a sexual experience and that is what the queen's gambit recognizes and displays through these struggles quite accurately because beth does face a lot of struggles with her sex life but it's not shown as if she doesn't want sex or as if she is incapable of understanding what sex means just that because of some of her artistically coded traits she has a lot of difficulty understanding and emotionally conceptualizing sex first and foremost in real life autistic people are not infantilized adults incapable of wanting sex in fact sex can hold just as much fascination for us as it does for any other person especially those going through puberty like beth is throughout the series beth is shown to be interested in sex as she starts to become a sexual being during her pubescent years in the first episode she watches from afar as two teenagers kiss and seems fascinated by it in the second episode she quietly gazes upon two of a feral of students making out in the library like many of us autistic or not beth finds sex fascinating to look at and yet doesn't completely understand it as few teenagers do yet she still desires it even if she doesn't understand it yet the awkwardness informed by many autistic folks social tendencies can create a struggle for many autistic folks to feel confident understanding or seeking out sex or being able to engage with the social graces necessary to properly flirt with sexual partners despite our desire for it despite looking like the amazing anya taylor joy beth is often incapable of really expressing sexual desire in social situations several times throughout the series beth is shown to be attracted to different men yet they turn her down because she seems cold aloof unemotional and uncaring one about sex forget it this isn't true she feels very deeply as we see throughout the show but she's also unable to portray that authentically to anyone around her in social situations as we talked about isolating her but for many of us on the spectrum instead of our hyper fixations and obsessions preventing our sexual desires they actually often inform and motivate them for example early in the series beth is shown to be uncomfortable with direct eye contact in social situations yet during chess anya taylor joy performs beth as unflinching staring directly at her opponents it creates an intimate atmosphere while she plays chess probably the most intimate interactions beth has achieved at that point in her life and she begins to feel comfortable with her opponents so it's by no means a coincidence then that the people she begins to have intimate sexual relationships with are her fellow players first most of her sexual partners throughout the show are men who she's played multiple times in a game of chess she's able to feel more intimate with people that she engaged with through her hyper fixation of chess rather than people that she met elsewhere in the world even more so she treats sex like a game of chess an act that two people engage in and perform specific moves in and when something happens that she doesn't expect she's unable to handle it both in sex and chess even more so once the actual game of chess is over once the thing that she cares about is done she doesn't know what to do in chess when the game is over it's over she shakes her opponent's hand and they go
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