The lead investigator of the latter study, Noah Sasson, was dismayed to learn from Spectrum that his research was being used to support what he calls a “misogynistic and sophomoric” ideology, and says his work was misinterpreted. The study applies to both men and women and is not about women’s feelings toward autistic men, says Sasson, a psychologist at the University of Texas at Dallas. In a follow-up study, he and his colleagues found that neurotypical people’s perceptions of an autistic adult depend heavily on whether they know that the adult is autistic, are familiar with autism and have met the autistic person in question. “What this means is that negative judgments about autistic adults are in no way absolute and uniform,” Sasson says. The Incel wiki makes no mention of this more nuanced report.

—Brendan Borrell, in “Radical online communities and their toxic allure for autistic men”