46% of trans people disabled, 52% neurodiverse.

@OrangeSamphire People absolutely do self-diagnose inappropriately with any number of things, including the differences normally considered part of the neurodiversity umbrella. I'm sure their reasons are many and varied, but I'm not sure how you could think this isn't happening.

I don’t disagree with you @AnyOldPrion but until access to diagnostic pathways is more readily available, self ID should not be invalidated.

And there is no help or advantage in being identified as autistic, formally or self ID’d. Maybe this is my social naivety showing but I can’t see why anyone would seek this out for themselves if it wasn’t truthful.

If you do a questionaire on health care, who do you think will be the most likely to want to respond?

I think most posters who are advocates for decent evidence/data collection and analysis are aware of the substantial limitations of non-probabilistic data collection via surveys.

Am I the only one that read the report that talks about 46% people who responded to the request for opinions as having a disability and not of ALL trans people?

If you do a questionaire on health care, who do you think will be the most likely to want to respond? People that do not need to access healthcare?

Not sure if it is relevant but a large number of the non binary and younger ‘trans’ people are exactly the sort of young people who, 25 years ago, would have been getting into paganism and witchcraft, and 35 years ago would have been gothlings.

In my experience during those years, a very large proportion were what would now be called neurodiverse, some with very obvious autistic traits and others with Asperger traits, many with disabilities too.

The difference is that neither paganism or gothdom had long term physical effects. I will be very glad when those that don’t ‘fit’ into society find something less physically dangerous and less aggressive to cotton on to that the trans/NB path.

There appears to be a rise in narcissistic traits at a societal level and an increasing number of people identifying into groups for personal benefit, rather than need. An obvious example would be male prisoners claiming they are women in order to be moved to women’s prisons, however it isn’t a new phenomenon. Earlier examples would include the PDSA which attempted to provide free veterinary care for all on low incomes who felt they needed it, but eventually had to introduce proof of receipt of certain benefits as more and more people self-identified as poverty stricken.

Where available help is limited, if allowed to, those people take away important resources from those in genuine need. I understand the generosity in including all who feel they need help, but unfortunately as the movement grows and it becomes known that advantage is available, those who use all such inform to their benefit will catch on and the situation will become untenable.

Nitro excellent post. As a disabled person (actual, not able to identify out of it when it gets awkward or not fun any more) I agree with every word.

Statistics become meaningless once self ID gets involved.

My daughter is autistic and has expressed a wish to be treated like a boy. She's asked us to call her by male names, and wears a chest binder, but has never expressed a wish to take it further by having surgery or anything like that. I think (and it's difficult, because I can't engage her in conversation), that she didn't fit into the typical teenage female gender stereotype, and found it easier to be 'male'. I don't think she actually wants to be male. It's just the more appealing alternative for her. She did once ask me for testosterone treatment. I told her no because she was too young. She hasn't mentioned it since. She was always stereotypically female at primary school, but since she went to high school it all changed because she didn't follow the same path as her peers. She's still very dependant on me and somewhat childlike. She's 17.

I find it really difficult to comprehend. She picks up names from manga characters and uses them. They change, probably annually. She dresses in clothes that I would consider are targeted at girls, although tend to be loser fitting due to her sensory issues. She wears skirts and dresses occasionally.

I can't bring myself to refer to her as a boy, or use the names she chooses, because ultimately, I don't think it will actually help.

dyslek

An extreme form of narcissism, which demands that the person is the centre of attention all the time, where the person will appropriate medical conditions and possibly invent situations where they wish to encourage synpathy from others.
Using their own fake vulnerability, they are able to access influential positions, then bully others into, for want of a better word, "worshipping" them, giving them a public voice, an unquestioning acceptance of whatever they say or do.

In my observation of people who pop up on here, Im talking about the cyclist for instance, or Amee Challonor or even big Steph or the person at the Labour Party conference claiming abuse in the loos, they all instantly strike me as Neurodiverse.
I think for people on the spectrum (and Im speaking as someone who may very well be on the spectrum myself) adopting an identity that others are forced to pay attention to must be very tempting when its difficult to fit in socially.

Can I just say that the image produced by that amazing turn of phrase "now watch my stim dance" has got me sniggering away on the train.

I think, in time, it will come to be considered that there has been a huge over-diagnosis and it might be discovered there is no significant link between genuine gender dysphoria and a diagnosis of autism, rather that those with autism are perhaps caught up in the current wave, which may be due to a form of mass psychosis, rather than a true rise in severe gender dysphoria.

Yes, this seems very, very likely to me.

I’m autistic and I also have an autistic daughter (both diagnosed).

Growing up autistic in a neurotypical-led world means your sense of identity can be almost entirely missing. We seek to belong but cannot find where and keep making social mistakes. We then isolate ourselves.

If the trans movement had been around when I was a teen I think I would have been extremely vulnerable to it. My daughter is. I’m glad she’s not in school because it is so dominant there.

Re self-identifying as autistic… the National Autistic Society supports it. There are many good reasons why a person may self-identify. Maybe there are some very lost individuals who have mistakenly self-identified but my bet would be they have other difficulties that may present in similar ways (PTSD, BPD) that means their outward presentation in the world and needs for support aren’t that different.

Apologies, I still haven’t spelled out clearly my exact point.

We have no way of knowing whether there is a link with genuine severe cases of gender dysphoria - the original group for whom transition was a medical treatment carried out as a last resort. The 2021 Swedish study did look at links with psychiatric co-morbidity, which suggests that that was a significant factor they had noted. They don’t mention autism at all, though of course, it’s not possible to rule out the possibility that it have been overlooked.

The link with autism has been established only recently and as far as I am aware, has been noted as significant in young people. I think, in time, it will come to be considered that there has been a huge over-diagnosis and it might be discovered there is no significant link between genuine gender dysphoria and a diagnosis of autism, rather that those with autism are perhaps caught up in the current wave, which may be due to a form of mass psychosis, rather than a true rise in severe gender dysphoria.

I believe it has been established by medics that young people with autism are more likely to consider themselves trans. I believe GIDS confirmed it, but also hadn’t bothered to quantify it or assess why there was a link and what it might signify.

However self-identifying as having autism is potentially almost as popular among young people as identifying as trans and there are obvious reasons for the overlap, particularly with relation to the huge wave of ROGD teens and also those who are likely claiming trans for reasons of narcissism.

So while there almost certainly is a genuine link between the current wave of transitioners and a diagnosis of autism, the figures in that survey are, I believe, worthless. They are almost certainly sought for reasons of propaganda and are likely harmful, rather than useful to those with severe gender dysphoria, who mostly make up the original group of people who transitioned. They are the people examined in the 2012 study I mentioned, which made no mention of a link.

Oh, absolutely, there is real evidence that autism in particular is massively overrepresented in the trans population.

But that data does not come from a self-reporting survey of people ticking the "neurodiverse" box. It's not 52%. But it is much higher than the general population.

I'd be more interested in seeing the reverse stat, which I haven't - what percentage of young people with an autism diagnosis have adopted some sort of "trans" identity.

I wouldn’t want to dismiss the autism and trans link just because someone did self identify. It’s pretty intuitive - what is I believe a reasonably common feature of autism is seeing the world in sets of rules which could include how each gender behaves so if that set behaviour doesn’t appeal to an autistic individual the feeling of discomfort can be stronger than an NT individual. Transitioning then seems like it relieves that feeling, as it’s another set of rules saying it’s ok to behave in the non gender conforming way you want to because you’re trans.

Very happy for someone more experienced to explain it much better and also happy to rephrase /redact anything not coming across right as I’m a complete layperson here.