ABSTRACT
Released on Netflix in July 2020, Love on the Spectrum (LOTS) follows seven single autistic people as they navigate the highs and lows of dating, and features two couples who share their stories of how they met and fell in love. This chapter will critically consider the intersection of representations of autism, sex and intimacy in LOTS. Not only does the show does not acknowledge that sexuality and all its concomitant practices are socially constructed, it also fails to acknowledge that understandings of and attitudes towards autism are similarly socially contingent and that the ontological status of autism is subject to contestation. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu’s sociology and adopting a Critical Autism Studies perspective, this chapter will argue that autistic individuals’ lived experiences are shaped by the wider sociocultural contexts in which they live and by the power dynamics that exist between neurotypical and neurodivergent people. From Bourdieu’s work, it is his notions of practice, field, capital and habitus that will be important and will be utilised to argue that it is necessary to move beyond individualised accounts of love and romance to look at the structural inequalities that autistic people experience in the dating world.
Keywords: Bourdieu, habitus, sexuality, autism, representations
