To think that the majority of trans people are neurodivergent

[SlipperSliders]

...and I sort of think it's a form of neurodivergence in itself.

By the way I'm trans affirmative.

I don't think I've met a trans person who I thought was neurotypical.

I'm not sure what you mean by this? You think my friends are going to revise their strongly held beliefs because a dictionary says otherwise 🫠

I'm autistic.

I never understood gender stereotypes as a little girl and used to get frustrated when people told me the things that I liked were for boys. 'I like it, and I'm not a boy, so it's not just for boys,' I'd say, and because it was the early 90s I was allowed to get on with playing with my brothers' toys and games (video games were 'for boys' in my house) even though my mother was very invested in stereotypes.

Had I been born decades later, I'm sure that liking 'boys' things' and not fitting in would have led me to a different conclusion. That I wasn't a girl/woman, but some sort of in-between, non-binary person. I thought other women were happy with the stereotypes, for the most part. A lot of my knowledge of people came from reading and TV. It was overly simplistic and I didn't know it.

I think you've identified a genuine correlation, but the explanation is that many ND people are using the gender identity framework as a way to try to make sense of their differences. Which wouldn't be a problem if it didn't lead to men in women's spaces, and teenage autistic girls having their healthy breasts cut off.

This 100%.

People with mental illness often don’t know they have mental illness. Doesn’t mean they don’t have one.

Who the hell do you think you are to tell gay and lesbian people who lived through the “queer bashing” era what is or isn’t offensive? How dare you.

I am aware of that. I didn’t say they were.

Neurodiverse includes mental illness.

One of my very close friends in school is/was trans. She was sexually abused by her stepdad when she was a child and when she became a teenager she began transitioning to male. She’s currently in therapy and has realised that the reason she wanted to transition was subconsciously because of the sexual abuse: to escape the gender that attracted the abuse. She’s now in the process of detransitioning and healing, but it is extremely complicated and slow. One thing she’s working on at the moment is using she/her pronouns again.

Obviously this isn’t the case for many trans people, but in my friend’s case, abuse absolutely ‘caused being trans’.

More making the point that people can describe themselves how they like - she described herself as queer, and she was not being self-derogatory.

Can you share a little about the reasons?
can I ask whether a reason for you, qualifies everyone to whom that reason is valid as also being enby?

Can I also ask when you say enby/NB/non-binary what do you mean?
Also is your ND diagnosed by you or by someone else?

Thanks and I know this isn’t AMA, sorry.

I just googled and it was a measured article that explained it well (in my opinion). But you seem so set in your beliefs you can’t take a second to read and just rule it out due to pre conceived ideas.

I’m not an expert, just a mum surrounded by gay and lesbian teens who use the term queer in a non offensive way and I listen to various views at work with the aim of selecting wording that doesn’t offend, but as this thread has proven, it’s tricky.

I’m probably much older than you and I don’t think it was geographical.

I do not support medical or hormonal transition in children in any way. It's messed up. Adults - I don't know, but I see the problem. I'm unaware on rates on detransition.

Does anyone feel there may be the possibility there is a biological component at play? Something we have not yet discovered? Or do you feel that the statistics wouldn't support that? Have people possibly always felt this way in the past yet they didn't have the means or social/ medical opportunity available before recent times?

Some people seem to me genuinely happy and fulfilled having transitioned

Why are people alking about how "inclusive" their workplace is and how colleagues introduce themselves as queer?
I'd be quite confused if you introduced yourself as queer to me. What happened to "hello"?

That's not the point I was making however. She can describe herself how she likes. But silence from others should not be interpreted as no one having a problem with a word that has an extremely painful history for many older gay and lesbian people.

It's clear this is partly a generational thing.

"Gay" was a really derogatory term at school in the 90s. I don't remember queer being used at all, in any sense, when I was a teen.

I appreciate queer has a traumatic resonance with an older generation. It's not a word my generation use at all, either way. But it has clearly been coopted in a new sense by a younger generation.

I think it's the term of choice for anyone whose partner identifies as gender diverse.

E.g. a heterosexual person whose partner is the opposite sex to them might feel they cannot use the word heterosexual of themselves because that would invalidate the gender identity of their partner, if that partner doesn't want to be thought of as belonging to their birth sex?

I don't imagine anyone who uses it positively has had traumatic experiences of bullying and worse using the word against them. It doesn't have the same status as the N word being reclaimed by some black people - if it was we would be saying "the Q word" and it would be offensive coming out of the mouth of anyone not claiming it for themselves.

Probably generational then. Words shift meaning through the generations

Not said that - My post literally says, Cambridge dictionary recognises is in a positive way but acknowledges some are still offended by it.

How many that are genuinely happy being trans are the same as those that say they are genuinely happy, yet are massively depressed?

Are these the same people that use the term "trans euphoria"?

Quite. Whereas it is often used in academic literature, for instance.

There has been a 4000% increase in recent years of teenage girls identifying as trans. If there was an inescapable biological cause then thousands of middle aged women would be coming out as trans now that society is more accepting. But that isn’t happening. Late transitioners are almost always male.

and there is no evidence that medical or surgical transition leads to better mental health outcomes and some evidence that it makes them worse.

@FrippEnos yes good point. Happiness and satisfaction is also difficult to objectively measure.

The idea of trans being a form of ND is something I’ve wondered about for a while

(I’ve always thought of that syndrome where people have a limb which for some reason is not integrated into their physical sense of self, and so they wish to amputate it – I don’t understand how either thing feels, but have wondered if there are similarities in terms of the experience and the underlying origins, i.e. that there is a neurological aspect to it, perhaps related to in utero exposure to hormones.)

Gay is certainly used as a derogatory term locally to me now by teenagers, and it was in the 90s too. Anything pink was referred to as "the gay pink..."

Yes, I am aware of that 🤦‍♀️