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Thank you! I just subbed. I'm on the spectrum and was a little girl who wished I'd been born a boy; and if I'd been born in 2000, I would've been thought to be a trans boy.
Like seriously you're missing so many points that countless trans autisitc people are picking up in the comments. Ranging from "this is what it's actually like" to "if you say this people will want to kill us."
I want to echo what Devlin said. There are so many people right here in the comments who are nonbinary and autistic and have serious concerns about the way the information was presented here. I get that you can't do everything in a 25 minute video, but what you CAN do is reach out to the people this affects before you put out a video with a message (intentional or not) that stigmatizes. A few things I wish you had included in this video are: * Gender identity variance is not a problem in and of itself. Treat dysphoria, not variance. * There are not just two valid gender "slots." * Some people benefit from *not* getting slotted into gender categories. * Many people are happily nonbinary. Nonbinary isn't the same as "a big question mark" that inherently causes gender dysphoria. * Nonbinary is just one expression of gender variance. * Many autistic people are happily autistic and need support rather than fixing. * There could be many other reasons for the overlap of autism and gender variance. Autistic people often see a lot of what NTs prioritize as weird and unhelpful, and gender is something NTs really seem to fetishize. Finally, it's of critical importance that you educate your audience about the fact that gender dysphoria is extremely highly correlated with lack of social support. People who are gender variant and have social support experience far, far less gender dysphoria than people who are gender variant without social support. This is an instance similar to that of an Identified Patient; the locus of the problem is in the pathological ways others respond to gender variance, rather than variance itself. Thanks for your consideration.
@@O2life yeah. And people need to realize gender dysphoria ***occurs in cisgender people too.*** Cis people have uncomfortable feelings about their bodies, how they look, how they are percieved, etc and how that relates to their gender! They're just seen as normal because "oh she waxes so she can be more ladylike." They're seen as fitting into their roles better, rather than becoming more comfortable in their own bodies n such
As a person who is on the spectrum and transgender, this is what I think about why they’re linked. Gender is very social, and if you struggle socially you can struggle with the social aspects of gender. If I never had to socialize with others, my gender would be irrelevant. In many ways my gender identity feels more like an inconvenience, at least to me. Why does my gender have to determine favorite colors, job preferences, and hobbies? For me this is how I feel.
Extremely relatable. I'm nonbinary, and it just throws cold water on me whenever someone genders me. I don't want people to make assumptions about me based on the shape of my body, whether those assumptions are good or bad.
@@MolecularMachine Making assumptions is a natural and often automatic thing, which in many cases even keeps you alive. Not only that, considering non binary people are 1-2% of population, it is quite reasonable to assume your gender. What kind special attitude do you expect when you are in the absolute minority?
@@alexmash1353 "Assumptions are natural and helpful," says the person making wildly incorrect assumptions about the solutions I want based on no evidence. Do you think? Or do you just speak?
When he said, "Autistic people think of social interactions as a mathematical problem instead of understanding it intrinsically," I felt that. As much as I feel that I can empathize with people, it's only from years of watching interactions and watching therapists do skits and doing my own research on behavior and where it comes from. Each person is like a new mathematical problem that I have to find the formula for, and I feel more comfortable when I tell people my formula(s) on how to help or comfort me.
Except that isnt true.:its another stereotype. Neuro Divergent here.Some do some dont just like other people. Ive always understood social interactions very well, and others often asked me to make sense of something and ive bever been one ty say i dont understand many behaviors.
@@deo864 I guess I was just saying that I related, not that I'm affirming that every single autistic person in the world is like that; we aren't a monolith and I'm aware of that. But that's certainly my experience, and sometimes it even leads me to having a better understanding of different cultures and interactions (like when someone uses a word that another person doesn't know and I can tell, I'll take the initiative to give that person the definition) because I spend so much time studying people (which I do because social cues and interactions don't just come naturally to me it's actually a conscious effort to learn them).
In a way yes but I also agree that it's somewhat of a stereotype. I'm actually pretty good at social interaction but it's less about a mathematical equation and more blending my style to fit in with their style. Kind of like music and harmonizing.
@@strawberry_n_bees I’ve done the Sherlock Holmes, “top-down” analysis of humans all my life until 3 years ago and something cracked. Now I can hear my heart and hear them through it. It really is a sixth sense! I cry a lot now though. Things are always super intense. Smoking weed helps. Sometimes I long for my Vulcan days but it’s so much nicer I’m the sun. The division between body and mind is an illusion. The pain was too much and you cut yourself off. So long ago that you have forgotten… it’s still there inside.
Does anyone else just forget their gender. Like you have no problem with your birth assigned gender but you just forget it exists. You don't think about it. You're just... You. And you do things that make you happy, you rarely think about the gender stereotypes as they hold no importance to you.
Also you don't really group yourself with your gender or other genders. They're somehow always a different group from you, even though you rationally know you belong to them. But this could be caused by 'oddness' in general. If you share different interests/behaviours from the majority of course you're going to feel like they're not your type of people.
As a late diagnosed ASC individual I have to say I laboured for years with a need to protect my outward appearing gender to prevent the pain of ostracisation, to find when I was finally discovered to have had autism all along, I let my hair down with respect to that painful issue to in effect allow my weirdness light to shine out. A couple of years after finding I had been autistic all along I also discovered I had also been carrying an extra chromosome. To these days despite myself having pursued a transition pathway to in event access the therapeutic aspect of hormones to treat a deficient endocrine system given SCA care was lacking in my locale, I find I don't identify as female, nor do I identify as male, I in fact identify as me, To have noticed in identifying as ' me ' a lot of what I used to suffer with autism appears to have diminished. Part of my thinking is that sex and gender is only relevant for the purposes of procreation where given I am both infertile and without a libido to in event describe asexuality I don't think it matters what one is beyond what service one can be to others.
@@kitcat2449 You forget your gender because there's no incongruence. You have to ask yourself why you are your gender or better, what your gender means to you. We forget our gender all the time. I do and I'm trans. Cis people don't look into their gender because they don't have to; just as you described.
I'm a straight cis male, and I've recently found out I'm autistic. What's super interesting to me about this video is that I definitely had a "crisis of masculinity" when I was younger (17, 18, 19), in part because it felt like a lot of other neurotypical men heavily rejected parts of my personality that were considered "not masculine." To this day, I often get people ask me if I'm gay, because it simply doesn't make sense to me to "perform" certain aspects of masculinity (especially those that seem entirely for the benefit of other men, rather than women). It was actually quite a frustrating experience before I understood I was autistic. I would not at all be surprised if other autistic people also feel like they don't belong in their "assigned" gender because of similar feelings of being completely unable to relate to the socially constructed facets of gender and sexuality.
The thing you said there at the end about "how to tell if a teenager is faking it" is something I wish I could tell everyone, I've been trying to explain this for years, calling kids out for "faking it", even if they are, doesn't do shit, and if they're not faking it, makes everything worse.
It also feels icky to assume someone is faking when it could just be something that they are exploring. Even if they are ultimately cis - needing to explore that IS a gender identity issue.
I think this might express a need in some way, that is there, even though the expression of that need might be faked to get the attention they seek for to fulfill their original need. So yes, it makes no sense to just tell them: "Your problem is not real." It would just lead to them never seeking help again... It still makes sense to evaluate, if that what they say is the real problem, or if just masks something, or, worst case, if it is something someone else forces them to do or think or behave that way through peer pressure or pressure from the family for example.
Absolutely! How many times I heard people saying "There is no problem with this person, they are just seeking attention." But nobody think that even if this is true, what may not be, is that if someone is seeking attention, is because they need some attention. This may be the only way they learned to ask for help.
@@rinaldsLV Yeah thats just the legality of the situation, but this channel has good information. I also suggest everyone do their own research and not trust the internet for medical help
As an autistic adult I have a hard enough job trying to identify as human. Specifics beyond 'I AM' just seen to be pigeon-holing society into smaller and smaller boxes increasing diversity but reducing inclusion. People are just people and should be embraced for being an individual. I don't like the terms disorder and issues and I loved your statement that it is a disorder or issue if it has a debilitating effect on one's life. We don't call people who wear glasses disabled despite the fact they would be need a lot of external support without them.
Labels and boxes are annoying. I know I am a man, but the whole role of "man" as I've learned it to be seems like a terrible job with a bunch of negative traits I don't want. I always wondered if television and commercials were important in the creation and maintenance of these boxes. To keep people feeling they're not enough woman or enough man, so buy this product and you'll become more like the people in the ad and feel a little better.
@@Karl_Marksman This spread of ideas like masculinity or femininity through society fits the original meaning of the word "meme." It's like a gene, but stored in collective _memory_ instead of _genetic_ code. Hence, Meme instead of Gene. I actually suspect gender is entirely a meme, while body dysphoria and dysmorphia are not. Just a hunch though, of course, no way to prove this hypothesis.
"smaller and smaller boxes increasing diversity but reducing inclusion" Reminds me of how the rainbow flag was meant to symbolize "everyone under the rainbow" i.e. everyone who felt some sort of disconnect from who they are as individuals and how society expects them to act based on what reproductive organs they have. 🏳️🌈 was once a symbol of that one big box. Now that people predominantly associate it with only gays, a whole host of flags have been made for other subsets, like pan or trans or aro. Not saying the flags for each are bad, just saying they're a result of this fragmentation. Based on experience with my lgbtq+-unfriendly family, I think that having so many subcategories makes it more difficult to explain how this stuff works and advocate for each of the smaller subsets within "not cis and/or straight". Like, I'm not sure if my mom is aware that pan, aro, ace or non-binary are even a thing. She only knows of lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and once asked me what the "queer denomination" of lgbtq was. I told her I didn't know enough on the topic for 2 reasons: 1. She was driving and I didn't want to distract her with this large and complex topic 2. I'm a cis girl and I didn't want to make any mistakes while explaining, for fear of misinforming her. On that note, *please correct me if you find issue with my train of thought!* Also, I've been pondering lately what are the error bars on "normal behaviour"?
as someone who was diagnosed with autism from a very young age (now 19) with massive issues of being able to understand my own emotions, processing, and picking up social cues etc., ive come to realise that gender doesn’t really exist in my mind. I’m physically a male, but i like to appear as more feminine and such, but also proud of my masculine parts as well as being bisexual. being honest i would call myself non-binary, but the social difficulty that comes with trying to convey that to others outweighs any actual benefits for me. i found this video so interesting and enlightening
Minus the diagnosis and my struggles in youth likely not being as bad as yours… I’m a male and exactly the same as you describe yourself in every way and agree with everything you said. Have a good day, internet twin!
As a transgender person, the last question about "faking it" triggered a bad train of thought. It is so nice for a psychiatrist to finally say straight, that even if someone is indeed faking it, there still is an underlying problem there that shouldn't be omitted. Thank you.
Completely understandable. I am assuming in good faith that the person asked in the context of people that turn out to be non-binary rather than transgender. Possibly they phrased their question incorrectly, I do not know.
15:15 "In the medical field, and in society, we are grappling with what constitutes a disorder vs is an acceptable, normal variant of human beings." I've been thinking about that a lot, and I love how Dr. K described it.
It's pretty much always a line drawn at function. We might have all the symptoms of a disorder, but if we're fully functional, socially, economically, and mentally, we usually won't be diagnosed with the disorder. Shrinks have told me that more than once. What we then have is a condition or a cluster of behaviours that we manage well enough to get along OK. So hooray for us I guess.
@@themudpit621 In my experience as an autistic who used to work as a teacher at a psych hospital, the measurement is far more determined by how much we annoy those in authority (parents, teachers, bosses, hospital staff) than our own well-being. Especially when it comes to kids. In staffing meetings the patients well-being never entered the picture. It’s why I can’t get my obviously autistic son, who’s exactly like me at his age, tested. Since we homeschool and accommodate ourselves he doesn’t have teachers who are bothered by his autism complaining of his behavior. So no one in authority is actively annoyed, no need for an IEP, no need for meds, then no need for a diagnosis because his autism only bothers him. This is from multiple doctors and therapists over multiple years. Severity isn’t about how a disorder influences our lives but how our differences effect neurotypical lives.
@@RR-et6zp Don’t type with your mouth full. Are you autistic or parent of an autistic kid and gone through the hell of trying to get a test, which costs hundreds and insurance doesn’t pay for, or been on the other side of the testing table with the psychiatrist and therapists? I’ve done all three. Multiple times.
Low functioning/severe autism is used to deny agency. High functioning is used to deny needs. Non-verbal does not mean non-thinking, non-feeling and non-understanding.
I’m a trans man, not diagnosed with autism. I’ve believed for a while now that it’s a possibility there’s a connection between the two and that a lot of trans people are underdiagnosed. I’m now 23 and slowly realizing I may be on the spectrum. It presents in so many different ways, and I think a lot of psychologists just look for the most obvious things. For example, many autistic people have difficulties empathizing, however some are the opposite and are highly aware of others’ emotions to the point of being overwhelmed. Very interesting video, thanks for helping break down the study
you very well might be, take this as someone who originally got the diagnosis asberger with adhd ( adhd would grow away, atleast they thought so at the time ) and am in my 30's. adhd and autism can cause you to feel you are not secure in your own body. This comes from a series of potential symptoms such as feeling that you don't controll your own body or it feels "wrong". Add social symptoms and it can make you feel "different". Years later and while I am as strait as it gets my diagnosis got clearer it was my adhd with severity acting up causing symptoms similar to mild autism ( basicly put my adhd caused me to zone out/flare up causing social situations/misreads ). So I have read up on what autism is and does. See the language used here and compare that to what you might have heard in trans situations. The difficulty to read roles/themselves leading to a lack of fitting in/feeeling different. Just look at how many on twitter that identify as lgbt that also lists autism, there are studies done in england on lgbt people that regretted things and got tested for autism at decently high numbers. Not everyone have it but its frequency is noticbly higher. I am a not a proffesional though, I just had access to good information and had someone knowledgable to air it with. If you suspect this and want to pursue it talk to a pro.
@@emberthecatgirl8796 It's a really annoying combination because we might empathise without understanding the feelings in the intrinsic way many people seem to, so it's confusing to navigate.
@@SmartCreeper Believing that trans people adhere to stereotypes is a fallacy that comes from literally not understanding anything about gender identity or trans people. By far most trans people I know are a lot more liberated in their gender expressions and defy gender norms all the time compared to cis people. I know many trans women who play competitive video games, work on cars, lift weights, or are interested in STEM fields, and many trans men are more willing to wear makeup, be into drag performance, be vulnerable and sensitive, and be highly emotionally available. Saying "no one is trans" is obviously incredibly transphobic and opens up every discussion for suppressing trans people in every aspect of society. It opens up the conversation for genocide, and hopefully I don't need to say this but don't say that. It's extremely harmful to a group of people you haven't even spoken to a single time in your life. With the amount of juvenile content on your channel that you obviously hoped would turn you into a youtuber, maybe it's time you logged off and learned how to be a functioning adult? just a though.
I'm transgender and diagnosed with asd. Something that's happened to me with a past therapist and that many autistic ppl have experienced with medical professionals, is that whenever we come at them with a concern they just brush it off and say "oh it's just your autism" or they straight up treat us like children that can't think for ourselves. Something that I'm kinda afraid might happen if this information becomes widespread with doctors/therapists, is that transphobes will use it as an excuse to deny people treatment because "oh are you really trangender or are you just autistic?" and "you just think you're nonbinary because of your autism". Because trust me, transphobes will death grip any excuse they can find to deny treatment. Don't get me wrong, obviously some ppl are rlly just confused and it's important to experiment with gender identity and not immediately jump to hrt without waiting to know for certain that's what you want. What I'm talking about is ppl who are 100% certain that they're trans/nonbinary. And most autistic ppl have at least 1 bad experience with a medical professional not taking them seriously because they can't grasp the idea that we can think independently
let being a doctor be a subject of significant monetary interest and this will happen frequently and indefinitely. you'd think that more professionals would at least try to familiarize themselves with their autistic patients and treat them like people instead of strange unpalatable exceptions. when i wanted my school staff to start using male pronouns for me the counselor demanded a written letter from my parent asking to do so even though i'm an adult and tried to explain to me what being trans is like it's a concept that i just encountered for the first time. can't say this makes me feel any hopeful or confident about dealing with ppl in healthcare and the legal system in the future
Can’t be trans without outdated notions of what men and women are allowed to do. Maybe the issue is having internalized the bigotry. Why does being a woman require femininity? Why does being a man require masculinity?
Even if ppl were trans because of their autism, we should just let them express themselves. So what if it's because I'm autistic?! That doesn't diminish the fact that I have certain experiences and this label helps me express that. Being nonbinary and being autistic are both intrinsic to my being, and are enmeshed with each other. And that's ok!
I’m redundantly/independently diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (by at least four Ph.D’s - both as a child [when it was called Asperger’s] and as an adult). I live as a cis male but have probably in many ways always been non-binary. You are quite invested in the “pathology model” of discourse and might consider reading Nick Walker’s “Neuroqueer Heresies.”
@@bobobsen Well you know what, because of that comment I looked it up and I actually didn't really know anything about the song except that it's a meme and now I've read the lyrics and it's actually very solid writing. So yeah we shouldn't forget about that song it's great!
The difficulties forming romantic relationships isn’t necessarily only because autism but there are many posible variables. Many autistic individuals also have trauma due to lived experiences and sensory related.
This may help me a lot. I have Autism and for the past year I have been identifying as Gender-fluid. I have came out to my parents of late and it hasn't been going well. They say they didn't see signs and it's hard to believe and they are trying to tie it with my ex that they hate. It has been really hard because I have to be in the house hold, can't express myself in any nb/fem way and it's been really hard. I have family therapy with them and it hasn't progressed but I think this study might show why I didn't show a lot of signs to them because it has been really hard for me to explain to them why I am and when I am and it's just been really hard.
honestly the same thing is going on with me. My parents are still trying to accept that I’m trans-masc but it’s not going great and they keep trying to blame my friends for influencing me even tho it ain’t that way. At least I’m not alone in this kind of situation tho.
I was super hesitant coming into this video, since topics like this can very easily become dismissive and toxic, but you approached it from such an open-minded perspective and one of trying to use the information to help people. As an autistic nonbinary person, thank you for this incredibly interesting video!
Meanwhile I'm austistic and haven't bee able to figure out this whole gener identity conversation at all, seeing it as utter nonsense due to the lack of understanding the logical path to how this even is a thing. I don't really care that much tho, so let people be what they wanna be as long as it doesn't affect me directly. I just wanna drink booze and play my games XD
as an autistic nonbinary person THANK YOU. im so tired of people telling me im faking my gender or my autism because "oh you have too many things." without understanding like 90% of my things are comorbid. my special interest is psychology so i read a lot of studies and no matter how many studies on gender and autism i show people they never believe me. thank you for spreading the word !! this was such a validating video to watch
Hello, we are twins. AuDHD enby with a SpIn in psychology. Even my psychotic disorder is comorbid with my autism. 😭 My entire "list" is incredibly intwined.
AuDHD genderqueer with a masters in counseling psychology focused on gender and sexuality lol. Plus I'm traumatized because my mother was a narcissist who would beat me for my AuDHD traits and my sexual and gender variance. So it took me 10 years of therapy to come to terms with my gender even tho it was a huge part of my special interests . It's all intersectional. You cannot separate my trauma, my neurodivergence, my interests, or my race and sex assigned at birth. They all feed into each other. Intentionally babyyy
People are so desperate for attention (i.e. some form of love) themselves that disease or disability gets automatically viewed as a threat. It's like oh I can't make that same claim, I cry foul, you're playing the attention game wrong, you must be exploiting the system. Capitalism, colonialism, industrial civ got us all so miserable and turned against each other we can't realize that we are our own solutions, ourselves, together, if we could only break the spell. -_-
Here's the thing, I don't care if you genuinely dislike the gender you were born as. That is inconsequential, it is not healthy for you or anyone to accept or lean in to this comorbidity of your autism. It is incredibly unhealthy for you to live your life as a non-binary person, well there's no way to cure autism, there are plenty of ways that you can get help in understanding your gender through healthy lenses, especially through therapy.
As a trans person who tests high for autistic traits, it’s truly wild to like *know* this correlation but having nothing but “trust me” as my source. This is cool!
I'm autistic and cisgender, but when I experimented a bit with other genders I found a big struggle was the literal thinking aspect of my mentality. I had to quantify what I consider to be "womanhood" and "manhood" and "neither" in relatively concrete terms. I would love to be able to hear from non-cis autistic people about if that was a hurdle for them as well.
Yep, it's like my soul / brain / self is androgynous. My body shows a specific gender but l feel very uncomfortable with people reading me this way. It's like they already have a picture of me by looking at me but my brain / self is so much more than those stereotypes. During my life I always had feminine and masculine traits both 50%. I try to make up for it now by calling myself nonbinary with no pronouns as it feels more like people would get to know my authentic self behind the outer shell.
@@ninanano2777 the problem i have with this line of thinking is it implies men and women are just men and women and nothing more...and that all men and women fit into sexist stereotypes and if you dont, you arent a man or woman. If a woman wants to be seen as a person before a woman, does that mean she is not a woman? or is she a woman who wants basic respect. I am not saying you are wrong to label yourself that way, i just think its important to identify why, if causation is not classic ftm/mtf dysphoria.
@@BeyondBitter i have a similar experience where I don't feel connected to the identity of a woman or man. However I think that is because one, cisnormative ideas are given to us, we as children don't really even understand that our gender identity is ours to define. It's easy to feel disconnected to something that is defined and exists away from us (specifically relating to gender and its distorted external perception). The difference between someone who personally feels a disconnect from their assigned gender and a woman who wants to be seen as a person first is one has a connection to the label "woman" / "man" and the other does not. People can personally liberate themselves by redefining what it is to be a man or a woman, but I think for many nb autistic ppl, we just feel the label itself is so alien and separate from who we actually are that it doesn't resonates.
id argue the disconnect exists because of the sexist roles associated with the labels man and woman. of course we don't fit into it, we are autistic. we dont fit into most aspects of society, especially ones that dont actually make sense because we like knowing how and why things are the way they are. I'd just like to clarify i'm not against the label and i fully understand why using it feels more natural for some, i am just curious about peoples reasonings when it differs from binary ftm/mtf with the causation being more of a physical disconnect rather than a societal one. I thought i was trans for awhile because of that societal disconnect but I personally found more comfort in redefining what being my birth sex even meant. the fact that so many of us are gender nonconforming points to gender being a complete social construct. it makes sense something like nonbinary is so common along the spectrum @@spinach4616
i just found out i am autistic recently, and i have always hated being told that certain behaviors, stlyes, or friendships, were off limits because of gender, it felt very authoritarian and arbirtary. i want to have long hair and befriend people of all genders and dress like a stand user! and ive yet to hear a compelling argument as to why i shouldnt.
Oh yeah, I’ve always thought the same thing. When I was a kid, I was always wondering why boys couldn’t wear pink. In 7th grade, I got a bright pink water bottle just to show people that boys could have pink things. I always wondered why I got made fun of
I’d be curious to know how much these experiences get exacerbated during and after puberty. It seems to me that during puberty is especially when those gender norms get prescribed in full force. I remember feeling quite fond of my childhood, it was during puberty when the norms between boys and girls started getting really weird and hard to navigate. Me being nice to a girl suddenly became associated with me flirting with her, and that made me feel very weird, as an example.
Omg yes, when all the other kids suddenly changed, I couldn't figure out how to navigate that. I don't see males or females in a sexual way, but suddenly they all did, as easily as growing their adult teeth.
That would fit my own anecdotal experience. As a young child, I never gave much thought to the differences between boys and girls or my own identity therein. As a teenager though, I started feeling increasingly uncomfortable with the expectations of my assigned gender. It never led to any particular dysphoria, but it certainly led to a lot of time spent imagining what would be like to have been born the other way around. Maybe for me it's just a case of the grass always seeming greener on the other side of the fence, but I could certainly see how for others it could become a whole lot more than that.
This just makes whats going on in Missouri, and what will likely happen in many other states, even more concerning. The fact that you can't get any form of gender-affirming care if you are autistic, depressed, or have anxiety, is such a blatant attack on the trans community and it's so devastating. I feel so sorry for everyone whos going through that right now, please stay strong and know you're loved. We wont stop fighting
The entire point of that qualification is to make sure nobody can get any care. Because let's be real; being trans in a red state automatically causes either depression or some form of anxiety. And also autism isn't "real" in the sense that it's anything more than being told "you have social behavior that we consider outside of the norm" which as far as I understand (I don't) means social ostracization for not conforming to gender roles will easily lead to abnormal behavior that can fit under the autism umbrella if you want it too. Which transphobes which will enforce these will absolutely want. ALSO; chilling effects. So yeah, it's just a planked ban you can defend with an "uhm actually🤓" if somebody calls it that.
The concept of mentalisation development is really helpful, tfs. I have been in recovery from borderline PD and realised a lot of the stuff I had laying around in my psychological attic was not some mystery PD but ASD. The BPD explains all of my relationships, the ASD describes all of my academic and career struggles and triumphs. I got really burnt out and triggered by notions of pursuing a just world. Now that I know what I'm working with inside, it's been so simple to resolve inner conflict and turmoil. I know how to pack my BPD and ASD away so harmoniously they are not only not a burden, but an asset.
Came to the comments first to see the type of audience the creator has and holy crap, it’s nothing but genuine ppl sharing experiences and being supportive of each other and I’m so happy to have come across this channel 😭💕
@@electronics-girl Could you imagine being such a sad, pathetic scumbag that the only thing you have to look forward to in life is to harass people you've never met online? Transphobes really are lower than dirt.
I'm a clinician who specializes in autism, and I just want to say thank you so much for developing your platform and putting this out there. Unfortunately, I think many clinicians don't understand autism enough, and they don't consider it when they're working with individuals with gender dysphoria. And, of course, the average person doesn't have this information to help them navigate it either. Also, you did a fantastic job scratching the surface of this topic without leaving people with just enough information to be dangerous or misunderstand - although, I'm sure that will still happen. Awesome video that I'll definitely be sharing.
People will be obtuse about anything if they can use it to demean or harm others, it ain't anything you can change beyond trying to clarify things for everyone else. Also in terms of clinician stuff don't forget to humanize people, it's easy to put a label on others especially if it helps them, but try to interact with them as people worthy of respect (though likely you already do, but current treatment and view of trans and ND people is well... substandard in comparison to Neurotypical and cisgender people)
As a 52 year old autistic man whose cisgender heterosexuality is hard won, I think the reverse is also true. People accepting of neurodiversity often think that people should be stuck in a gender identity chosen at 8, 10, 12, 25, or 29. And that is a false idea. Once gay always gay is just as bad as using surgery to treat gender identity disorder. And this is a level of abuse your patients need protecting from.
@@TedSeeber Respectfully, no. You don’t get to determine what an adult does with their own body. As a trans adult, I should be able to access gender affirming care so that I can feel comfortable existing as who I am. Being able to “socially transition” as a child for me was simply cutting my hair and wearing boy-ish clothing. I want you to understand that this helped me from terminating my life when I was a kiddo. As a trans adult, I have the right to access healthcare. This for me, would simply include a low dose of testosterone. Some trans/non-binary folk don’t even want to get surgery. Idk why everyone immediately jumps the gun into “getting surgery” as the one and only option. Not that there’s a problem with adults getting the surgery ANYWAY. If you have a problem with trans/non-binary adults seeking care in this way, perhaps turn your efforts towards plastic surgery. Truly, compare the numbers on how many cosmetic procedures people are allowed to undergo to a trans person seeking an augmentation to their body that better suits what they want to express in their lives.
@Beardeddragon A and agreed on plastic surgery. What they do not tell you is that "low dose of testosterone" comes with many dangerous side effects. But you are also correct as AN ADULT that is a choice you should be able to make. That is not a CHOICE being offered to many misdiagnosed kids today. The growing detrans movement is real and will one day result in devastating class action lawsuits against the entire industry, no different than the anti-tobacco lawsuits of the 1970s and 1980s, or the Mesothelioma lawsuits of the 1990s.
As someone with ASD, (probably, it hasn't been officially diagnosed, but I have my reasons), I might be able to provide a bit of insight here (although potentially severely limited in this case by being cisgendered and heterosexual). One of the main ASD traits that I have is that I don't particularly care for social conventions - everything has to have a reason for me to care, and "that's just how it is" doesn't do it for me. That leaves people like me more free to explore gender identity, as I suspect we have less stigmas regarding gender identity than the average person. My hypothesis would predict that a similar link exists between ASD and homosexuality, bisexuality, and generally being some kind of LGBTQ+, so that might be a good way to see if I'm right (which I may well not be).
There is an English savant (genius) named Daniel Tammet who's also gay. He also has linguistic, numerical and visual synesthesia, meaning that his perception of words, numbers and colors are woven together into a new way of perceiving and understanding the world. For example, he can "taste" colors and musical notes. His story always captivated me when I was younger. The human brain is fascinating. All of these variations are there for a reason. As Temple Grandin (famous scientist with ASD) said, we wouldn't have computers if we tried to get rid of or suppress these traits. She and many other scientists believe that these various traits, such as being autistic, genius, gay, or whatever, are linked to each other and we can't have one without the other.
I agree with what you’re saying, but it does not explain gender dysphoria. Gender identity is still something the majority of people are instinctively aware of. From a biological viewpoint, it wouldn’t make sense for someone not to have a sense of who or what they were. Maybe being gay is a neurodiversity in and of itself.
As an autistic who is agender/nonbinary, I think there are two very clear reasons (mind you I'm not discarding something genetic): 1. Gender is a social construct, we don't normally understand those, so we are more likely to break them 2. We are already marginalized, that makes it easier to identify with other marginalized identities because we are already outsiders, who cares if it's for one or multiple reasons?
Hi I'm a trans man, and I personally really disagree with thinking gender is a social construct. Sure gender norms are but I don't think gender itself is. Even if I was born in the middle of the forest all by myself and have never seen anyone in my life, I would still have gender dysphoria. Sure it would be much harder, maybe even downright impossible to know that I was meant to be born as a man. That doesn't mean I wouldn't feel like I'm in the wrong body. I will still be trans even if I never learned about gender roles or whatever. Please don't take it as an attack, I just personally really hate seeing such a statement bc it feels invalidating to me.
@@buliontro don't worry I actually think more or less the same, when I say it's a social construct I mean more the concept of gender rather than the feeling, I was still me before I had the words and in absence of society that wouldn't change
@@buliontrosorry but i disagree i think most of your pain comes through external evaluation. That is perfectly normal. We all do things out of fear of being judged. And in most cases we are judged more for our effort to not be judged. It's normal human evolution. Why? Because we are dependant on other peoples compassion for not to be killed. If we piss peoppe off to much we won't wake up with a knife in our back. Well cause we'll be dead with a knife in our back. I am gonna give you a cognito hazard. Why do you care about your sex, gender, identiy whatever? What does it matter. Does being born any any other sex make you happy? Apart from pure familarity i don't think i would be to upset if i woke up being a female or any other sex. Certainly weird to imagine being a diffrent sex. I only know being male. All i really crave more than anything is to be less alone. I don't think among the rules of the natural world we can defeat this rat race. We will push the boulder up just to see it falling back down. But we cannot loose either. I mean that would require everyone to give up. Certainly there are enough people who are deluded that they will finally push the boulder over. But without changing the rules of the game that is simply impossible. So yeah all these earthly things i am not attached to beyond the means of keeping me alive in a world that will discrimate me no matter what for simply existing. And i can change nothing. I will always be discriminated. It's not possible to avoid for anybody entirely. Yes you can change some things. But think about the cost vs benefit. I certainly believe that it is unresponsible to let people live in their delusion. And that is where i can see the confusion of many people about trans people. But i am not confused about you. And if you already did measures to become emulate a certain sex i see no reason to give you whatever you need. I certainly see no point in putting someone like you through more procedures. I wouls recommend anyone in this world to pick the gender role easiest to achieve so you can exist among the ignorant which is a forced requirement for many people unfortunatly. If your born male be male if your born female be female. Your never gonna be accepted more being a diffrent gender and torturing yourself through that. If you wrongly did that already however then there is mo reason to go back the past happened. So yes accept trans people but we don't need any new one. We need to give people with gender dysphoria the healing they need so they don't do selfharm to fit some maniac gender bs. But unfortuantly it requires society to change so i don't see this coming any time soon. Unfortunatly society will as always keep pushing people to dp self harming deprived things because you are never enough and will do things for a percieved positive evaluation out of fear. It is very sad and it is done out of fear. The people who try to "help" trans people either are sexualized people with deprived fetisches or people who want to convert them back. None actually love them or truely want to see or help them. And unfortunatly that is just human nature. Compassion is very selective in most humans. I mean vegans are the minority and not killing seems to be the basic metric of being good but i can't even do it. I could brutally murder a animal knowing full well the pain i am causing. And infact i do it all the time going to the grocery store with the diffrence of my hands staying blissfully ignorant clean. I try to express my compassion with trying to share my knowledge and understanding with those willing to lissen. And i hope to learn aswell. Sex is extremly discusting. I dispise the part of me that wants it. I just wish to love without the torturing that has been build into me. I want to kill all of it. I am a slave. I am have no autonomy. I am jailed and if i try to defend myself i will be killed. As long as there is suffering in anything i don't think i will ever be at peace. But i will be devided and conflictet in myself. I am so weak but i cannot loose either. I wish to see you one day.
I really appreciate your answer to the last question about "faking gender issues" because nobody but the person knows whether or not gender is the root cause of their distress. Address it as if it is genuine, and you will either help them figure out their gender or identify the root cause and work on that. Great video!
I'd say gender is unprovable if we are going by gender not by your privet parts and you can creative with it. I also think autism is over diagnosed like ADHD. "He's an eccentric person with sensory issues that could be migraines. Let's slap the autism label so this person can be discriminated in the work place and treated like a freak by good meaning insulting idiots." My experence in a nutshell.
Love the way you answered that question about "faking" gender identity disorder. It's obvious that you were uncomfortable with the question but you stayed on task. I wrote a piece not long ago about the brutality behind that accusation of being "fake", while ignoring what might be a symptom or a cry for help. Accusing someone of being "fake" or "faking" is a dismissal, but moreover, the intent behind it can be a bit of a beat down. I can dismiss you. I can ignore you. You are not worth my attention. You are faking. This says so much more about the accuser than it does about the alleged "faker." Also, interesting observation of mine is that "faking" is approved in some circumstances, such as bravery or confidence, but derided in others such as illness or emotional states. What's up with that?
Bravery and confidence don't really "pressure" other people on how to feel, is how I see it. I think that mental or physical illness pressure people to feel something or do something about it. For example, if I'm hanging out with friends and I break my arm, there is a pressure for them to help me. So people get upset when you pressure them to feel a certain way or deal with your problems. Not saying it's okay, just where I think this mindset comes from.
If you fake bravery/confidence, the intent is typically to help other people (feign strength so they can trust you to help them). If you fake an illness/distress, the intent is typically for you to receive something from other people (help/sympathy). There are exceptions to both obviously, and the exceptions are typically not socially acceptable. Faking confidence when you are lying to someone is not socially acceptable, for instance.
To me, on a surface level at least, the link between ASD and Gender non-conformity screams that our concepts of gender are purely social constructions. Someone who is already struggling with abiding by all forms of social norms would of course feel alienated by the social imposition of gender norms as well. I think we have a lot to learn from folks with ASD about what elements of humanity are 'natural,' and which elements are a result of the legacy of dominant cultures. It's worth noting that there have always been societies where gender norms were more flexible and allowed for more diverse gender roles (such as the pan-indigenous 'Two-Spirit') than the rigid gender binary most of us are more familiar with in western society.
I've been diagnosed with ASD recently, and it explains a lot of my life. A variety of my skills and traits allowed me to adjust and manage to live with it quite well. I have struggled with mental disorders, but I do not consider my autism in itself to be an "illness". It is, in some way, a part of me and who I am, and I like who I am! To me, a disorder starts at the point where it seriously affects one's day-to-day life in a negative way, and I know that lots of folks with ASD do struggle on a daily basis. It's hard to put it into words, but it feels like it's in some ways a disorder and in some ways it's not, and it varies person-to-person. That's why it's so hard to define. Still, no matter what the definition and wording is, neurodivergent folks should be provided with the needed help, as well as respect. We're all valid! That comes down to gender identity as well. I have actually no idea what gender is supposed to feel like to me, and I feel just a general lack of connection to describing things as feminine or masculine, and to be honest, I don't really care. What I do care about is that everyone feels comfy in their bodies, and I see no issue in adjusting them to feel more like yourself. I myself usually like to use they/them pronouns, and I believe I am somewhere close to agender. However, I am fine with how my body looks, I like its shape and form. The only thing I'm against is what people associate with my body, so I would prefer to look more neutral to avoid that.
Yeah you should watch Luke Smith. His video is titled goofy but he talks a lot abt how half these mild mental illnesses are just basically just extensions of your personality. I got ADHD. I just need pills and a strict schedule, and I'm set. But its not even remotely the same shit that schizophrenics go thru. Its mostly just a genetic fuckup that sometimes is good, sometimes is bad.
It's so common that as a cis guy I sometimes feel like a minority in the autistic community. Before engaging with the wider autistic community I had no idea of the link but it makes sense. Autism heavily influences what clothes feel good or uncomfortable on our skin, what activities we are drawn to or avoid, how we relate to other people and by extension ourselves, what we find pleasurable and what roles we take in life. It really isn't much of a stretch to imagine for a lot of autistic people this would influence or extend to gender identity.
I thought I was gay for a while because I was not sure what I even liked. Now I would consider myself straight and I have a girlfriend and I love her. I think autism can make you overthink things that most people won’t even think about. My therapist told me that our brains are so analytical and always looking for logical answers. That along with the fact that we don’t really pay attention to “social norms”, it can lead to gender and sexuality fluidity.
@@interstate80. i guess it really could be too much time with no hobby type of situation, ive met a lot of autistics, and there are 2 main groups, the ones that are genderly wierd and ones that are really focused on sth, im focused on mechanics/medieval stuff, my friend is on computers and programming, and ive met a bunch online and both online and irl those that arent like that have either a different identity or sexuality or sth. For me it was simple, im a man, biology tells me im compatible with women, and since reproduction is the main point of life i should pursue women, done, now lets go back to sth i care about. But i guess for other people its a big point that they may focus for extended periods of time and develop some more or less rational conclusions
@@interstate80. When I was 6 I thought I must be an alien, seemed to be the only logical answer to why I was so different to everyone else. I believe there are good reasons autistic people might be more likely to not be cis-het but I'm sure there are less charitable factors at play too. It's a complicated and messy topic, there are probably dozens of factors at play.
@@eeeguba432 I think you’re onto something here, after I really got into collecting coins and model car collecting it’s not really been a thought as much
i really appreciate your answer to the question about teenagers "making up" their gender identity issues. i feel like there is this overwhelmingly prevalent assumption that many, many people willl just "make up" their issues for whatever reason. attention, usually. while this may sound like a deceptively harmless thing to be worried about, it kind of feeds into the horrible narrative of marginalized people not knowing what they actually are, what they need and whats best for them. that they are delusional in some way or even malicious maybe for trying to "get" something by "lying". but lets be honest; what totally healthy, happy, cisgender person would make up that theyre trans?? for what??? even if they DID make it up, that would be worthy of examination as well, since thats not really the norm either. this mentality is what made me question myself for so many years, not wanting to get checked for adhd bc for some reason, i convinced myself that actually, i was just making it all up without meaning to, and that the doctors would be like "you are making this up to get special treatment, get out". they didnt say that, obviously, and i do have inattentive adhd, turns out. so im very glad hat you kind of rejected the premise in the first place. this was such an interesting video, as i have also been questioning my gender identity as a woman for quite a few years now as well. as adhd and autism are also brought up in the same conversations a lot of the time, i wonder if there is some kind of like there as well? well, i dont know, but it sure is interesting to think about all of this!
either i made it up or i'm using it as an excuse to be lazy in life by trying to receive assistance. it's a certain kind of people who tend to make negative assumptions like this. sometimes they dont even say it out right, to be polite, but it's still possible to tell.
I feel like a liar all the time and question if my own feelings are real. I feel I need to tweak the things i say to sound more realistic so i don't get 'called out' for lying. Even when i observe this aspect of myself i snap back and tell myself i'm exaggerating. Insisting someone is a liar based on anecdotal evidence can fuck them up.
I’m not professionally diagnosed, but I have a very high degree of autistic traits and experiences that only made sense once I had the lens of autism to see them through. I’ve also identified as some variation on non-binary since I knew that was an option (terminology and my awareness of it has evolved a lot in the last fifteen years). I’m really glad that you made it clear that being non-binary is a resolution to gender identity issues, because I spent so much time as a kid feeling very confused about why I didn’t fit in with my female peers, and had quite a bit of distress around my gender, but as soon as I had a third option, it’s something I’ve never been stressed about outside of the nagging concerns of discrimination and political attacks on my right to freely express myself and exist.
As I understand it, many people with ASD are very analytical and "discrete" thinkers. From their observations they create rules for organizing things, consciously and/or subconsciously, and that tends to create "boxes" in their thinking. If something satisfies a certain set of rules, then it fits in this box or this category. (I see this in myself actually, and I give it some credit for my skill in math/logic/computing. I've been obsessed with those topics for at least a decade, and just recently started a professional career in software) One of my hypotheses is that when such people introspect themselves and see themselves not fitting in like "normal" boys and girls, they conclude that they don't fit in the box and that leads them to try and figure out what they really are. And if they start ticking checkboxes on the other side, or neither side, that might lead to a conclusion that they are X other gender or non-binary. Me personally, I've never had gender identity issues despite not fitting in. I was not like the average guys in my school, but that didn't bother me, I had my own group of similarly nerdy friends. If I learned about gender identity while I was a teenager, I might have gone down that path. But I learned about autism long before that, and I'm satisfied with autism as the answer for my own life experiences.
I had a very similar experience as a teenager. Never got on with most of the boys, always the artistic/creative or nerdy ND types. There were very brief transient moments where I felt like I wasn’t a proper man or failed at being masculine/wondered what it would be like if I was a girl. Had i learnt about gender identity back then, I might’ve gone down that path but after realising I’m ND and my way of experiencing the word is just different than most blokes I’ve come to accept that.
The REALLY messed up part is there are a ton of doctors and health system that will not allow gender dysohoria to be treated if you have an autism diagnosis because they view it as less “valid” and think it’s a mental health issue related to autism. You are far less likely to be referred to hormone therapy or gender confirmation surgery if you have an autism diagnosis in a lot of places even in the US. They are absolutely related. But it doesn’t make the gender identity and gender confirmation care any less valid.
@@TheRoboticFerret I mean it's about not giving permanent life-changing treatments to people who don't need it. Doctors are not vending machines to give you anything you desire when you want it. It's not like we have an infinite supply of doctors to give people healthcare either, most doctors are already overworked handling bullshit cases and many hospitals are understaffed. I don't think we should be performing any operations for essentially religious reasons. I don't care if it's because you have the wrong "gendered soul" for your body or if it's circumcision.
@@Puzzlesocks you do realize trans people often struggle for years trying to get people to fucking believe them in order to get treatment, right? it is never as easy as the vending machine analogy you think you're being clever about. a person should not be denied gender affirming treatment just because they have ASD, as if being autistic renders you incapable of consent or something.
I don't understand how there's not more studies about autism being genetic. All my father, my brother and I are autistic, and we can trace it back to my great grandfather. In my opinion, the gender identity issues come from not being able to relate to any gender since childhood, due to our different ways to function.
I can relate to this. Myself and my brother are both ASD and although he was never diagnosed, it's easy to see we definitely get it from our dad. My nephew, the son of my ASD brother, is 6 years old and has severe autism. Interestingly, most of the asd or autistic kids and adults I know can trace it back to at least one other family member or have a sibling who is also on the spectrum. I agree with you on gender identity; my theory is that since we're bad at picking up social cues and gender is a social construct, we just don't "get" it, or at least not until much later than most people do. We don't feel that early pressure to fit into gender norms. By the time we do realise (if we do at all) that we're not how society expects, we already have a fixed concept of who we are. At that point our self-identity is too set to change it to meet societal standards, so instead we have to change which standards we apply to ourselves.
There are some studies, even involving inducing autism in Rhesus monkeys by repeating the gene suspected to cause autism. But genetic research is a different field than sociological research. It's not "either/or," they're studied in tandem but by different people. I like the Autistic Self-Advocacy Network (ASAN) and stance on research - it should be focused on improving autistic lives, not focused on "cures." So geneticists must recognize eugenic tendencies, avoid them in their own work, and combat them in the work of others. (The same of course goes for sexology and gender studies.)
It is genetic due to the fact it is a ‘manifestation’ of metaphysical principles. Unfortunately, the term manifestation has been misused by normal (in the statistic meaning of normal) humans, getting related to money, exclusivity, materialism. The manifest body experience, such as front lobe issues, actually are a ‘hint’ as to the next step for humans. All those structures that make no sense for the autistic mind, in truth, do not make REAL sense. If you dig deeply, you’ll probably also feel something does not make sense in the linear time illusion (a funny paradox, since we tend to infere logical chains for everything).
I knew I was transgender when I was 4, I told my older sister "I'm a boy trapped in a girl's body" and she never forgot it. I said it again at 7, same exact line, and at 12 I finally started going by my real name and living as a boy. I was diagnosed with autism when I was 6. Knew I was trans at 4, diagnosed with autism at 6... If that's interesting to ponder... Also never told my abusive parents because they had already become way more hateful and abusive when my teachers told them I had autism they didn't want a " useless r****d kid" and thei threw my sister out at age 15 when she told them she was a lesbian so if a teacher told them I was trans like these new laws being proposed, they probably would have literally killed me as they were so violent with me already or they'd abandon me on the street and who knows what would happen to a 6 or 7 year old "girl" left on the street alone probably r*** and murder if not child trafficking. So... Don't pass those literally deadly bills and realize your votes are actually going to kill real children all over the country.
Ima be honest with you, there is no physically possible way, you are able to realize your transgender at the age of 4. If children are "Litterally Dying", then its time to cut the bullshit. This is a mental illness, not a gender identity. Nothing wrong with that tho. Just is more genuine term.
I ain't trans, not even LGBTQ. I am a straight, Autistic male with a dash of ADHD. I have personally always thought about gender as the biological sex. I got a penis, therefore I am male. But I also recognise that gender dysphoria is real, that it causes distress if not adressed. I don't see a issue with people wanting to present themselves differently. I am different from the norm, therefore I accept that others are different too. I also do find that some gender norms are bogus and the idea that certain behaviours should only be attributed to a certain gender to be ridiculous. Why judge people for trying to find themselves? It would be hypocritical of me as I am still trying to find myself. To be comfortable in this alien world.
i'm not autistic (as far as i know), i'm also straight and male. but that's more or less the way i view things as well, i always just thought of gender as your biological sex, just a classification for physical characteristics. So it felt really weird when i learned about transgenders, as they put an emphasis on gender way bigger than i thought it had. The closest thing i can think of that might be related to gender identity is the fact that i prefer to play male characters in video games as it's easier to put myself in their place, maybe that's my gender identity showing, but i can't tell for sure
You brought up a point that always confused me. (and continues to do so) You wrote that some gender roles are bogus to you. I can not think of a single one that is anything ranging from arbitrary to actively harmful for everyone involved. Do you (or anyone else) have an example of a gender role that makes sense?
@@joda7697 I have actually held off on responding to this to give it some thought. The only role that makes some sense is that of soldiers. Combat is mentally and physically taxing of any individual, so it makes sense that the people being drafted are overwhelmingly male. Afaik there are some studies that have show that mixed gender combat units actually performs worse in general. Women are also more exposed to being raped and facing other bad treatment if captured by the enemy. I am not saying women are incapable of being soldiers. That would be quite contradictory to both modern war history and current events. But they are often better suited to support the soldiers in roles the men otherwise would have occupied. Besides war time conditions where our biological differences matters a lot more, gender roles are mostly arbitrary in peace time. Both genders are able to be "breadwinners". Both genders are able to take care of children and be parental figures. Roles are a lot more flexible when our survival is not threatened. Sorry if I am being unclear or of there is any bad grammar. Just got home from a birthday party involving drinking.
Same, don't even understand what it means to "feel like a man" as a male, whether I was playing sports or Barbies with my NT sister. It was no different to me than height, I'm 6'4" so being taller I was selected for center in basketball because it's the tallest position
I saw recently an article about autistic identity that described allistic identified as being defined primarily from one's social interactions, while an autistic person's identity was defined more through values and passions. I feel that this explains the connection between autism and gender identity rather well since we're less likely to identify based on the social groups we're matched with. Instead we either spend a long time considering gender turning the concept as a while into a passion, it it never gets to that state and thereby simply didn't register as a part of one's identity. Something interesting that I'd noticed is that not only are autistic people more likely to be LGBT+ than allistic people, being nonbinary, asexual, or bisexual are all even more likely compared to their usual proportions in the allistic LGBT+ community. What these have in common is that they specifically put less focus on gender. Not only are we more likely to have a gender that doesn't align with the traditional binary, but we also seen to be less likely to take that binary into account when looking for relationships in others.
I recently had a canvassing job that included asking people about their gender and sexual orientation. One person volunteered that she was autistic, and that person also identified as NB and demisexual.
Ne? That top part is a thing? Boy I should probably see if I can get an actual diagnosis either way on if I am or am not autistic but hell if it doesn’t look like I might be to… literally my sibling and a couple of my friends, and if that wouldn’t explain why I seem to be having a hell of a harder time understanding what the fuck a gender is apparently than everyone else around me. Like, I’ve determined that I guess I’m cis because I’m not something other than what I am now and have always been, I feel no conflict with how I define myself and how I feel I should be, I guess
I think it comes down to we (autistic people) are less likely to intuitively understand gender Honestly, I’m just glad we’re able to talk about this stuff openly nowadays.
My experience has been very much the same. I'm autistic, non-binary, and pan-sexual. I never really understood or cared much for traditional gender roles. I spent most of my life just desperately trying to fit in but now that I'm 43 I just don't care anymore. I am much more happy when I am just myself and stop caring what others think.
As an autistic transfemme, i think socialization was a big part of it for me. I remember pretty distinctly feeling alienated by "boys groups" and struggling to understand behaviors that were expected of me as a result of my gender and often got bullied because of that. Around middleschool I stopped bothering trying to meet them but still hadn't really figured out specifics but probably would have if the concept of transness had been something I knew about, but I got there eventually lmao
@@sari9645 he is a boy who doesn’t want to identify purely as female but wants to adopt certain female characteristics, can be just long hair with make up, clothes, pronouns etc all or a part in variable degrees. So all in all a fancy woke to say feminine boy
It's perfectly okay to be a feminine boy or man. Your identity is valid but you're not required to box yourself in with a specific identity if it doesn't feel right for you. People aren't stereotypes, we come in all kinds of ways ❤
I was diagnosed with Asperger's at a young age, and I went through the veritable hell with socializing. I am AFAB, and am secure enough with identifying as a woman, but I never felt sold on the whole deal. I act a bit more less female, at least in the way I talk and choose to interact. social conventions, including gender, just don't really stick for most on the spectrum, which I've grown to understand. I've been exploring more identities and ways of expressing myself through time. Thank you for making this video and talking about this subject! It's given me some, as well as others, good insight. :)
I've known quite a few enbies who were also neurodivergent in my time, so I've found the information interesting. Here's the way I see it: If we accept that gender is a sort of social mode that we use to interpret and form social interactions/connections, rather than an aesthetic, social category, or personality trait, then it makes sense that people who might have difficulty understanding/engaging in other social situations might have trouble conceptualizing their gender, or that they might have a more unique relationship to it compared to neurotypical people.
Exactly, gender is a sort of social mode rather than some objective reality. Very well put and far too often overlooked. The language around this issue tends to be very essentialist on both sides
@@sandworm9528 Yes, I've seen many people saying that gender has no impact on the way people behave and that it is purely an aesthtic, and I've seen others claim that there is a certain, proper way to be a particular gender (often TERFs).
From my experience as autistic, I thought everyone was faking gender until I was like 18, that they did what I tried to do, which was heavily mask (it didn't work long term), and thought they were just too cowardly to do their own thing. I never considered that yeah, people are just gender sometimes, because I only understood things through my own lens.
@@jambott5520 this confuses me. What do you mean faking gender? In a way we're all faking gender, because it's a social construct. What actions/thoughts did you think people were faking
@@sandworm9528 i think the difference would be how many of their feelings towards it are genuine vs how many of their feelings towards it are performative. it certainly isn't black and white and most people are at least a bit performative but some people do have more of an attachment or identify themselves with certain things/etc
This video came at the right time because I am 27F who struggled in socializing, have a completely different interest/hobbies than my friends and loves being in my own world. My friend works as an experienced teacher with special needs kids and said just recently that it's high probability that I have ASD. I will have to find strength and courage to go through assessment and diagnosis. Edit: I don't have gender identity issues and I am straight.
Was only diagnosed at 16. If you do end up getting diagnosed with ASD, remember that it doesn't make you a different person if you have the diagnosis. You're still you, ASD or not :)
@The Truth Hurts Me too. It's not that big of a deal not talking to people for days. I am happy with my books and plants. But I think it's worth talking to a doctor about what Dr. K discussed. I think the lay population would need a clear definition of the terms regarding gender identity issues. The terms are a bit abstract for me. If there are gradients... how to tell if it has clinical significance.
@@TheTruthHurts6666 Yeah, but you can want that without being autistic, and you can have versions of autism that are overly social where that would be crippling
This was a great watch as someone who is nonbinary/queer and suspected on the asd spectrum but not yet diagnosed. That 'faking it' was a bad faith question but I really appreciate your way of handling it. Kudos!
I'm autistic, it took me a very long time to be able to tell when someone was "into" me or just staring or being nice haha I have always been very gentle hearted and introverted and have a lot of feminine traits and long hair. what feels masculine to me is different from how I see a lot of males act, a combination of intuitive and highly sensitive, honest and blunt and emotional and also very intellectual and hardworking and devoted to always improving. I let people be how they want and don't try to dominate but gently guide and inspire others and let them find their own voice rather than telling people how to be. I am a natural leader but it just feels different from the way most men do it(not to imply the normal way is bad because it's not) I would see a lot of men taking charge and being dominant and extroverted and thought I must not be very masculine and that's why no women will be with me. But as I got older I realized women were very much interested in me and I could never tell XD now I'm 30 and have a wonderful partner who thinks I'm very masculine in the way she always wished men were and I don't feel conflicted anymore. My masculine energy really shines when doing things that involve deep concentration and skill but really lack when it comes to directing groups of people and social situations though I am great helping people 1 on 1 and express my masculinity by becoming an expert at what I do and helping as many people as possible with my gifts. Think that a lot of gender issues resolve when you find how you want to live your life and find a way to do it. Think a lot of the stereotypes about autism are still wrong. Most of the autistic people I know are more intuitive and feeling based than logical, And only become logical to try to navigate the social situations and language barriers in order to survive and it takes a huge toll on mental resources. I seem completely different based on who I'm talking with. Some people are so difficult for me to read I become very nervous around them and can hardly talk and other people i feel instantly comfortable with and I can talk fluently and am able to settle into myself easier. I think with autism a lot of the gender identity issues could really be more about not understanding why they don't seem like the others of their gender. But if peers didn't make them feel so different maybe they wouldn't have to question their gender. I know I wouldn't have questioned mine if people treated me better or if I knew about autism earlier and could relate the problems I was having with being autistic, I wouldn't have to constantly guess why soany interactions with others went so poorly. Just learning about autism for a few years and my whole life is changing and seeing how misunderstood autism can be it makes me want to try to share my experiences, sorry this post got so long.
I definitely agree with we are feeling based until we have to go into our heads to talk to other people. I wish I could just live in my body 24/7 because the blame from NTs when I have to go into my head to talk to them and leave my body ...
Omg you mentioned anancephaly! Back when I drove a handicap taxi, there was a girl that got picked up from a dairy farm to go to the special needs school with that condition. Her family was lovely, and it was always such a nice drive
my experience post ASD diagnosis was realizing that why I struggled so much with the concept of gender/sex was because of how much it is built upon social constructs and how many definitions and characteristics were plastered on to each word. "Sex = gender, but sex is physical attributes and chromosomes and sex organs, but also appearance and dress, and gender is what I say it is, but also how I perceive you" just made zero sense. My conclusion after setting up flow charts and examining is that there are three definitive categories: sex, gender roles, and gender identity. sex is observable realities of the physical state (sex organs, chromosomes, etc), gender roles is how you are perceived by others and how you're expected to express yourself and behave as a result, and gender identity is the personal attachments and/or detachments to the former two that determine how you choose to label, present and manage yourself
@@TheAlexDouglasnone of that exists. If you actually apply the scientific method you'll see most psychology is BS. It exists because of the $$$ involved
@@TheAlexDouglas none of that exists. If you actually apply the scientific method you'll see most psychology is BS. It exists because of the $$$ involved
I"m 23 and autistic and still have a bit if a mental block around gender. I have this illogical perception that things on the other side are easier, but I know that even if there was a way to magically transition with no stigma my situation wouldn't change at all. If it was my choice to make I wouldn't have been born male, but I'm very much aware that transitioning is far from perfect and leads to even more social difficulty.
I feel really similar. I am 19 right now and I was diagnosed with autism as a child. I right now am at the point of wondering what my gender is. I have thought about being a girl multiple times and I think I would rather have been born as a girl. And if there was a magical thing that could turn me into a girl, I would do it. But the thing is I also feel fine with being a boy and I am also attracted to girls. I don't want to do any hormone therapy or surgery. But I think I would feel better in a female body.
@@hansrudi4564 "I right now am at the point of wondering what my gender is." Well, taking a look at your genitalia should clear it up. In the very unlikely case that that doesn't suffice, try a DNA test.
If you want my understanding of the matter i send a link to a copy of the comment i wrote to other people here related to that. I don't think i am allowed to double post here.
This is really interesting. I'm diagnosed with ADHD and I'm starting to suspect that I also have autism. Right now, I'm happy with my assigned gender, but when I was younger, particularly in middle school, I had some gender dysphoria because I didn't have very many, if any at all, of the stereotypical "girly" traits that the rest of my peers had. I hated pinks and purples, I hated playing with "girl" toys or video games, I preferred playing in the dirt and with bugs and climbing trees, my favorite subjects were the maths and sciences instead of the "girl appropriate" social studies and literatures. I explicitly remember thinking, "I should have been born a boy," and, "I wonder what it would be like to be a boy," on MANY occasions. Turns out, this stuff was just needlessly gendered and I hadn't found the stereotypically "girly" things that I was actually interested in. I still prefer math and science and playing in the dirt and with bugs, but now I'm obsessed with fairies and princesses and knights in shining armor and romance and I'm currently wearing a pink and purple tie dye hoodie. Gender is wibbly wobbly and what you're interested in doesn't determine what your gender actually is. I still explore my identity through D&D and it all just leads me back to, "I am who I am, and that's okay."
ah sounds lot like me.. not being interested in make-up and being lady-like being very messy. later I realized I am not into typically manly things either. that things are needlessly gendered and it might be self worth issues that I don't have much motivation to take care of my self... and that being in tidy orderly place has no importance to me since I often lost in thoughts.
Gender is entirely abstract and even biological sex is a spectrum that's far beyond XX vs. XY So Yeah, you're you, and you don't have to be in neither one of the boxes society urges you to choose from You can have both, neither, a third one or make them into a single box, tear them apart... Maybe your gender identity isn't binary(so neither cis female nor trans male, but maybe neither or both) and you struggle in finding a gender expression that reflects the uniqueness of your personal gender identity because it feels like you can't be too masculine so people don't think you're a manly man nor can you be too feminine so people don't think you're a girly girl, but at the end of the day you're precisely right, you're just you and people should see you as yourself, not as "one of these" or "one of those". The plethora of concepts that society bundles up into "gender" is so vastly diverse that it makes no sense whatsoever, specially since it's bound to a specific culture's norms, so something masc can be femme to other cultures and neutral to another. there's nothing solid to support the idea of gender as an objective concept, it's just something we invented. I hated most things boys like and always felt more comfortable with girls, felt gender euphoria for the first time when I was 7 with a couple girl friends and we played with princesses, but I don't like expressing myself with the energy of a Karen blonde or even an "Yas queen" dude, I definitely don't like being perceived as too manly but my voice is too deep to avoid that, maybe I'm just not very expressive at all? Anyway, I'm of the opinion that neurodivergent people are basically amnesiac aliens sent to earth to study humans whislt trying to fit in amongst them, so that's why we don't fit into such primitively limited gender categories I'd love to be perceived and treated just like a genderless alien, bc masking as a (nt)human is already too stressful for me, masking as a human with culturally cohesive and socially acceptable gender expression is hell. I might've not made much sense, sorry.. I'm too sleep deprived to rephrase everything, I'll just leave a pseudo-conclusion: I feel more like a literal extraterrestrial being than either male or female
@@Ewr42 I fully understood what you were saying on everything lol. The amnesiac alien thing made me laugh because that's really how it feels sometimes. Makes me think of something that happened in my last D&D session where an NPC that we've joked was a dragon in disguise from the start of the campaign actually was a silver dragon, but was convinced he was human. Turns out, his consciousness WAS actually a human, and the real dragon's consciousness was buried somewhere in there. The human was sick and old and was going to die and the dragon liked him so he basically let him live in his body. Now they've got a Beyond: Two Souls kind of situation going on.
Of course you mention fairies since, when not portrayed as all female, the fae are often shown as relatively androgynous, or at least the males tend to be rather effeminate. How does this connect with the other half of the topic? _Changelings._ Let's just say that faeries have literally been a part of autism culture since before autism existed. 🧚
The thing about mentalising as a mathematical problem is so relatable to me, I always thought I was good at mentalising until i found out how often I am just dead wrong because people (including myself it turns out) don’t function in a perfectly logical way and are therefor not possible to crack using a strictly logical method.
Most people are more emotional than rational. Yes, even men. When we take desitions it's always triggered by emotion, then we try to use logic. So I get why you're confused lol.
I kind of disagree with this, but maybe because I enjoy solving emotional mathematical questions, rather than logic based ones. As in I like to work out why people enjoy the things they enjoy, why they do the things they do and how to change behaviour in "the most efficiënt way". I try to make mathematical equations with emotions and actions. If I feel like this, I will do this. Or the other way around, if I do this I will feel like this. And then add in time spent, amount of rest, how others have made you feel. And then sometimes, I kind of understand how people work.
@@debbiekruizinga6515 In my experience, trying to do what you are doing is just going to lead you to false conclusions about people. The variables that influence the results of peoples emotional experience are not static. The amount of variables that will change the outcome are essentially infinite. To put this in a simple real life example, chocolate cake might make me happy, but giving me chocolate cake may not make me happy based off any number of variables such as currently being on a diet, not having a sugar craving, not having a level of trust to take food from you, or being a bad version of or the wrong type of chocolate cake as a few limited examples. If you spend all your time trying to mentalize and formulize all of the variables then you are no longer trying to just live your life, but you are trying to control it to get the results you want in a potentially unhealthy way.
@@tomasagustinveravicentin7789 most "logical" people are more emotional rather than rational. it just so happens that their behavior stems from their emotional state controlling what observations they're even able to perceive rather than how they interpret those observations. tbh i don't know if anyone escapes emotional behavior. there are less emotional people who are able to make rational decisions simply because there's less things that rouse emotions but they still encounter the same issues as soon as they do get emotional. even people who find themselves to be emotionally dead are generally just repressing those emotions but still acting in accordance with them. at least that's what I've found, myself included obviously. mayb some the buddha, dalai lama or jesus could do it but I haven't gotten to know anyone well enough that's nearly that enlightened so I can't say.
One of my friends does that quite often, thinking they understand the inner thoughts of a group of people they’ve never met, because they think a human brain is just like any other human brain. They think situations are so simple, because the stories told are simple. Once they experience something themselves, they start describing all these related events that interfered and changed the “logical” conclusion. Ultimately, the problem is that a lot of people are quick to accept small sample sizes and very little information. “I’ve never been vaccinated and I haven’t gotten sick” does not mean vaccines cause the illness that they spent years trying to create a vaccine for. It is an ability people have to develop, and I’m glad you’re doing so, because many voting adults refuse to accept data that doesn’t match their preconceived notions.
When it comes to the final question about what to do if someone is "making up" having gender identity issues, I think people have to keep in mind that being a cis man/woman is a gender identity as well. And as Dr. K explained helping them explore their gender identity issues could help them in that they could realize that they are cisgender. (assuming that they were "making it up"/were unsure)
I am happy to have found you - I kept having the "he's talking about me" sensation, and about 10:00 you mentioned how autistic people treat social interaction in more of a mathematical way... that is when I knew for sure. Yeah, you are talking about me :) I am happy to be your newest subscriber, and thank you in advance for all the knowledge.
I've never had gender identity issues however I believe I am very high with autistic traits and the journey you have described around mentalising and coming to an understanding of the self resulting in significant reduction in difficulties with romantic relationships was so accurately true for me and for my orientation. Once I realised I was asexual, my life made so much more sense and I was able to interact with members of the opposite sex so much more naturally, and all that anxiety and nerves and uncomfortable simply came from my own lack of understanding of myself and how I do not feel sexual desire for others
@@simonkus no it doesnt. Many asexual people remain asexual for the rest of their lives. Thats like saying gay people will develop heterosexual interest over time
@@MidnightEkaki What a stupid comparison. The developing of a biological feature late in ones life resulting in an abnormal (asexual) life is not even close to the same as a gay person developing heterosexual interests over time.
@RungholeSoup Some bodies just work differently. Maybe the way they’re “designed” is to have heterosexual attraction and reproductive sex, but if we can accept homosexuality, non-impregnating sex, and people choosing not to have sex or children, we can accept some people just won’t ever feel attraction and that’s just how their brain is and it’s fine
I am an autistic cis woman, and I've always thought gender norms were annoying. Its a completely arbitrary thing to stratify society around. I was told I wasn't supposed to like things I liked because of what body type I had, and it didn't make any sense to me so I just ignored what I saw as pointless conformity demands and did what I wanted. I got harassed for that a lot- I support the trans community now because I got bullied for not performing gender the way people wanted, and I empathize with people who don't fit in the stupid boxes.
Whermst the fuck is harassing someone for that? Btw If you are harassed, typically just force them to fuck off, the most effective way is threats or use of violence. If used in a controlled manner violence solves a very high amount of problems.
Ninguna persona realmente encaja dentro de los estereotipos de género, todos nos sentimos incomodos con las expectativas de género, seas autista o no, porque son construcciones sociales. Por eso las feministas quieren abolir el género para que cada persona pueda expresar su personalidad sin ninguna clase de expectativa social.
See, I see those as highly contradictory statements. You didn't like how people gave you negative comments about how you don't conform to the gender they think you are. So you support Trans. Which is the idea that your conformity to social norms for a gender means you are that gender. Which will then get you looked down on for the same reason, not conforming well enough to the gender identity you've chosen. It's backwards thinking that doesn't solve the base issue that there are gender norms to begin with. It also creates the highly dangerous and damaging idea that rejecting your body is the right thing to do. Instead of teaching tolerance and acceptance.
@@stephanreiken9912 I mean no being trans means you can do whatever you want with gender like, most trans people I know don''t 100% conform or try to pass even though there are plenty I don't know that do. Gender freedom is like, it doesn't matter what you started as because it's all arbitrary anyway. I don't get harassed by anyone who asks what my pronouns are I get harassed by people who thinks trans people are dangerous and have a big fit about what other people do with their bodies.
I liked this video. I've felt I might have a small party of the autism spectrum since way back in the days of Asperger's. I've also experienced many things in my life that lead me to fully believe I am transgender. I'm sure I could have benefited from knowing more about these and possibly had a diagnosis much earlier in life. I was just listening to this in the background and kind of nodding as I checked boxes in my head. Then that last question comes up. For so much of my life I've been told I'm malingering. That word exactly. In school, in the military, at home, in church, my marriage, at work, nobody wants to believe I've ever been honest in my effort or description of my experience. Thanks for the understanding and the answer. I may not have an autism diagnosis, but I do have gender dysphoria, and I have fought so hard against people denying my situation. It helps to know that the clinical path is to resolve rather than solve.
I'm just going to drop my own perspective here (as someone who was diagnosed as an adult). I think we are inherently bad at doing things that will make us fit in. I'm pretty comfortable with that I'm a woman but even as I say that I feel like there's a lot of expectations on womanhood that just don't fit me. I've always just been me and gender hasn't mattered. Because of this I was seen as a tomboy (when in reality I was probably something more in-between). I never cared for a lot of feminine things. I never cared for a lot of ultra masculine things. I've never cared for the typical "successful" life of marrying and having kids. I just want to live my life (single) and do things I enjoy and have fun with my friends. Even something as mundane as this comes across as weird to some which I find so odd. I never understood why people cared so much about what makes others happy. My interests are all rather strange and really intense but they make me happy. In fact, if I'm to live a happy life, I'm utterly incapable of trying to be "normal" and not do all the weird things I do and live my life in this way. I've noticed a lot of autistic individuals also have this "inability" to be anything other than their true selves without being as affected by what society expects of us. I could totally see how this leaves you way more prone to embrace a different gender identity! Or questioning it more in general. There's been times where I've questioned how much of a "woman" I am, but so far I've settled on that I'm just me and I don't mind being called a woman
i think these studies are super important and interesting! as a nonbinary person with autistic traits, i’m also apprehensive, because a very easy next step to take from these types of questions is “how do we ‘fix’ it?” i don’t want people to look at these studies and use them as an excuse to find the “cause” of these things so that they can “get rid of them.” to be frank, i don’t want eugenicists to get ahold of it.
I think thats true but I think the better term would be how do we find a way to cope with it. There is no fixing it because your brain has develop different but in a majority cis world how can people cope and live a fulfilling life with out the struggles.
@@graycat7704 yes, but also it's more about being accepted; i think what was done in this video was perfect, that the use of this study is that one should be tested for the other, because knowing more about yourself can help you figure things out. I don't think that we should look at this study as a problem or issue, that both being autistic and being trans are perfectly okay and just as good as not being those things
Agreed; I am simultaneously fascinated by this information provided, and also terrified that it will be used as a means to state that certain groups of people are just "stunted", "mentally underdeveloped", etc (to be clear: I do not believe Autistics or LGBT folk should be lumped into these incredibly prejudiced verbal constructs. I am solely stating them as reference points of what could happen if prejudiced assholes decided to take this research the absolute wrong direction).
The exterminationist types who are plotting to round up and kill all trans people are already plotting to round up and kill all trans people, those same individuals already have the same attitude regarding autistic people, they just aren’t saying it out loud because it will slow down their efforts to gain enough power to start their death camps.
I am autistic, was diagnosed at 18 because I kinda went under the radar due to me being a girl, and while I am not trans I have noticed that I think about my gender and my relationship to it way more deeply than my non autistic cis peers. Like if you ask an allistic* cis person why they are the gender they are they will probably say something along the lines of "I just am" while I have like. entire lectures in my mind about my relationship to femininity and masculinity as concepts, my own body, and the non verbal "brain vibes" that are deeply ingrained in my concept of my own gender that are really difficult to sort. Interestingly I think the difficulty with mentalization thing strongly effects how I interact with my own identity, gender or otherwise, because I cannot wrap my head around how other people perceive me. When I was doing my self assessment for my diagnosis I literally texted my friends mid assessment any time a question said something about how other people would describe me because I just don't know. And I cannot understand how the hell other people can just GET that. So when I look at my own identity it is either completely divorced from how other people perceive my identity or it has what my brain can only really interpret as a randomized value or something that requires active research (actively and intentionally asking people what they think about me and what things they associate with me). So like that is A Thing, dunno if its good or bad or neither but it Sure Does Happen *allistic means someone who is not autistic
For 'how would others describe you' I would probably just reuse things people have said to my face before. E.g. 'like a robot' 'the most wholesome person on this discord server' 'defensive' 'so cute and happy', etc. Or maybe think of a handful of specific people's life situations and how that differs from mine. Using my model of their mind and preferences, estimate how they would evaluate each of my presentations to them in their own preference ordering. e.g. someone who does sports might say "uses the computer too much" or "nerd" or "likes reading". This requires however building such models and having them handy. Which requires a special interest in minds and beliefs/understanding in particular I think? Also I at some point decided wrong answers are okay so long as they're close enough to be useful. So I've built up a lot of mental machinery for quick and rough estimates instead of precise known answers. And when my mind presents me with the fact the answer is probably inexact, I accept that fact and declare it 'good enough' and speak it. Not always with a qualifier. Which is mildly horrifying, but it has allowed me to function I think.
Its interesting how much much difference across the spectrum there is. I personally view (and "feel") gender as being a useless construct. It doesn't solve a problem for me and I don't see its existence solving problems for others, instead creates a bunch(or rather, the way people think about it does, both cis and non-cis). I never felt "masculine" or "feminine" or anything. I just am.
@@TheFlyfly No one has to put a label on themselves just because they dont fit into stereotypical feminine or masculine tropes or because they don't associate "gender identity" with sex. This person is just living their life not caring about gender expectations and because of that you suggest they're agender? That's pretty sexist
I used to be like this untill I realized that gender is probably the absolute least important thing about me anyways so who cares what it is. I'm not even interested in puting a label on it anymore because it says nothing of value about me.
You've expressed very very delicately the thoughts I've had concerning the mentalization of people with ASD and how helping that can help with better understanding their gender identity. I think some people don't understand that the untreated autism is what can perhaps cause someone who has ASD to think they're trans when maybe they really aren't. It can be quite harmful to use things such as HRT for someone who isn't actually trans. My friend with untreated autism who went through HRT had a rough time while he was on it, realizing a couple years into his transition that he wasn't a transwoman. I've seen it happen twice firsthand where two separate autistic friends, in an environment with many other genderqueer autistic people, transitioned for 2 years only to realize they weren't transwomen at all and detransitioned. These friends, and many of the others, were mostly undiagnosed or untreated with their autsim because their parents never helped them to cope or mentalize. Therefore, not only are they struggling with their identity, they're struggling to mentalize and understand society and the certain nuances when it comes to gender and are suffering because of it either as a cis or a trans person. I've also seen a story on Reddit where a man said he realized that when he was diagnosed and treated for his autism, he no longer felt gender dysphoria as he had before. I know that some people are afraid that these ideas will cause people to find a way to invalidate being trans as an autistic person, but it's really necessary to understand what type of therapy is best for the person.
Literally what I’ve been saying but it’s so “controversial” that I can’t have these conversations. I am on the spectrum and struggled with my identity my entire life, not as much with gender but in many other regards. I tend to see how things are connected big picture so I’m grateful for your work!
It's becoming controversial because people argue you shouldn't be trans and be autistic and that you are being forced to be trans by woke media if you are autistic rather than maybe thinking autistic people have a mind of their own and not necessarily influenced by everything
Ever since I read that there was an above-average correlation between subscribers of /r/autism and /r/transgender, I expected a paper like this one to come out
Another thing that I would like to see a paper discuss is how much of the correlation might be caused by the intrinsic properties of autism proper, and how much is caused by the way the autistic population interacts with communities of both cisgender and transgender/non-binary people. For instance, some critics have thrown around the "love-bomb" theory where autistic people are allegedly "pressured" into questioning their gender identity due to the way the trans community treats them in comparison to the average population - is there some truth in that, or is it just some sort of propaganda?
@@csolisr well if you look at how its promoted to psychologically vulnerable people then yeah. If you look at the numbers of how many people are actually gender dysphoric vs just transgender then you'll notice it has outside influencing factors
@@MrOnay-px1jxAbsolutely, though what’s interesting is detransition rates still trend quite low. I’ve expected them to climb in recent years especially because of the climb of identification and the sex ratio but recent studies still find detrans rates of less than 2%. I’m forced to conclude that people who may be vulnerable still are overwhelmingly the type of people happy to blur the line between genders.
I was diagnosed as autistic in my late 50s. I grew up believing I was a girl because I had a girl body and so was told I was a girl. I dressed like a girl and played with girl’s toys, but preferred jeans and played just as often with my brother’s toys. The problem was that I didn’t behave girly enough for others. I had difficulty relating to girls. Of course, I learned to mask much to the detriment of my mental health. As I got older, I had lots of guy friends but rarely got asked out, right? I thought I was a girl, but I clearly didn’t give off straight girl vibes. Guys would ask me if I was a lesbian. No lie. Adulthood has been quite a journey. Of course, I was expected to get married and have babies. I did eventually get married to a guy who is undiagnosed but probably ND. Babies? No effing way. Pregnancy is body horror for me. If I’d had the misfortune of getting pregnant, my options would have been abortion or suicide. Seven years ago, I was diagnosed with breast cancer and chose to get a double mastectomy. Afterward, I realized that I wish I’d never had them. I’ve spent the better part of the last 12 years writing fiction - imagining being male, female, and gender queer, and I’m definitely the latter. My autism diagnosis and getting old have been gifts because now I embrace who I am, and if NTs don’t like it, they can go to hell. The pressure to conform to gender rules is so damaging to the ND, and that needs to change.
You explained exactly how I felt before I finally accepted my identity as, in my case, a trans man, that I never got words for before...as a 19 year old whose parents saw this paper and are trying to use it make me "consider" that my autism could be "misleading" me, this means a lot to me, thank you so much for this comment I feel seen
I felt all of the ways that you did until i was about 18. Then for no reason i can fathom i just liked being a girl. I remember one time when I was 14 i came home and all I was told i was late. I said my curfew had always been at dusk. When I asked my mom why she said it was because I had boobs now. I said tgey weren't that big and she could have them back. I think gender as a concept is bunk. No action, mode of dress, etc. will ever make me a man or a woman. I ended up being a bisexual woman in the army during DADT days and it was ridiculous. I think we should have a society where concepts such as gender are seen as antiquated as telegrams and a lack of soap.
My teenager recognized that she presented multiple traits consistent with ASD (her words, not mine) and so we went ahead and got her an appointment to be evaluated and now has an ASD diagnosis along with her ADHD diagnosis.
I'm autistic and gender queer (I don't feel that the idea of gender really applies to me at all). If gender is a social construct, and I don't tap into social stuff very well, it makes sense to me that gender would be something I don't connect to.
I have ASD. I never had gender identity issues per say, but people did think I was gay growing up... not because I acted gay, or had the mannerisms of someone who was gay, but because I was effectively raised by women lol. I had very few positive Male role models. I was always hearing from the people around me about how terrible men were, and all about the patriarchy. So I endeavored to never be like that. And effectively turned into Manny from Modern Family. One particular nasty break up made me realise women were just as flawed and clueless as men were, and I had to sort re-program myself to not hate myself. I would later find out that most people who thought I was gay were actually gay themselves.
This is very similar to my experience with ASD too, It has been a long hard path, but I have found my masculinity and no longer feel like a fraud or a fake man.
One thing I like about my ASD friends is how accepting they are of people's uniqueness. They typically treat everyone with respect as long as the other person is being decent to them. It's very refreshing to be around. I love how we can have good conversations and they listen to the content of what I'm saying and value it regardless of my gender or sexuality. I like being valued as a person which is why I'm genderneutral on here. Saddly, it's actually very different from this corrupt world. Many people are only nice if they either have many unimportant things in common or if they want to date or want something else from the person.. this incorrect interaction is the norm, so when someone is nice to you and respects you as a fellow human being, the intention behind it can be misunderstood. So that's why someone might assume you'd want to date them even if you're both the same genders, they're gay and your straight. They're just not used to being around someone of their own gender who treats them respectfully and is only interested in good conversation or a project (if working together). Hopefully as the world acceptance improves, this will become normal. Hopefully as soon as you explained you were not interested in dating them, they understood and you could go on being friends. I've found when I accidentally thought someone was interested in me, but they weren't, once I expressed interest in dating them, they quit talking to me which was too bad because once I knew we were only friends, I was very cool with that and felt even more comfortable around them because I no longer felt the need to try to impress them like I would have a potential suitor.
Thank you for being kind. I am an Autistic Transmasculine person. I love being me. I don't want to be asked not to be me. I just want to be treated with empathy and love. I don't need to be "fixed". My experience as myself is not the problem. A lack of compassion and love in our society is the problem.
@@zxyatiywariii8 I know it hurts. It hurts because a lack of deep connections in our society. It hurts because you aren't getting the empathy and warmth that you deserve. You always have deserved it and you always will. Even if you aren't receiving what you deserve you are still worthy.
@@zxyatiywariii8 I didn't hear anyone say they love themselves, only other's love them. Key difference but I'd agree self love makes the bitter cold of many peoples realities add wind to your sails rather than cut your deeply
@@matthewsilfer2010 a prime example of how badly those with ASD can be treated was the Jesse Snodgrass Entrapment case. Its on youtube, vice/rolling stone covered it, its worth watching
I remember watching this video probably around when it came out. I think it gave me the nudge I needed to acknowledge the possibility that I'm trans. I found that adopting my preferred gender has been a huge improvement. I used to figure that it was just how life is to think your body's too disgusting to share with a partner (despite said partner obviously enjoying it), to feel uncomfortable having pictures taken, to hate and avoid dressing up, to feel like a dispassionate third party watching my own life happen, to care little if I lived or died - all of that was, in my case, relieved by transitioning. Thank you!
Love this video, as an adult autistic and bisexual gnc (gender non-conforming) woman. ❤ ❤ ❤ Funny (sad) thing about accusing children and teens of "faking it": This will just lead all of y'all in unproductive circles. Doctors, parents, children, etc. You will all be frustrated, less efficient and less healthy. The "worst" thing that'll happen if you take a young person's gender issues seriously and learn about them, is that they learn to trust you. That, when they tell you something, you listen and do your best to support. They learn to trust you, because you have shown that YOU trust THEIR judgement of themselves, which is incredibly important in these formative years, and from a proper caretaker. It builds confidence, communication skills, and emotional regulation. Doesn't sound so bad, right? Do this enough, and they will do what all caretakers should appreciate and aim for: come to you when they need help. If you accuse them? If you dismiss them? Simple. They learn that they can't trust you, that WHATEVER they tell, it won't matter to you, and you will try to steer them away - not for their safety, but out of your disapproval of something you don't understand and will not learn about. It will never make them stronger, it will make them angrier, worse at self-preservation, worse at building relationships. You will have failed them. Therefore, even if a young person isn't telling the truth, just testing the waters, or whatever - WHICH IS RARE TO BEGIN WITH - taking them seriously will lead to positive results for everyone in the long run. They will appreciate your honesty and openness and return the favor, even if it takes them a long time.
I have autism and just don't have a sense of belonging to a certain gender. But have at times questioned if Im trans due to being too far from how my gender is described (concluded that Im not, as I dont hate my body). Always felt a bit confusing how people can have such a clear sense of it and what they assign to it (ever since I learned gender is not just about purely physical traits). I also consider myself to be pretty much in the middle between feminine and masculine in personality, but its hard to estimate yourself. Its interesting to see that they are correlated
You are contradicting yourself. If gender is not about physical traits, then why the need for transitioning? The whole gender ideology is one big fallacy. This is the same logical fallacy as claiming gender/sex does not exist, yet aknowledge gay people.
@@electronics-girl that is a very slippery slope though. You're essentially tying your identity to how said genders are being presented to you. This is especially dangerous when you're autistic since it's easier for them to be and feel left out by their gender-peers regardless of what they are. Imagine you're called David. You hate the name and want to change your name because you've never really felt like a David. Why? Not because they got the name wrong, but because you're not like other Davids you have met. This could be for any number of reasons though. Instead of considering yourself not a David, isn't it better to see yourself as proof that Davids are not homogenous?
@@electronics-girl “Social dysphoria” can not exist without the presence of social norms that an individual does not fit in to - therefore it is an external issue, not an inherent trait of any one individual. That means it is not something that shows whether or not an individual is “transgender”. You are spreading misleading information.
I'm nonbinary, have ADHD, and strongly suspect that I may be on the Autism spectrum as well; one thing you said really stood out to me - that the mental distress caused by one or both of the disorders discussed in the video (I would not necessarily call gender identity itself a disorder, though dysphoria is very very real and harmful for some of us), can affect one's ability to form relationships with others. I fully agreed with that, especially based on past experience, until you specified romantic relationships. I have never been in a romantic relationship, by choice, and I would like to suggest an amendment to your statement (which will probably be glaringly obvious to most anyone reading this) - it absolutely affects non-romantic relationships as well. It's extremely frustrating to try to convey certain thoughts and feelings - sometimes you completely understand them and they make perfect sense to you; sometimes you're not fully sure why it's so important to get the point(s) in question across at all - only to have the other person not understand you. They may even completely rebuff you, and you have no clue why. I have 100% lost friends due to my neurodivergence, and if it's happened to someone reading this comment, I hear you. I see you. You are not alone.
As a nonbinary autist this research terrifies me. Neurodivergent people are already infantalized and subject to people thinking we can't be in charge of our own minds and bodies. This has a lot of potential to be used against both the autistic and gender non conforming communities
That’s what happened when it was discovered that transgenders have higher suicide rates than cisgenders. Luckily, there are people who spend hours every day just to correct misinformation on the subject, so I don’t think it’ll be all that bad.
Don't worry there is a backlash forming, a backlash lead by autistic scientists and academics who are well able to take on those with letters after their name.
yeah I know a lot of people with autism and a lot of trans people, I definitely noticed that they do often go together. I wondered if, bc neurodivergent people end up having to do more self-reflection & analyze their behavior, tendencies, traits, etc. more than average out of necessity, they end up figuring out they have gender identity issues more often than the neurotypical people who don't HAVE to analyze their own behavior, tendencies, traits, etc. nearly as much.
To add to this I think that the fact neurodivergence already makes you part of a minority group, which has social repercussions, helps. Like, the difference between being treated as autistic & being treated as autistic & trans is smaller than the difference between being treated like a neurotypical person & being treated as trans. A form of intersectionality, I feel.
As a queer person on the spectrum, I am glad to see these studies being done. I honestly feel like autism gave me the power to challenge the norms society put on people, instead of comply with them. For me, autism has been the key to the wonderful question of "why?" we must do as society tells us, when it's more comfortable to express ourselves the way we see fit (without the harm of other living beings of course).
Society is just people. Follow the golden rule (do unto others), and pay your own way, "society" demands little else really. Do as you wish my friend. Good luck to you.
That makes no sense to me and I suspect you're not actually autistic. I have autism and I came to the opposite conclusion. I learned how a man should act and how a woman should act and I liked when people fell into their proper categories. It's when people deviate from those norms that creates a nightmare for autistic people. We HATE unpredictability and things that challenge our mental models of the world. And just because not everything should fit in specific categories doesn't mean the same is true for gender roles. They exist for a reason and they are NOT created by society, they are merely reflected by society. I have conservative parents and was raised correctly and engaged in rough play as a kid and had proper socialization. None of that feminist bullshit they're pushing in schools now that is destroying the minds of boys.
im only a few minutes in, but i can already see some major connotations from this information. some good, some bad. the bad comes from how i see it likely to be used against us. let me start by saying i'm 42, and only just now realizing i am autistic. i was diagnosed with adhd at 36. i also have cptsd. as a child, i was a "tomboy" and was very uncomfortable with my femininity. there were times in my early 20s when i felt like i should be a guy. now i'm mostly secure in my femininity, but i'm still not good at "girl things" like dresses, makeup, hair, and all the more performative feminine traits like that. things i can see in society from this information: firstly, this definitely means that the trans fight for acceptance is also the autism fight, and the autism fight is also the trans fight. we have to work together to protect each other. secondly, i recently saw that one state is passing a bill that even adult trans people are going to have to work even harder to be allowed to transition medically in that state. and they explicitly banned anyone with autism from being able to pursue this process at all in that state. this is inherently unfair. (not that it wasn't already). it also puts this into the territory of the ADA and an already protected class of disability. this could be a potential way to fight this bigotry moving forward, at least in a legal sense. unfortunately, i also see the idea that autism and transness will both become more stigmatized by the right, since they already seem to hate both groups. i fear that they will say "see, these autistic people are disabled and don't know better, we have to protect them from themselves." no, you don't. we aren't intellectually disabled, and anyone who is intellectually disabled does not need politicians deciding what is right for them. they already have a care team (hopefully) in place that knows their needs far better. i'm going to keep listening. this is already fascinating and i really hope that in the end this information helps free us all rather than finding a new way to imprison us. especially as so many autistics are only just now learning about it and being diagnosed. it just wasn't a thing in the 90s, and my mom explicitly told me that she didn't go get me diagnosed with anything as a child because she wasn't going to be told to put me on a bunch of medications. so avoiding diagnosis (and making my life a confusing hell that i'm only now really unravelling), is how it went down instead. thank you for your work dr k.
The problem is that transgenderism accepts key premises of the gaslighting NTs subject us to as autistics. "You don't fit in with your gender, change yourself". It makes a different change than what the NTs want (or claim to want, assuming they're not just doing it to boost their own egos), but it's still a change. It's better to reject those premises entirely. Sure, NTs are going to call some things about me "effeminate", but I don't need any man card other than my plumbing. Encouraging, or allowing, children to accept those premises and transition is ghastly. The trans movement isn't "grooming" kids as it's often claimed: it's just a bunch of people with an unhealthy coping strategy for some legitimately awful stuff in their lives passing on the best coping strategy get know, but as I see it it does do damage. You probably can't outright stop adults from transitioning without doing significant damage to the political structure of our society, but society certainly should not be encouraging or enabling it in any way. And I'm not coming at this from a position of "autistic people are too stupid to make their own decisions": I'm one of the smartest people I know, but I can look back at my life and see that in the right circumstances I could have been convinced to transition, and it would have f🦆ed me up completely, and I'd still be in denial that it had f🦆ed me up at all. Bad coping strategies are dangerous to everyone, and no amount of intelligence will make you immune.
My theory on this has always been that autistic sensory processing issues can easily include gender - as in, living as the wrong gender is physically unbearable the same way an awful texture may be, so there's no choice but to remove the offending article, be it a sweater or a gender. This would also explain the reverse - neurotypicals are more likely to be cis because even if their gender isn't a perfect match, they can live with minor incongruities around them without experiencing constant negative sensory feedback.
This really speaks to me. I'm autistic and biologically male, and had a lot of trouble coming to terms with my gender identity growing up. Something interesting in my case is that I had a strong external factor influencing this: the church I grew up in both had strong opinions as to what a man should be, and gave most leadership positions and church duties only to men (and did not look kindly on same-sex marriage or gender reassignment surgery). And this absolutely tanked my dating life too (i.e. I don't feel like I can say I'm a man, so why should I waste these womens' time?). Fortunately, I left after becoming an adult, and finally had the chance to sit down and think/talk about it, and now feel very happy identifying as a man.
I'm autistic too, but I hate the diagnosis. I'm a Icelander. Had to be had been awful grew up with religious right wingers as a ASD person. I have sympathy for you. I'm amused that Greg locke thinks I'm a demon possessed person. I want to prank that guy speaking in a scary demon language.
In graduate school we spent a full year critiquing research studies. We used studies from very prestigious journals, like JAMA, Lancet and others. In that year we found only ONE study that had no significant flaws. Some things like the correlation between autism and gender issues are very hard to study by their nature. The first thing that jumped out at me was whether the studies corrected for confounding variables. In other words were there other factors that were not controlled for. Also, although he said there were more than one age group, change over time was not described. It seems to me that the correlation is strong enough that even flaws in the studies might not overcome the validity. But I think much more rigorous studies need to be done.
Yeah.. my thoughts as well.. but as I read the paper I am relieved that they screened the research papers that they included in their study. Here is a copy paste of it..😂😂 We were able to identify 1,019 studies through the database search and five studies through other sources. After duplicates were removed, we screened 736 studies and excluded irrelevant ones. From the remaining 108 full-text articles, we excluded 61 studies because they did not fulfil the criteria described in the method section. Hence, 47 studies that contained information on the overlap between ASD and GD/GI were included in the current systematic literature review. Of these studies, five were conducted with children, 13 with children and adolescents, two with adolescents, two with children, adolescents, and adults, nine with adolescents and adults, and 16 with adults
I'm autistic and adhd, and i have always felt pretty sure i was a boy. But that doesn't mean i feel like the other boys, and i think that is still confusing me. Most of my childhood, where i wouldn't follow any norms and just talk to whoever i connected with, i were friends with mostly girls. And i feel like, if i become best friends with a girl once, there isn't nessecarily anything to it, but twice and still to this day connect most often with girls, there might be a course? Since 9 years old i always thought boys were dumb, trying to reign with masculinity over the girls, instead of talking to them (I love girls like any other heterosexual, it's not about that). Maybe the connection, talked about here, is also there for me (i feel like i never really know myself anyway), or maybe autistic people also just in general have another view, without being anything else. Anyone relate? Should probably explore my gender more though.
Incredible explanation of both the meta-analysis and the importance of a person's level of distress in the determination of whether to classify an experience as a "disorder"! The other hypothesis of causation frequently discussed is the idea that people with autism likely also place different levels of importance on social constructs from people labeled as neurotypical, meaning that external gender cues, norms, etc. may also carry less intrinsic importance.
"People with autism likely also place different levels of importance on social constructs from people labeled as neurotypical." YES. Thank you for articulating this point. I think it's a critical part of this discussion.
I'm trans, with ADHD and social anxiety. When I found out that autism and ADHD (and Tourette's) are genetically related, I started to wonder about if there might be more to my own condition. So definitely interested in this subject.
I have 2 thoughts about this: 1. people with autism think of things from a different perspective, why should gender constructs be any different? 2. I knew a person who wasn't diagnosed with autism until he was an adult. He knew something was different about him and he sought again and again to try and figure out why. He told me that at one point he wondered if he might be gay, not because he was attracted to the same gender, but because he couldn't figure out how he was different but inherently knew it. I've since been diagnosed with autism as an adult as well and I felt that same need to understand why I was different.
I have ASD and I'm non-binary. I think the most confusing part for me was that no one explained non-binary as an umbrella term. I'm not non-binary as in "no gender" but the sense that I experience all the genders at the same time but it's also fluid and ever changing. kind of like checking the tire pressure, once I try to analyze, it changes.
As an autist: I strongly suspect that whatever the brain does to make sure you're "part of the group" for safety and security just doesn't always trigger for us. And I suspect that subconscious drive is responsible for *way more* than people tend to think. Learning empathy, learning to compromise, learning to fit in with others of your assigned gender specifically, ect. So choices that come with a risk of "othering" don't set off as many unconscious warning bells in our heads and we just kinda go with stuff.
@@theyxaj There are actually studies that the "communication difficulties" are specifically NT ND. They got a bunch of neurotypical folks together in a group and they communicated with each other fine - then they did the same with a bunch of autistic folks and it was the same! It was when they had a mixed group of the two that they observed difficulties. So you're spot on.
This is such a silly response. You should learn more about why trans people are trans instead of just assuming that they don’t try to fit in with their assigned gender
@@psywrenergy I figure that's the case too. Because in my experience, part of this is autistic people having a generally stronger sense of identity than NTs do (to the point that even Alzheimer's will steal other things before it steals an autistic person's sense of identity), which itself leads to being less prone to try to "fit in", which leads to following things that are specific to you more readily, up to and including gender. And the main caveat to this is that a lot of the methods used to "treat" autism are basically heavy-duty methods of hammering away at one's sense of identity, often done from a very young age, which can compromise anyone's sense of identity because even if we have stronger senses of identity, those senses aren't infinitely strong. And often that comes with being more sensitive to other stimuli (emotions, sounds, sights, etc.), which means that these identity-destroying treatments can lead to a boatload of trauma.
One more factor that needs to be considered imho is this: Autism spectrum disorders and gender identity issues both manifest at the boundary between the self and the outside world. And both require a lot of introspection from the individual. So there could be a link in the rate of discovery. Like someone who is trans will have to do a lot of self reflection, and through that process discover symptoms of the spectrum, that they would have been masking otherwise. Or someone who is on the spectrum and has to put conscious effort into every social interaction could be more likely to discover that some of their issues may be related to gender identity.
This was interesting to listen to and I like the way the study was conducted. I'm autistic and I don't have gender identity issues, I'm just not super-feminine by society's standards because it doesn't make sense to me that being professional means I should paint my face. Also, it made me happy when he said a big part of working with autistics is helping us be more comfortable within ourselves.
I definitely agree that there's a correlation with gender identity and ASD, but trying to say it all comes down to being "confused about what you really are" is not the case. I have ASD and GID, but ever since I was 5 years old I have had a completely clear and specific sense of my gender identity, and where exactly I fell on what I, even then, perceived as a continuum between male and female. It has always been the clearest thing I know about myself, the strongest and most definite foundation stone of my identity, as I imagine it is for most cisgender people. It is hugely important to point out I grew up in a time before gender identity was discussed at all in the world around me or represented in the media, before the internet. If gay people were brought up it was in purely negative terms, an insult. My parents are homophobic and never discussed anything about it, so I wasn't influenced into being trans by an outside source. I had never heard of the existence of trans people, but that's still what I was, and I vocally told people how I wanted to be identified even when I was still only 5 years old. Of course, it was dismissed and ignored and I was punished for "bad behaviour" every time I mentioned it or I tried to perform in the social role for my internal gender. However, I am now well into adulthood and my gender identity has always remained exactly as it has been since I was a child. In SOME cases of people with ASD, I'm sure there are some elements of confusion at play to be resolved, but confusion is not a blanket explanation for the correlation between ASD and GID. I have never been confused. It is important to mention that I was perfectly self-confident when I was a small child, and likely would have developed quite well socially and functionally if I had been accepted for who I was, and I had been raised socially in my real, internal gender. I believe that many of the problems I now experience with ASD are hugely impacted and worsened by having been made to feel alienated from my body and my social environment throughout my life, because everyone was forcing me to pretend to be a completely different person, of a completely different gender and social role, than I actually was, and everyone expected me to play along with this pretence. With autism we have to mask to appear "normal", and being trans at the same time meant my whole identity- as perceived by others- was a complete fabrication. My whole existence, who people regarded me as, the gendered social roles I was expected to fill, the very name they called me by, all belonged to a completely different person, of a different gender than my internal real self. I would be standing right there, but no one would see or engage with me; they were seeing and engaging with this artificial construct-person, this play-act of who they wanted me to be. As far as anyone else was concerned, my real internal self was invisible and non-existent. There was NO way to emotionally connect with anyone else in these circumstances. There was no way to emotionally connect with myself, or to build any relationship with my own physical body. There was no way to engage with anyone; no way to be proud of anything, because all praise was going to some stranger, this external fabrication, and not to myself. My self and the outer world was at a complete disconnect, so naturally I had no desire to participate and I withdrew. The only thing I can compare it to was like having locked-in syndrome, and I remained locked-in until I was old enough to have independence from other people's control over my life and gained enough vocabulary and terminology to become openly trans. Growing up in this was all hugely impeded my development and made my ASD far, far worse. Honestly, it was immensely painful to have to grow up like this, and I developed severe dissociation to cope. Dissociation hugely exacerbates my autistic interoception problems, but, for me, the disconnect was all very much a RESULT of growing up without acceptance, NOT the CAUSE of being trans. I know this was long, but I really think this all needs to be said because of the medicalisation with which these things are inevitably described- "Here's the genes that turn on gender issues, and we can just turn them right back off!" Or "We can alter the developmental path to make these kids 'normal'!" "They're just confused, we need to teach them who they REALLY are!" (ie. to make them conform.) There is nothing wrong with who I am and who I was born as- What was wrong was the way I was treated. THAT's what needs to change for children and adults going forward, not our genetics, not fundamental elements about who we are as people. More research is always good, but I can really see how many people might take what is stated in this paper as proof that it's possible to force children born with ASD or GID to "become normal".
You worded this so well, much better than I ever could of. My autism makes me partially non-verbal so I can’t ever seem to express this, and even if I tried nobody would listen. I’ve never seen someone describe what I’ve been experiencing my whole life, I feel like nobody will ever understand this. Thank you for talking the time to write this out, it made me feel a little bit better today
I 100% agree with you, also coming from a trans autistic perspective, I am definitely not confused. I have talked about it with a few of my trans autistic friends about how there is a correlation and the idea that we have is that society does not really serve us that well. We don't really feel the same advantages of fitting into society as an allistic person does because to fit in we have to mask so much for a lot of us, it just isn't worth it. So we are already in a society that doesn't really accept us so it's a lot easier for us to break out from society in different ways e.g. dressing differently, having different interests and one of the ways that you break from society and not conform is coming out. The reason why there are more non straight autistic people isn't because they are confused about their sexuality, it's because there are a lot of non straight allistic people who are trying their best to conform whilst their autistic peers have already came out. I was in the closet for a very short time, the time between realising who I was for certain vs coming out was very short because why would I care what others think, meanwhile I have allistic friends who were closeted when I was and still are now 5 years later. It really seems like he did not speak to a single autistic trans person because this is a very common perspective on this phenomenon in the autistic trans community. Obviously there are autistic trans people who identify as trans because they struggle to connect to their agab as gender is a social construct and any gender seems confusing. But there are a lot of us who know exactly who we are. We just stand prouder than some allistic trans people because we are already used to social ostracisation.
@@Mars6821 Thank you for saying so. I was honestly hesitant about whether or not to post this, but I'm glad I did if it helped you. You're not alone, and I do understand. I'm sure there are many others in the same boat as us out there.
This is really fascinating! As someone who spends a lot of time around neurodivergent trans people (thanks tumblr) I definitely noticed this trend and assumed it was just because autistic people end up spending more time questioning the "rules" of society and their place within it. What is gender if not a complicated set of societal rules and expectations? I've certainly spent lots of my time contemplating what exactly it is and where I fit into it! Uh… Maybe I ought to get evaluated as per your advice, hah.
I am on the Autistic spectrum and I do not see myself having a disorder. It certainly has made me awkward, it did give me a serious issue with learning English and the way our language is used, but I am still capable. So I think we need to recognize the difference between the disorder and just another part of the population who might need assistance to grow away from the disorder.
I feel my ex probably should have been checked for these things. He always felt off, didn't want sex and tested dressing in my clothes when I wasn't home. He could almost never make eye contact, rarely could hold a conversation outside of his gaming interest, held no interest in talking about every day life issues or conversations, he found no point in them. I thought possibly he has aspergers. He was usually pretty silent and didn't seem to understand wanting to spend time together as a couple, more of if something is what we are "supposed" to dohe guessed we could do it if it was what he should do with me not to loose me but I felt like a thing, not a person to him. I am a feeling lovey dovey person and I found I could barely feel anything from him. Mostly his frustration of me smothering him. I'm glad we separated that he could be with roommates who also just enjoyed talking about games and things and I found someone who understood and could give back on an emotional level. I believe my ex is happier without me and living a joy filled life without being smothered or tied down by the feeling type relationship I needed but he disliked.
@noco7243 Short answer. My ex I met through a couple that use to come to the store I worked at that they asked me to come to their wedding he was one of their 4 roomates. (Longer stuffs: ) They introduced us and I never had a boyfriend before so I didn't have experience and just a want for one. We both liked games and anime, he seemed nice enough. After moving in with them all for a few years, it because us 7 roommates and 2 babies the couple had (Should be a TV show). It was fun for a bit but I never really caught on he still just wanted to do his own things after I asked him out, I felt lonely in the relationship. He would talk in extremes when we had arguments that if I asked to spend more time with me, he got upset and said fine, he'd quit his job and even go to the bathroom with me... he just didn't grasp I wanted to sit and cuddle and talk about our days or our pasts, he saw no point to it. He would just come home and b-line it to his computer. I thought interests were enough but even though we played the same games, he didnt want to play with me, he wanted to RP with other people online (but they also would get into arguments like when he wanted his character to get pregnant and still go out and battle and RP with everyone when they played it out that his character should be resting, not out battling). We would put on anime but I ended up on the couch alone while he just listened and watched it on the side while he stayed on his computer to game. I kept trying to explain what we could do and I tried to fix things for 10 years. I should have left sooner but I didn't see it as horrible, I knew there were worse relationships out there but some say I was in an emotionally abusive relationship, I can see kind of now but I was so determined to try to make it work. I became less of the bubbly, creative and decorating for holidays person I use to be before him that I feel being with him dulled my emotions that I had to find them again and it took a while after I left him and am still battling finding my joy again. I use to take care of all the cleaning, cooking, paying bills. He just had to try to keep a job (because he kept loosing them for a while, he just couldn't work with customers, he was too blunt which came off as unkind) and pay our rent was the only responsibility I felt I could give him. I was just glad I found someone through the game I tried to play with my ex that actually wanted to play with me so something good came out of it.
This is so interesting, my sister recently came out as trans and was also diagnosed with autism. For me, it really seemed she changed out of nowhere, but knowing now that this two things graduate over time and are related, really helps me a lot to understand and support her. Thank you so much for this video!!
@@MargheritaReads The only studies done on ROGD polled parents of trans kids instead of the trans kids themselves, and advertised to the parents on anti-trans websites. As of now, it has no scientific backing.
Was she diagnosed with ASD later in life? Because if so, she likely learned to hide her struggles very early on, as a survival tactic. Behind the scenes, she likely struggled for years without realising that reaching out to you for support was even an option (or she could have had other reasons not to reach out, but this hypothesis is based on my own experience with being diagnosed later in life with ASD - I just didn't realise that I could ask for help with many of my struggles).
@@MargheritaReads While the concept of ROGD is interesting, I think it's important to keep in mind that the ROGD study only surveyed parents of children with gender dysphoria, not the children themselves, so ultimately it's only the perceptions of the parents. The study doesn't prove the existence of ROGD and was later amended to specifically mention that.
@@MargheritaReads ROGD is a fictional phenomenon, not a new one. The "studies" related to it interviewed the *parents* of transgender teens about their child's gender rather than the child themself. If you have ever been a teenager, then you will know that they do not tell their parents everything, especially when they believe their parents will disapprove. If you were to ask my parents, they would say I suddenly because gay in college, when this was emphatically not the case. Moreover, there is likely a higher percentage of people identifying as transgender because being transgender is more commonly known about and accepted now. I, for one, did not hear about transgender people until 2015. This does not mean that they did not exist prior to then, but that it was not well known about. People who might have identified that way in the past had they had the knowledge, may not have ever been exposed to the idea and may have simply felt "wrong" in their body and unable to explain why. I would also be curious to know-- you mention that there is an increase in people transitioning to male. However, this is an increase in those transitioning, not overall numbers. These are very different statistics if previously there were double the number of people transitioning to female and this represents a levelling out of the population than if it were the other way around. A quick search reveals that this seems to be the case-- an NIH study from 2020 discusses that, while in the past there were more MtF individuals seeking transition, these numbers are now roughly equivalent.
@@MargheritaReads trans people arent pretending to be something else, gender is a social construct, so you can decide what you are. ROGD is complete bullshit but makes sense why a transphobe would cite it as a reliable source since it was created by a transphobe.
I'm autistic and trans non-binary. I've been aware of this study, and I'd like to make a couple notes as someone who's *experienced* this instead of someone who just studies this. 1. I've found that autistic people like myself see through social constructs a lot more than non-autistic people. I felt uncomfortable as a woman and always had many masculine traits. The boxes that society had created for gender ("Man" and "Woman") both didn't fit me. The thing that causes most distress there for me, was (besides phsyical dysphoria that can be solved with surgery) that society often times doesn't accept this. There are literal government forms that I can't fill in because of my gender. 2. I fear that people see this research and will try to "fix the issue" in the same way they tried and failed to "fix homosexuality" by conversion therapy. Or how my therapist tried to send me somewhere to "fix" my asexuality. There are places doing research to stop autism from existing, and transgender people or people who otherwise also experience gender identity issues are quite a controversial topic as well. Meanwhile, again, a lot of the distress comes from the way people treat us, based on misinformation and misunderstanding. I'm just hoping this research will be used by psychologists to indeed be able to diagnose individuals and help people who are struggling, instead of eradicate it. 3. I don't believe it's right to say autistics don't have insight into other peoples emotions behind their actions like that. Many autistics are highly sensitive instead, to the point where they may "feel" the emotions of others. The problem remains however that we may not know how to react. We can be blunt, honest, and generally react in ways people don't expect us to. Being overly aware of everything causes a lot of fatigue and anxiety, which in turn causes problems in communication as well. Example: People generally don't like it when you point out that they view you more as a charity case than an actual friend, even if it's true. I'm open to questions by the way.
As a fellow autistic non-binary person, I soooo agree with this! I didn't quite like the 'mentalising' part of it. It's not our fault that others can't communicate properly and hide subliminal messages. I think it's our superpower to be A) honest and B), as you said, not care about social constructs as much. It just doesn't make sense to try and fit in.
Back when I tried to begin my transition, there was psychiatrists and physicians who tried to stop me or slow down my process (they really did GOD DAMN, I'm surprised that I survived). One of the countless things they tried was to test if I had ASD. Once it turned out that I had it, they could use that against me. Despite this experience, I do appreciate it. If I didn't get diagnosed back then, who knows when I would have gotten help regarding my ASD.
Heh, this is the first time I’ve been “recommended” to consider the possibility of having ASD. Every therapist and clinician I had seems to agree that social anxiety best describes my social challenges, and any time I worry “but am I on the spectrum tho 🤔” has just been a testament in support of my worry/fear/anxiety as the root cause. I couldn’t even point you to any solid evidence that I could have autism tbh. I don’t have sensory processing issues, I’m not a stickler for routines , “special interest” never seemed to accurately describe the interests I’ve grown attached to and identified with despite eventually losing touch over the years, I socialized fairly typically in my gifted/advanced classes through 12th grade. I just worry, probably irrationally, that I’m bad at socializing and making friends and that I might be missing social cues I have no way of being aware of. It just all sounds like anxiety and maybe a little bit survivor of a narcissist parent who mentally abused the other parent throughout my childhood I’ve also had very sharp insight about how I feel in my gender after ten years of being a nonbinary adult. The first two were the ambiguous years of not having the right language and familiarity with myself as transgender, but when I discovered in me the ability to be both out of the binary and “man-flavored” in my gender, it’s worked really well for me. As many as 15% of autistic people may be nonbinary, but not necessarily 15% of nonbinary folks are autistic, I suppose. It’s still in “unlikely” territory after all.
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Thank you!
I just subbed.
I'm on the spectrum and was a little girl who wished I'd been born a boy; and if I'd been born in 2000, I would've been thought to be a trans boy.
Can you please include the people you're talking about when you're making sketchy videos like these?
Like seriously you're missing so many points that countless trans autisitc people are picking up in the comments. Ranging from "this is what it's actually like" to "if you say this people will want to kill us."
I want to echo what Devlin said. There are so many people right here in the comments who are nonbinary and autistic and have serious concerns about the way the information was presented here. I get that you can't do everything in a 25 minute video, but what you CAN do is reach out to the people this affects before you put out a video with a message (intentional or not) that stigmatizes.
A few things I wish you had included in this video are:
* Gender identity variance is not a problem in and of itself. Treat dysphoria, not variance.
* There are not just two valid gender "slots."
* Some people benefit from *not* getting slotted into gender categories.
* Many people are happily nonbinary. Nonbinary isn't the same as "a big question mark" that inherently causes gender dysphoria.
* Nonbinary is just one expression of gender variance.
* Many autistic people are happily autistic and need support rather than fixing.
* There could be many other reasons for the overlap of autism and gender variance. Autistic people often see a lot of what NTs prioritize as weird and unhelpful, and gender is something NTs really seem to fetishize.
Finally, it's of critical importance that you educate your audience about the fact that gender dysphoria is extremely highly correlated with lack of social support. People who are gender variant and have social support experience far, far less gender dysphoria than people who are gender variant without social support. This is an instance similar to that of an Identified Patient; the locus of the problem is in the pathological ways others respond to gender variance, rather than variance itself.
Thanks for your consideration.
@@O2life yeah. And people need to realize gender dysphoria ***occurs in cisgender people too.*** Cis people have uncomfortable feelings about their bodies, how they look, how they are percieved, etc and how that relates to their gender! They're just seen as normal because "oh she waxes so she can be more ladylike." They're seen as fitting into their roles better, rather than becoming more comfortable in their own bodies n such
As a person who is on the spectrum and transgender, this is what I think about why they’re linked. Gender is very social, and if you struggle socially you can struggle with the social aspects of gender. If I never had to socialize with others, my gender would be irrelevant. In many ways my gender identity feels more like an inconvenience, at least to me. Why does my gender have to determine favorite colors, job preferences, and hobbies? For me this is how I feel.
Extremely relatable. I'm nonbinary, and it just throws cold water on me whenever someone genders me. I don't want people to make assumptions about me based on the shape of my body, whether those assumptions are good or bad.
Gender is all just weird made up stuff anyways. Statistically, whether you are a man or woman, your favorite color is blue.
I totally agree with this!
@@MolecularMachine Making assumptions is a natural and often automatic thing, which in many cases even keeps you alive. Not only that, considering non binary people are 1-2% of population, it is quite reasonable to assume your gender. What kind special attitude do you expect when you are in the absolute minority?
@@alexmash1353 "Assumptions are natural and helpful," says the person making wildly incorrect assumptions about the solutions I want based on no evidence. Do you think? Or do you just speak?
When he said, "Autistic people think of social interactions as a mathematical problem instead of understanding it intrinsically," I felt that. As much as I feel that I can empathize with people, it's only from years of watching interactions and watching therapists do skits and doing my own research on behavior and where it comes from. Each person is like a new mathematical problem that I have to find the formula for, and I feel more comfortable when I tell people my formula(s) on how to help or comfort me.
Except that isnt true.:its another stereotype. Neuro Divergent here.Some do some dont just like other people. Ive always understood social interactions very well, and others often asked me to make sense of something and ive bever been one ty say i dont understand many behaviors.
@@deo864 I guess I was just saying that I related, not that I'm affirming that every single autistic person in the world is like that; we aren't a monolith and I'm aware of that. But that's certainly my experience, and sometimes it even leads me to having a better understanding of different cultures and interactions (like when someone uses a word that another person doesn't know and I can tell, I'll take the initiative to give that person the definition) because I spend so much time studying people (which I do because social cues and interactions don't just come naturally to me it's actually a conscious effort to learn them).
In a way yes but I also agree that it's somewhat of a stereotype. I'm actually pretty good at social interaction but it's less about a mathematical equation and more blending my style to fit in with their style. Kind of like music and harmonizing.
@@toddydog3 Music is also very mathematical, you just don't think of it being that way.
@@strawberry_n_bees I’ve done the Sherlock Holmes, “top-down” analysis of humans all my life until 3 years ago and something cracked. Now I can hear my heart and hear them through it. It really is a sixth sense! I cry a lot now though. Things are always super intense. Smoking weed helps. Sometimes I long for my Vulcan days but it’s so much nicer I’m the sun. The division between body and mind is an illusion. The pain was too much and you cut yourself off. So long ago that you have forgotten… it’s still there inside.
Does anyone else just forget their gender.
Like you have no problem with your birth assigned gender but you just forget it exists. You don't think about it. You're just... You. And you do things that make you happy, you rarely think about the gender stereotypes as they hold no importance to you.
Also you don't really group yourself with your gender or other genders. They're somehow always a different group from you, even though you rationally know you belong to them.
But this could be caused by 'oddness' in general. If you share different interests/behaviours from the majority of course you're going to feel like they're not your type of people.
I think this is the norm and a hyper focus on ones own gender in general never seems to be of a benefit.
As a late diagnosed ASC individual I have to say I laboured for years with a need to protect my outward appearing gender to prevent the pain of ostracisation, to find when I was finally discovered to have had autism all along, I let my hair down with respect to that painful issue to in effect allow my weirdness light to shine out.
A couple of years after finding I had been autistic all along I also discovered I had also been carrying an extra chromosome. To these days despite myself having pursued a transition pathway to in event access the therapeutic aspect of hormones to treat a deficient endocrine system given SCA care was lacking in my locale, I find I don't identify as female, nor do I identify as male, I in fact identify as me,
To have noticed in identifying as ' me ' a lot of what I used to suffer with autism appears to have diminished.
Part of my thinking is that sex and gender is only relevant for the purposes of procreation where given I am both infertile and without a libido to in event describe asexuality I don't think it matters what one is beyond what service one can be to others.
@@housey_ "To look into one's self is a bad thing." -you
@@kitcat2449 You forget your gender because there's no incongruence. You have to ask yourself why you are your gender or better, what your gender means to you. We forget our gender all the time. I do and I'm trans. Cis people don't look into their gender because they don't have to; just as you described.
I'm a straight cis male, and I've recently found out I'm autistic. What's super interesting to me about this video is that I definitely had a "crisis of masculinity" when I was younger (17, 18, 19), in part because it felt like a lot of other neurotypical men heavily rejected parts of my personality that were considered "not masculine." To this day, I often get people ask me if I'm gay, because it simply doesn't make sense to me to "perform" certain aspects of masculinity (especially those that seem entirely for the benefit of other men, rather than women). It was actually quite a frustrating experience before I understood I was autistic.
I would not at all be surprised if other autistic people also feel like they don't belong in their "assigned" gender because of similar feelings of being completely unable to relate to the socially constructed facets of gender and sexuality.
Whay exactly even is a gender
There's no such thing as a cis male. You are a male. "Cis" is just a term coined by pedophiles.
@@diamondmemer9754 "Whay exactly even is a gender"
An euphemism for sex. Not sexual activity, mind you, but male/female.
@@knrdvmmlbkkn then why do people say they feel a different gender?
Question, have you desired to be sexual with a same sex person?
The thing you said there at the end about "how to tell if a teenager is faking it" is something I wish I could tell everyone, I've been trying to explain this for years, calling kids out for "faking it", even if they are, doesn't do shit, and if they're not faking it, makes everything worse.
It also feels icky to assume someone is faking when it could just be something that they are exploring. Even if they are ultimately cis - needing to explore that IS a gender identity issue.
I think this might express a need in some way, that is there, even though the expression of that need might be faked to get the attention they seek for to fulfill their original need. So yes, it makes no sense to just tell them: "Your problem is not real." It would just lead to them never seeking help again...
It still makes sense to evaluate, if that what they say is the real problem, or if just masks something, or, worst case, if it is something someone else forces them to do or think or behave that way through peer pressure or pressure from the family for example.
"faking it" itself also shouldn't just be glossed over, likely they could be struggling with something completely different
@@volk9327 I mean, "likely" is being generous. And it definitely shouldn't be your first assumption that they are faking it.
Absolutely!
How many times I heard people saying "There is no problem with this person, they are just seeking attention."
But nobody think that even if this is true, what may not be, is that if someone is seeking attention, is because they need some attention. This may be the only way they learned to ask for help.
What a time we live in where a DOCTOR can disseminate new information to EVERYONE who has an internet connection for FREE. truly gg from healthy gamer
you cannot take his advice as true medical advice and inform diagnosis or prognosis you know that right? he can't be your surrogate psychiatrist
@@thejazzman4591 my friend! i hope you are having a great day! please read my comment again.
@@thejazzman4591 he is literally an actual psychiatrist. if you think that he can't give accurate information on psychiatry, then who can?
@@stae24 He can't give medical advice over youtube no matter how qualified he is.
@@rinaldsLV Yeah thats just the legality of the situation, but this channel has good information. I also suggest everyone do their own research and not trust the internet for medical help
As an autistic adult I have a hard enough job trying to identify as human. Specifics beyond 'I AM' just seen to be pigeon-holing society into smaller and smaller boxes increasing diversity but reducing inclusion. People are just people and should be embraced for being an individual. I don't like the terms disorder and issues and I loved your statement that it is a disorder or issue if it has a debilitating effect on one's life. We don't call people who wear glasses disabled despite the fact they would be need a lot of external support without them.
Labels and boxes are annoying. I know I am a man, but the whole role of "man" as I've learned it to be seems like a terrible job with a bunch of negative traits I don't want.
I always wondered if television and commercials were important in the creation and maintenance of these boxes. To keep people feeling they're not enough woman or enough man, so buy this product and you'll become more like the people in the ad and feel a little better.
@@dmitryhetman1509 You will never be a real man. Just a little boy on the internet.
@@Karl_Marksman This spread of ideas like masculinity or femininity through society fits the original meaning of the word "meme." It's like a gene, but stored in collective _memory_ instead of _genetic_ code. Hence, Meme instead of Gene.
I actually suspect gender is entirely a meme, while body dysphoria and dysmorphia are not. Just a hunch though, of course, no way to prove this hypothesis.
@@joda7697 You're kinda blowing my mind right now with the etymology of the word meme. That went above my head for so long
"smaller and smaller boxes increasing diversity but reducing inclusion"
Reminds me of how the rainbow flag was meant to symbolize "everyone under the rainbow" i.e. everyone who felt some sort of disconnect from who they are as individuals and how society expects them to act based on what reproductive organs they have. 🏳️🌈 was once a symbol of that one big box. Now that people predominantly associate it with only gays, a whole host of flags have been made for other subsets, like pan or trans or aro. Not saying the flags for each are bad, just saying they're a result of this fragmentation.
Based on experience with my lgbtq+-unfriendly family, I think that having so many subcategories makes it more difficult to explain how this stuff works and advocate for each of the smaller subsets within "not cis and/or straight".
Like, I'm not sure if my mom is aware that pan, aro, ace or non-binary are even a thing. She only knows of lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and once asked me what the "queer denomination" of lgbtq was. I told her I didn't know enough on the topic for 2 reasons:
1. She was driving and I didn't want to distract her with this large and complex topic
2. I'm a cis girl and I didn't want to make any mistakes while explaining, for fear of misinforming her. On that note, *please correct me if you find issue with my train of thought!*
Also, I've been pondering lately what are the error bars on "normal behaviour"?
as someone who was diagnosed with autism from a very young age (now 19) with massive issues of being able to understand my own emotions, processing, and picking up social cues etc., ive come to realise that gender doesn’t really exist in my mind. I’m physically a male, but i like to appear as more feminine and such, but also proud of my masculine parts as well as being bisexual. being honest i would call myself non-binary, but the social difficulty that comes with trying to convey that to others outweighs any actual benefits for me. i found this video so interesting and enlightening
Minus the diagnosis and my struggles in youth likely not being as bad as yours… I’m a male and exactly the same as you describe yourself in every way and agree with everything you said. Have a good day, internet twin!
@@toomanytubes0002 you too bro!
I don't call myself non-binary because it's a useless label, why call yourself something if it holds zero significance?
bro not thinking about gender all the time is normal
@@S3nCh4nin my experience [vaguely simular to the original person], gender just doesn't exist. it isn't a concept to me.
As a transgender person, the last question about "faking it" triggered a bad train of thought. It is so nice for a psychiatrist to finally say straight, that even if someone is indeed faking it, there still is an underlying problem there that shouldn't be omitted. Thank you.
i absolutely love his answer to this question and that he says right away he is not agreeing with the setup (/sentiment?) of the question.
Mad respect for doc. Brilliant answer to a bad faith question
@@rebeccasheng620 Even called out the basis of the question being in bad faith but tackled the issue productively.
Yeah I loved it too. Genuine professional that knows what’s up.
Completely understandable. I am assuming in good faith that the person asked in the context of people that turn out to be non-binary rather than transgender. Possibly they phrased their question incorrectly, I do not know.
15:15 "In the medical field, and in society, we are grappling with what constitutes a disorder vs is an acceptable, normal variant of human beings." I've been thinking about that a lot, and I love how Dr. K described it.
It's pretty much always a line drawn at function. We might have all the symptoms of a disorder, but if we're fully functional, socially, economically, and mentally, we usually won't be diagnosed with the disorder. Shrinks have told me that more than once. What we then have is a condition or a cluster of behaviours that we manage well enough to get along OK. So hooray for us I guess.
@@themudpit621 In my experience as an autistic who used to work as a teacher at a psych hospital, the measurement is far more determined by how much we annoy those in authority (parents, teachers, bosses, hospital staff) than our own well-being. Especially when it comes to kids. In staffing meetings the patients well-being never entered the picture.
It’s why I can’t get my obviously autistic son, who’s exactly like me at his age, tested. Since we homeschool and accommodate ourselves he doesn’t have teachers who are bothered by his autism complaining of his behavior. So no one in authority is actively annoyed, no need for an IEP, no need for meds, then no need for a diagnosis because his autism only bothers him. This is from multiple doctors and therapists over multiple years.
Severity isn’t about how a disorder influences our lives but how our differences effect neurotypical lives.
@@AngryPug76 important perspective to understand. Thank you
ol thsts all BS
@@RR-et6zp Don’t type with your mouth full. Are you autistic or parent of an autistic kid and gone through the hell of trying to get a test, which costs hundreds and insurance doesn’t pay for, or been on the other side of the testing table with the psychiatrist and therapists? I’ve done all three. Multiple times.
Low functioning/severe autism is used to deny agency. High functioning is used to deny needs. Non-verbal does not mean non-thinking, non-feeling and non-understanding.
I’m a trans man, not diagnosed with autism. I’ve believed for a while now that it’s a possibility there’s a connection between the two and that a lot of trans people are underdiagnosed. I’m now 23 and slowly realizing I may be on the spectrum. It presents in so many different ways, and I think a lot of psychologists just look for the most obvious things. For example, many autistic people have difficulties empathizing, however some are the opposite and are highly aware of others’ emotions to the point of being overwhelmed. Very interesting video, thanks for helping break down the study
you very well might be, take this as someone who originally got the diagnosis asberger with adhd ( adhd would grow away, atleast they thought so at the time ) and am in my 30's. adhd and autism can cause you to feel you are not secure in your own body. This comes from a series of potential symptoms such as feeling that you don't controll your own body or it feels "wrong". Add social symptoms and it can make you feel "different". Years later and while I am as strait as it gets my diagnosis got clearer it was my adhd with severity acting up causing symptoms similar to mild autism ( basicly put my adhd caused me to zone out/flare up causing social situations/misreads ). So I have read up on what autism is and does.
See the language used here and compare that to what you might have heard in trans situations. The difficulty to read roles/themselves leading to a lack of fitting in/feeeling different. Just look at how many on twitter that identify as lgbt that also lists autism, there are studies done in england on lgbt people that regretted things and got tested for autism at decently high numbers. Not everyone have it but its frequency is noticbly higher.
I am a not a proffesional though, I just had access to good information and had someone knowledgable to air it with. If you suspect this and want to pursue it talk to a pro.
I’d say it’s the opposite, some autistic people have troubles empathising, but the rest are just overwhelmed with how much we empathise.
@@emberthecatgirl8796 It's a really annoying combination because we might empathise without understanding the feelings in the intrinsic way many people seem to, so it's confusing to navigate.
hyper-empathy & being easily overwhelmed by other people's emotions is comorbid with C-PTSD , by the way.
@@SmartCreeper Believing that trans people adhere to stereotypes is a fallacy that comes from literally not understanding anything about gender identity or trans people. By far most trans people I know are a lot more liberated in their gender expressions and defy gender norms all the time compared to cis people. I know many trans women who play competitive video games, work on cars, lift weights, or are interested in STEM fields, and many trans men are more willing to wear makeup, be into drag performance, be vulnerable and sensitive, and be highly emotionally available. Saying "no one is trans" is obviously incredibly transphobic and opens up every discussion for suppressing trans people in every aspect of society. It opens up the conversation for genocide, and hopefully I don't need to say this but don't say that. It's extremely harmful to a group of people you haven't even spoken to a single time in your life. With the amount of juvenile content on your channel that you obviously hoped would turn you into a youtuber, maybe it's time you logged off and learned how to be a functioning adult? just a though.
I'm transgender and diagnosed with asd. Something that's happened to me with a past therapist and that many autistic ppl have experienced with medical professionals, is that whenever we come at them with a concern they just brush it off and say "oh it's just your autism" or they straight up treat us like children that can't think for ourselves.
Something that I'm kinda afraid might happen if this information becomes widespread with doctors/therapists, is that transphobes will use it as an excuse to deny people treatment because "oh are you really trangender or are you just autistic?" and "you just think you're nonbinary because of your autism". Because trust me, transphobes will death grip any excuse they can find to deny treatment. Don't get me wrong, obviously some ppl are rlly just confused and it's important to experiment with gender identity and not immediately jump to hrt without waiting to know for certain that's what you want. What I'm talking about is ppl who are 100% certain that they're trans/nonbinary. And most autistic ppl have at least 1 bad experience with a medical professional not taking them seriously because they can't grasp the idea that we can think independently
let being a doctor be a subject of significant monetary interest and this will happen frequently and indefinitely. you'd think that more professionals would at least try to familiarize themselves with their autistic patients and treat them like people instead of strange unpalatable exceptions. when i wanted my school staff to start using male pronouns for me the counselor demanded a written letter from my parent asking to do so even though i'm an adult and tried to explain to me what being trans is like it's a concept that i just encountered for the first time. can't say this makes me feel any hopeful or confident about dealing with ppl in healthcare and the legal system in the future
Can’t be trans without outdated notions of what men and women are allowed to do. Maybe the issue is having internalized the bigotry.
Why does being a woman require femininity?
Why does being a man require masculinity?
Even if ppl were trans because of their autism, we should just let them express themselves. So what if it's because I'm autistic?! That doesn't diminish the fact that I have certain experiences and this label helps me express that. Being nonbinary and being autistic are both intrinsic to my being, and are enmeshed with each other. And that's ok!
@@DingoTheDemon Why do you choose to be defined by labels rather than simply living a life worth living free of stereotypes?
@@MusicSetAdrift lmao
I’m redundantly/independently diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (by at least four Ph.D’s - both as a child [when it was called Asperger’s] and as an adult). I live as a cis male but have probably in many ways always been non-binary. You are quite invested in the “pathology model” of discourse and might consider reading Nick Walker’s “Neuroqueer Heresies.”
Yas!
Chocolate rain
@@Lisa-gt6ve Damn he will never live that down huh
@@bobobsen Well you know what, because of that comment I looked it up and I actually didn't really know anything about the song except that it's a meme and now I've read the lyrics and it's actually very solid writing. So yeah we shouldn't forget about that song it's great!
TayZonday probably wants to be known for more than a single song he wrote in 2007 that went viral. Just a thought.
The difficulties forming romantic relationships isn’t necessarily only because autism but there are many posible variables. Many autistic individuals also have trauma due to lived experiences and sensory related.
This may help me a lot. I have Autism and for the past year I have been identifying as Gender-fluid. I have came out to my parents of late and it hasn't been going well. They say they didn't see signs and it's hard to believe and they are trying to tie it with my ex that they hate. It has been really hard because I have to be in the house hold, can't express myself in any nb/fem way and it's been really hard. I have family therapy with them and it hasn't progressed but I think this study might show why I didn't show a lot of signs to them because it has been really hard for me to explain to them why I am and when I am and it's just been really hard.
Are you unable to accept your biological sex?
honestly the same thing is going on with me. My parents are still trying to accept that I’m trans-masc but it’s not going great and they keep trying to blame my friends for influencing me even tho it ain’t that way. At least I’m not alone in this kind of situation tho.
@@d3ad_d3r3k Why are you unable to accept yourself as an autistic girl?
They probably didn't see the signs because it's normal for most people not to conform to gender stereotypes 100% of the time.
good luck yall. much love to you
I was super hesitant coming into this video, since topics like this can very easily become dismissive and toxic, but you approached it from such an open-minded perspective and one of trying to use the information to help people. As an autistic nonbinary person, thank you for this incredibly interesting video!
Non binary is a made up term
Non-binary isn't a thing. You're either male, or female, or both. Gender "identity" is fucking nonce-sense
ol thsts all BS
@@RR-et6zp Oh? Do elaborate.
Meanwhile I'm austistic and haven't bee able to figure out this whole gener identity conversation at all, seeing it as utter nonsense due to the lack of understanding the logical path to how this even is a thing. I don't really care that much tho, so let people be what they wanna be as long as it doesn't affect me directly. I just wanna drink booze and play my games XD
as an autistic nonbinary person THANK YOU. im so tired of people telling me im faking my gender or my autism because "oh you have too many things." without understanding like 90% of my things are comorbid. my special interest is psychology so i read a lot of studies and no matter how many studies on gender and autism i show people they never believe me. thank you for spreading the word !! this was such a validating video to watch
Hello, we are twins. AuDHD enby with a SpIn in psychology. Even my psychotic disorder is comorbid with my autism. 😭 My entire "list" is incredibly intwined.
AuDHD genderqueer with a masters in counseling psychology focused on gender and sexuality lol. Plus I'm traumatized because my mother was a narcissist who would beat me for my AuDHD traits and my sexual and gender variance. So it took me 10 years of therapy to come to terms with my gender even tho it was a huge part of my special interests . It's all intersectional. You cannot separate my trauma, my neurodivergence, my interests, or my race and sex assigned at birth. They all feed into each other. Intentionally babyyy
People are so desperate for attention (i.e. some form of love) themselves that disease or disability gets automatically viewed as a threat. It's like oh I can't make that same claim, I cry foul, you're playing the attention game wrong, you must be exploiting the system. Capitalism, colonialism, industrial civ got us all so miserable and turned against each other we can't realize that we are our own solutions, ourselves, together, if we could only break the spell. -_-
ASD correlates with a lot of "things".
Here's the thing, I don't care if you genuinely dislike the gender you were born as. That is inconsequential, it is not healthy for you or anyone to accept or lean in to this comorbidity of your autism. It is incredibly unhealthy for you to live your life as a non-binary person, well there's no way to cure autism, there are plenty of ways that you can get help in understanding your gender through healthy lenses, especially through therapy.
As a trans person who tests high for autistic traits, it’s truly wild to like *know* this correlation but having nothing but “trust me” as my source. This is cool!
I'm autistic and cisgender, but when I experimented a bit with other genders I found a big struggle was the literal thinking aspect of my mentality. I had to quantify what I consider to be "womanhood" and "manhood" and "neither" in relatively concrete terms. I would love to be able to hear from non-cis autistic people about if that was a hurdle for them as well.
There's no such thing as a cisgender. You are a male or female. "Cis" is just a term coined by pedophiles.
Yep, it's like my soul / brain / self is androgynous. My body shows a specific gender but l feel very uncomfortable with people reading me this way. It's like they already have a picture of me by looking at me but my brain / self is so much more than those stereotypes. During my life I always had feminine and masculine traits both 50%. I try to make up for it now by calling myself nonbinary with no pronouns as it feels more like people would get to know my authentic self behind the outer shell.
@@ninanano2777 the problem i have with this line of thinking is it implies men and women are just men and women and nothing more...and that all men and women fit into sexist stereotypes and if you dont, you arent a man or woman. If a woman wants to be seen as a person before a woman, does that mean she is not a woman? or is she a woman who wants basic respect. I am not saying you are wrong to label yourself that way, i just think its important to identify why, if causation is not classic ftm/mtf dysphoria.
@@BeyondBitter i have a similar experience where I don't feel connected to the identity of a woman or man. However I think that is because one, cisnormative ideas are given to us, we as children don't really even understand that our gender identity is ours to define. It's easy to feel disconnected to something that is defined and exists away from us (specifically relating to gender and its distorted external perception). The difference between someone who personally feels a disconnect from their assigned gender and a woman who wants to be seen as a person first is one has a connection to the label "woman" / "man" and the other does not. People can personally liberate themselves by redefining what it is to be a man or a woman, but I think for many nb autistic ppl, we just feel the label itself is so alien and separate from who we actually are that it doesn't resonates.
id argue the disconnect exists because of the sexist roles associated with the labels man and woman. of course we don't fit into it, we are autistic. we dont fit into most aspects of society, especially ones that dont actually make sense because we like knowing how and why things are the way they are.
I'd just like to clarify i'm not against the label and i fully understand why using it feels more natural for some, i am just curious about peoples reasonings when it differs from binary ftm/mtf with the causation being more of a physical disconnect rather than a societal one. I thought i was trans for awhile because of that societal disconnect but I personally found more comfort in redefining what being my birth sex even meant. the fact that so many of us are gender nonconforming points to gender being a complete social construct. it makes sense something like nonbinary is so common along the spectrum @@spinach4616
i just found out i am autistic recently, and i have always hated being told that certain behaviors, stlyes, or friendships, were off limits because of gender, it felt very authoritarian and arbirtary. i want to have long hair and befriend people of all genders and dress like a stand user! and ive yet to hear a compelling argument as to why i shouldnt.
Damm relatable mate
Oh yeah, I’ve always thought the same thing. When I was a kid, I was always wondering why boys couldn’t wear pink. In 7th grade, I got a bright pink water bottle just to show people that boys could have pink things. I always wondered why I got made fun of
You should definitely dress and act like a stand user.
@@icedirt9658 Yeah it would unironically be awesome. If someone did that at my school i would give them a thumbs up
@@interstate80. not autistic but I also had a pink shirt that I wore for a similar reason
I’d be curious to know how much these experiences get exacerbated during and after puberty. It seems to me that during puberty is especially when those gender norms get prescribed in full force. I remember feeling quite fond of my childhood, it was during puberty when the norms between boys and girls started getting really weird and hard to navigate. Me being nice to a girl suddenly became associated with me flirting with her, and that made me feel very weird, as an example.
i totally agree !!! i get so insecure interacting with boys and girls (im a lesbian) because of how everything can be interpreted as something else
Omg yes, when all the other kids suddenly changed, I couldn't figure out how to navigate that. I don't see males or females in a sexual way, but suddenly they all did, as easily as growing their adult teeth.
Relatable
I feel that.
That would fit my own anecdotal experience. As a young child, I never gave much thought to the differences between boys and girls or my own identity therein. As a teenager though, I started feeling increasingly uncomfortable with the expectations of my assigned gender. It never led to any particular dysphoria, but it certainly led to a lot of time spent imagining what would be like to have been born the other way around.
Maybe for me it's just a case of the grass always seeming greener on the other side of the fence, but I could certainly see how for others it could become a whole lot more than that.
This just makes whats going on in Missouri, and what will likely happen in many other states, even more concerning. The fact that you can't get any form of gender-affirming care if you are autistic, depressed, or have anxiety, is such a blatant attack on the trans community and it's so devastating. I feel so sorry for everyone whos going through that right now, please stay strong and know you're loved. We wont stop fighting
The entire point of that qualification is to make sure nobody can get any care.
Because let's be real; being trans in a red state automatically causes either depression or some form of anxiety.
And also autism isn't "real" in the sense that it's anything more than being told "you have social behavior that we consider outside of the norm" which as far as I understand (I don't) means social ostracization for not conforming to gender roles will easily lead to abnormal behavior that can fit under the autism umbrella if you want it too. Which transphobes which will enforce these will absolutely want.
ALSO; chilling effects.
So yeah, it's just a planked ban you can defend with an "uhm actually🤓" if somebody calls it that.
Yeah. That’s the problem. It’s not helpful the way he presents it.
imagine if you transitioned before you get diagnosed with anxiety straight up steal you gender back untransed
The concept of mentalisation development is really helpful, tfs. I have been in recovery from borderline PD and realised a lot of the stuff I had laying around in my psychological attic was not some mystery PD but ASD. The BPD explains all of my relationships, the ASD describes all of my academic and career struggles and triumphs. I got really burnt out and triggered by notions of pursuing a just world. Now that I know what I'm working with inside, it's been so simple to resolve inner conflict and turmoil. I know how to pack my BPD and ASD away so harmoniously they are not only not a burden, but an asset.
Came to the comments first to see the type of audience the creator has and holy crap, it’s nothing but genuine ppl sharing experiences and being supportive of each other and I’m so happy to have come across this channel 😭💕
The top-level comments seem good, but there's a lot of transphobia in the replies.
@@electronics-girl ☹️😤
@@electronics-girl no there's not
@@Money_Fox buried
@@electronics-girl Could you imagine being such a sad, pathetic scumbag that the only thing you have to look forward to in life is to harass people you've never met online? Transphobes really are lower than dirt.
I'm a clinician who specializes in autism, and I just want to say thank you so much for developing your platform and putting this out there. Unfortunately, I think many clinicians don't understand autism enough, and they don't consider it when they're working with individuals with gender dysphoria. And, of course, the average person doesn't have this information to help them navigate it either. Also, you did a fantastic job scratching the surface of this topic without leaving people with just enough information to be dangerous or misunderstand - although, I'm sure that will still happen. Awesome video that I'll definitely be sharing.
People will be obtuse about anything if they can use it to demean or harm others, it ain't anything you can change beyond trying to clarify things for everyone else. Also in terms of clinician stuff don't forget to humanize people, it's easy to put a label on others especially if it helps them, but try to interact with them as people worthy of respect (though likely you already do, but current treatment and view of trans and ND people is well... substandard in comparison to Neurotypical and cisgender people)
Thank you for sharing this! It's inspiring to see more new generation clinicians reach people where they are. Thanks for all you do!
As a 52 year old autistic man whose cisgender heterosexuality is hard won, I think the reverse is also true. People accepting of neurodiversity often think that people should be stuck in a gender identity chosen at 8, 10, 12, 25, or 29. And that is a false idea. Once gay always gay is just as bad as using surgery to treat gender identity disorder.
And this is a level of abuse your patients need protecting from.
@@TedSeeber Respectfully, no. You don’t get to determine what an adult does with their own body.
As a trans adult, I should be able to access gender affirming care so that I can feel comfortable existing as who I am. Being able to “socially transition” as a child for me was simply cutting my hair and wearing boy-ish clothing. I want you to understand that this helped me from terminating my life when I was a kiddo.
As a trans adult, I have the right to access healthcare. This for me, would simply include a low dose of testosterone.
Some trans/non-binary folk don’t even want to get surgery.
Idk why everyone immediately jumps the gun into “getting surgery” as the one and only option.
Not that there’s a problem with adults getting the surgery ANYWAY. If you have a problem with trans/non-binary adults seeking care in this way, perhaps turn your efforts towards plastic surgery. Truly, compare the numbers on how many cosmetic procedures people are allowed to undergo to a trans person seeking an augmentation to their body that better suits what they want to express in their lives.
@Beardeddragon A and agreed on plastic surgery. What they do not tell you is that "low dose of testosterone" comes with many dangerous side effects. But you are also correct as AN ADULT that is a choice you should be able to make. That is not a CHOICE being offered to many misdiagnosed kids today. The growing detrans movement is real and will one day result in devastating class action lawsuits against the entire industry, no different than the anti-tobacco lawsuits of the 1970s and 1980s, or the Mesothelioma lawsuits of the 1990s.
As someone with ASD, (probably, it hasn't been officially diagnosed, but I have my reasons), I might be able to provide a bit of insight here (although potentially severely limited in this case by being cisgendered and heterosexual). One of the main ASD traits that I have is that I don't particularly care for social conventions - everything has to have a reason for me to care, and "that's just how it is" doesn't do it for me. That leaves people like me more free to explore gender identity, as I suspect we have less stigmas regarding gender identity than the average person. My hypothesis would predict that a similar link exists between ASD and homosexuality, bisexuality, and generally being some kind of LGBTQ+, so that might be a good way to see if I'm right (which I may well not be).
There is an English savant (genius) named Daniel Tammet who's also gay. He also has linguistic, numerical and visual synesthesia, meaning that his perception of words, numbers and colors are woven together into a new way of perceiving and understanding the world. For example, he can "taste" colors and musical notes. His story always captivated me when I was younger. The human brain is fascinating. All of these variations are there for a reason. As Temple Grandin (famous scientist with ASD) said, we wouldn't have computers if we tried to get rid of or suppress these traits. She and many other scientists believe that these various traits, such as being autistic, genius, gay, or whatever, are linked to each other and we can't have one without the other.
I agree with what you’re saying, but it does not explain gender dysphoria. Gender identity is still something the majority of people are instinctively aware of. From a biological viewpoint, it wouldn’t make sense for someone not to have a sense of who or what they were. Maybe being gay is a neurodiversity in and of itself.
As an autistic who is agender/nonbinary, I think there are two very clear reasons (mind you I'm not discarding something genetic):
1. Gender is a social construct, we don't normally understand those, so we are more likely to break them
2. We are already marginalized, that makes it easier to identify with other marginalized identities because we are already outsiders, who cares if it's for one or multiple reasons?
Hi I'm a trans man, and I personally really disagree with thinking gender is a social construct. Sure gender norms are but I don't think gender itself is. Even if I was born in the middle of the forest all by myself and have never seen anyone in my life, I would still have gender dysphoria. Sure it would be much harder, maybe even downright impossible to know that I was meant to be born as a man. That doesn't mean I wouldn't feel like I'm in the wrong body. I will still be trans even if I never learned about gender roles or whatever. Please don't take it as an attack, I just personally really hate seeing such a statement bc it feels invalidating to me.
@@buliontro don't worry I actually think more or less the same, when I say it's a social construct I mean more the concept of gender rather than the feeling, I was still me before I had the words and in absence of society that wouldn't change
@@buliontrosorry but i disagree i think most of your pain comes through external evaluation. That is perfectly normal. We all do things out of fear of being judged. And in most cases we are judged more for our effort to not be judged. It's normal human evolution. Why? Because we are dependant on other peoples compassion for not to be killed. If we piss peoppe off to much we won't wake up with a knife in our back. Well cause we'll be dead with a knife in our back. I am gonna give you a cognito hazard. Why do you care about your sex, gender, identiy whatever? What does it matter. Does being born any any other sex make you happy? Apart from pure familarity i don't think i would be to upset if i woke up being a female or any other sex. Certainly weird to imagine being a diffrent sex. I only know being male. All i really crave more than anything is to be less alone. I don't think among the rules of the natural world we can defeat this rat race. We will push the boulder up just to see it falling back down. But we cannot loose either. I mean that would require everyone to give up. Certainly there are enough people who are deluded that they will finally push the boulder over. But without changing the rules of the game that is simply impossible. So yeah all these earthly things i am not attached to beyond the means of keeping me alive in a world that will discrimate me no matter what for simply existing. And i can change nothing. I will always be discriminated. It's not possible to avoid for anybody entirely. Yes you can change some things. But think about the cost vs benefit. I certainly believe that it is unresponsible to let people live in their delusion. And that is where i can see the confusion of many people about trans people. But i am not confused about you. And if you already did measures to become emulate a certain sex i see no reason to give you whatever you need. I certainly see no point in putting someone like you through more procedures. I wouls recommend anyone in this world to pick the gender role easiest to achieve so you can exist among the ignorant which is a forced requirement for many people unfortunatly. If your born male be male if your born female be female. Your never gonna be accepted more being a diffrent gender and torturing yourself through that. If you wrongly did that already however then there is mo reason to go back the past happened. So yes accept trans people but we don't need any new one. We need to give people with gender dysphoria the healing they need so they don't do selfharm to fit some maniac gender bs. But unfortuantly it requires society to change so i don't see this coming any time soon. Unfortunatly society will as always keep pushing people to dp self harming deprived things because you are never enough and will do things for a percieved positive evaluation out of fear. It is very sad and it is done out of fear. The people who try to "help" trans people either are sexualized people with deprived fetisches or people who want to convert them back. None actually love them or truely want to see or help them. And unfortunatly that is just human nature. Compassion is very selective in most humans. I mean vegans are the minority and not killing seems to be the basic metric of being good but i can't even do it. I could brutally murder a animal knowing full well the pain i am causing. And infact i do it all the time going to the grocery store with the diffrence of my hands staying blissfully ignorant clean. I try to express my compassion with trying to share my knowledge and understanding with those willing to lissen. And i hope to learn aswell.
Sex is extremly discusting. I dispise the part of me that wants it. I just wish to love without the torturing that has been build into me. I want to kill all of it. I am a slave. I am have no autonomy. I am jailed and if i try to defend myself i will be killed. As long as there is suffering in anything i don't think i will ever be at peace. But i will be devided and conflictet in myself. I am so weak but i cannot loose either. I wish to see you one day.
@@durschfalltv7505I ain't gonna read all that. I'm happy/sorry for you tho
@@PrestoJacobsonsucks cause i shared my best thoughts at that time. Well what can i do. What should i care.
I really appreciate your answer to the last question about "faking gender issues" because nobody but the person knows whether or not gender is the root cause of their distress. Address it as if it is genuine, and you will either help them figure out their gender or identify the root cause and work on that. Great video!
Thank you for covering this
I'd say gender is unprovable if we are going by gender not by your privet parts and you can creative with it. I also think autism is over diagnosed like ADHD. "He's an eccentric person with sensory issues that could be migraines. Let's slap the autism label so this person can be discriminated in the work place and treated like a freak by good meaning insulting idiots." My experence in a nutshell.
Love the way you answered that question about "faking" gender identity disorder. It's obvious that you were uncomfortable with the question but you stayed on task. I wrote a piece not long ago about the brutality behind that accusation of being "fake", while ignoring what might be a symptom or a cry for help. Accusing someone of being "fake" or "faking" is a dismissal, but moreover, the intent behind it can be a bit of a beat down. I can dismiss you. I can ignore you. You are not worth my attention. You are faking. This says so much more about the accuser than it does about the alleged "faker." Also, interesting observation of mine is that "faking" is approved in some circumstances, such as bravery or confidence, but derided in others such as illness or emotional states. What's up with that?
People who de-transition are often accused of having been fake trans by their once gender identity community.
Thank you. I think you just verbalized (sort of since this is text) my feelings on this matter, and I think you make an excellent point.
Good point about faking being approved in some circumstances.
Bravery and confidence don't really "pressure" other people on how to feel, is how I see it. I think that mental or physical illness pressure people to feel something or do something about it. For example, if I'm hanging out with friends and I break my arm, there is a pressure for them to help me. So people get upset when you pressure them to feel a certain way or deal with your problems. Not saying it's okay, just where I think this mindset comes from.
If you fake bravery/confidence, the intent is typically to help other people (feign strength so they can trust you to help them).
If you fake an illness/distress, the intent is typically for you to receive something from other people (help/sympathy).
There are exceptions to both obviously, and the exceptions are typically not socially acceptable. Faking confidence when you are lying to someone is not socially acceptable, for instance.
To me, on a surface level at least, the link between ASD and Gender non-conformity screams that our concepts of gender are purely social constructions. Someone who is already struggling with abiding by all forms of social norms would of course feel alienated by the social imposition of gender norms as well. I think we have a lot to learn from folks with ASD about what elements of humanity are 'natural,' and which elements are a result of the legacy of dominant cultures. It's worth noting that there have always been societies where gender norms were more flexible and allowed for more diverse gender roles (such as the pan-indigenous 'Two-Spirit') than the rigid gender binary most of us are more familiar with in western society.
I do believe in some sort of gender role but it’s not whatever society set up.
I've been diagnosed with ASD recently, and it explains a lot of my life. A variety of my skills and traits allowed me to adjust and manage to live with it quite well. I have struggled with mental disorders, but I do not consider my autism in itself to be an "illness". It is, in some way, a part of me and who I am, and I like who I am!
To me, a disorder starts at the point where it seriously affects one's day-to-day life in a negative way, and I know that lots of folks with ASD do struggle on a daily basis. It's hard to put it into words, but it feels like it's in some ways a disorder and in some ways it's not, and it varies person-to-person. That's why it's so hard to define.
Still, no matter what the definition and wording is, neurodivergent folks should be provided with the needed help, as well as respect. We're all valid!
That comes down to gender identity as well. I have actually no idea what gender is supposed to feel like to me, and I feel just a general lack of connection to describing things as feminine or masculine, and to be honest, I don't really care. What I do care about is that everyone feels comfy in their bodies, and I see no issue in adjusting them to feel more like yourself.
I myself usually like to use they/them pronouns, and I believe I am somewhere close to agender.
However, I am fine with how my body looks, I like its shape and form. The only thing I'm against is what people associate with my body, so I would prefer to look more neutral to avoid that.
Yeah you should watch Luke Smith.
His video is titled goofy but he talks a lot abt how half these mild mental illnesses are just basically just extensions of your personality.
I got ADHD. I just need pills and a strict schedule, and I'm set. But its not even remotely the same shit that schizophrenics go thru.
Its mostly just a genetic fuckup that sometimes is good, sometimes is bad.
I very much am of this view as well.
It's so common that as a cis guy I sometimes feel like a minority in the autistic community. Before engaging with the wider autistic community I had no idea of the link but it makes sense.
Autism heavily influences what clothes feel good or uncomfortable on our skin, what activities we are drawn to or avoid, how we relate to other people and by extension ourselves, what we find pleasurable and what roles we take in life. It really isn't much of a stretch to imagine for a lot of autistic people this would influence or extend to gender identity.
Same here, its wierd and im pretty much the only autistic straight around. I feel like a bit of it may be missfires
I thought I was gay for a while because I was not sure what I even liked. Now I would consider myself straight and I have a girlfriend and I love her. I think autism can make you overthink things that most people won’t even think about. My therapist told me that our brains are so analytical and always looking for logical answers. That along with the fact that we don’t really pay attention to “social norms”, it can lead to gender and sexuality fluidity.
@@interstate80. i guess it really could be too much time with no hobby type of situation, ive met a lot of autistics, and there are 2 main groups, the ones that are genderly wierd and ones that are really focused on sth, im focused on mechanics/medieval stuff, my friend is on computers and programming, and ive met a bunch online and both online and irl those that arent like that have either a different identity or sexuality or sth. For me it was simple, im a man, biology tells me im compatible with women, and since reproduction is the main point of life i should pursue women, done, now lets go back to sth i care about. But i guess for other people its a big point that they may focus for extended periods of time and develop some more or less rational conclusions
@@interstate80. When I was 6 I thought I must be an alien, seemed to be the only logical answer to why I was so different to everyone else.
I believe there are good reasons autistic people might be more likely to not be cis-het but I'm sure there are less charitable factors at play too. It's a complicated and messy topic, there are probably dozens of factors at play.
@@eeeguba432 I think you’re onto something here, after I really got into collecting coins and model car collecting it’s not really been a thought as much
i really appreciate your answer to the question about teenagers "making up" their gender identity issues. i feel like there is this overwhelmingly prevalent assumption that many, many people willl just "make up" their issues for whatever reason. attention, usually. while this may sound like a deceptively harmless thing to be worried about, it kind of feeds into the horrible narrative of marginalized people not knowing what they actually are, what they need and whats best for them. that they are delusional in some way or even malicious maybe for trying to "get" something by "lying". but lets be honest; what totally healthy, happy, cisgender person would make up that theyre trans?? for what??? even if they DID make it up, that would be worthy of examination as well, since thats not really the norm either. this mentality is what made me question myself for so many years, not wanting to get checked for adhd bc for some reason, i convinced myself that actually, i was just making it all up without meaning to, and that the doctors would be like "you are making this up to get special treatment, get out". they didnt say that, obviously, and i do have inattentive adhd, turns out. so im very glad hat you kind of rejected the premise in the first place.
this was such an interesting video, as i have also been questioning my gender identity as a woman for quite a few years now as well. as adhd and autism are also brought up in the same conversations a lot of the time, i wonder if there is some kind of like there as well? well, i dont know, but it sure is interesting to think about all of this!
either i made it up or i'm using it as an excuse to be lazy in life by trying to receive assistance. it's a certain kind of people who tend to make negative assumptions like this. sometimes they dont even say it out right, to be polite, but it's still possible to tell.
I feel like a liar all the time and question if my own feelings are real. I feel I need to tweak the things i say to sound more realistic so i don't get 'called out' for lying. Even when i observe this aspect of myself i snap back and tell myself i'm exaggerating. Insisting someone is a liar based on anecdotal evidence can fuck them up.
Two words. Dylan Mulvaney.
@@TryingtoTellYou yes and?
This. Fakeclaimers will do much more harm to a community than any "faker" out there.
I’m not professionally diagnosed, but I have a very high degree of autistic traits and experiences that only made sense once I had the lens of autism to see them through. I’ve also identified as some variation on non-binary since I knew that was an option (terminology and my awareness of it has evolved a lot in the last fifteen years). I’m really glad that you made it clear that being non-binary is a resolution to gender identity issues, because I spent so much time as a kid feeling very confused about why I didn’t fit in with my female peers, and had quite a bit of distress around my gender, but as soon as I had a third option, it’s something I’ve never been stressed about outside of the nagging concerns of discrimination and political attacks on my right to freely express myself and exist.
As I understand it, many people with ASD are very analytical and "discrete" thinkers. From their observations they create rules for organizing things, consciously and/or subconsciously, and that tends to create "boxes" in their thinking. If something satisfies a certain set of rules, then it fits in this box or this category. (I see this in myself actually, and I give it some credit for my skill in math/logic/computing. I've been obsessed with those topics for at least a decade, and just recently started a professional career in software)
One of my hypotheses is that when such people introspect themselves and see themselves not fitting in like "normal" boys and girls, they conclude that they don't fit in the box and that leads them to try and figure out what they really are. And if they start ticking checkboxes on the other side, or neither side, that might lead to a conclusion that they are X other gender or non-binary.
Me personally, I've never had gender identity issues despite not fitting in. I was not like the average guys in my school, but that didn't bother me, I had my own group of similarly nerdy friends. If I learned about gender identity while I was a teenager, I might have gone down that path. But I learned about autism long before that, and I'm satisfied with autism as the answer for my own life experiences.
I had a very similar experience as a teenager. Never got on with most of the boys, always the artistic/creative or nerdy ND types. There were very brief transient moments where I felt like I wasn’t a proper man or failed at being masculine/wondered what it would be like if I was a girl.
Had i learnt about gender identity back then, I might’ve gone down that path but after realising I’m ND and my way of experiencing the word is just different than most blokes I’ve come to accept that.
The REALLY messed up part is there are a ton of doctors and health system that will not allow gender dysohoria to be treated if you have an autism diagnosis because they view it as less “valid” and think it’s a mental health issue related to autism. You are far less likely to be referred to hormone therapy or gender confirmation surgery if you have an autism diagnosis in a lot of places even in the US.
They are absolutely related. But it doesn’t make the gender identity and gender confirmation care any less valid.
Thank god for those doctors and systems.
@@Puzzlesocks yeah cause god forbid someone be comfortable as themself
@@TheRoboticFerret I mean it's about not giving permanent life-changing treatments to people who don't need it. Doctors are not vending machines to give you anything you desire when you want it. It's not like we have an infinite supply of doctors to give people healthcare either, most doctors are already overworked handling bullshit cases and many hospitals are understaffed.
I don't think we should be performing any operations for essentially religious reasons. I don't care if it's because you have the wrong "gendered soul" for your body or if it's circumcision.
@@Puzzlesocks lol, lmao even. You would deny treatment to people who DO need it on the pretense that it isn't "right" based on criteria you made up
@@Puzzlesocks you do realize trans people often struggle for years trying to get people to fucking believe them in order to get treatment, right? it is never as easy as the vending machine analogy you think you're being clever about. a person should not be denied gender affirming treatment just because they have ASD, as if being autistic renders you incapable of consent or something.
I don't understand how there's not more studies about autism being genetic. All my father, my brother and I are autistic, and we can trace it back to my great grandfather. In my opinion, the gender identity issues come from not being able to relate to any gender since childhood, due to our different ways to function.
I can relate to this. Myself and my brother are both ASD and although he was never diagnosed, it's easy to see we definitely get it from our dad. My nephew, the son of my ASD brother, is 6 years old and has severe autism.
Interestingly, most of the asd or autistic kids and adults I know can trace it back to at least one other family member or have a sibling who is also on the spectrum.
I agree with you on gender identity; my theory is that since we're bad at picking up social cues and gender is a social construct, we just don't "get" it, or at least not until much later than most people do. We don't feel that early pressure to fit into gender norms. By the time we do realise (if we do at all) that we're not how society expects, we already have a fixed concept of who we are. At that point our self-identity is too set to change it to meet societal standards, so instead we have to change which standards we apply to ourselves.
True, i also think is a genetic thing on my family, my uncle, my brother has spectrum characteristics, but im the only one diagnosed.
There are some studies, even involving inducing autism in Rhesus monkeys by repeating the gene suspected to cause autism. But genetic research is a different field than sociological research. It's not "either/or," they're studied in tandem but by different people.
I like the Autistic Self-Advocacy Network (ASAN) and stance on research - it should be focused on improving autistic lives, not focused on "cures." So geneticists must recognize eugenic tendencies, avoid them in their own work, and combat them in the work of others.
(The same of course goes for sexology and gender studies.)
The risk for eugenics is too high with genetic studies but many fall into RCCX cluster MTHFR dopamine issues etc...
It is genetic due to the fact it is a ‘manifestation’ of metaphysical principles. Unfortunately, the term manifestation has been misused by normal (in the statistic meaning of normal) humans, getting related to money, exclusivity, materialism. The manifest body experience, such as front lobe issues, actually are a ‘hint’ as to the next step for humans. All those structures that make no sense for the autistic mind, in truth, do not make REAL sense. If you dig deeply, you’ll probably also feel something does not make sense in the linear time illusion (a funny paradox, since we tend to infere logical chains for everything).
I knew I was transgender when I was 4, I told my older sister "I'm a boy trapped in a girl's body" and she never forgot it. I said it again at 7, same exact line, and at 12 I finally started going by my real name and living as a boy. I was diagnosed with autism when I was 6. Knew I was trans at 4, diagnosed with autism at 6... If that's interesting to ponder... Also never told my abusive parents because they had already become way more hateful and abusive when my teachers told them I had autism they didn't want a " useless r****d kid" and thei threw my sister out at age 15 when she told them she was a lesbian so if a teacher told them I was trans like these new laws being proposed, they probably would have literally killed me as they were so violent with me already or they'd abandon me on the street and who knows what would happen to a 6 or 7 year old "girl" left on the street alone probably r*** and murder if not child trafficking. So... Don't pass those literally deadly bills and realize your votes are actually going to kill real children all over the country.
your first concious thought was "bro I need to get rid of this willy"
@@ConnorisseurYT The opposite, actually
@@SkullApplesproDN your -1th unconscious thought will be "sis you want to get this willy"
Ima be honest with you, there is no physically possible way, you are able to realize your transgender at the age of 4.
If children are "Litterally Dying", then its time to cut the bullshit. This is a mental illness, not a gender identity. Nothing wrong with that tho. Just is more genuine term.
I ain't trans, not even LGBTQ. I am a straight, Autistic male with a dash of ADHD. I have personally always thought about gender as the biological sex. I got a penis, therefore I am male.
But I also recognise that gender dysphoria is real, that it causes distress if not adressed. I don't see a issue with people wanting to present themselves differently. I am different from the norm, therefore I accept that others are different too. I also do find that some gender norms are bogus and the idea that certain behaviours should only be attributed to a certain gender to be ridiculous.
Why judge people for trying to find themselves? It would be hypocritical of me as I am still trying to find myself. To be comfortable in this alien world.
i'm not autistic (as far as i know), i'm also straight and male. but that's more or less the way i view things as well, i always just thought of gender as your biological sex, just a classification for physical characteristics. So it felt really weird when i learned about transgenders, as they put an emphasis on gender way bigger than i thought it had. The closest thing i can think of that might be related to gender identity is the fact that i prefer to play male characters in video games as it's easier to put myself in their place, maybe that's my gender identity showing, but i can't tell for sure
You brought up a point that always confused me. (and continues to do so)
You wrote that some gender roles are bogus to you. I can not think of a single one that is anything ranging from arbitrary to actively harmful for everyone involved. Do you (or anyone else) have an example of a gender role that makes sense?
@@skkadoot9533 Idk, I don't mind playing as either gender. I don't get immersed in games as others do
@@joda7697 I have actually held off on responding to this to give it some thought. The only role that makes some sense is that of soldiers. Combat is mentally and physically taxing of any individual, so it makes sense that the people being drafted are overwhelmingly male. Afaik there are some studies that have show that mixed gender combat units actually performs worse in general. Women are also more exposed to being raped and facing other bad treatment if captured by the enemy.
I am not saying women are incapable of being soldiers. That would be quite contradictory to both modern war history and current events. But they are often better suited to support the soldiers in roles the men otherwise would have occupied.
Besides war time conditions where our biological differences matters a lot more, gender roles are mostly arbitrary in peace time. Both genders are able to be "breadwinners". Both genders are able to take care of children and be parental figures. Roles are a lot more flexible when our survival is not threatened.
Sorry if I am being unclear or of there is any bad grammar. Just got home from a birthday party involving drinking.
Same, don't even understand what it means to "feel like a man" as a male, whether I was playing sports or Barbies with my NT sister. It was no different to me than height, I'm 6'4" so being taller I was selected for center in basketball because it's the tallest position
I saw recently an article about autistic identity that described allistic identified as being defined primarily from one's social interactions, while an autistic person's identity was defined more through values and passions. I feel that this explains the connection between autism and gender identity rather well since we're less likely to identify based on the social groups we're matched with. Instead we either spend a long time considering gender turning the concept as a while into a passion, it it never gets to that state and thereby simply didn't register as a part of one's identity.
Something interesting that I'd noticed is that not only are autistic people more likely to be LGBT+ than allistic people, being nonbinary, asexual, or bisexual are all even more likely compared to their usual proportions in the allistic LGBT+ community. What these have in common is that they specifically put less focus on gender. Not only are we more likely to have a gender that doesn't align with the traditional binary, but we also seen to be less likely to take that binary into account when looking for relationships in others.
I recently had a canvassing job that included asking people about their gender and sexual orientation. One person volunteered that she was autistic, and that person also identified as NB and demisexual.
Ne? That top part is a thing?
Boy I should probably see if I can get an actual diagnosis either way on if I am or am not autistic but hell if it doesn’t look like I might be to… literally my sibling and a couple of my friends, and if that wouldn’t explain why I seem to be having a hell of a harder time understanding what the fuck a gender is apparently than everyone else around me. Like, I’ve determined that I guess I’m cis because I’m not something other than what I am now and have always been, I feel no conflict with how I define myself and how I feel I should be, I guess
Link me the article if you find it please!! Sounds really interesting
I think it comes down to we (autistic people) are less likely to intuitively understand gender
Honestly, I’m just glad we’re able to talk about this stuff openly nowadays.
My experience has been very much the same. I'm autistic, non-binary, and pan-sexual. I never really understood or cared much for traditional gender roles. I spent most of my life just desperately trying to fit in but now that I'm 43 I just don't care anymore. I am much more happy when I am just myself and stop caring what others think.
As an autistic transfemme, i think socialization was a big part of it for me. I remember pretty distinctly feeling alienated by "boys groups" and struggling to understand behaviors that were expected of me as a result of my gender and often got bullied because of that. Around middleschool I stopped bothering trying to meet them but still hadn't really figured out specifics but probably would have if the concept of transness had been something I knew about, but I got there eventually lmao
What does transfemme mean?
@@sari9645 he is a boy who doesn’t want to identify purely as female but wants to adopt certain female characteristics, can be just long hair with make up, clothes, pronouns etc all or a part in variable degrees.
So all in all a fancy woke to say feminine boy
@@sari9645 Feminine gender identity, or expression while being trans, as in not conforming as an assigned male.
Anna thank you! So sick of the word salads.
It's perfectly okay to be a feminine boy or man. Your identity is valid but you're not required to box yourself in with a specific identity if it doesn't feel right for you. People aren't stereotypes, we come in all kinds of ways ❤
I was diagnosed with Asperger's at a young age, and I went through the veritable hell with socializing. I am AFAB, and am secure enough with identifying as a woman, but I never felt sold on the whole deal. I act a bit more less female, at least in the way I talk and choose to interact. social conventions, including gender, just don't really stick for most on the spectrum, which I've grown to understand. I've been exploring more identities and ways of expressing myself through time. Thank you for making this video and talking about this subject! It's given me some, as well as others, good insight. :)
THIS MAKES SO MUCH SENSE AND ANSWERS SO MANY QUESTIONS I HAD OH MY GOD
I've known quite a few enbies who were also neurodivergent in my time, so I've found the information interesting. Here's the way I see it:
If we accept that gender is a sort of social mode that we use to interpret and form social interactions/connections, rather than an aesthetic, social category, or personality trait, then it makes sense that people who might have difficulty understanding/engaging in other social situations might have trouble conceptualizing their gender, or that they might have a more unique relationship to it compared to neurotypical people.
Exactly, gender is a sort of social mode rather than some objective reality. Very well put and far too often overlooked. The language around this issue tends to be very essentialist on both sides
@@sandworm9528 Yes, I've seen many people saying that gender has no impact on the way people behave and that it is purely an aesthtic, and I've seen others claim that there is a certain, proper way to be a particular gender (often TERFs).
From my experience as autistic, I thought everyone was faking gender until I was like 18, that they did what I tried to do, which was heavily mask (it didn't work long term), and thought they were just too cowardly to do their own thing.
I never considered that yeah, people are just gender sometimes, because I only understood things through my own lens.
@@jambott5520 this confuses me. What do you mean faking gender? In a way we're all faking gender, because it's a social construct. What actions/thoughts did you think people were faking
@@sandworm9528 i think the difference would be how many of their feelings towards it are genuine vs how many of their feelings towards it are performative. it certainly isn't black and white and most people are at least a bit performative but some people do have more of an attachment or identify themselves with certain things/etc
This video came at the right time because I am 27F who struggled in socializing, have a completely different interest/hobbies than my friends and loves being in my own world. My friend works as an experienced teacher with special needs kids and said just recently that it's high probability that I have ASD. I will have to find strength and courage to go through assessment and diagnosis. Edit: I don't have gender identity issues and I am straight.
Was only diagnosed at 16. If you do end up getting diagnosed with ASD, remember that it doesn't make you a different person if you have the diagnosis. You're still you, ASD or not :)
Hey that's me but I'm straight too. I can literally live in the middle of no where like a forest and not talk to people for years and be okay with it
@The Truth Hurts Me too. It's not that big of a deal not talking to people for days. I am happy with my books and plants. But I think it's worth talking to a doctor about what Dr. K discussed. I think the lay population would need a clear definition of the terms regarding gender identity issues. The terms are a bit abstract for me. If there are gradients... how to tell if it has clinical significance.
Gender identity is different than sexuality.
@@TheTruthHurts6666 Yeah, but you can want that without being autistic, and you can have versions of autism that are overly social where that would be crippling
surely the comments won't be THAT bad
I know I shouldn’t flip to most recent but I REALLY REALLY WANNA
This was a great watch as someone who is nonbinary/queer and suspected on the asd spectrum but not yet diagnosed. That 'faking it' was a bad faith question but I really appreciate your way of handling it. Kudos!
I'm autistic, it took me a very long time to be able to tell when someone was "into" me or just staring or being nice haha I have always been very gentle hearted and introverted and have a lot of feminine traits and long hair. what feels masculine to me is different from how I see a lot of males act, a combination of intuitive and highly sensitive, honest and blunt and emotional and also very intellectual and hardworking and devoted to always improving. I let people be how they want and don't try to dominate but gently guide and inspire others and let them find their own voice rather than telling people how to be. I am a natural leader but it just feels different from the way most men do it(not to imply the normal way is bad because it's not) I would see a lot of men taking charge and being dominant and extroverted and thought I must not be very masculine and that's why no women will be with me. But as I got older I realized women were very much interested in me and I could never tell XD now I'm 30 and have a wonderful partner who thinks I'm very masculine in the way she always wished men were and I don't feel conflicted anymore. My masculine energy really shines when doing things that involve deep concentration and skill but really lack when it comes to directing groups of people and social situations though I am great helping people 1 on 1 and express my masculinity by becoming an expert at what I do and helping as many people as possible with my gifts. Think that a lot of gender issues resolve when you find how you want to live your life and find a way to do it. Think a lot of the stereotypes about autism are still wrong. Most of the autistic people I know are more intuitive and feeling based than logical, And only become logical to try to navigate the social situations and language barriers in order to survive and it takes a huge toll on mental resources. I seem completely different based on who I'm talking with. Some people are so difficult for me to read I become very nervous around them and can hardly talk and other people i feel instantly comfortable with and I can talk fluently and am able to settle into myself easier. I think with autism a lot of the gender identity issues could really be more about not understanding why they don't seem like the others of their gender. But if peers didn't make them feel so different maybe they wouldn't have to question their gender. I know I wouldn't have questioned mine if people treated me better or if I knew about autism earlier and could relate the problems I was having with being autistic, I wouldn't have to constantly guess why soany interactions with others went so poorly. Just learning about autism for a few years and my whole life is changing and seeing how misunderstood autism can be it makes me want to try to share my experiences, sorry this post got so long.
I definitely agree with we are feeling based until we have to go into our heads to talk to other people. I wish I could just live in my body 24/7 because the blame from NTs when I have to go into my head to talk to them and leave my body ...
Can relate to that on many levels.
Omg you mentioned anancephaly!
Back when I drove a handicap taxi, there was a girl that got picked up from a dairy farm to go to the special needs school with that condition.
Her family was lovely, and it was always such a nice drive
Paragraphs my dude use them
I think gender disforia ends, when u konw what u want to do, and just do it, without stop to think if its femenine or masculine
my experience post ASD diagnosis was realizing that why I struggled so much with the concept of gender/sex was because of how much it is built upon social constructs and how many definitions and characteristics were plastered on to each word. "Sex = gender, but sex is physical attributes and chromosomes and sex organs, but also appearance and dress, and gender is what I say it is, but also how I perceive you" just made zero sense.
My conclusion after setting up flow charts and examining is that there are three definitive categories: sex, gender roles, and gender identity. sex is observable realities of the physical state (sex organs, chromosomes, etc), gender roles is how you are perceived by others and how you're expected to express yourself and behave as a result, and gender identity is the personal attachments and/or detachments to the former two that determine how you choose to label, present and manage yourself
lol thsts all BS
That sounds perfectly fine...? 🤔
I mean, it's plausible.
Nah, its mental blocks from childhood and trauma plus disorders
@@TheAlexDouglasnone of that exists. If you actually apply the scientific method you'll see most psychology is BS. It exists because of the $$$ involved
@@TheAlexDouglas none of that exists. If you actually apply the scientific method you'll see most psychology is BS. It exists because of the $$$ involved
Title: "Psychiatrist Explains Why Autism and Gender Identity Are Connected"
Psychiatrist: "We're not really sure why."
This is a pretty valid critique, NGL.
😄
I"m 23 and autistic and still have a bit if a mental block around gender. I have this illogical perception that things on the other side are easier, but I know that even if there was a way to magically transition with no stigma my situation wouldn't change at all. If it was my choice to make I wouldn't have been born male, but I'm very much aware that transitioning is far from perfect and leads to even more social difficulty.
I feel really similar. I am 19 right now and I was diagnosed with autism as a child.
I right now am at the point of wondering what my gender is. I have thought about being a girl multiple times and I think I would rather have been born as a girl. And if there was a magical thing that could turn me into a girl, I would do it. But the thing is I also feel fine with being a boy and I am also attracted to girls. I don't want to do any hormone therapy or surgery. But I think I would feel better in a female body.
@@hansrudi4564 "I right now am at the point of wondering what my gender is."
Well, taking a look at your genitalia should clear it up. In the very unlikely case that that doesn't suffice, try a DNA test.
@@knrdvmmlbkknew, that is a crime
If you want my understanding of the matter i send a link to a copy of the comment i wrote to other people here related to that. I don't think i am allowed to double post here.
@@TheAutisticFrog"ew, that is a crime"
What do you refer to?
This is really interesting. I'm diagnosed with ADHD and I'm starting to suspect that I also have autism. Right now, I'm happy with my assigned gender, but when I was younger, particularly in middle school, I had some gender dysphoria because I didn't have very many, if any at all, of the stereotypical "girly" traits that the rest of my peers had. I hated pinks and purples, I hated playing with "girl" toys or video games, I preferred playing in the dirt and with bugs and climbing trees, my favorite subjects were the maths and sciences instead of the "girl appropriate" social studies and literatures. I explicitly remember thinking, "I should have been born a boy," and, "I wonder what it would be like to be a boy," on MANY occasions. Turns out, this stuff was just needlessly gendered and I hadn't found the stereotypically "girly" things that I was actually interested in. I still prefer math and science and playing in the dirt and with bugs, but now I'm obsessed with fairies and princesses and knights in shining armor and romance and I'm currently wearing a pink and purple tie dye hoodie. Gender is wibbly wobbly and what you're interested in doesn't determine what your gender actually is. I still explore my identity through D&D and it all just leads me back to, "I am who I am, and that's okay."
ah sounds lot like me.. not being interested in make-up and being lady-like being very messy. later I realized I am not into typically manly things either. that things are needlessly gendered and it might be self worth issues that I don't have much motivation to take care of my self... and that being in tidy orderly place has no importance to me since I often lost in thoughts.
Gender is entirely abstract and even biological sex is a spectrum that's far beyond XX vs. XY
So Yeah, you're you, and you don't have to be in neither one of the boxes society urges you to choose from
You can have both, neither, a third one or make them into a single box, tear them apart...
Maybe your gender identity isn't binary(so neither cis female nor trans male, but maybe neither or both) and you struggle in finding a gender expression that reflects the uniqueness of your personal gender identity because it feels like you can't be too masculine so people don't think you're a manly man nor can you be too feminine so people don't think you're a girly girl, but at the end of the day you're precisely right, you're just you and people should see you as yourself, not as "one of these" or "one of those".
The plethora of concepts that society bundles up into "gender" is so vastly diverse that it makes no sense whatsoever, specially since it's bound to a specific culture's norms, so something masc can be femme to other cultures and neutral to another. there's nothing solid to support the idea of gender as an objective concept, it's just something we invented.
I hated most things boys like and always felt more comfortable with girls, felt gender euphoria for the first time when I was 7 with a couple girl friends and we played with princesses, but I don't like expressing myself with the energy of a Karen blonde or even an "Yas queen" dude, I definitely don't like being perceived as too manly but my voice is too deep to avoid that, maybe I'm just not very expressive at all?
Anyway, I'm of the opinion that neurodivergent people are basically amnesiac aliens sent to earth to study humans whislt trying to fit in amongst them, so that's why we don't fit into such primitively limited gender categories
I'd love to be perceived and treated just like a genderless alien, bc masking as a (nt)human is already too stressful for me, masking as a human with culturally cohesive and socially acceptable gender expression is hell.
I might've not made much sense, sorry.. I'm too sleep deprived to rephrase everything, I'll just leave a pseudo-conclusion:
I feel more like a literal extraterrestrial being than either male or female
@@Ewr42 I fully understood what you were saying on everything lol. The amnesiac alien thing made me laugh because that's really how it feels sometimes. Makes me think of something that happened in my last D&D session where an NPC that we've joked was a dragon in disguise from the start of the campaign actually was a silver dragon, but was convinced he was human. Turns out, his consciousness WAS actually a human, and the real dragon's consciousness was buried somewhere in there. The human was sick and old and was going to die and the dragon liked him so he basically let him live in his body. Now they've got a Beyond: Two Souls kind of situation going on.
Of course you mention fairies since, when not portrayed as all female, the fae are often shown as relatively androgynous, or at least the males tend to be rather effeminate. How does this connect with the other half of the topic? _Changelings._ Let's just say that faeries have literally been a part of autism culture since before autism existed. 🧚
@@angeldude101 Exactly! I have always loved changelings and thought they were even cooler when I found out about the history of them with autism. 💖
The thing about mentalising as a mathematical problem is so relatable to me, I always thought I was good at mentalising until i found out how often I am just dead wrong because people (including myself it turns out) don’t function in a perfectly logical way and are therefor not possible to crack using a strictly logical method.
Most people are more emotional than rational. Yes, even men.
When we take desitions it's always triggered by emotion, then we try to use logic.
So I get why you're confused lol.
I kind of disagree with this, but maybe because I enjoy solving emotional mathematical questions, rather than logic based ones. As in I like to work out why people enjoy the things they enjoy, why they do the things they do and how to change behaviour in "the most efficiënt way". I try to make mathematical equations with emotions and actions. If I feel like this, I will do this. Or the other way around, if I do this I will feel like this. And then add in time spent, amount of rest, how others have made you feel. And then sometimes, I kind of understand how people work.
@@debbiekruizinga6515 In my experience, trying to do what you are doing is just going to lead you to false conclusions about people. The variables that influence the results of peoples emotional experience are not static. The amount of variables that will change the outcome are essentially infinite.
To put this in a simple real life example, chocolate cake might make me happy, but giving me chocolate cake may not make me happy based off any number of variables such as currently being on a diet, not having a sugar craving, not having a level of trust to take food from you, or being a bad version of or the wrong type of chocolate cake as a few limited examples. If you spend all your time trying to mentalize and formulize all of the variables then you are no longer trying to just live your life, but you are trying to control it to get the results you want in a potentially unhealthy way.
@@tomasagustinveravicentin7789 most "logical" people are more emotional rather than rational. it just so happens that their behavior stems from their emotional state controlling what observations they're even able to perceive rather than how they interpret those observations.
tbh i don't know if anyone escapes emotional behavior. there are less emotional people who are able to make rational decisions simply because there's less things that rouse emotions but they still encounter the same issues as soon as they do get emotional. even people who find themselves to be emotionally dead are generally just repressing those emotions but still acting in accordance with them.
at least that's what I've found, myself included obviously. mayb some the buddha, dalai lama or jesus could do it but I haven't gotten to know anyone well enough that's nearly that enlightened so I can't say.
One of my friends does that quite often, thinking they understand the inner thoughts of a group of people they’ve never met, because they think a human brain is just like any other human brain. They think situations are so simple, because the stories told are simple. Once they experience something themselves, they start describing all these related events that interfered and changed the “logical” conclusion.
Ultimately, the problem is that a lot of people are quick to accept small sample sizes and very little information. “I’ve never been vaccinated and I haven’t gotten sick” does not mean vaccines cause the illness that they spent years trying to create a vaccine for.
It is an ability people have to develop, and I’m glad you’re doing so, because many voting adults refuse to accept data that doesn’t match their preconceived notions.
When it comes to the final question about what to do if someone is "making up" having gender identity issues, I think people have to keep in mind that being a cis man/woman is a gender identity as well. And as Dr. K explained helping them explore their gender identity issues could help them in that they could realize that they are cisgender. (assuming that they were "making it up"/were unsure)
I am happy to have found you - I kept having the "he's talking about me" sensation, and about 10:00 you mentioned how autistic people treat social interaction in more of a mathematical way... that is when I knew for sure. Yeah, you are talking about me :)
I am happy to be your newest subscriber, and thank you in advance for all the knowledge.
I've never had gender identity issues however I believe I am very high with autistic traits and the journey you have described around mentalising and coming to an understanding of the self resulting in significant reduction in difficulties with romantic relationships was so accurately true for me and for my orientation. Once I realised I was asexual, my life made so much more sense and I was able to interact with members of the opposite sex so much more naturally, and all that anxiety and nerves and uncomfortable simply came from my own lack of understanding of myself and how I do not feel sexual desire for others
@@simonkus no it doesnt. Many asexual people remain asexual for the rest of their lives. Thats like saying gay people will develop heterosexual interest over time
@@MidnightEkaki What a stupid comparison. The developing of a biological feature late in ones life resulting in an abnormal (asexual) life is not even close to the same as a gay person developing heterosexual interests over time.
Then why you talking
@@PubicGore You're assuming it's abnormal.
@RungholeSoup Some bodies just work differently. Maybe the way they’re “designed” is to have heterosexual attraction and reproductive sex, but if we can accept homosexuality, non-impregnating sex, and people choosing not to have sex or children, we can accept some people just won’t ever feel attraction and that’s just how their brain is and it’s fine
I am an autistic cis woman, and I've always thought gender norms were annoying. Its a completely arbitrary thing to stratify society around. I was told I wasn't supposed to like things I liked because of what body type I had, and it didn't make any sense to me so I just ignored what I saw as pointless conformity demands and did what I wanted. I got harassed for that a lot- I support the trans community now because I got bullied for not performing gender the way people wanted, and I empathize with people who don't fit in the stupid boxes.
What is stupid and annoying about nature? Having identity disorder is not efficient and not productive.
Whermst the fuck is harassing someone for that?
Btw If you are harassed, typically just force them to fuck off, the most effective way is threats or use of violence.
If used in a controlled manner violence solves a very high amount of problems.
Ninguna persona realmente encaja dentro de los estereotipos de género, todos nos sentimos incomodos con las expectativas de género, seas autista o no, porque son construcciones sociales. Por eso las feministas quieren abolir el género para que cada persona pueda expresar su personalidad sin ninguna clase de expectativa social.
See, I see those as highly contradictory statements.
You didn't like how people gave you negative comments about how you don't conform to the gender they think you are.
So you support Trans.
Which is the idea that your conformity to social norms for a gender means you are that gender.
Which will then get you looked down on for the same reason, not conforming well enough to the gender identity you've chosen.
It's backwards thinking that doesn't solve the base issue that there are gender norms to begin with.
It also creates the highly dangerous and damaging idea that rejecting your body is the right thing to do. Instead of teaching tolerance and acceptance.
@@stephanreiken9912 I mean no being trans means you can do whatever you want with gender like, most trans people I know don''t 100% conform or try to pass even though there are plenty I don't know that do. Gender freedom is like, it doesn't matter what you started as because it's all arbitrary anyway. I don't get harassed by anyone who asks what my pronouns are I get harassed by people who thinks trans people are dangerous and have a big fit about what other people do with their bodies.
I liked this video. I've felt I might have a small party of the autism spectrum since way back in the days of Asperger's.
I've also experienced many things in my life that lead me to fully believe I am transgender.
I'm sure I could have benefited from knowing more about these and possibly had a diagnosis much earlier in life.
I was just listening to this in the background and kind of nodding as I checked boxes in my head. Then that last question comes up. For so much of my life I've been told I'm malingering. That word exactly. In school, in the military, at home, in church, my marriage, at work, nobody wants to believe I've ever been honest in my effort or description of my experience.
Thanks for the understanding and the answer. I may not have an autism diagnosis, but I do have gender dysphoria, and I have fought so hard against people denying my situation. It helps to know that the clinical path is to resolve rather than solve.
I'm just going to drop my own perspective here (as someone who was diagnosed as an adult). I think we are inherently bad at doing things that will make us fit in. I'm pretty comfortable with that I'm a woman but even as I say that I feel like there's a lot of expectations on womanhood that just don't fit me. I've always just been me and gender hasn't mattered. Because of this I was seen as a tomboy (when in reality I was probably something more in-between). I never cared for a lot of feminine things. I never cared for a lot of ultra masculine things. I've never cared for the typical "successful" life of marrying and having kids. I just want to live my life (single) and do things I enjoy and have fun with my friends. Even something as mundane as this comes across as weird to some which I find so odd. I never understood why people cared so much about what makes others happy. My interests are all rather strange and really intense but they make me happy. In fact, if I'm to live a happy life, I'm utterly incapable of trying to be "normal" and not do all the weird things I do and live my life in this way. I've noticed a lot of autistic individuals also have this "inability" to be anything other than their true selves without being as affected by what society expects of us. I could totally see how this leaves you way more prone to embrace a different gender identity! Or questioning it more in general. There's been times where I've questioned how much of a "woman" I am, but so far I've settled on that I'm just me and I don't mind being called a woman
That sounds like the best way to look at it.
i think these studies are super important and interesting! as a nonbinary person with autistic traits, i’m also apprehensive, because a very easy next step to take from these types of questions is “how do we ‘fix’ it?” i don’t want people to look at these studies and use them as an excuse to find the “cause” of these things so that they can “get rid of them.” to be frank, i don’t want eugenicists to get ahold of it.
I think thats true but I think the better term would be how do we find a way to cope with it. There is no fixing it because your brain has develop different but in a majority cis world how can people cope and live a fulfilling life with out the struggles.
@@graycat7704 yes, but also it's more about being accepted; i think what was done in this video was perfect, that the use of this study is that one should be tested for the other, because knowing more about yourself can help you figure things out. I don't think that we should look at this study as a problem or issue, that both being autistic and being trans are perfectly okay and just as good as not being those things
Agreed; I am simultaneously fascinated by this information provided, and also terrified that it will be used as a means to state that certain groups of people are just "stunted", "mentally underdeveloped", etc (to be clear: I do not believe Autistics or LGBT folk should be lumped into these incredibly prejudiced verbal constructs. I am solely stating them as reference points of what could happen if prejudiced assholes decided to take this research the absolute wrong direction).
You're not non binary. You are the sex you were born.
The exterminationist types who are plotting to round up and kill all trans people are already plotting to round up and kill all trans people, those same individuals already have the same attitude regarding autistic people, they just aren’t saying it out loud because it will slow down their efforts to gain enough power to start their death camps.
I am autistic, was diagnosed at 18 because I kinda went under the radar due to me being a girl, and while I am not trans I have noticed that I think about my gender and my relationship to it way more deeply than my non autistic cis peers. Like if you ask an allistic* cis person why they are the gender they are they will probably say something along the lines of "I just am" while I have like. entire lectures in my mind about my relationship to femininity and masculinity as concepts, my own body, and the non verbal "brain vibes" that are deeply ingrained in my concept of my own gender that are really difficult to sort. Interestingly I think the difficulty with mentalization thing strongly effects how I interact with my own identity, gender or otherwise, because I cannot wrap my head around how other people perceive me. When I was doing my self assessment for my diagnosis I literally texted my friends mid assessment any time a question said something about how other people would describe me because I just don't know. And I cannot understand how the hell other people can just GET that. So when I look at my own identity it is either completely divorced from how other people perceive my identity or it has what my brain can only really interpret as a randomized value or something that requires active research (actively and intentionally asking people what they think about me and what things they associate with me). So like that is A Thing, dunno if its good or bad or neither but it Sure Does Happen
*allistic means someone who is not autistic
For 'how would others describe you' I would probably just reuse things people have said to my face before. E.g. 'like a robot' 'the most wholesome person on this discord server' 'defensive' 'so cute and happy', etc.
Or maybe think of a handful of specific people's life situations and how that differs from mine. Using my model of their mind and preferences, estimate how they would evaluate each of my presentations to them in their own preference ordering. e.g. someone who does sports might say "uses the computer too much" or "nerd" or "likes reading".
This requires however building such models and having them handy. Which requires a special interest in minds and beliefs/understanding in particular I think?
Also I at some point decided wrong answers are okay so long as they're close enough to be useful. So I've built up a lot of mental machinery for quick and rough estimates instead of precise known answers. And when my mind presents me with the fact the answer is probably inexact, I accept that fact and declare it 'good enough' and speak it. Not always with a qualifier. Which is mildly horrifying, but it has allowed me to function I think.
Its interesting how much much difference across the spectrum there is. I personally view (and "feel") gender as being a useless construct. It doesn't solve a problem for me and I don't see its existence solving problems for others, instead creates a bunch(or rather, the way people think about it does, both cis and non-cis). I never felt "masculine" or "feminine" or anything. I just am.
@@TheFlyfly No one has to put a label on themselves just because they dont fit into stereotypical feminine or masculine tropes or because they don't associate "gender identity" with sex. This person is just living their life not caring about gender expectations and because of that you suggest they're agender? That's pretty sexist
I used to be like this untill I realized that gender is probably the absolute least important thing about me anyways so who cares what it is. I'm not even interested in puting a label on it anymore because it says nothing of value about me.
@Regex Rationalist do you base your social being on your discord interactions?
You've expressed very very delicately the thoughts I've had concerning the mentalization of people with ASD and how helping that can help with better understanding their gender identity. I think some people don't understand that the untreated autism is what can perhaps cause someone who has ASD to think they're trans when maybe they really aren't. It can be quite harmful to use things such as HRT for someone who isn't actually trans. My friend with untreated autism who went through HRT had a rough time while he was on it, realizing a couple years into his transition that he wasn't a transwoman.
I've seen it happen twice firsthand where two separate autistic friends, in an environment with many other genderqueer autistic people, transitioned for 2 years only to realize they weren't transwomen at all and detransitioned. These friends, and many of the others, were mostly undiagnosed or untreated with their autsim because their parents never helped them to cope or mentalize. Therefore, not only are they struggling with their identity, they're struggling to mentalize and understand society and the certain nuances when it comes to gender and are suffering because of it either as a cis or a trans person.
I've also seen a story on Reddit where a man said he realized that when he was diagnosed and treated for his autism, he no longer felt gender dysphoria as he had before.
I know that some people are afraid that these ideas will cause people to find a way to invalidate being trans as an autistic person, but it's really necessary to understand what type of therapy is best for the person.
Literally what I’ve been saying but it’s so “controversial” that I can’t have these conversations. I am on the spectrum and struggled with my identity my entire life, not as much with gender but in many other regards. I tend to see how things are connected big picture so I’m grateful for your work!
It's becoming controversial because people argue you shouldn't be trans and be autistic and that you are being forced to be trans by woke media if you are autistic rather than maybe thinking autistic people have a mind of their own and not necessarily influenced by everything
Ever since I read that there was an above-average correlation between subscribers of /r/autism and /r/transgender, I expected a paper like this one to come out
Another thing that I would like to see a paper discuss is how much of the correlation might be caused by the intrinsic properties of autism proper, and how much is caused by the way the autistic population interacts with communities of both cisgender and transgender/non-binary people. For instance, some critics have thrown around the "love-bomb" theory where autistic people are allegedly "pressured" into questioning their gender identity due to the way the trans community treats them in comparison to the average population - is there some truth in that, or is it just some sort of propaganda?
And then some lawsuits.
@@csolisr well if you look at how its promoted to psychologically vulnerable people then yeah. If you look at the numbers of how many people are actually gender dysphoric vs just transgender then you'll notice it has outside influencing factors
Now a paper on the relationship between autism and reddit usage
@@MrOnay-px1jxAbsolutely, though what’s interesting is detransition rates still trend quite low. I’ve expected them to climb in recent years especially because of the climb of identification and the sex ratio but recent studies still find detrans rates of less than 2%. I’m forced to conclude that people who may be vulnerable still are overwhelmingly the type of people happy to blur the line between genders.
I was diagnosed as autistic in my late 50s. I grew up believing I was a girl because I had a girl body and so was told I was a girl. I dressed like a girl and played with girl’s toys, but preferred jeans and played just as often with my brother’s toys. The problem was that I didn’t behave girly enough for others. I had difficulty relating to girls. Of course, I learned to mask much to the detriment of my mental health. As I got older, I had lots of guy friends but rarely got asked out, right? I thought I was a girl, but I clearly didn’t give off straight girl vibes. Guys would ask me if I was a lesbian. No lie.
Adulthood has been quite a journey. Of course, I was expected to get married and have babies. I did eventually get married to a guy who is undiagnosed but probably ND. Babies? No effing way. Pregnancy is body horror for me. If I’d had the misfortune of getting pregnant, my options would have been abortion or suicide. Seven years ago, I was diagnosed with breast cancer and chose to get a double mastectomy. Afterward, I realized that I wish I’d never had them.
I’ve spent the better part of the last 12 years writing fiction - imagining being male, female, and gender queer, and I’m definitely the latter. My autism diagnosis and getting old have been gifts because now I embrace who I am, and if NTs don’t like it, they can go to hell. The pressure to conform to gender rules is so damaging to the ND, and that needs to change.
Never have I ever felt so noticed. Thank you
You explained exactly how I felt before I finally accepted my identity as, in my case, a trans man, that I never got words for before...as a 19 year old whose parents saw this paper and are trying to use it make me "consider" that my autism could be "misleading" me, this means a lot to me, thank you so much for this comment I feel seen
I felt all of the ways that you did until i was about 18. Then for no reason i can fathom i just liked being a girl. I remember one time when I was 14 i came home and all I was told i was late. I said my curfew had always been at dusk. When I asked my mom why she said it was because I had boobs now. I said tgey weren't that big and she could have them back. I think gender as a concept is bunk. No action, mode of dress, etc. will ever make me a man or a woman. I ended up being a bisexual woman in the army during DADT days and it was ridiculous. I think we should have a society where concepts such as gender are seen as antiquated as telegrams and a lack of soap.
My teenager recognized that she presented multiple traits consistent with ASD (her words, not mine) and so we went ahead and got her an appointment to be evaluated and now has an ASD diagnosis along with her ADHD diagnosis.
I'm autistic and gender queer (I don't feel that the idea of gender really applies to me at all). If gender is a social construct, and I don't tap into social stuff very well, it makes sense to me that gender would be something I don't connect to.
I have ASD. I never had gender identity issues per say, but people did think I was gay growing up... not because I acted gay, or had the mannerisms of someone who was gay, but because I was effectively raised by women lol.
I had very few positive Male role models. I was always hearing from the people around me about how terrible men were, and all about the patriarchy. So I endeavored to never be like that.
And effectively turned into Manny from Modern Family.
One particular nasty break up made me realise women were just as flawed and clueless as men were, and I had to sort re-program myself to not hate myself.
I would later find out that most people who thought I was gay were actually gay themselves.
This is very similar to my experience with ASD too, It has been a long hard path, but I have found my masculinity and no longer feel like a fraud or a fake man.
One thing I like about my ASD friends is how accepting they are of people's uniqueness. They typically treat everyone with respect as long as the other person is being decent to them. It's very refreshing to be around. I love how we can have good conversations and they listen to the content of what I'm saying and value it regardless of my gender or sexuality. I like being valued as a person which is why I'm genderneutral on here.
Saddly, it's actually very different from this corrupt world. Many people are only nice if they either have many unimportant things in common or if they want to date or want something else from the person.. this incorrect interaction is the norm, so when someone is nice to you and respects you as a fellow human being, the intention behind it can be misunderstood. So that's why someone might assume you'd want to date them even if you're both the same genders, they're gay and your straight. They're just not used to being around someone of their own gender who treats them respectfully and is only interested in good conversation or a project (if working together). Hopefully as the world acceptance improves, this will become normal.
Hopefully as soon as you explained you were not interested in dating them, they understood and you could go on being friends.
I've found when I accidentally thought someone was interested in me, but they weren't, once I expressed interest in dating them, they quit talking to me which was too bad because once I knew we were only friends, I was very cool with that and felt even more comfortable around them because I no longer felt the need to try to impress them like I would have a potential suitor.
Learning that everyone is flawed and that people with more power even more so. Your worldview gets so turned upside down
@@MattLouw welcome to the quack!
@@nleem3361 I want to telepathically communicate that first paragraph to every human being in Earth.
Thank you for being kind. I am an Autistic Transmasculine person. I love being me. I don't want to be asked not to be me. I just want to be treated with empathy and love. I don't need to be "fixed". My experience as myself is not the problem. A lack of compassion and love in our society is the problem.
I'm autistic and non-binary and I couldn't agree more.
I admire that. . . I hate being me, because the world never understands.
I deeply admire your ability to love yourselves despite that.
@@zxyatiywariii8 I know it hurts. It hurts because a lack of deep connections in our society. It hurts because you aren't getting the empathy and warmth that you deserve. You always have deserved it and you always will. Even if you aren't receiving what you deserve you are still worthy.
@@zxyatiywariii8 I didn't hear anyone say they love themselves, only other's love them. Key difference but I'd agree self love makes the bitter cold of many peoples realities add wind to your sails rather than cut your deeply
@@matthewsilfer2010 a prime example of how badly those with ASD can be treated was the Jesse Snodgrass Entrapment case.
Its on youtube, vice/rolling stone covered it, its worth watching
I remember watching this video probably around when it came out. I think it gave me the nudge I needed to acknowledge the possibility that I'm trans. I found that adopting my preferred gender has been a huge improvement. I used to figure that it was just how life is to think your body's too disgusting to share with a partner (despite said partner obviously enjoying it), to feel uncomfortable having pictures taken, to hate and avoid dressing up, to feel like a dispassionate third party watching my own life happen, to care little if I lived or died - all of that was, in my case, relieved by transitioning.
Thank you!
Wow, Man, THIS WAS EXTREMELY INFORMATIVE, THX
Love this video, as an adult autistic and bisexual gnc (gender non-conforming) woman. ❤ ❤ ❤
Funny (sad) thing about accusing children and teens of "faking it": This will just lead all of y'all in unproductive circles. Doctors, parents, children, etc. You will all be frustrated, less efficient and less healthy.
The "worst" thing that'll happen if you take a young person's gender issues seriously and learn about them, is that they learn to trust you.
That, when they tell you something, you listen and do your best to support. They learn to trust you, because you have shown that YOU trust THEIR judgement of themselves, which is incredibly important in these formative years, and from a proper caretaker. It builds confidence, communication skills, and emotional regulation. Doesn't sound so bad, right?
Do this enough, and they will do what all caretakers should appreciate and aim for: come to you when they need help.
If you accuse them? If you dismiss them? Simple. They learn that they can't trust you, that WHATEVER they tell, it won't matter to you, and you will try to steer them away - not for their safety, but out of your disapproval of something you don't understand and will not learn about. It will never make them stronger, it will make them angrier, worse at self-preservation, worse at building relationships. You will have failed them.
Therefore, even if a young person isn't telling the truth, just testing the waters, or whatever - WHICH IS RARE TO BEGIN WITH - taking them seriously will lead to positive results for everyone in the long run. They will appreciate your honesty and openness and return the favor, even if it takes them a long time.
Gender Non-conforming?
@@atthecore4560 i don't even know dude
I have autism and just don't have a sense of belonging to a certain gender. But have at times questioned if Im trans due to being too far from how my gender is described (concluded that Im not, as I dont hate my body). Always felt a bit confusing how people can have such a clear sense of it and what they assign to it (ever since I learned gender is not just about purely physical traits). I also consider myself to be pretty much in the middle between feminine and masculine in personality, but its hard to estimate yourself. Its interesting to see that they are correlated
You don't have to hate your body (body dysphoria) in order to be trans. Social dysphoria exists, too.
You are contradicting yourself. If gender is not about physical traits, then why the need for transitioning? The whole gender ideology is one big fallacy.
This is the same logical fallacy as claiming gender/sex does not exist, yet aknowledge gay people.
@@electronics-girl that is a very slippery slope though. You're essentially tying your identity to how said genders are being presented to you. This is especially dangerous when you're autistic since it's easier for them to be and feel left out by their gender-peers regardless of what they are.
Imagine you're called David. You hate the name and want to change your name because you've never really felt like a David. Why? Not because they got the name wrong, but because you're not like other Davids you have met. This could be for any number of reasons though. Instead of considering yourself not a David, isn't it better to see yourself as proof that Davids are not homogenous?
@@electronics-girl “Social dysphoria” can not exist without the presence of social norms that an individual does not fit in to - therefore it is an external issue, not an inherent trait of any one individual. That means it is not something that shows whether or not an individual is “transgender”. You are spreading misleading information.
I'm a transman and I don't hate my body. Is just a body. The problem is the society tell me "you're a woman" 'cause my genitals. This is ridiculous.
I'm nonbinary, have ADHD, and strongly suspect that I may be on the Autism spectrum as well; one thing you said really stood out to me - that the mental distress caused by one or both of the disorders discussed in the video (I would not necessarily call gender identity itself a disorder, though dysphoria is very very real and harmful for some of us), can affect one's ability to form relationships with others. I fully agreed with that, especially based on past experience, until you specified romantic relationships. I have never been in a romantic relationship, by choice, and I would like to suggest an amendment to your statement (which will probably be glaringly obvious to most anyone reading this) - it absolutely affects non-romantic relationships as well.
It's extremely frustrating to try to convey certain thoughts and feelings - sometimes you completely understand them and they make perfect sense to you; sometimes you're not fully sure why it's so important to get the point(s) in question across at all - only to have the other person not understand you. They may even completely rebuff you, and you have no clue why. I have 100% lost friends due to my neurodivergence, and if it's happened to someone reading this comment, I hear you. I see you. You are not alone.
As a nonbinary autist this research terrifies me. Neurodivergent people are already infantalized and subject to people thinking we can't be in charge of our own minds and bodies. This has a lot of potential to be used against both the autistic and gender non conforming communities
That’s what happened when it was discovered that transgenders have higher suicide rates than cisgenders. Luckily, there are people who spend hours every day just to correct misinformation on the subject, so I don’t think it’ll be all that bad.
Don't worry there is a backlash forming, a backlash lead by autistic scientists and academics who are well able to take on those with letters after their name.
yeah I know a lot of people with autism and a lot of trans people, I definitely noticed that they do often go together. I wondered if, bc neurodivergent people end up having to do more self-reflection & analyze their behavior, tendencies, traits, etc. more than average out of necessity, they end up figuring out they have gender identity issues more often than the neurotypical people who don't HAVE to analyze their own behavior, tendencies, traits, etc. nearly as much.
Neurotypical people are often far, FAR more obsessed with their public image than we are as well, at least from what I can tell.
this makes a LOT of sense. i just realised the correlation and was coming to the wrong conclusions. thank you.
To add to this I think that the fact neurodivergence already makes you part of a minority group, which has social repercussions, helps. Like, the difference between being treated as autistic & being treated as autistic & trans is smaller than the difference between being treated like a neurotypical person & being treated as trans. A form of intersectionality, I feel.
I'm transgender but not autistic.
@@LunaBirbosa Neat!
As a queer person on the spectrum, I am glad to see these studies being done. I honestly feel like autism gave me the power to challenge the norms society put on people, instead of comply with them. For me, autism has been the key to the wonderful question of "why?" we must do as society tells us, when it's more comfortable to express ourselves the way we see fit (without the harm of other living beings of course).
Have you thought that autism is a barrier to make these “challenging” questions?
Society is just people. Follow the golden rule (do unto others), and pay your own way, "society" demands little else really. Do as you wish my friend. Good luck to you.
That makes no sense to me and I suspect you're not actually autistic. I have autism and I came to the opposite conclusion. I learned how a man should act and how a woman should act and I liked when people fell into their proper categories. It's when people deviate from those norms that creates a nightmare for autistic people. We HATE unpredictability and things that challenge our mental models of the world.
And just because not everything should fit in specific categories doesn't mean the same is true for gender roles. They exist for a reason and they are NOT created by society, they are merely reflected by society. I have conservative parents and was raised correctly and engaged in rough play as a kid and had proper socialization. None of that feminist bullshit they're pushing in schools now that is destroying the minds of boys.
@@greg77389 Who are you to tell others that they aren't autistic? Or that they're living life "incorrectly"? That's so sad.
@@greg77389 autism is a spectrum and you definitely fall in one of those categories with how you express your bad takes
Interesting video! I was worried about the implications until you elaborated and talked about how this can be applied in a care environment.
im only a few minutes in, but i can already see some major connotations from this information. some good, some bad. the bad comes from how i see it likely to be used against us.
let me start by saying i'm 42, and only just now realizing i am autistic. i was diagnosed with adhd at 36. i also have cptsd. as a child, i was a "tomboy" and was very uncomfortable with my femininity. there were times in my early 20s when i felt like i should be a guy. now i'm mostly secure in my femininity, but i'm still not good at "girl things" like dresses, makeup, hair, and all the more performative feminine traits like that.
things i can see in society from this information: firstly, this definitely means that the trans fight for acceptance is also the autism fight, and the autism fight is also the trans fight. we have to work together to protect each other.
secondly, i recently saw that one state is passing a bill that even adult trans people are going to have to work even harder to be allowed to transition medically in that state. and they explicitly banned anyone with autism from being able to pursue this process at all in that state. this is inherently unfair. (not that it wasn't already). it also puts this into the territory of the ADA and an already protected class of disability. this could be a potential way to fight this bigotry moving forward, at least in a legal sense.
unfortunately, i also see the idea that autism and transness will both become more stigmatized by the right, since they already seem to hate both groups. i fear that they will say "see, these autistic people are disabled and don't know better, we have to protect them from themselves." no, you don't. we aren't intellectually disabled, and anyone who is intellectually disabled does not need politicians deciding what is right for them. they already have a care team (hopefully) in place that knows their needs far better.
i'm going to keep listening. this is already fascinating and i really hope that in the end this information helps free us all rather than finding a new way to imprison us. especially as so many autistics are only just now learning about it and being diagnosed. it just wasn't a thing in the 90s, and my mom explicitly told me that she didn't go get me diagnosed with anything as a child because she wasn't going to be told to put me on a bunch of medications. so avoiding diagnosis (and making my life a confusing hell that i'm only now really unravelling), is how it went down instead.
thank you for your work dr k.
The problem is that transgenderism accepts key premises of the gaslighting NTs subject us to as autistics. "You don't fit in with your gender, change yourself". It makes a different change than what the NTs want (or claim to want, assuming they're not just doing it to boost their own egos), but it's still a change. It's better to reject those premises entirely. Sure, NTs are going to call some things about me "effeminate", but I don't need any man card other than my plumbing.
Encouraging, or allowing, children to accept those premises and transition is ghastly. The trans movement isn't "grooming" kids as it's often claimed: it's just a bunch of people with an unhealthy coping strategy for some legitimately awful stuff in their lives passing on the best coping strategy get know, but as I see it it does do damage. You probably can't outright stop adults from transitioning without doing significant damage to the political structure of our society, but society certainly should not be encouraging or enabling it in any way. And I'm not coming at this from a position of "autistic people are too stupid to make their own decisions": I'm one of the smartest people I know, but I can look back at my life and see that in the right circumstances I could have been convinced to transition, and it would have f🦆ed me up completely, and I'd still be in denial that it had f🦆ed me up at all. Bad coping strategies are dangerous to everyone, and no amount of intelligence will make you immune.
My theory on this has always been that autistic sensory processing issues can easily include gender - as in, living as the wrong gender is physically unbearable the same way an awful texture may be, so there's no choice but to remove the offending article, be it a sweater or a gender.
This would also explain the reverse - neurotypicals are more likely to be cis because even if their gender isn't a perfect match, they can live with minor incongruities around them without experiencing constant negative sensory feedback.
So could you say gender has a texture? 😂
@@darmakx99 Basically, yeah! 🙃
@@A6by Mine is a little scratchy, but tolerable most of the time. Would still rather not have to deal with it at all, though.
Educate yourself on Autism. You sound VERY IGNORANT.
huh, makes you think, maybe many neurotypicals are deep down trans but due to being neurotypicals they cant make that connection
This really speaks to me. I'm autistic and biologically male, and had a lot of trouble coming to terms with my gender identity growing up. Something interesting in my case is that I had a strong external factor influencing this: the church I grew up in both had strong opinions as to what a man should be, and gave most leadership positions and church duties only to men (and did not look kindly on same-sex marriage or gender reassignment surgery). And this absolutely tanked my dating life too (i.e. I don't feel like I can say I'm a man, so why should I waste these womens' time?). Fortunately, I left after becoming an adult, and finally had the chance to sit down and think/talk about it, and now feel very happy identifying as a man.
Oh, I wonder if you are onto something with the church link dictating you must fit into a very narrow mode of behavior to be a real "man" or "woman."
I'm autistic too, but I hate the diagnosis. I'm a Icelander. Had to be had been awful grew up with religious right wingers as a ASD person. I have sympathy for you. I'm amused that Greg locke thinks I'm a demon possessed person. I want to prank that guy speaking in a scary demon language.
In graduate school we spent a full year critiquing research studies. We used studies from very prestigious journals, like JAMA, Lancet and others. In that year we found only ONE study that had no significant flaws. Some things like the correlation between autism and gender issues are very hard to study by their nature. The first thing that jumped out at me was whether the studies corrected for confounding variables. In other words were there other factors that were not controlled for. Also, although he said there were more than one age group, change over time was not described. It seems to me that the correlation is strong enough that even flaws in the studies might not overcome the validity. But I think much more rigorous studies need to be done.
Yeah.. my thoughts as well.. but as I read the paper I am relieved that they screened the research papers that they included in their study.
Here is a copy paste of it..😂😂
We were able to identify 1,019 studies through the database search and five studies through other sources. After duplicates were removed, we screened 736 studies and excluded irrelevant ones. From the remaining 108 full-text articles, we excluded 61 studies because they did not fulfil the criteria described in the method section. Hence, 47 studies that contained information on the overlap between ASD and GD/GI were included in the current systematic literature review. Of these studies, five were conducted with children, 13 with children and adolescents, two with adolescents, two with children, adolescents, and adults, nine with adolescents and adults, and 16 with adults
I'm autistic and adhd, and i have always felt pretty sure i was a boy. But that doesn't mean i feel like the other boys, and i think that is still confusing me. Most of my childhood, where i wouldn't follow any norms and just talk to whoever i connected with, i were friends with mostly girls. And i feel like, if i become best friends with a girl once, there isn't nessecarily anything to it, but twice and still to this day connect most often with girls, there might be a course? Since 9 years old i always thought boys were dumb, trying to reign with masculinity over the girls, instead of talking to them (I love girls like any other heterosexual, it's not about that).
Maybe the connection, talked about here, is also there for me (i feel like i never really know myself anyway), or maybe autistic people also just in general have another view, without being anything else. Anyone relate? Should probably explore my gender more though.
I mean seems like a win to me bro! You connect and talk to women good naturally. That’s genuinely an awesome thing.
@@XavierPoonfun You're right! But you just can't stop wondering why you are different. Turns out i'm probably just demisexual.
Incredible explanation of both the meta-analysis and the importance of a person's level of distress in the determination of whether to classify an experience as a "disorder"! The other hypothesis of causation frequently discussed is the idea that people with autism likely also place different levels of importance on social constructs from people labeled as neurotypical, meaning that external gender cues, norms, etc. may also carry less intrinsic importance.
"People with autism likely also place different levels of importance on social constructs from people labeled as neurotypical." YES. Thank you for articulating this point. I think it's a critical part of this discussion.
Yes! If society in general is constructed in ways that you question, then of course gender plays a part in that for a lot of people
I'm trans, with ADHD and social anxiety. When I found out that autism and ADHD (and Tourette's) are genetically related, I started to wonder about if there might be more to my own condition. So definitely interested in this subject.
Fantastic breakdown! Learned a lot from this one
I have 2 thoughts about this: 1. people with autism think of things from a different perspective, why should gender constructs be any different? 2. I knew a person who wasn't diagnosed with autism until he was an adult. He knew something was different about him and he sought again and again to try and figure out why. He told me that at one point he wondered if he might be gay, not because he was attracted to the same gender, but because he couldn't figure out how he was different but inherently knew it. I've since been diagnosed with autism as an adult as well and I felt that same need to understand why I was different.
I have ASD and I'm non-binary. I think the most confusing part for me was that no one explained non-binary as an umbrella term. I'm not non-binary as in "no gender" but the sense that I experience all the genders at the same time but it's also fluid and ever changing. kind of like checking the tire pressure, once I try to analyze, it changes.
You're not non binary. You are the sex you were born as. I am terribly sorry that you are being fed politics instead of truth.
I love your analogy, it makes so much sense! :D
I also have Schrödinger’s gender 💜
common or epicene rather than neutrum
@@novasgarden183 not nice < niais < nescius := not-skilled but you are.
As an autist:
I strongly suspect that whatever the brain does to make sure you're "part of the group" for safety and security just doesn't always trigger for us. And I suspect that subconscious drive is responsible for *way more* than people tend to think. Learning empathy, learning to compromise, learning to fit in with others of your assigned gender specifically, ect. So choices that come with a risk of "othering" don't set off as many unconscious warning bells in our heads and we just kinda go with stuff.
I would argue that we're just in the wrong group and fit in perfectly well with other people on the spectrum :)
@@theyxaj There are actually studies that the "communication difficulties" are specifically NT ND. They got a bunch of neurotypical folks together in a group and they communicated with each other fine - then they did the same with a bunch of autistic folks and it was the same! It was when they had a mixed group of the two that they observed difficulties. So you're spot on.
This is such a silly response. You should learn more about why trans people are trans instead of just assuming that they don’t try to fit in with their assigned gender
@@sfglim5341I think they are suggesting that autistic folks are more likely to come out or act on non-cis feelings
@@psywrenergy I figure that's the case too. Because in my experience, part of this is autistic people having a generally stronger sense of identity than NTs do (to the point that even Alzheimer's will steal other things before it steals an autistic person's sense of identity), which itself leads to being less prone to try to "fit in", which leads to following things that are specific to you more readily, up to and including gender.
And the main caveat to this is that a lot of the methods used to "treat" autism are basically heavy-duty methods of hammering away at one's sense of identity, often done from a very young age, which can compromise anyone's sense of identity because even if we have stronger senses of identity, those senses aren't infinitely strong. And often that comes with being more sensitive to other stimuli (emotions, sounds, sights, etc.), which means that these identity-destroying treatments can lead to a boatload of trauma.
One more factor that needs to be considered imho is this:
Autism spectrum disorders and gender identity issues both manifest at the boundary between the self and the outside world. And both require a lot of introspection from the individual.
So there could be a link in the rate of discovery. Like someone who is trans will have to do a lot of self reflection, and through that process discover symptoms of the spectrum, that they would have been masking otherwise.
Or someone who is on the spectrum and has to put conscious effort into every social interaction could be more likely to discover that some of their issues may be related to gender identity.
This was interesting to listen to and I like the way the study was conducted. I'm autistic and I don't have gender identity issues, I'm just not super-feminine by society's standards because it doesn't make sense to me that being professional means I should paint my face.
Also, it made me happy when he said a big part of working with autistics is helping us be more comfortable within ourselves.
I definitely agree that there's a correlation with gender identity and ASD, but trying to say it all comes down to being "confused about what you really are" is not the case. I have ASD and GID, but ever since I was 5 years old I have had a completely clear and specific sense of my gender identity, and where exactly I fell on what I, even then, perceived as a continuum between male and female. It has always been the clearest thing I know about myself, the strongest and most definite foundation stone of my identity, as I imagine it is for most cisgender people.
It is hugely important to point out I grew up in a time before gender identity was discussed at all in the world around me or represented in the media, before the internet. If gay people were brought up it was in purely negative terms, an insult. My parents are homophobic and never discussed anything about it, so I wasn't influenced into being trans by an outside source. I had never heard of the existence of trans people, but that's still what I was, and I vocally told people how I wanted to be identified even when I was still only 5 years old. Of course, it was dismissed and ignored and I was punished for "bad behaviour" every time I mentioned it or I tried to perform in the social role for my internal gender. However, I am now well into adulthood and my gender identity has always remained exactly as it has been since I was a child.
In SOME cases of people with ASD, I'm sure there are some elements of confusion at play to be resolved, but confusion is not a blanket explanation for the correlation between ASD and GID. I have never been confused.
It is important to mention that I was perfectly self-confident when I was a small child, and likely would have developed quite well socially and functionally if I had been accepted for who I was, and I had been raised socially in my real, internal gender. I believe that many of the problems I now experience with ASD are hugely impacted and worsened by having been made to feel alienated from my body and my social environment throughout my life, because everyone was forcing me to pretend to be a completely different person, of a completely different gender and social role, than I actually was, and everyone expected me to play along with this pretence. With autism we have to mask to appear "normal", and being trans at the same time meant my whole identity- as perceived by others- was a complete fabrication. My whole existence, who people regarded me as, the gendered social roles I was expected to fill, the very name they called me by, all belonged to a completely different person, of a different gender than my internal real self. I would be standing right there, but no one would see or engage with me; they were seeing and engaging with this artificial construct-person, this play-act of who they wanted me to be. As far as anyone else was concerned, my real internal self was invisible and non-existent.
There was NO way to emotionally connect with anyone else in these circumstances. There was no way to emotionally connect with myself, or to build any relationship with my own physical body. There was no way to engage with anyone; no way to be proud of anything, because all praise was going to some stranger, this external fabrication, and not to myself. My self and the outer world was at a complete disconnect, so naturally I had no desire to participate and I withdrew. The only thing I can compare it to was like having locked-in syndrome, and I remained locked-in until I was old enough to have independence from other people's control over my life and gained enough vocabulary and terminology to become openly trans. Growing up in this was all hugely impeded my development and made my ASD far, far worse.
Honestly, it was immensely painful to have to grow up like this, and I developed severe dissociation to cope. Dissociation hugely exacerbates my autistic interoception problems, but, for me, the disconnect was all very much a RESULT of growing up without acceptance, NOT the CAUSE of being trans.
I know this was long, but I really think this all needs to be said because of the medicalisation with which these things are inevitably described- "Here's the genes that turn on gender issues, and we can just turn them right back off!" Or "We can alter the developmental path to make these kids 'normal'!"
"They're just confused, we need to teach them who they REALLY are!" (ie. to make them conform.)
There is nothing wrong with who I am and who I was born as- What was wrong was the way I was treated. THAT's what needs to change for children and adults going forward, not our genetics, not fundamental elements about who we are as people.
More research is always good, but I can really see how many people might take what is stated in this paper as proof that it's possible to force children born with ASD or GID to "become normal".
You worded this so well, much better than I ever could of. My autism makes me partially non-verbal so I can’t ever seem to express this, and even if I tried nobody would listen. I’ve never seen someone describe what I’ve been experiencing my whole life, I feel like nobody will ever understand this. Thank you for talking the time to write this out, it made me feel a little bit better today
I 100% agree with you, also coming from a trans autistic perspective, I am definitely not confused. I have talked about it with a few of my trans autistic friends about how there is a correlation and the idea that we have is that society does not really serve us that well. We don't really feel the same advantages of fitting into society as an allistic person does because to fit in we have to mask so much for a lot of us, it just isn't worth it. So we are already in a society that doesn't really accept us so it's a lot easier for us to break out from society in different ways e.g. dressing differently, having different interests and one of the ways that you break from society and not conform is coming out. The reason why there are more non straight autistic people isn't because they are confused about their sexuality, it's because there are a lot of non straight allistic people who are trying their best to conform whilst their autistic peers have already came out. I was in the closet for a very short time, the time between realising who I was for certain vs coming out was very short because why would I care what others think, meanwhile I have allistic friends who were closeted when I was and still are now 5 years later. It really seems like he did not speak to a single autistic trans person because this is a very common perspective on this phenomenon in the autistic trans community. Obviously there are autistic trans people who identify as trans because they struggle to connect to their agab as gender is a social construct and any gender seems confusing. But there are a lot of us who know exactly who we are. We just stand prouder than some allistic trans people because we are already used to social ostracisation.
@@Mars6821 Thank you for saying so. I was honestly hesitant about whether or not to post this, but I'm glad I did if it helped you. You're not alone, and I do understand. I'm sure there are many others in the same boat as us out there.
@@miketorlinski3462 I agree entirely.
I feel like I just read a major part of my own story. Thank you so much for writing this so clearly, I think this is REALLY important to understand.
This is really fascinating! As someone who spends a lot of time around neurodivergent trans people (thanks tumblr) I definitely noticed this trend and assumed it was just because autistic people end up spending more time questioning the "rules" of society and their place within it. What is gender if not a complicated set of societal rules and expectations? I've certainly spent lots of my time contemplating what exactly it is and where I fit into it! Uh… Maybe I ought to get evaluated as per your advice, hah.
I am on the Autistic spectrum and I do not see myself having a disorder. It certainly has made me awkward, it did give me a serious issue with learning English and the way our language is used, but I am still capable. So I think we need to recognize the difference between the disorder and just another part of the population who might need assistance to grow away from the disorder.
I feel my ex probably should have been checked for these things. He always felt off, didn't want sex and tested dressing in my clothes when I wasn't home. He could almost never make eye contact, rarely could hold a conversation outside of his gaming interest, held no interest in talking about every day life issues or conversations, he found no point in them. I thought possibly he has aspergers. He was usually pretty silent and didn't seem to understand wanting to spend time together as a couple, more of if something is what we are "supposed" to dohe guessed we could do it if it was what he should do with me not to loose me but I felt like a thing, not a person to him. I am a feeling lovey dovey person and I found I could barely feel anything from him. Mostly his frustration of me smothering him. I'm glad we separated that he could be with roommates who also just enjoyed talking about games and things and I found someone who understood and could give back on an emotional level. I believe my ex is happier without me and living a joy filled life without being smothered or tied down by the feeling type relationship I needed but he disliked.
Bro fumbled. L
I need
How did you meet?
@noco7243 Short answer. My ex I met through a couple that use to come to the store I worked at that they asked me to come to their wedding he was one of their 4 roomates. (Longer stuffs: ) They introduced us and I never had a boyfriend before so I didn't have experience and just a want for one. We both liked games and anime, he seemed nice enough. After moving in with them all for a few years, it because us 7 roommates and 2 babies the couple had (Should be a TV show). It was fun for a bit but I never really caught on he still just wanted to do his own things after I asked him out, I felt lonely in the relationship. He would talk in extremes when we had arguments that if I asked to spend more time with me, he got upset and said fine, he'd quit his job and even go to the bathroom with me... he just didn't grasp I wanted to sit and cuddle and talk about our days or our pasts, he saw no point to it. He would just come home and b-line it to his computer. I thought interests were enough but even though we played the same games, he didnt want to play with me, he wanted to RP with other people online (but they also would get into arguments like when he wanted his character to get pregnant and still go out and battle and RP with everyone when they played it out that his character should be resting, not out battling). We would put on anime but I ended up on the couch alone while he just listened and watched it on the side while he stayed on his computer to game. I kept trying to explain what we could do and I tried to fix things for 10 years. I should have left sooner but I didn't see it as horrible, I knew there were worse relationships out there but some say I was in an emotionally abusive relationship, I can see kind of now but I was so determined to try to make it work. I became less of the bubbly, creative and decorating for holidays person I use to be before him that I feel being with him dulled my emotions that I had to find them again and it took a while after I left him and am still battling finding my joy again. I use to take care of all the cleaning, cooking, paying bills. He just had to try to keep a job (because he kept loosing them for a while, he just couldn't work with customers, he was too blunt which came off as unkind) and pay our rent was the only responsibility I felt I could give him. I was just glad I found someone through the game I tried to play with my ex that actually wanted to play with me so something good came out of it.
This is so interesting, my sister recently came out as trans and was also diagnosed with autism. For me, it really seemed she changed out of nowhere, but knowing now that this two things graduate over time and are related, really helps me a lot to understand and support her. Thank you so much for this video!!
@@MargheritaReads The only studies done on ROGD polled parents of trans kids instead of the trans kids themselves, and advertised to the parents on anti-trans websites. As of now, it has no scientific backing.
Was she diagnosed with ASD later in life? Because if so, she likely learned to hide her struggles very early on, as a survival tactic. Behind the scenes, she likely struggled for years without realising that reaching out to you for support was even an option (or she could have had other reasons not to reach out, but this hypothesis is based on my own experience with being diagnosed later in life with ASD - I just didn't realise that I could ask for help with many of my struggles).
@@MargheritaReads While the concept of ROGD is interesting, I think it's important to keep in mind that the ROGD study only surveyed parents of children with gender dysphoria, not the children themselves, so ultimately it's only the perceptions of the parents. The study doesn't prove the existence of ROGD and was later amended to specifically mention that.
@@MargheritaReads ROGD is a fictional phenomenon, not a new one. The "studies" related to it interviewed the *parents* of transgender teens about their child's gender rather than the child themself. If you have ever been a teenager, then you will know that they do not tell their parents everything, especially when they believe their parents will disapprove. If you were to ask my parents, they would say I suddenly because gay in college, when this was emphatically not the case.
Moreover, there is likely a higher percentage of people identifying as transgender because being transgender is more commonly known about and accepted now. I, for one, did not hear about transgender people until 2015. This does not mean that they did not exist prior to then, but that it was not well known about. People who might have identified that way in the past had they had the knowledge, may not have ever been exposed to the idea and may have simply felt "wrong" in their body and unable to explain why.
I would also be curious to know-- you mention that there is an increase in people transitioning to male. However, this is an increase in those transitioning, not overall numbers. These are very different statistics if previously there were double the number of people transitioning to female and this represents a levelling out of the population than if it were the other way around. A quick search reveals that this seems to be the case-- an NIH study from 2020 discusses that, while in the past there were more MtF individuals seeking transition, these numbers are now roughly equivalent.
@@MargheritaReads trans people arent pretending to be something else, gender is a social construct, so you can decide what you are. ROGD is complete bullshit but makes sense why a transphobe would cite it as a reliable source since it was created by a transphobe.
I'm autistic and trans non-binary. I've been aware of this study, and I'd like to make a couple notes as someone who's *experienced* this instead of someone who just studies this.
1. I've found that autistic people like myself see through social constructs a lot more than non-autistic people. I felt uncomfortable as a woman and always had many masculine traits. The boxes that society had created for gender ("Man" and "Woman") both didn't fit me. The thing that causes most distress there for me, was (besides phsyical dysphoria that can be solved with surgery) that society often times doesn't accept this. There are literal government forms that I can't fill in because of my gender.
2. I fear that people see this research and will try to "fix the issue" in the same way they tried and failed to "fix homosexuality" by conversion therapy. Or how my therapist tried to send me somewhere to "fix" my asexuality. There are places doing research to stop autism from existing, and transgender people or people who otherwise also experience gender identity issues are quite a controversial topic as well. Meanwhile, again, a lot of the distress comes from the way people treat us, based on misinformation and misunderstanding. I'm just hoping this research will be used by psychologists to indeed be able to diagnose individuals and help people who are struggling, instead of eradicate it.
3. I don't believe it's right to say autistics don't have insight into other peoples emotions behind their actions like that. Many autistics are highly sensitive instead, to the point where they may "feel" the emotions of others. The problem remains however that we may not know how to react. We can be blunt, honest, and generally react in ways people don't expect us to. Being overly aware of everything causes a lot of fatigue and anxiety, which in turn causes problems in communication as well.
Example: People generally don't like it when you point out that they view you more as a charity case than an actual friend, even if it's true.
I'm open to questions by the way.
As a fellow autistic non-binary person, I soooo agree with this! I didn't quite like the 'mentalising' part of it. It's not our fault that others can't communicate properly and hide subliminal messages. I think it's our superpower to be A) honest and B), as you said, not care about social constructs as much. It just doesn't make sense to try and fit in.
@@MargheritaReads 😑
Back when I tried to begin my transition, there was psychiatrists and physicians who tried to stop me or slow down my process (they really did GOD DAMN, I'm surprised that I survived). One of the countless things they tried was to test if I had ASD. Once it turned out that I had it, they could use that against me.
Despite this experience, I do appreciate it. If I didn't get diagnosed back then, who knows when I would have gotten help regarding my ASD.
@@MargheritaReads >using an adjective as a noun
A yes a tactic as old as time
@@MargheritaReads .
Heh, this is the first time I’ve been “recommended” to consider the possibility of having ASD. Every therapist and clinician I had seems to agree that social anxiety best describes my social challenges, and any time I worry “but am I on the spectrum tho 🤔” has just been a testament in support of my worry/fear/anxiety as the root cause. I couldn’t even point you to any solid evidence that I could have autism tbh. I don’t have sensory processing issues, I’m not a stickler for routines , “special interest” never seemed to accurately describe the interests I’ve grown attached to and identified with despite eventually losing touch over the years, I socialized fairly typically in my gifted/advanced classes through 12th grade. I just worry, probably irrationally, that I’m bad at socializing and making friends and that I might be missing social cues I have no way of being aware of. It just all sounds like anxiety and maybe a little bit survivor of a narcissist parent who mentally abused the other parent throughout my childhood
I’ve also had very sharp insight about how I feel in my gender after ten years of being a nonbinary adult. The first two were the ambiguous years of not having the right language and familiarity with myself as transgender, but when I discovered in me the ability to be both out of the binary and “man-flavored” in my gender, it’s worked really well for me. As many as 15% of autistic people may be nonbinary, but not necessarily 15% of nonbinary folks are autistic, I suppose. It’s still in “unlikely” territory after all.