Gender nonconformity, dysphoria, and fluidity are oft discussed in neurodiversity communities. Neurodivergent people are more likely than the general population to be gender non-conforming. Many prominent autistic self-advocates identify as intersex, non-binary, asexual, aromantic, transgender, and genderqueer.
Updated version available
An updated and expanded version of this article is available at Stimpunks Foundation.
The broadest definition of neurodiversity is a social model umbrella that includes Queer people.
Spectrums and rainbows, double rainbows.
Autistic and queer folks share some dark history—and some bad actors. Chapter 7 of NeuroTribes, Fighting the Monster, shares the legacy of Ole Ivar Lovaas, the twisted father of Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) and conversion therapy. He applied his abusive, torturous techniques to autistic kids and “sissy boys” to make them “indistinguishable from their peers”. He had little regard for their humanity—they were engineering projects.
“The fascinating part to me was to observe persons with eyes and ears, teeth and toenails, walking around yet presenting few of the behaviors that one would call social or human,” he wrote. “Now, I had the chance to build language and other social and intellectual behaviors where none had existed, a good test of how much help a learning-based approach could offer.”
He explained to Psychology Today, “You see, you start pretty much from scratch when you work with an autistic child. You have a person in the physical sense— they have hair, a nose, and a mouth— but they are not people in the psychological sense. One way to look at the job of helping autistic kids is to see it as a matter of constructing a person. You have the raw materials, but you have to build the person.”
ABA and its conversion therapy kin are with us still, all too alive and well.
#ActuallyAutistic reject ABA. I don’t know a single autistic person who supports it.
Protecting queer kids protects also neurodivergent kids—and vice versa. The fight is for inclusion and acceptance—for all operating systems, for all of our different ways of being human. Supporting our kids means supporting all of their possibilities and expressions.
Children on the autism spectrum are more than seven times more likely to show signs of gender variance, according to a study led by New York University.
The study, published last month in Transgender Health, recruited the parents of 492 autistic children ages six to 18. When the researchers asked these parents whether their children often “wish to be the opposite sex,” a little over five percent of participants said yes, compared to less than one percent of the general population.
Bolstering these findings is the fact that a previous study from the Children’s National Medical Center in 2014 found almost the exact same results. The NYU study found that 5.1 percent of children on the autism spectrum showed signs of gender variance. The 2014 study put that number down at 5.4 percent.
Both studies show that counselors working with autistic children should ask about their gender identity. Being both autistic and gender non-conforming, some children face a double-challenge in responding to society’s biases.
Study: Autistic kids more likely to be gender non-conforming | PhillyVoice
Ollie’s parents wondered if his gender nonconformity — behavior that doesn’t match masculine and feminine norms — might have something to do with his autism. Ollie had been diagnosed with sensory processing disorder at age 2: An extreme sensitivity to sounds, light, the texture of some foods or the feel of a particular fabric can send children like Ollie into a meltdown. He also had difficulty falling asleep and staying asleep. It would take his parents four more years to find a doctor who recognized the classic symptoms of Asperger syndrome — above-average intelligence combined with social and communication deficits, and restricted interests. (Ollie was diagnosed with Asperger syndrome before the diagnosis was absorbed into the broader category of autism spectrum disorder in 2013.)
Ollie’s parents are not alone in pondering this puzzle. A handful of studies over the past five years — and a series of case reports going back to 1996 — show a linkage between autism and gender variance. People who feel significant distress because their gender identity differs from their birth sex — a condition known as gender dysphoria —have higher-than-expected rates of autism. Likewise, people with autism appear to have higher rates of gender dysphoria than the general population.
Between 8 and 10 percent of children and adolescents seen at gender clinics around the world meet the diagnostic criteria for autism, according to studies carried out over the past five years, while roughly 20 percent have autism traits such as impaired social and communication skills or intense focus and attention to detail. Some seek treatment for their gender dysphoria already knowing or suspecting they have autism, but the majority of people in these studies had never sought nor received an autism diagnosis. What’s more, roughly the same numbers of birth males and females appear to be affected — which is surprising, given that in the general population, autism skews male.
Over the past decade, people with gender dysphoria have developed new ways of expressing their sense of self. Whereas many once identified as transsexual or transgender, some now call themselves ‘genderqueer’ or ‘non-binary.’ Rates of autism and autism traits appear to be higher in those identifying as genderqueer. Like Ollie, these people generally say they don’t feel fully masculine or feminine, and explicitly reject the notion of two mutually exclusive genders. The word ‘trans’ is often used to encompass all of these identities and the phrase ‘affirmed gender’ to convey a person’s sense of self.
Inspired by the Dutch study, Strang and his colleagues approached prevalence from another angle. Instead of measuring the incidence of autism among gender-dysphoric children and adolescents, they assessed gender variance — defined as a child “wishing to be the other sex” — in children with autism. “We found rates that were 7.5 times higher than expected,” Strang says.
Still, she cautions that sometimes, what looks like autism may actually be untreated gender dysphoria. “So much of the experience of being trans can look like the spectrum experience,” she says. People who don’t want to socialize in their birth genders may seem to have poor social skills, for example; they may also feel so uncomfortable with their bodies that they neglect their appearance. “That can sometimes be greatly alleviated if you give that person appropriate gender support,” she says.
Others agree with these insights. A 2015 study by researchers from Boston Children’s Hospital reported that 23.1 percent of young people presenting with gender dysphoria at a gender clinic there had possible, likely or very likely Asperger syndrome, as measured by the Asperger Syndrome Diagnostic Scale, even though few had an existing diagnosis. Based on these findings, the researchers recommend routine autism screening at gender clinics.
Source: Living between genders | Spectrum
Gender norms should not be imposed on people with autism to make the rest of the world more comfortable. Why teach girls with autism how to apply makeup, dress in a feminine manner and shop? Therapists, educators and parents only consider these to be important goals because our society imposes strict gender norms.
As a member of the LGBTQ community who is also autistic, I encounter inequality based on my gender identity, my sexual orientation and my disability. Societal barriers in housing, employment, transportation, healthcare and education systematically exclude queer, gender-queer, transgender and disabled people; outdated and negative attitudes about gender, sexuality and autism affect our social relationships.
Queer environments don’t often account for our sensory processing issues or social differences, whereas autism services don’t often recognize that we may identify beyond the gender binary or have queer relationships. Shifting the focus from the tired narratives of delayed diagnosis and sex differences can help the autism community take responsibility for improving our day-to-day quality of life, whatever our age at diagnosis or gender identity.
Source: Focus on autism must broaden to include non-binary genders | Spectrum
Nearly a quarter of young persons diagnosed with gender dysphoria, or who are transgender, screened positive for Asperger syndrome, a form of autism, according to a new paper in the academic journal LGBT Health.
The study was a small retrospective review of intake files of 39 children at Boston Children’s Hospital. Lead author Dr. Daniel E. Shumer explains, “We found that 23 percent of kids fell into the ‘possible, likely or very likely category’ when using the evaluation tool to screen for Asperger’s.”
“Having autism is a burden; a lot of things in the world change when you have autism,” says Strang. “But adding transgenderism, or maybe some of them aren’t transgender but they are just exploring gender, that is complicated in itself.”
“Knowing how to navigate in a world that is not really friendly with people who are trans can be tricky when you are missing social cues.”
Shumer says it is important that parents and medical providers be aware of the increased possibility for co-occurrence of autism and gender variance. If treating patients for one condition, they should screen for the other and be prepared to treat it.
“There also may be implications for how to provide informed consent for things like hormonal interventions,” he adds.
Source: PrideSource – Transgender Youth More Likely to Have Autism
Lovaas’s crusade to “normalize” deviance was not limited to autistic children. In the 1970s, he lent his expertise to a series of experiments called the Feminine Boy Project, the brainchild of UCLA psychologist Richard Green. After interviewing one hundred men and women who applied for gender reassignment surgery, Green became interested in tracing the roots of sexual identity back to childhood. He teamed up with Lovaas to see if operant conditioning could be employed as an early intervention in cases of gender confusion to prevent the need for reassignment surgery in the future.
The project’s most celebrated success story was Kirk Andrew Murphy, enrolled at UCLA by his parents at age five. Bright and precocious, Kirk would ask for his favorite snacks by their brand names at the supermarket. But after seeing Green interviewed on TV about “sissy-boy syndrome”— his term for early-onset gender dysphoria— Kirk’s parents became concerned that he was exhibiting behavior that was inappropriate for a little boy. One day, his father caught him posing in the kitchen in a long T-shirt and saying, “Isn’t my dress pretty?” Children with this syndrome, Green claimed, often grew up to become transsexual or homosexual. Lovaas assigned a young graduate student named George Rekers to become Kirk’s behavioral therapist.
In a case report that would go on to become a classic in undergraduate psychology courses, Rekers and Lovaas wrote that Kirk (called “Kraig”) possessed “a remarkable ability to mimic all the subtle feminine behaviors of an adult woman.” They framed his “offer to ‘help mommy’ by carrying her purse” as an example of the boy’s devious manipulation of his mother to “satisfy his feminine interests.” Their descriptions of the little boy’s behavior, compared with the transcripts of Green’s intake interviews with Kirk’s parents, were decidedly more extreme, as if the boy were clearly a world-class drag queen in the making at age five. They claimed that he had an elaborate “history of cross-dressing” that included plundering his grandmother’s makeup kit for cosmetics and “swishing around the home and clinic, fully dressed as a woman with a long dress, wig, nail polish, high screechy voice, [and] slovenly seductive eyes.” (In family photographs, Kirk more resembles a Mouseketeer.)
Silberman, Steve (2015-08-25). NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity (p. 320). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
In a case report that would go on to become a classic in undergraduate psychology courses, Rekers and Lovaas wrote that Kirk (called “Kraig”) possessed “a remarkable ability to mimic all the subtle feminine behaviors of an adult woman.” They framed his “offer to ‘help mommy’ by carrying her purse” as an example of the boy’s devious manipulation of his mother to “satisfy his feminine interests.” Their descriptions of the little boy’s behavior, compared with the transcripts of Green’s intake interviews with Kirk’s parents, were decidedly more extreme, as if the boy were clearly a world-class drag queen in the making at age five. They claimed that he had an elaborate “history of cross-dressing” that included plundering his grandmother’s makeup kit for cosmetics and “swishing around the home and clinic, fully dressed as a woman with a long dress, wig, nail polish, high screechy voice, [and] slovenly seductive eyes.” (In family photographs, Kirk more resembles a Mouseketeer.)
Silberman, Steve (2015-08-25). NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity (p. 320). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
In a case report that would go on to become a classic in undergraduate psychology courses, Rekers and Lovaas wrote that Kirk (called “Kraig”) possessed “a remarkable ability to mimic all the subtle feminine behaviors of an adult woman.” They framed his “offer to ‘help mommy’ by carrying her purse” as an example of the boy’s devious manipulation of his mother to “satisfy his feminine interests.” Their descriptions of the little boy’s behavior, compared with the transcripts of Green’s intake interviews with Kirk’s parents, were decidedly more extreme, as if the boy were clearly a world-class drag queen in the making at age five. They claimed that he had an elaborate “history of cross-dressing” that included plundering his grandmother’s makeup kit for cosmetics and “swishing around the home and clinic, fully dressed as a woman with a long dress, wig, nail polish, high screechy voice, [and] slovenly seductive eyes.” (In family photographs, Kirk more resembles a Mouseketeer.
To nip the little boy’s inappropriate behavior in the bud, they devised a program of total immersion based on Lovaas’s work on autism. This time, instead of hand-flapping, gaze aversion, and echolalia, the behaviors targeted for extinction included the “limp wrist,” the submissively yielding “hand clasp,” the notorious “swishy gait,” the girlish “hyperextension” of the limbs in moments of exuberance, and prissy declarations like “goodness gracious” and “oh, dear me.”
At home, Kirk’s “masculine” behaviors were rewarded with blue chips that could be redeemed for candy and other treats, while his “feminine” behaviors were punished with red chips that were subtracted from the total. In interviews conducted by blogger Jim Burroway, who undertook a thorough investigation of the case in 2011, Kirk’s brother, Mark, recalled their father punishing the boy— with Rekers’s approval— by converting each red chip into a “swat.” Mark broke down sobbing as he confessed to hiding red chips from his brother’s pile so that Kirk wouldn’t have to endure the abuse.
Misperceptions about what it means to be transgender or about autistic people’s ability to understand their gender or make decisions about their bodies often prompt service providers or family members to stand in the way of transgender autistic people’s attempts to live life with authenticity and dignity. This can include denying transgender autistic people access to transition-related care, subjecting them to “normalization” treatments aimed at suppressing their gender expression, or placing them in guardianship or institutional settings that restrict their decision-making power. While research suggests a large overlap between transgender and autistic communities, trans autistic people often lack access to services and supports that understand and respect all aspects of their identity.
“Too frequently, autistic people are denied basic rights to make decisions about our own bodies and health care, including when it comes to expressing our gender identity,” said Sam Crane, Legal Policy Director for the Autistic Self-Advocacy Network. “Whether we’re transgender or not, autistic people’s gender identities are as real as anyone else’s and should be respected and supported, not dismissed based on baseless stereotypes.”
The intersection of being both autistic and transgender is more common than one might think. While the dialogue around autism and gender identity is expanding, I have a bit of trouble figuring out where I fit into the whole picture. So, I decided to do my own research, and while this subject is a fairly new field of study, I found some pretty astounding statistics:
In 2014, a U.S. study of 147 children (ages 6 to 18) diagnosed with ASD found that autistic participants were 7.59 times more likely to express gender variance than the comparison groups. Another study, conducted in the UK in 2015, involved 166 parents of teenagers with Gender Dysphoria (63% were assigned female-at-birth.) Based on parents’ report of their children on the Social Responsiveness Scale, the study found that 54% of the teenagers scored in the mild/moderate or severe clinical range for Autism.
The relationship has only begun to be explored in research in recent years, but I’ve come to realize that there are a lot of autistic trans people out there in the world. As someone who very much values human connection and simultaneously struggles with it, I have to say that looking at those figures provided me an amount of comfort. I discovered that there are a lot of people just like me.
Being autistic and being transgender certainly each has their own respective challenges, though one that they share is a lack of societal acceptance due to stigma. Many people still believe that who I am as a transmasculine person is inherently invalid, just like many other people still believe autism is some kind of tragedy that is to be cured. In contrast, I feel very strongly that who I am as a person is heavily dependent on both my trans and autistic identities, and that they are beautiful things.
Source: THINKING PERSON’S GUIDE TO AUTISM: Autism, Transmasculine Identity, and Invisibility
Don’t use this information to “blame” trans identity on autism. Don’t threaten identity or reduce agency.
To blame trans identities on autism is to say that autistic people cannot understand or be aware of their own gender. If an autistic person cannot know they are trans, how can they know they aren’t? How can they know anything about themselves?
When a person’s gender is doubted because they are autistic, this paves the way for removing autistic people’s agency in all kinds of other ways. If we can’t know this central aspect of our identity, we surely can’t know how we feel, what we like, or who we are. In short, it implies that we are not truly people, and that our existence, experiences, and identities are for other people to define. This is just another facet of dehumanising autistic people, and gender is certainly not the only area in which this happens.
In itself, the very urge to find a ‘reason’ that someone is transgender is a result of believing that being transgender is a problem, and that it would always be better not to be. The fact that clinicians like Zucker are focused on why someone is transgender, instead of focusing on what kind of help they need and how to best provide it, demonstrates clearly the belief that it is fundamentally bad to be transgender.
Not only that, but the belief that it’s even theoretically possible for anyone besides the individual in question to know what someone’s gender is. That’s just not how gender works! No-one really understand what gender is, or what it means, or where it comes from. The only thing we know for sure is that it’s internal, subjective, and personal. You can’t prove or test someone else’s gender any more than you can prove or test their favourite colour. The idea that it can be tested is constantly used to invalidate trans people. Our genders are doubted or disbelieved if we fail to adequately ‘prove’ ourselves to everyone else – if we express too many or too few gender stereotypes, if we are too old or too young, if we claim to be nonbinary or our description of our identity is too complicated or confusing.
The best option is to allow someone to explore their feelings, support them in gaining self-understanding, and accept their identity whatever it turns out to be. It is not complicated, and it’s only scary if you are still holding onto the belief that being either autistic or transgender – or, perish the thought, both – is a terrible thing to be. Which it’s not. I am, along with countless others like me, living proof of that.
“A common misconception is the assumption that gender and sexuality are irrelevant to autistic people, or that our sexuality and gender identities are symptoms of our autism,” said Bascom. “These beliefs are not only inaccurate but also profoundly harmful to autistic people and are often used to prevent autistic LGBT folks from accessing LGBT spaces, authentic relationships, and transition-related health care. The reality is that autistic people can have a beautiful diversity of gender identities and sexualities, and we have the same right to self-determination as anybody else.”
Source: How doctors’ offices and queer culture are failing autistic LGBTQ people.
Studies:
- Focus: Autism Spectrum Disorders: Gender Identity and Autism Spectrum Disorders
- Increased gender variance in autism spectrum disorders and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. – PubMed – NCBI
- Autistic Traits in an Internet Sample of Gender Variant UK Adults: International Journal of Transgenderism: Vol 16, No 4
- Autism Spectrum Disorders in Gender Dysphoric Children and Adolescents
- Evaluation of Asperger Syndrome in Youth Presenting to a Gender Dysphoria Clinic
- Gender Variance Among Youth with Autism Spectrum Disorders: A Retrospective Chart Review
- Gender Dysphoria and Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Systematic Review of the Literature
- Autism Spectrum Disorders in Gender Dysphoric Children and Adolescents | SpringerLink
- Traits of Autism Spectrum Disorders in Adults with Gender Dysphoria | SpringerLink
- The effect of High-Functioning Autism on Sexual Orientation and Gender-Identity
- Brief Report: Autistic Features in Children and Adolescents with Gender Dysphoria. – PubMed – NCBI
27 thoughts on “Neurodiversity and Gender Non-conformity, Dysphoria and Fluidity”