Psychopathic Hymn for the Creeps: Neuroqueering Creepiness from the Inside

Abstract

This article combines techniques from critical neurodiversity studies, trans auto- and autist-ethnography, and speculative creative writing to offer a neuroqueer account of creepiness from the inside. That is to say, this is an autoethnography of creepiness and a work of creepy autoethnography conducted by two white, university-educated, late-diagnosed autistic, trans people. It articulates not simply what we know of creepiness, but what we know through creepiness: an account of what creepiness knows, and permits us to know, of the world. In doing so, it maps some of those spaces, connections, forms of community, and modes of self-understanding that the label ‘creepy’ is deployed to prevent us from reaching and inhabiting. Rather than seeking to rid ourselves of this sticky label - to resist the ways in which it adheres to us, to refute the ways it describes us - we follow the example of those who have embraced similar stigmatizing labels (‘queer’, ‘crip’, ‘monster’, ‘sick woman’) and seek to turn ‘creepy’ to our own advantage. To do so, we model what we term a ‘too-close reading’ of J.G. Ballard’s Crash (1973), monotropically embracing, interrogating, and creatively embellishing upon the novel’s dramatization of its protagonist’s metagnostic journey into increasingly ‘creepy’ modes of queer and crip intimacy, belonging, and obsession. We strategically collage passages of literary analysis, fantasies, fabulations, key texts from the history of autism’s medicalization, poetry, personal ephemera, stims, and our own auto-theoretical reflections on autism and creepiness, and we claim this behaviour as a valid and valuable form of knowledge transmission. We beckon readers to consider which aspects of their own character and conduct might see them labelled as ‘creepy’ and to join us in unapologetically behaving as if they already are what they might desire to become. We invite you to join us in being creeps.