STEM is not "more autistic" than the humanities
There's an autism stereotype that just won't die, and it never stops bugging me. It's the idea that the "default" autistic person is a STEM person, while an autistic person in the arts or humanities is atypical, an anomaly.
The "STEM autistic, arts neurotypical" dichotomy isn't as entrenched as it was a decade or two ago (and boy do I remember how entrenched it was), but I still see it floating around.
I see it in social media posts that claim a knack for fantasy and role-play sets PDA apart from Regular Old Autism. (That's a whole other can of worms that I don't want to try to talk about.)
I see it in research studies like the one Autism Answers Back critiqued here. This study used closed-ended surveys and a time-limited task to measure creativity, yet didn't ask any open-ended questions that could've allowed participants to describe their creative process, or what creativity means for them. The study then drew the conclusion that autistic people don't show exceptional creativity unless we also have ADHD; that to be creative, we need some sort of add-on to offset our Regular Old Autism.
Recently I saw it in a social media post by an autistic creator whose work I respect. The post, a deep dive into differences between autistic and neurotypical communication, had a lot of care and thought put into it. But one small piece of it made me pause. "Artistic nuance" was listed as an inherent strength of neurotypical communication, while "STEM communication" was listed as a natural strength of autistic people. The post came with the caveat that these are generalizations, but calling artistic nuance neurotypical still didn't sit right with me. (And that's not even getting into the fact that neurodivergences besides autism exist.)
I commented. I wasn't as nice as I should've been, and I feel bad about that, and I ended up deleting it later. But her reply ("I'm simply pointing out that we lean in different directions") reminded me of the excuse my former (thank goodness) therapist made after telling me women's brains were inherently worse at math.
The thing is, saying "X people are naturally good at Y subject, while A people are naturally good at B subject" isn't harmless. It's often used to pigeonhole human beings in racist, sexist, or ableist ways.
I'm not saying that autistic people in STEM aren't common, or that they're embodying a stereotype. Autistic people in STEM are great and deserve to be recognized.
I'm saying (or at least trying to say) that science or math shouldn't be considered more "typical" autistic strengths than the arts or humanities. Autistic artists or writers deserve better than the idea that their interests and talents make them closer to neurotypical than autistic engineers are.
And while we're at it, can we leave the humanities-vs-STEM binary in the past too? They can intermingle in amazing ways. When you see them as polar opposites, you miss that.