Between Vulnerability and Desire: Autistic Women’s Experiences of Sexual Boundaries (ABOUND)
Name of applicant
Sofie Boldsen
Title
Postdoctoral Fellow
Institution
University of Copenhagen
Amount
DKK 1,921,807
Year
2025
Type of grant
Reintegration Fellowships
What?
This project explores how autistic women experience and navigate boundaries in sexual interactions focusing on how sensory differences shape feelings of desire, vulnerability, connectedness, and transgression. Clarifying the link between autistic lived experience and the precarious practice of negotiating sexual boundaries, the project offers unprecedented insight into sexual experience in autism.
Why?
Autistic women face higher risks of sexual victimization, sexual discomfort and sexual regret, yet their experiences of sexual boundaries are as-of-yet unexplored. By centering their experiences and perspectives, the project both deepens the understanding of gender in autism and paves the way for improved sexual safety and wellbeing for autistic women across the lifespan.
How?
Working closely with autistic women, the project combines phenomenological and ethnographic methods to explore how they experience sexual boundaries, vulnerability, and desire. Capturing both the fine-grained details of their experiences and shared meanings of sex and gender, the project advances an innovative research agenda clarifying the structures of sexual experience among autistic women.