Take part: Autistic Gender Critical Voices

@Bosky

https://www.openaccessgovernment.org/nine-out-of-ten-autistic-women-are-victims-of-sexual-assault/134603/#:~:text=A%20study%20finds%20that%20nine,partner%20violence%20in%20their%20lifetime.

I think it is higher because autistic women are likely to fawn or freeze, or be slower at processing events, or possibly even lack the social abilities to explicitly consent or refuse consent when they feel uncomfortable. I am sure that the comorbidity of learning disabilities will enhance that number too.

I am not a statistician, but if it's true then it's a really scary number and I won't ever stop caring about the safety of our young ones.

Hi NeuroPoppins - just to let you know that when I did a DuckDuckGo Search for "Neuro Poppins" your Substack (I assume it is yours) was the top result:

https://neuropoppins.substack.com/

Shamelesslyhidingbehindanamechange - "its estimated 9 in 10 autistic girls will experience some sort of sexual assault"

Have you got a reference for that please? At first I thought that seemed very high but then I wondered:

How does that compare with girls not diagnosed as autistic?

Is the figure elevated by the fact that some autistic girls will have a learning disability and girls with a learning disability are more likely to be sexually assaulted?

Thanks for doing this NeuroPoppins. I’m recently diagnosed as autistic, which has been enough of a shock, but since I started looking around the web for stuff which might help I’ve found so much stuff on autism is full of gender woo. I feel like I've always been very logical, work in science, and I’m boggled by how captured it all is by something so anti-science.

Shamelesslyhidingbehindanamechange · Today 01:24

Well done for standing up against lies and bravely thinking for yourself.

I am sorry your family have second-guessed you, stood in your way, and not supported you.💐✨

@Shamelesslyhidingbehindanamechange I'm so sorry these things have happened to you, sending hugs. 💐

I am a late diagnosed gender critical adult woman, and my brother who is a 10 year younger adult is also going through the diagnostic pathway.

My mother came to the family history interview appointment as part of my diagnosis, and used the fact that I think only men can be men and only women can be women as extreme black and white thinking and my gender critical views as having a strong sense of justice and a refusal to be wrong.

I find this really hurtful that even when I was opening up and being vulnerable to the doctor, my mother who had raised me a feminist suddenly stabbed me in the back.

My brothers partner is a transman, and my brother is the golden child. He's always outwardly displayed his need for care more than I have, so he's always had more of the attention and love and compassion.

I can't make the words that come out of my mouth deceive my eyes, especially not with sincerity, and that may indeed be part of my autism, but it hurts to see my family get sucked into this ideology of the emperors new clothes and treat my opinions as simply part of being disabled.

This ideology is tearing our family apart, and I don't truly believe that the people who support us both mutually believe what is coming out of their mouths however because my brother presents autism in a very male way, and every one is very concerned about his mental health and tries to rally support in any way they can for him which means validating his views and opinions for fear he would try and kill himself again and the mental health follow up care is not there and it's a huge scary threat that manipulates what they're allowed to think or feel, my support needs and mental health go widely ignored and I am made to feel like a horrible person if I correctly sex/accidentally misgender his partner when we're in the same space.

I wish my family knew that I also used to work in an office that had 3 lots of male toilets and so they were all practically empty, and 1 lot of women's toilets, and so many of the times when I would be in there needing to use the loo, or when I was throwing up because I was pregnant, there was a transwoman in their making audibly pleasured noises, however nobody ever took my concerns seriously as there were so few women in our office, and to me it's very important that people are correctly identified by their sex so that the impacts of these experiences can be taken much more seriously.

I wish they cared that its estimated 9 in 10 autistic girls will experience some sort of sexual assault, and men commit an overwhelming and extreme number of these sexual assaults and that telling young girls that men can be women to access their safe spaces opens them up to so much grooming potential that they ignore any red flags they see as girls are very likely to fawn in the fight/flight/freeze/fawn response tree, as well as their ability to assess risk being much lower than someone who is neurotypical.

I wish someone had noticed, when I was a little girl, and got me on the pathway sooner, and cared about my need for safeguarding all through my life. And because they don't care, that's why I have to care.

Thank you for the lovely comment @ScrollingLeaves
Thank you for the link @BettyBooper

And... thank you for what you are doing and for coming on to MN to spread the word @NeuroPoppins Based on only reading your first and most recent article (so far), you're an incredible narrator and copywriter. Being able to position the human angle and the impact in such an empathetic, curious and informative way is a real talent. I'm looking forward to reading more.

@INeedAPensieve I'm hoping that the article that you linked is the awakening of a questioning in the mainstream press about the "link" between autism and gender identity 🤞🤞

May I recommend @BonfireLady to any posters here who have not come across her yet for having worked out a brilliant care plan for her autistic daughter so that she is less likely to have people at school etc starting to subtlety suggest to her she might be trans?

I have an autistic son I worry since we are in Scotland. Especially with stories like this:-

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/05/09/autism-school-pushing-pseudoscientific-trans-ideology/

Thanks for this. Autistic GC woman with a 12 year old Autistic GC daughter here. Placemarking and reading with interest. We talk about this a lot.

I have now found it and read. Thank you so much for this. It was great (and sadly heartbreaking at times) to read of autistic people's experiences of this. More voices need to be heard. Well done you. Much appreciation.

Hurray! Thanks! Will have a read 😊

https://auntieautism.wordpress.com/2024/05/09/silenced-voices-autistic-perspectives-on-gender-critical-views/

Like a driving licence, masking is useful to have available to you even if you choose not to use it most of the time.

What we shouldn't be doing is masking all the time.

@NeuroPoppins Can you tell us which site it's on? I can't see it in my google search?

There is a difference between masking ( behaviour detrimental to masker) and camouflaging (? Think that was the term my SLT used) which is the adapting everyone does to the location. Masking can be useful for some people in short bursts if used knowingly and weighing up the pros and cons. (Eg when not appearing disabled is a safety concern)