Strong Female Character

Scottish comedian Fern Brady was told she couldn't be autistic because she had relationships and made good eye contact. In this memoir, she explores neurodivergence and living unmasked. Brady recognized signs of autism in her teens—sensory issues, meltdowns, difficulty reading social cues—but wasn't officially diagnosed until age thirty-four. Strong Female Character examines the years between self-recognition and diagnosis, and how sexism and ableism often delay autism diagnosis in women until adulthood. Raised in a working-class Scottish Catholic family, Brady reflects on how undiagnosed autism shaped her youth, from a tree that served as her childhood best friend to a psychiatric facility where she was placed when her parents and school didn't know how to help her. The memoir details her struggles with employment, destructive coping mechanisms, and severe meltdowns. Brady's nonlinear journey—including stripping, arrest, and finding comedy as an outlet, culminating in an appearance on the Taskmaster TV show—serves as both a coming-of-age account and a reflection on life at the intersection of womanhood and neurodiversity. The book explores how being female can obscure autism and how being autistic conflicts with expectations of womanhood.