#autistic brittany

[autismtana]

brittany s pierce is autistic

around a year ago, i made this post about santana lopez and why i (as a neurodivergent person) view her as having adhd (among other things which i've mentioned elsewhere and plan on writing more meta about), and i think it's finally time to talk about brittany s pierce, my autistic queen, and why i view her as autistic.

firstly, i want to acknowledge that i'm not the first person to headcanon brittany as autistic. i'm nowhere near the first person to write a post about it. in fact, sue sylvester calls brittana "autistically feisty", which i think is the closest we've got to an actually autistic canon confirmation. i'd suggest reading these posts by smolbrittana and sopheadraws among others. brittany has also been written as autistic in fanfiction (the road to unicorn and there's something about santana are two of my personal favourites in terms of writing brittany as autistic in an authentic way that doesn't feel like autistic media portrayed by neurotypical people).

as i've said in other posts, i'm autistic myself and also have a background in adolescent psychology. i do not endorse diagnosing real people with anything; brittany s pierce is a fictional character and displays a lot of traits that resonate with me as an autistic person hence why i am making this post. i'm also aware that some of these things were written to be throwaway lines or comic effect but viewing them as that and viewing them through an autistic lens does not have to be mutually exclusive. also, i use identity-first language, which is generally preferred among actually autistic folks.

(trigger warning for discussion of sexual assault, as well as mention of school shooting)

sidenote but i also believe brittany to have a specific learning disability in language in addition to being autistic which will most likely require its own post.

anyway, without further ado, let's go.

poor executive functioning - brittany struggles with basic self-care tasks such as brushing her teeth and remembering to eat breakfast. it's also worth pointing out that a lot of autistic folks struggle with brushing their teeth for sensory reasons, which could be a possibility with brittany and why her teeth were in the state they were in during 2x02. i myself did not brush my teeth regularly until i got braces (when i was 15).

difficulty coping with change - this one is pretty broad and can encompass small things, such as believing in santa claus or believing that storks bring babies in her junior year of high school, and big things, such as her feelings of hopelessness and depression when she is held back a year and santana goes off to louisville.

rigid routines - writes everything with multicoloured crayon (a different crayon for every letter). she was also very particular when the planning for her wedding was taking place; was stressed out by the idea of santana seeing her in her wedding dress and felt the need to put a lot of rituals in place to alleviate her feelings of anxiety in that situation.

difficulty comprehending figurative language - brittany tends to take things people say at face value. there are a lot of examples of her misunderstanding when other people use non-literal figures of speech (e.g. "brittany, take it away"/"take what away?"). in 3x22 mercedes wishes everyone in glee club could all stay in the room together so they wouldn't have to leave and brittany suggests using the bin for a toilet and eating joe.

unusual eating habits - brittany has pica (consuming non-food items); canonically she has eaten the snowflakes at sadie hawkins, kleenex, sand in her master cleanse and the soil sue put in her and santana's lockers.

very particular narrow interests - brittany is an expert on cat diseases and (although the storyline bothers me for personal reasons) she is also exceptional at maths.

flat affect - often speaks in a monotone voice

tendency to come across as blunt or rude - this comes through in a lot of her interactions with tina and rachel, as well as in her speech to santana's abuela in 6x06 and her communication with guests on fondue for two.

inability to lie - often tells on herself, particularly in instances concerning sue and being pressured to spy on the glee club for her.

heightened sensory experiences - the one time when she notices blaine isn't in glee club because she can smell his hair gel. brittany is a great dancer (because the actress who played her was a professional dancer who worked with beyoncé) and is sensory-seeking in a proprioceptive way. she also enjoys the use of koosh pens and fidgets with them at times.

"unconventional" experiences with gender identity and/or gender expression and sexuality - research has shown that autistic individuals are more likely to identify as part of the lgbtq+ community, which brittany does as a bi woman. she has also experimented with androgynous gender expression (e.g. her senior prom outfit) and she ran for prom king.

masking - tends to have different personas depending on who she's with. she is more comfortable around santana and mercedes, but alters how she communicates with people depending on how they have communicated with her (or santana, who she's very protective of) in the past.

hyperfixations - when she's running kurt's (and later her own) campaign for president, a lot of her dialogue includes mentions of unicorns.

learning difficulties and poor experience in mainstream schooling - statistically, autistic children have poor school outcomes (and it's entirely the fault of the school system, not the children themselves). 60-70% of autistic people also have a learning disability. 56% of autistic youth in australia report being treated unfairly at school. when talking to rachel in 2x13, brittany explicitly says that teachers have told her that by not attending class, her grades might improve. as a result of the lack of support (which may have led to discomfort in asking for assistance), brittany was unable to graduate from high school with her peers.

naivety and/or childlike interests - brittany can be gullible at times (e.g. sue's baby cannons tactic). as smolbrittana pointed out in their post, she writes with crayon and plays with barbies at times.

difficulty understanding other people's points of view - the dissonance between her own understanding and expectations of sex versus artie's expectations for what his first sexual experience should be like.

unconventional ways of expressing emotions - brittany often uses lord tubbington to describe how she feels about a particular situation (often when she's upset about a situation involving santana); for example, she tells lord tubbington "you joined a gang" right after santana tells her over skype that her commitments to the louisville cardinals cheerleading team impede on her ability to talk to brittany over skype.

burnout - i've touched on this in other posts, but brittany's presentation in 5x12 and 5x13 read as her being exhausted and overwhelmed with feeling forced to pursue mathematics and not have any other creative outlet.

faceblindness - brittany mistakes a brunette girl who is a member of the prom committee for rachel, and at times confuses unique and mercedes.

love of animals - brittany has a close connection with her cats, lord tubbington and lady tubbington. research shows that autistic individuals prefer to interact with animals over humans and 80% of autistic children participated in pet therapy.

freeze response to trauma - brittany experienced a freeze response during the lockdown in 4x18, which is common in autistic people. this can be prolonged and can occur for minutes, even hours.

sexual trauma - this is unfortunately a case of glee making a joke out of serious topics and it's not an isolated incident. in 1x17, brittany (who at the time is a sophomore and therefore 15 or 16 years old), in an effort to state her case for why she should be ranked higher on quinn's arbitrary list of who are the most sexually promiscuous glee club members, mentioned that she has "made out" with mr kidney the janitor, who is presumably an adult as he is employed by the school* (also i want to point out that any relationship involving a school employee and a school student that is of a sexual nature is predatory regardless of age; for example, although puck is 18 when he has a sexual relationship with shelby, she is still in a position of power over him and by engaging in a romantic and later sexual relationship with him is a sexual predator). in 3x05, brittany later describes her first sexual experience as an "alien invasion" (and in fact the original dialogue for that scene revealed that she was 14 and the "alien" in question was a 19-year-old). research suggests that 30% of women have experienced sexual assault, and 2-3x as many autistic women are affected. an estimated 9 out of 10 autistic women have been victims of sexual assault. outside of her relationship with santana (who also canonically has experienced SA), brittany engages in hypersexual behaviour; she mentions having a "perfect record" and she mentions her sexual history as evidence of her popularity when persuading kurt to let her be his campaign manager. this can be interpreted as her way of coping with her traumatic experiences, and it becomes a problem when she uses sex as a way to help artie move on from tina, not realising that artie views sex differently than how she does.

(*also i want to point out that brittany's experiences with mr kidney could have also occurred much earlier than when she brought them up, which is even more unfortunate)

[sopheadraws]

When it comes to Brittany S. Pierce, people’s interpretations are all over the place. It ranges anywhere from <3 innocent babie <3, to severely cognitively impaired, to manipulative liar who pretends to be stupid so others obey their will (which I’ll later accuse her mother of, but that’s neither here nor there). Anyways, I’m adding my opinion into the cacophony because, despite the indecisive fanbase, thorough Brittany meta is lacking in quantity. Also, I tend to think my opinion is best, as is human nature.

This analysis is rooted in autistic!Brittany, and while its unnecessary since I’ll go through many of her autistic characteristics, here’s a post detailing the headcanon and a medical article describing the diagnostic criteria in simple terms if you’re unfamiliar with the disorder. I understand that not everybody considers Britt neurodivergent, and that’s totally fine - I’m always up for a healthy conversation/debate! - but please give me a heads up if you plan to respond critically because a lot of this is based on my own experiences as an autistic teenage girl, so unmentioned critiques can feel personal fast. Now without further ado:

A Deep Dive Into Brittany S. Pierce <3

Auditory Processing Disorder “APD” is a subdivision of Sensory Processing Disorder “SPD” which is a quintessential element of an autism diagnosis. APD is pretty much exactly what it sounds (haha pun) like: despite somebody’s hearing abilities, the brain fails to process auditory input properly. The APD trait I hear discussed most in autism spaces is the inability to filter out background noises, but Britt seems to struggle most with interpreting meaning from words. Sometimes when people talk to me (“dolphins are just gay sharks”), even though they’re speaking clearly and I’m very literate in English, it sounds like jumbled nonsense (“dulfanz-our-goost-gae-shorcks”). This accounts for what I’m calling Brittany’s “so close you can taste it” lines. Think of her claim that Christopher Cross discovered America or that O is the capital of Ohio; a man named Christopher C. is indeed credited with discovering America and O is the only capital letter in Ohio. As a whole, they often misunderstand things told to them directly, and it seems a lot less foolish if she only understood half of what was being said via APD.

I’m calling the category of Brittany lines that can’t usually be rationalized as possible by anybody over seven (e.g. Rory the leprechaun, storks delivering babies, and anything with Lord Tubbington) the “stranger than fanfiction lines.” Now, I could take these at face value and say she’s tapping into a magical dimension, but I have my own set of autism driven realism issues, so, without a pre-existing fantasy world, I’m using my significant brainpower to twist Brittany into plausibility =D I ultimately think the best explanation for the stranger than fanfiction lines is echolalia. Echolalia is the repetition of words or phrases, and it’s usually associated with autism. Autistic people often reuse other people’s words, and since we usually think in pictures and have various social communication problems, it’s easier than formulating new sentences. Or we just like the tongue movements/sound a word makes. Personally, I quote songs a lot - if you say something loosely related to a Taylor Swift, musical, or Glee lyric, chances are I’ll sing it - and dipsomaniacal is a new fave to say randomly. There’s some evidence for Britt doing this in canon, unrelated to the stranger than fanfiction lines. While Brittany is known for calling him Blaine Warbler, it actually originated from Rachel and the infamous spin the bottle kiss. They also repeat ‘uber weird after Blaine in the That’s So Rachel reading, and the last line of that scene is them talking in time with Blaine, a behavior seen in S1 with Santana. However, it interests me most that she calls Artie a robot, as we see her dad call Stephen Hawkin, another wheelchair user, a robot in S6.

Basically, I blame the Pierces for how terribly adjusted their child is <3 (Mostly Whitney. Assuming Pierce actually has an IQ of 40, he’s disabled too and deserves some slack in terms of spreading misinformation.) In her admittedly limited screen time, Whitney manages to do two positive things: be an LGBTQ+ ally and let her younger daughter do soccer, I guess. Otherwise, she kept the truth about Stephen Hawking from Brittany for 20 years, cheated on her husband on their honeymoon for claiming infertility, crapped in random barns, insulted her husband’s intelligence, publicly insulted her husband’s appearance, and arguably restricted her daughter’s intellectual growth. To be honest, I realize Whitney isn’t that deep and I don’t actually hate her, but if people can hate Brittany for being a comedic character from the 2010s, I’ll do the same thing to their mother in defense of Brittany. Fight stop the violence with violence, baby! Anyways, I don’t think echolalia alone can explain the stranger than fanfiction lines. At least, not without a source. And that’s usually where upbringing comes in.

I’m ruling out nature automatically because there aren’t chromosomes telling people to believe in unicorns. Well, some people - including autistic people (hehe see what I’m doing here?) - are more inclined to believe falsehoods, but falsehoods have to be fed by someone else. With autism, the reckless believing tendencies come from literal thinking in part. Also, since SPD makes processing the outside world difficult, we often can’t recognize “obvious” truths in the first place. My extended family hated watching movies with me because I used to ask questions every five seconds lol. Setting Pierce aside because he seems to follow Whitney blindly; Brittany’s unnamed sister, Sue, and Whitney are the remaining suspects.

I assume Brittany’s sister is significantly younger than Britt because she played soccer with a seven-year-old in S1 (technically she could’ve been the coach, but that throws off my theory that the Klaine/Brittana wedding was child free), and children aren’t clever or mean enough to throw off anybody��s world view so badly :) Sue does seem the obvious answer, but she didn’t meet Brittany until they started high school, and she’s consistently baffled by Britt’s behavior despite encouraging her own eccentricities in the other Cheerios. And that leaves Whitney as the perpetrator, blaming her Scientology and gambling addiction on a cat.

Finally, I do think there’s a few times when Brittany intended for her jokes to be jokes. I don’t think it happens as much as you might expect, but there’s a scene in S3 when JBI is interviewing Brittany about her class president candidacy, and she tells him she’s voting for Rick “The Stick” Nelson before turning to Santana and laughing that clued me in. I think the mentality behind these lines (the “pun intended” category) is best explained with an anecdote from my own childhood.

When I was little - maybe six or seven - I really wanted to be funny. Well, I wanted to be liked, and since I didn’t understand social cues, my solution was humor because I knew my dad told jokes which made me laugh, which made him likable! Unfortunately, as a literal thinking child, I had no idea how to do this, which meant I parroted the only joke I knew (“What time is it when an elephant sits on the table?” “Time to get a new table!”) in hopes of chuckles. This went about as badly as you would expect. After a while, my parents got rightfully fed up with this joke and got me a joke book. I had no sense which of these jokes were funny, which wasn’t helped by most of the book being about taxes, bad marriages, and other stuff aimed at adults.

It wasn’t until a routine walk to the convenient store that my comedy dreams were fulfilled. My dad, little sister, and I used to walk to the “snack store” to buy a drink each and share a candy bar. While we had some routine favorites, we also tried out new candies together. However, there were a few bars my dad refused to buy because he’d disliked them prior to our snack store outings. Most infamous of these forbidden fruits was the Zero Bar. We tended to reference the Zero Bar when picking our next treat, and on this fateful day I said, “It’s called the Zero Bar because zero people like it.”

And my dad laughed. He laughed because of something I’d said. I was elated!

The only catch up was I hadn’t actually intended it as a joke. After all my attempts to be funny, the only thing that apparently worked was speaking my mind. This singular incident didn’t rewire my understanding of humor - I attempted the parroting tactic with the Zero Bar joke after all - but it’s the most pivotal moment in my mind. To this day, I play up my neurodivergent thought process to make others laugh. I reference Glee at seemly unrelated times with mock enthusiasm to callback times I’ve mentioned Glee with real enthusiasm or talk about my other interests in forced monotones.

There isn’t any actual evidence that Brittany has the same weird complex about humor, but some of their interactions regarding stupidity parallel it. In general, when they’re away from Santana, Brittany appears fairly insecure about her neurodivergence. I might even go as far as to say that she doesn’t joke without Santana around. Now, I don’t think Britt knows what her atypicalities are until they’re presumably diagnosed at M.I.T., but every neurodivergent person I know knew something was wrong before being diagnosed. (I want to talk about how Blaine’s diagnosed autism is a foil for Brittany’s undiagnosed autism at some point, but you didn’t sign up for autistic!Blaine, so now isn’t the time.)

Anddd, that’d pretty much it for now :) I intend to write more in depth Brittany meta in the future, but this is a decent overview for the time being. I hope this made you think, and I’d love to hear your thoughts if it did!

[twobruhsinahottub]

I could go on for a century about how much these two, espec Santana (may Naya's memory be a blessing :() meant/still mean to me. They were the first open sapphic couple i ever saw in media. I would watch I Kissed A Girl (S3 e4? of Glee) on repeat but silent in case anyone heard and i got outed by it. That episode truly saved me. For those who dont know, its the episode where Santana is forcibly outed as a lesbian, and throughout the episode she begins to own it and is proud. At a time when i thought the world was ending i couldnt understand who i was, and i thought liking girls was wrong, this episode brought be comfort. Glee was my special interest for years, coincidentally at the same time as i was first questioning my sexuality. Seeing someone like me in my favourite media genuinely kept me alive. I owe my life to Naya Rivera and Heather Morris and their portrayal of Britana. On top of that, Brittany helped me understand myself too. She is bisexual, and at the time I was thinking I was too. I thought it was wrong to like boys and girls and Brittany showed be it was ok to be you. She also is very clearly autistic, and seeing skmeone in media who was like me, even if i didnt know it yet, helped me tremendously. Thank you Heather and Naya. I owe you the world. Happy pride to these two.

[do-u-know-this-autisticcharacter]

Do You Know This (Non-canon) Autistic Character?

Evidence below the cut.

I say no because technically it's not canon, but it is HEAVILY implied she is autistic. Since trying to get diagnosed myself I have noticed it more and more how even though the show never said the "A word".

- In her wedding vows she stated that her brain worked differently

- Has hyperfixations/special interests

- Very clearly masking. She acts dumb to fit around other people except when she's with Santana who is her girfriend/wife.

- Doesn't understand certain social cues.

- Can overshare without realising such as how she and Santana act in private.

- Tries to downplay how intelligent she really is, especially at maths and got accepted to MIT

- Doesn't like confrontation

- Has very big imagination and creative skills

There is this whole entire Tumblr thread https://www.tumblr.com/smolbrittana/635788995236954112/traits-that-suggest-that-brittany-s-pierce-is

[sebastiansmytheapologist]

part 2

[autisticheadcanons]

Brittany S Pierce from Glee is autistic!

[autisticheadcanonsdaily]

Brittany Pierce from Glee is autistic!

[chipmunkweirdo]

The inside of my head at all times.

Yes this is an Inside Out parody. But yes, it’s also shockingly accurate.

[ciinelqura]

[kristyavsonhero2]

I got the plush toy for my first time. Sure, took me two or three months to get it but I got it. thank you so much Britt and I'm a huge fan of your videos, unlike Louise. I watched your videos on YouTube.

[feralfrey]

brittany: i have a disorder. the doctor said it’s otter crossing

santana: auditory processing

[de-lyc-ful]

Most dogs love me. I love most dogs. I’m a cat person but I carry a bag of dog treats with me most times and I stop to pet any dog that will let me. My friends sometimes joke that I can’t ignore a dog ever and that’s generally true. I’ll say hi to any dog as long as I’m following my rules:

1- must not be an on-duty service dog

2- must not require me to go too far out of my way to pet

3- owner must give me permission

Today I met a brittany named Ruby, whose owners were a very nice elderly couple who seemed quite happy that I knew what a brittany was. Ruby was the sweetest little baby and her owners took some pictures of us together on my phone.

Going on walks and meeting people’s dogs has been one of the biggest things that have helped improve my social skills and fear of talking to strangers. I always have something to talk about, and I’m probably not going to see the person ever again, so it’s perfect practice. I also get to unmask because most dog owners are very excited to talk to other people who are also very excited about dogs.

[petrolandchlorine]

Brittany S Pierce would totally have these

[personagensautistas]

O personagem autista do dia é: Brittany Pierce, da série Glee.

[drchucktingle]

thank you to the LAREDO MORNING TIMES and brittanie shey for this important piece. it was so nice to talk to you and prove love is real

[gotylocks]

Miscellaneous Bottoms Meta Thoughts

Hazel has had a crush on PJ for a long time and thinks she's super cool. That's why she initially believes they went to juvie and why she was hurt PJ lied to her (also because she doesn't get sarcasm because she's very autistic coded). You can see her heart breaking when PJ says she has no friends and a skank for a mom. Even though she calls her a liar, she still keeps the secret, even though she's hurt because she still likes her.

Brittany says she's straight but I think that might be more because she's not into PJ as more than a friend. I think when she hits 27 she's going to look back on her friendship with Isabel she's going to have that hindsight "Oh I was actually in love with her" moment so many of us have had.

Josie may not believe Isabel when she says she could've just talked to her, but Isabel seems interested in her even as early as the fair at the beginning.

Bottoms 2 needs to happen so we can get Stella-Rebecca a girlfriend (who will help beat up her stalker).