For millennia, sexuality has remained one of the most stigmatized and overlooked topics in the autism community, particularly when it comes to autistic adults. This stigma largely stems from decades of misinformation and a lack of understanding. In this interview, I speak with leading autism consultant and international speaker Amy Gravino, who has transformed her personal experiences into a powerful platform advocating for inclusive conversations around autism and sexuality.
Amy attending the ELIJA Foundation 17th Annual Sy Schwartz Golf Outing in Glen Head, NY in 2024
Her mission is clear: to dismantle the persistent stigma surrounding autistic sexuality, advocate for autistic-led education, and call for institutional changes that promote dignity, safety, and autonomy.
Amy’s advocacy journey began when she was diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome (now Autism Level 1) in 1994 at 11 years old. Asperger’s was just added to the DSM that same year. “Being a girl, it was even more amazing that I was diagnosed then,” she reflects.
“It is 3-4 times more likely for a boy to be diagnosed than a girl.” She adds that the numbers probably weren’t reflecting a true difference in prevalence but rather a diagnostic bias. Psychology was better at recognizing autism and its characteristics in males, as presentation tends to be different in females.
Despite challenges, Amy persevered. She earned her degree in Applied Behavior Analysis and dedicated her career to spotlighting sexuality in the autism community. “I remember when I was going through puberty and adolescence, my sexuality was something that was in the fore and something I was trying to figure out, just like any 13- or 14-year-old,” she shares. “What really inspired me to focus on sexuality was that, of course, nobody was really doing it.”
For many, discussing sexuality remains taboo, let alone researching it, especially in the context of autism. “It’s an underaddressed area, and there are really a handful of us who are engaged in the work,” she says. “When I look back at my life, I see threads that have led up to this point, and it makes it feel like I was always meant to talk about this.”
But Amy didn’t have outlets to explore her sexuality. “I didn’t go on dates in high school. Boys were too busy calling me names, making fun of my appearance, and didn’t want anything to do with me. I had massively low self-esteem,” she shares. Instead, she turned to writing. “They say that men watch their porn and women read their porn. That was very true for me. I began to read erotic fiction around that age and then write it. I never felt any sense of shame around it. I think that many autistic people don’t necessarily feel a sense of shame about things until someone tells us that we should feel ashamed.”
Writing became a liberating form of self-expression. “I would read about all kinds of relationships because it freed me from the traditional gender sex roles of a woman and feeling that I didn’t look a certain way or knew how to do certain things that women had to do when it comes to sexual activity.” At the time, Amy was a fan of the Backstreet Boys and joined a fan chatroom, quickly becoming the designated fan-fiction writer for her friends. “I wrote about all the things that my 15-year-old imagination could stretch to, which was pretty far,” she laughs.
Meanwhile, Amy was finishing graduate school, where she began to integrate her interests into her academic work. For her master’s thesis in ABA, she chose to teach two adults on the spectrum how to ask someone on a date using video modeling and didactic instruction. “In the research literature, everything was mainly about teaching social skills. When you teach something like brushing your teeth, that instruction is pretty much the same every time. A date is different. Every date is different. Every person is different. It’s much more complex,” she shares. “So, while all of my classmates and my professors were focused on early intervention, I really wanted to be working with adults because I knew that there was this lack of services.”
In 2013, Amy presented about sexuality with a colleague, Dr. Peter Gerhardt. “One of our first talks that I’ll always remember was at a church, since it was in Virginia, talking about sex. He talked about the clinical side, and I did the personal side,” she remembers. Personal storytelling remains central to Amy’s work. “Of course, I was interested in the topic professionally as well and trying to further the work that I started with my thesis. It’s always been hard to get funding for research related to sexuality. There is so much taboo and stigma around it,” she adds.
At the time, misconceptions about disability and sexuality were still persistent. For decades prior, if not more, any kind of sexuality displayed or exhibited by autistic, disabled people was viewed as aberrant. “It was automatically aberrant and deviant simply because it was an autistic person expressing it. We’ve had to work so hard to even move away from that to show that a neurodivergent individual is interested in engaging with their sexuality. It’s not aberrant simply because someone who is not neurotypical is expressing it,” she voices.
Within this particular area, concerns about sexuality can even extend into a law issue. “If you do something that violates a social convention, you could end up in jail. It’s that simple. The law doesn’t care if you have autism or not. There is a disproportionate number of autistic people in the criminal justice system labeled as sex offenders when they shouldn’t be,” Amy mentions. This often stems from a lack of education – many individuals were never taught about boundaries or behaviors that might be misinterpreted. She states, “Individuals with autism are also more likely to be victims of sexual abuse than the perpetrators.”
Most of the stigma surrounding sexuality and autism is reinforced not only in communities but within institutions. “The first thing is that we have to move away from infantilizing adults with autism,” Amy claims. “People will say things like, ‘he’s twenty years old with the mentality of a five-year-old.’ It treats adults as if they are children, and it’s very dehumanizing and very dangerous because it sets people up to be vulnerable.” Such language is inherently harmful and strengthens the already present misjudgments against individuals with autism.
Amy also addressed the common misconception that all autistic people are asexual, which ties into her point about infantilization. The problem with such generalizations is that a society begins to see someone as forever childlike, which Amy believes is conveniently easy for parents who aren’t comfortable seeing their child as a sexual being, to begin with. “Of course, there are people who identify as asexual or aromantic, and that’s completely fine. But when it becomes a stereotype regarding an entire group of people, that is a massive problem,” she voices. Amy also communicates that this doesn’t apply to all disabled groups. “For individuals with Down syndrome, for example, the stereotype has traditionally been one of hypersexuality. The opposite goes for autism. The thing I’ve noticed as I keep doing this is that it’s not disabled people who are weird about sex. It’s everybody else who is weird about us having sex,” she says.
Diagnostic criteria also can create immense stigma relating to sexuality and autism. “There is this idea of a lack of empathy, for instance,” Amy points out. “Rather than having no emotions, I think we have so many emotions, and we don’t really filter them out. There is this idea that if emotions aren’t displayed how they are expected, it means the person isn’t actually feeling them. People on the spectrum express love in ways that may look different than what people expect, but it doesn’t mean we feel it any less. The challenge, more often than not, is finding people who appreciate that love that we must give.”
“A couple of years ago, someone asked me if autistic people feel rejection the same way neurotypicals do. I was sort of taken aback by it,” Amy shared. “But again, people think that if you don’t respond in ways that someone expects, that someone will think you don’t feel it. Neurotypicals have a term, actually. We call them the ‘strong silent types.’ People are strong and silent. They handle rejection with a stiff upper lip. But when it comes to autistic people, emotions are pathologized.”
Amy also pointed to challenges faced in the healthcare scene by nonbinary or transgender autistic individuals. “It already is challenging for those folks to get adequate healthcare. When you add autism on top of that, it makes it even harder,” Amy acknowledges. “Progress in the medical field is very slow. It has to be pushed. How people identify sexuality is a huge factor in the care that you can provide someone. We have to train physicians better is what it comes down to. Lack of knowledge is a killer.”
I ended my conversation with Amy by asking her how she hopes this interdisciplinary field will evolve. She informed me of a sex-ed curriculum for individuals on the spectrum that she had designed. “We’ve been able to incorporate autistic communication into this curriculum, which is very important in helping individuals reach their goals pertaining to sexuality,” she shares. “What has been taught usually is what is expected of neurotypicals by neurotypicals, and that doesn’t work for individuals with autism. We don’t want to shove people into a box that they don’t fit in. We want to make the box work for them.”
Amy’s advocacy goes beyond raising awareness. She has been at the forefront of fostering acceptance and ensuring that autistic individuals receive the guidance they need to explore their sexuality. Her lived experience, professional insight, and honesty have made her one of the nation’s most influential advocates at the intersection of autism and sexuality.
For inquiries or to connect, please contact Gabi Barrocas at gabrielebarrocas@gmail.com or via Instagram @the_realspectrum.
