amy also discovered the secret to giving a perfect blowjob.

AG: It's not so much about technique, it’s about the excitement. I'm not trying to toot my own horn here, but I've never had any complaints about about my performance. And I think it's because I find the joy in it, right? Like, why give somebody a blow job if you don't want to? You shouldn't, if you don't want to. Don't do it. It's not worth doing. If your heart's not in it, you know.

NR: Wise words, Amy. Anyways, moving on, after that relationship, it would be a couple more years before Amy would experience penetrative sex for the first time. There were opportunities before then, but Amy didn’t feel she was ready yet. That is until she met a certain someone on a certain site with a certain interest. 

AG: I was 22 and I met this guy again, in the worst place, which was on a message board for fans and Kevin Smith, the movie director. I was in my senior year of college and he lived in Seattle. I was in Pennsylvania in school, and I want to go to Seattle in spring break with a friend who would want to go to see some concerts. And so I met this guy while I was there and I started falling for him even more than I had online. 

NR: Amy ended up moving out to Seattle after graduation. She was she determined to have sex with this man, so much so that she got on the pill a month before, giving it enough to kick in as she would say.

AG: I asked him to wear a white button down shirt because I always dreamt of buttoning off a guy's shirt when we're going to make love. And he did wear a white button down shirt. And I had my bottle of wine all set. I had the music burned on the CD.

NR: But message-board-guy was having trouble maintaining his erection. No problem...Amy had a plan in case this would happen. 

AG: So I said, I have a surprise for you. Close your eyes. And I went into the closet and I pulled out the University of Washington Huskies cheerleader uniform. 

NR: Message-board-guy had a thing for cheerleaders, of course Amy came prepared. 

AG: And I wound up losing my virginity in a University of Washington Huskies cheerleader uniform. 

NR: Amy clearly did her homework. Now she wanted feedback.

AG: I need to know if I've done a good job. I got to have some kind of feedback. So I thought, well, when you stay at a hotel, even a restaurant they have these cards that you can fill out. And so I created a sexual intercourse comment card for for him to fill out. And and it was completely serious tone somewhat in cheek. The questions were, you know, what did you enjoy most about the sex session? What did you like that happened that you'd like to happen again? What didn't happen, that you'd like to have happened? Please rate the following on a scale of one to five: my vocal volume during intercourse, my outfit pre-intercourse, my facial expressions? Is there anything I could do in the future to maximize your pleasure and make our sessions more enjoyable? 

NR: Message-board-guy filled out the card. The feedback was good. It wouldn’t be until years later, however, that Amy realize that those questions she wrote weren’t the ones she should have been asking. 

AG: What I always point out is that there's a problem with these questions. And it was a problem I didn't see at the time, and I did not see until much, much later on. And that's that all the questions are around his pleasure. And his enjoyment. There's no word about whether I enjoyed myself. My pleasure was secondary, you know if it existed at all. That was absent from there. 

NR: Things didn’t work out with message-board guy. It turned out he had a girlfriend the entire time and didn’t tell Amy about it. These kinds of letdowns were extremely hurtful for her. Remember, she trusts people a lot easier than most. But that doesn’t mean Amy would ever give up on dating or sex. Yes, people treat her like shit sometimes, but that doesn’t mean she’s going to allow them to think they ruined her life. No, she’s stronger than that. 

AG: I'm still here. I'm still here. And that I think speaks to a resilience that a lot of autistic people have. And it's so funny to me, because somebody said to me, not long ago that autistic people are not very resilient. And I'm like, are they smoking some kind of drugs? Because I don't think that's true at all. I think, you know, as people on the spectrum, we're more resilient than a lot of people because we have to be, because we have to exist and try to thrive in this world that's not built for people like us. 

NR: Amy went on to get her master’s, which by the way is pretty impressive given that doctors used to tell her parents she would never be able to go to school. Yet, she did, and now she has two degrees, one of them in Applied Behavior Analysis, which is a type of therapy aimed to improve specific behaviors, like social skills and communication. It’s a bit controversial within the autism community because of the way it’s been marketed as a way to make autistic people “normal again.”

AG: To me, it's about helping somebody make meaningful changes to their behavior that they choose to make it. For my master's thesis, which we had to design and run a study using the principles of ABA, I chose to teach adults on the spectrum how to ask somebody out on a date. And in the research literature, having to do with ABA and teaching skills and autism, there's a lot of stuff with social skills but there’s really nothing with dating skills. It's just something that hasn't been addressed. It's something that a lot of researchers are, you know…there's a lot of taboo around it.

NR: That’s because there are misconceptions that autistic people are sexual or that they can’t love. Two very hurtful beliefs that couldn’t be far from true. 

AG: A lot of that comes from that we have this permanent image of people on the spectrum as children, that even when they're adults, that they still have a childlike mentality, which is not true, and which is, you know, very much unfair. We think of autistic people as being innocent, which, you know, even if somebody is not talking about sex, it doesn't mean they're not interested in sex. If you had a neurotypical teenager who wasn't talking about sex with their parents, that would be totally 100% normal. But you have autistic teen who doesn't want to talk about sex, and they think, “Oh, no, they're just not interested,” or “they don't want to have sex.” And it's a misconception popularized by the media…for example, Sheldon Cooper on “The Big Bang Theory,” who is not officially labeled as autistic but a lot of folks kind of see him as an avatar of that. And he was, you know, asexual for most of the show. And there totally are plenty of folks who do identify as asexual, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. And that is totally fine. But when it becomes the defining stereotype of the whole group, then it's a real big problem. 

NR: So Amy decided to do something about it. Using what she learned in her master’s program and armed with her many dating and sex stories, Amy started creating presentations around autism and sex. 

AG: I always ask people, you know, who do you talk to about sex and dating. I show several different options, you know, your family, a therapist, or religious leader, or your friends? Or do you not have anybody to talk to about sex and dating, and I always tell people, you know, I gave this presentation to a group of autistic college students and almost all of them raised their hand for the last one, that they had no one to talk to you about sex and dating, or didn't feel comfortable talking about it. And so I always talk about, you know, this is such a huge part of the human experience. Imagine not having anybody to talk to you about this stuff.

NR: But it’s not only people with autism who reach out to Amy. 

AG: Parents write to me all the time, you know, professionals working with autistic adults? I get, you know, queries from from all kinds of different people,. I send strategies to parents and professionals for how to have a conversation about sexuality with their child or their client. 

NR: It can be challenging sometimes though since Amy herself is also still trying to figure out. Not to mention Amy’s putting herself out there, something that anyone, autistic or not, might have difficulty with.

AG: I know I overshare and I talk about these things in my presentations and all but you…but it makes you very vulnerable if you are, you know, sharing all these intimate details with people who you don't know and who might, you know, use those things against you. And so yeah, you know, I want to be able to give them good advice, and I worry about saying the wrong thing and especially being professional, and, you know. And then for me, it's also emotionally overwhelming because I'm on the spectrum myself and I can relate to maybe a lot of the things that they're writing to me with and so I have to deal with my own emotional response to that in addition, so that is the most challenging group of folks to communicate with of all the audiences that I speak to. So because I feel that I owe them the most of anybody.

NR: Amy is a vulnerable, sexual,  loving, empathetic woman, all adjectives that might not be immediately associated with someone with autism. Her work and her willingness to be there for others debunks so many stereotypes of autistic people that are out there. 

AG: One of the things that exist is that autistic people have difficulty displaying empathy. Well, most of the displays of a lack of empathy that I've seen in my life have been from non-autistic people toward autistic people, rather than the other way around. And in fact, I think people on the spectrum have a huge amount of empathy. It's just that we feel everything so much that we can't filter it out. So we wound up shutting down to try to deal with the overwhelming amount of information that's coming in. But because of that stereotype, it's thought that people on those spectrum cannot love. I am full of love, I have so much love to give, I just have not found somebody who's worthy of that love, and who deserves me. 

NR:  So, Amy, we're out of time. Those are all my questions. Where can people find you?

AG: So people can find me on my website, amygravano.com. I'm also on Twitter at Amy Gravino on Instagram. And I have a Facebook fan page, Amy Gravino fan page, which is what you type into but if you just type “Amy Gravino” it'll start to come up. So that's where I'm at.

NR: Thank you so much for talking with me today, Amy. I really loved this conversation.

AG: Thank you, Natalie. Thank you for having me. It was great.

Natalie: And that was our show. This episode was produced by me, Natalie Rivera. I’m also the host and creator. Ben Quiles is our audio engineer. Shyanne Lopez did copy and fact check. Music is by Miguel Gutierrez. Find his music online under his artist name Magh. Chelsea Kwoka is our vocal coach. Our marketing team includes Gabriela Sanchez and Alissa Medina. Our sponsorship manager is Mouna Coulibaly. Make sure to check out our sponsor Fembot Magazine. We’re also on Instagram and Twitter at howickpodcast, that’s “How I Fuck,” without the “u” so “fck.” We also have a website, howifckpodcast.com, again without the “u” where you can find all of our latest episodes, show notes and our list of articles and stats we used in this episode. And if you like this podcast please subscribe to it, rate it, review it. Reviews are a big deal for podcasts. They help us gain more listeners which then helps us do more of what we do, so we’d really appreciate it if you took a couple minutes to rate us on Apple podcasts. Help us keep doing what we’re doing. Thanks again, and stay tuned for our next episode!