WHEN HE WAS a teenager, Ben believed that he struggled with friendships and romantic relationships more than others his age. Discerning personal boundaries and finding ways to effectively communicate often bewildered him, and he wasn’t sure what certain signals meant or how many he may have missed. As someone with autism, cerebral palsy, and expressive dysphasia—which means it takes him longer to find the words he wants to use when speaking or writing—he found nearly every encounter with someone he liked or had a crush on fraught with anxiety and confusion.
He was not alone. Many people with intellectual and developmental disabilities are never explicitly taught that the ways a person touches someone else depend on the nature of the relationship, or even what it means for someone to consent. It was only once he was 26, in the spring of 2022, that Ben (not his
