Peter Wynn
2 min readSep 17, 2022

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Okay, I remember an Australian show, The Comedy Company, and it had a character created by Marianne Fahey, called Kylie Mole. I remember watching some of it in Year Ten Drama, and my teacher said that Marianne Fahey went and rode on buses, and listened to teenagers boarding after school, and saying things like, "Oh, Mr. Jones stands up to do Economics, and, he goes, he goes, he goes...." I was a teenager when that show was being aired and I didn't talk like that, but I didn't take offense to it. I didn't find it funny, though.

I remember John Inman's character, Mr. Humphries, in "Are You Being Served?" and I know that John Inman was gay in real life. Some people jumped up and down and claimed that his character was insulting to gay people. I saw his character as a camp exaggeration and not typical of a gay man. There are some gay men who you wouldn't suspect of being gay unless they told you.

Before I met my sister-in-law, who is a mental health nurse, I was anxious that she would be like some people with a limited knowledge of autism, and say, like one psychologist tried to do with me, and pick out the most ridiculous reasons as to why I didn't have PTSD, when I do, and say, "Oh, but you're not like Sheldon Cooper." Sheldon Cooper is a stereotype. If someone says, "You don't look autistic," what they're REALLY saying is, "You don't conform to the stereotype I have formulated of what an autistic person is supposed to be like."

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Peter Wynn
Peter Wynn

Written by Peter Wynn

Diagnosed with autism at 35. Explained a lifetime of difference.

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