‘Why I've never had a boyfriend at 31'
My life has always been marked by a strange duality.
I was Dux of my high school, but I had no best friend to trade secrets and friendship bracelets with.
I graduated with a double-degree, but I couldn't make eye contact with the cute guys in my classes.
I work professionally and was headhunted for a PhD scholarship, but at age 31 I've still never had a boyfriend.
The shame of my difference was all-consuming until I was diagnosed as autistic at age 28.
Finally, my life made sense: my sensory quirks, mental health struggles, and especially my 'social awkwardness'.
For many women like me, an autism diagnosis comes later in life – if we're ever diagnosed at all.
According to recent research, nearly 80% of autistic females remain undiagnosed at age 18.
For a long time, autism was considered a 'male' condition, with four times as many boys diagnosed as girls.
Now, though, experts are realising that autism is much more common in girls and women than previously thought.
Still, the diagnostic criteria for autism remains male-centric, meaning girls and women often remain undiagnosed and unsupported.
Yet even with a diagnosis, autistic women often face barriers receiving appropriate support.
Take, for example, my experience with the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS).
According to the NDIS, the scheme prioritises participant 'choice and control' and supports that are 'reasonable and necessary' to improve disabled people's quality of life, independence, and social skills.
Applying to the NDIS, I was hopeful I'd finally get some help – support I need particularly because of my social isolation.
I have no partner, and both of my parents have died.
After a year of waiting on my application, I got a life-changing call from a sunshine-voiced woman.
'Just calling to let you know that you are now a participant of the NDIS,' she said.
Relief flooded through me, but it was short-lived.
In my first planning meeting, an NDIS worker asked me what supports I would like.
'Psychosexual therapy and pelvic floor physiotherapy,' I responded.
'And maybe a hearing aid for my left ear.'
'How are those related to your autism?' she asked.
Awkwardly, I explained how my social anxiety and trauma are stored in my pelvic muscles, a condition called vaginismus.
These therapies, I clarified, will mean one day I'll have the confidence and physical ability to have a normal romantic, sexual relationship, just like everyone else.
'Not everyone who has autism experiences trauma,' she said.
'There's no direct link from autism to psychosexual therapy or pelvic floor physiotherapy for your vaginis… whatever'.
Shame swept over me.
'These are considered medical treatments,' she continued, 'So they're not covered by the NDIS but by Medicare.'
It took all my courage to point out that neither of these therapies are covered by Medicare.
Later, I found out that both psychosexual therapy and physiotherapy can be covered by the NDIS.
At the end of the call, the NDIS planner offered me access to a speech therapist and support worker, despite the fact I have no speech impediment and am comfortable going out alone.
As a disability scholar, I know why I've fallen through the cracks.
Like many services that aim to help autistic people, the NDIS is biased by years of male-centric diagnostic and treatment rhetoric.
This underlying current of medical misogyny fuels ignorance about how autism presents in girls and adult women, and therefore what 'reasonable and necessary' supports might be.
In other words, because I'm autistic, I was offered speech therapy and a support worker, which I understand is common for autistic men.
But I'm an autistic woman, and I don't need speech therapy.
I need physical and mental therapy so I can build my confidence and heal my traumatised body, so that relationships aren't terrifying and so that sex isn't painful.
And I'm not alone in struggling with romance and sex.
Research shows that autistic women often have poorer levels of overall sexual functioning, feel less well in sexual relationships than autistic men, and are also at greater risk of becoming a victim of sexual assault or abuse.
According to a recent study, 9 out of 10 autistic women have experienced sexual violence.
I am among them.
Despite statistics like these, support for autistic women is scarce and hard to access, even for so-called 'high-functioning' autistic people like me.
Reflecting on my NDIS experience, I think 'it shouldn't be this hard'. But it is.
And it has real-life implications.
In a pub where the noise worsens my hearing impairment, I can't properly hear the guy who approaches me to talk.
He eventually gives up and politely excuses himself, walking away.
I have a panic attack and leave.
On Facebook, I see old school peers post about their partners and children. On Instagram, I see one of my oldest friends announce her engagement.
'Congrats!!!' I comment, crying tears of envy.
At the gynaecologist, I fail a cervical exam in searing pain.
Alone, I remember lying in a man's bed, paralysed with fear and the shame of my inexperience.
I wonder what a speech therapist would say.
Elena Filipczyk is an autistic writer and PhD candidate.
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ABC News
an hour ago
- ABC News
Freebirth movement called out for extremism as mothers share traumatic experiences
It was during lockdown that Angela Gallo started noticing her social media feed "getting weird". The COVID pandemic and strict hospital mandates were changing the way women experienced pregnancy and birth, and for thousands, birthing at home seemed a better option. Ms Gallo, also known as Angel Phoenix, had a sizeable Instagram following centred around birth and the movement to wrestle back a woman's control over it. Warning: This story includes details about stillbirth and birth trauma. Freebirth, which is distinct from a homebirth, and occurs without a midwife or doctor present, was a growing part of that conversation. "Things started becoming more and more extreme, very anti-hospital, anti-medical, anti-midwife," Ms Gallo says. "It's either you birth in a river with dolphins while talking in light language or you're not welcome here and you get death threats for suggesting that women use the medical system if they need it. "That's when things started to get very messy." Ms Gallo was also running a professional and personal development course known as Dynamo Doulas. The course provided business tools for doulas — unregulated birth workers with no medical training, who provide emotional and physical support for women during pregnancy and birth. Ms Gallo had trained hundreds through her online course, which she says taught birth workers "to meet other women where they're at, by teaching you to meet yourself". But once they completed the course and were out on their own, the doulas were working for themselves, and Ms Gallo had no control over their practice. Several of her trainees chose to attend freebirths and rebranded themselves as "radical birthkeepers", operating in a scope only they could define, where they were the only "expert" in the room. Ms Gallo believes mothers had good reasons for turning to them for support. "They're seduced by the empathy. They're seduced by being seen … by witnessing them in their horror, because the system doesn't give a shit. The system doesn't listen," she says. "So, you're validating them, and that's why they seek out these communities." Over time, authorities came to Ms Gallo with questions she could not answer. She claims police contacted her on four separate occasions after the deaths of two babies and a mother, and one severe birth injury, all of which happened during freebirths attended by people who had taken her training course. "Once I got contacted by the last police situation, I made the decision, like this just was not feasible," she says. Ms Gallo pulled the plug on the course, closed her official Instagram account and shut down her website and podcast. "It doesn't matter what you say or what you do, people are going to be operating outside of the ethics of what I believe is the right thing to do," she says. "For my own mental health it was too much." Post-pandemic, the freebirth movement online continued to grow — and Lucy, whose name has been changed, was getting drawn in. Lucy's first birth, which ended in a caesarean delivery, was deeply unsatisfying. When she got pregnant for the second time, she was curious to find another way. "I was completely in the freebirth cult ... all the Instagram accounts, everything was about freebirth … about how it's orgasmic, it's amazing. That you are reborn and every woman can do it," she says. The woman Lucy employed for her second birth was part of a growing cohort of radical birth workers, populating the online space with a hardline rhetoric about medical care. The Victorian-based doula called herself the "authentic birthkeeper" and agreed to attend Lucy's birth for $3,000, with a few appointments beforehand. Although the woman never said she was a midwife, Lucy says she believed she had midwifery skills and even used a doppler, a medical device normally used by registered midwives, to monitor the baby's heartbeat. "She knew how to feel the baby. She could listen to the baby's heartbeat. She just didn't have the actual qualification," Lucy says. Within days of signing up, Lucy says her birthkeeper invited her to a WhatsApp support group with over 70 members. "I had no fears, I was just super excited about giving birth and all around me I could hear all those amazing stories," she recalls. "[There were] mums that she had birthed [with] already, all the ones that were pregnant. As the months went on, Lucy and the other mothers in the WhatsApp group became friends, and some would chat every day. "So anytime we had a question or anything, everyone was asking in the group," she says. Lucy had had some blood tests and a scan early on in the pregnancy, but decided against any further ultrasounds. "Because everyone was so freebirth and anti-system, maybe somewhere in my head, subconsciously, I didn't want to have one because I didn't want to be the one that had the scan," she says. "You have this one way of thinking … you can't bend to anything else." Lucy says the birthkeeper helped her feel she could have a natural birth, no matter what. "Maybe because I lack confidence. So having someone that is super confident, I was like: 'OK, good. I've got this,'" she says. "Maybe I needed some backup. Some reassurance. That's what cult leaders do." When labour finally arrived at 41 weeks, the pain was extreme. "I was hating it. I was thinking: 'What the f*** am I doing? Like, I'm crazy. Why am I putting myself through this?'" Lucy remembers. "I just felt it was really, really painful at the front. I felt like something was wrong. "And then because I had the C-section, and I just remember hearing about the scar and that ... if you feel a pain in your scar, it can be bad." The birthkeeper told Lucy it was all in her head. "She's like: 'You're sabotaging yourself, remember what you want: a birth, a baby.'" Lucy changed position, got out of the pool and was on all fours. At one point there was a significant amount of meconium, which is a baby's first poo — if passed while the baby is still in the uterus, it can be a sign of distress. "I kept telling her: 'It's not normal,'" Lucy says. "And she's like: 'A baby's going to come out of your body, a baby's going to come out of your body. Just keep pushing.'" Lucy says the birthkeeper did a vaginal examination and told her she could feel the baby's head. "And then I put my finger [there] and I couldn't feel anything," she says. "And I remember at this point thinking: 'You don't know what you're talking about.'" When Lucy and her partner made the decision to transfer to hospital, the birthkeeper accompanied them, but Lucy says she gave a false name and said she was a "friend". "The midwives would tell me something and she was saying, 'don't do it, or don't let them', so I was just in between," Lucy says. The birthkeeper suggested they return home, but Lucy and her partner refused. "You could feel the tension, you could feel they [the hospital staff] were angry at us," she says. Lucy laboured in the shower, but when the baby emerged, it was stuck, in a life-threatening position known as shoulder dystocia. "The doctor went with her whole arm inside and then just pulled [the baby] out. And then I just remember hearing: 'Oh, here's your baby. It's a little girl.'" The baby couldn't breathe by herself for 15 minutes and was put on life support, as doctors expressed concerns she may have a brain injury. With her baby given the all clear, Lucy returned home after a week in hospital, broken and exhausted. She turned to her freebirth friends on the WhatsApp chat. "I needed it. I needed to talk about it," Lucy says. "And I got roasted by all those women that I thought were friends." One wrote: "How you [live] your life is how you give birth. You take radical responsibility for all choices and consequences in life and birth and mothering." "It was a cult," Lucy says. "I was breaking something, you know, I couldn't be part of the group anymore. Within a week, the birthkeeper cut off contact, and removed Lucy from the freebirth support group. "I've decided to keep the group specifically for women who have freebirthed or are about to have a freebirth," the birthkeeper wrote. "I'm sorry if this is upsetting to anyone but I think it is what's best to protect the integrity of the group so that women are free to share their experiences without being fearful." The ABC sent written questions to Lucy's birthkeeper but she did not respond. Lucy contacted the ABC after a freebirth investigation last year, which was among dozens of stories about deficiencies in the Australian maternity system prompted by a crowdsourced project. The investigation revealed seven babies and one mother had died during or after a freebirth in the space of 18 months, in the same pocket of south-east Queensland and northern NSW. In each case, the mother had employed a doula or birthkeeper to attend the birth. In November last year, the ABC published a story about one of those birthkeepers, who refers to herself as a "sovereign midwife" and is alleged to have incorrectly told a mother her baby's shoulder was a head. The birthkeeper did not respond to questions from the ABC and uploaded a video of her burning the article after it was published. That story also revealed two more baby deaths had been referred to the coroner in 2024 after freebirths with other doulas, or birthkeepers, in the same geographic area. In February 2025, two birth workers were charged with manslaughter in NSW, over a newborn baby death that occurred hours after a freebirth in 2022. That case is currently before the courts. A woman's death after a freebirth in May, in south-east Queensland, has also been referred to the coroner. A birthkeeper known as Earth Aunty, who was a friend of the woman, established a GoFundMe after the death and helped organise a call out for "unv@axxed colostrum and breast milk donations" from the community. The birth worker put out a similar notice for unvaccinated breast milk in 2022, when a breech freebirth she attended on the Sunshine Coast resulted in a lifelong brain injury for a baby girl. The ABC contacted the birth worker, but she declined an interview and advised reporters not to contact "any of the women or families I may or may not have served, past, present or future". The mother who died in May is the second maternal death in the hours after a freebirth in the space of three years in the same geographic area, after the death of a 41-year-old mother in 2022. The coroner has not yet made the cause of death for either mother public. Maternal deaths are extraordinarily rare in Australia and the majority result from "diseases or conditions that were not due to a direct obstetric cause, but were aggravated by the pregnancy or birth". Over the 10 years to 2022, of more than 3 million births, 23 mothers died during or immediately after birth across the country, in a death that was directly related to the pregnancy. Three of those deaths occurred outside a hospital. The ABC's previous reporting into freebirths provoked strong reactions within the freebirthing community, with advocates describing reporters as vultures. Former doula trainer Ms Gallo says she has never been opposed to freebirth, and still works as a postpartum doula, but she believes a "group think" has emerged, making the movement dangerous. She describes it as a culture that encourages people to close ranks in order to protect their own. "Something that needs to aggressively sustain its ideology, lest it … come undone at the seams, feels like a cult to me," she says. The Victorian parliament is currently conducting an inquiry into the recruitment methods of cults and organised fringe groups. It uses a widely adopted definition which describes a cult as a movement or a group that exhibits "devotion" to an idea, in a way that "employs unethically manipulative techniques of persuasion and control" to advance "the goals of the group's leaders, to the actual or possible detriment of members". These types of groups typically isolate members from friends and family, use guilt or fear to control followers' thinking, and punish members for perceived disobedience — behaviours that Ms Gallo, Lucy, and others who were once associated with the freebirthing movement, recognise. "When you are trying to play God and pretend nothing can go wrong, obviously things are going to go horrifically wrong," Ms Gallo says. She says radical birthkeepers are becoming the problem they are trying to fight against. "I've seen doctors say horrific things. I've seen midwives do stitches as violently as possible to prove a point and get that person into submission," Ms Gallo says. "All I know is I'm against extremism in the hospital setting or in the freebirth setting." Much of the online narrative around freebirth remains overwhelmingly positive, with accounts of "elation" and "empowerment", that stand in stark contrast to the public record on birth trauma in hospitals. But mothers are also starting to openly share their traumatic experiences of freebirth. In a post just before Mother's Day, Port Macquarie woman Richa Ekka described being "abandoned" by her birthkeeper, after a freebirth that ended in her baby's death and her own admittance to intensive care. "My birthkeeper did not show up fully during my labour," wrote Ms Ekka, who has given the ABC permission to share her post. "She was not there [the] majority of the time. She was not there when I had my seizure. She was not there when I was taken to the hospital. She did not come visit me in the hospital when I was in ICU for three days. "We invited her into our most sacred and vulnerable ceremony of life and birth and she spat all over it by abandoning us in the most difficult time of our lives." The mother told the ABC she had chosen to freebirth because she "didn't have many options". "I do believe that government-funded homebirth programs Australia-wide would significantly reduce women choosing freebirth," Ms Ekka said. "Doulas are cheaper than private midwives so a lot of people end up with a doula because they think, 'oh it's the same'. But it's not. And you don't always know that in your first birth." Ms Ekka says the Australian maternity system has broader issues that need addressing. "If women were given more options they would choose care that is more aligned rather than extremes." Ms Ekka's birthkeeper did not respond to a request for comment. The ABC has spoken with other mothers about their freebirth experiences, who didn't want to be identified. One mother told the ABC she was "gaslit" by a birth worker in her community after her attempt at freebirth ended in a hospital transfer. She said she laboured for five days at home, and after her birth ended in a caesarean, the birthkeeper told her friends it was because she didn't know how to "use her voice". Do you know more? Contact the ABC's Regional Investigations team. Another mother told the ABC she fired her birthkeeper when she recommended taking magic mushrooms during pregnancy. The mother said she had also been failed by every level of care available to her. "The options basically boiled down to: pay $8,000 to a private midwife to be gaslit and bullied into things so they keep their stats good, pay $4,000 to a doula to be given virtual support and a flaky birth attendant that advocates for drug use, or have a free midwifery experience in hospital that teaches you exactly zero about birth and forces you into doing things before you have time to think," the woman said. Health authorities are working to respond to concerns about traumatic birth experiences in the mainstream medical system after inquiries in NSW found women had been repeatedly subject to interventions without consent and left with "avoidable" physical and psychological injuries. The NSW government told the ABC five initiatives in response to the inquiry were on track to be delivered by August, including increased access to continuity of care models, and "embedded trauma-informed maternity care". New facilities known as Midwifery Group Practices have been announced in the Shoalhaven, Goulburn and Port Macquarie regions and the government has doubled the incentives for midwives to relocate to rural areas. The Queensland Health Department said it was "investigating ways to improve the safety of women who choose to give birth outside of a medical setting", including through a public homebirth program on the Sunshine Coast. "Midwives working within the publicly funded homebirth program regularly attend community events to engage with women and expectant mothers who may not have contacted health professionals," a spokeswoman said in a statement. "We will continue to provide maternity services that are co-designed in partnership with maternity consumers and community groups." At a federal level, a Health Department spokesperson noted the government had committed $3.5 million over four years to expand the Midwife Professional Indemnity Scheme (MPIS) to allow homebirth midwives adequate coverage. Ms Gallo says health authorities should respond to the freebirth movement with kindness, rather than punishment. "Take responsibility for the birth trauma. Show them that your professionals are trauma-informed," she says. "Do the actual work to make women feel safe. Lower your rates of caesarean, lower your rates of instrumental birth. "Actually make concrete changes within the system to show women you're doing the work. "Otherwise, you're just like a partner who's abusing their spouse and says, 'oh, I swear I'll change'. And then you come back and you get hurt. And then who's the fool?"
ABC News
2 hours ago
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Is it too easy to get a prescription for medicinal cannabis?
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News.com.au
9 hours ago
- News.com.au
ABC radio host James Valentine has shared second shock cancer diagnosis
Beloved ABC radio host James Valentine has revealed a second cancer diagnosis months after having a tumour removed. Valentine announced he had oesophageal cancer, and was going off the air to have surgery in March last year. He returned to work in September, while he was being monitored by doctors for future outbreaks. On Friday, he revealed the wretched news to his audience that another tumour had been discovered. 'My current scans and a biopsy have confirmed that I have tumours in my omentum. Yes, omentum, I'd never heard of it either,' he said. 'It's described usually as a fatty veil, which extends from the stomach over your intestine. Quite what it does, not sure; partly packaging, partly helping to protect the intestine, possibly some role in dealing with infection. 'Whatever it's meant to do it is currently largely squeezing my bowel and causing constriction and constipation and general discomfort in that part of the world. 'Oh, it's been a fun few weeks, my friends. I am now way too familiar with the 'digestive' aisle of my local chemist.' Valentine begins immunotherapy and chemotherapy next week and will take three months off from radio and saxophone duties while he heals and recovers from the treatment. 'Immunotherapy is the great hope of everyone these days. I'm eligible, as in it's considered that it's very likely to be effective in my case,' he said. 'Side effects of the treatment range from mildly irritating to horrendous, so I think I'll just deal with them. Best I focus on this one thing, and give the medicine and the process its best chance.' Doctors told him before he underwent surgery there was a likelihood the cancer would return. He said he was focused firmly on the present and what needed be done through the course of the treatment to 'fix this.' 'That's me for the next few months. Treatment, deal with the treatment, rest, build strength for next treatment. In between, be with the people I love,' he said. 'I'm already missing you, I'm already wanting to get back on air. 'I don't pray, but if you do, please go hard. I can feel your good wishes, love and support and I thank you deeply for it. 'When I know anything about what's happening, I'll let you know but right now I'm off to the land of the sick. When I get back, you'll hear from me.'
