Something I just thought about the whole 'Brain sex' theory.

[TinyRick]

So if the body is 'male' and the brain is 'female' from birth then why didn't the 'female' brain develop estrogen and secondary sex characteristics for the 'male' body? (Obviously vice versa too for FtT)

Are they saying their brain is actually wrong and stupid? Even though they profess the opposite?

autisticrat, can I ask you something? I know from friends with autism and from friends whose children have autism that one of the hardest things to cope with are certain social behaviours which almost have the status of implicit rules but are too amorphous and ill-defined to function as true rules. They're the peculiar parts of neurotypical people's behaviour where they seem to know instinctively what to do in a given situation, but it's not clear to someone with autism what it is that they instinctively know. And when you try to pin these behaviours down, it's like nailing jelly to a wall because when you press them on what it is they're doing and how they're interpreting the situation, everyone has a slightly different and equally ill-defined version of what the rules are. (One of my close friends really struggled with this when it came to dating.)

It strikes me that gender, understood as a set of (oppressive) rules about sex stereotypes is exactly this. Everyone has a slightly different set of the rules, some neurotypical people think the rules are bollocks, others think their (particular individual take on them) is enshrined in nature, the whole thing comes with a massive dose of cognitive dissonance (for women who gender-police these implicit rules particularly - they must be aware on some level that the rules are stacked against them, yet they are massively invested in propping them up).

So I guess my question is this: do you think some autistic people, rather than going down the route of "well, these so-called rules are so amorphous they don't actually exist and are just a pile of crap" instead go down the route of saying "I don't understand the rules for my sex at all, they make no sense to me... so maybe I should be trying to follow the rules for the other sex..." This would, I think, be particularly tempting for girls on the autistic spectrum, because at least the cognitive dissonance aspect would be cured that way. You'd be spared the internal mess that comes with trying to follow a set of rules that you recognise on some level are actually detrimental to your well-being.

M0stlyBowlingHedgehog

Fascinating question and wonderfully thought out.

And a theory that is definitely taking hold, I believe.

I'd be really interested to hear what you think too, autisticrat.

Should have added, autistocrat (love the name btw) that I find the "extreme male brain" thing really, really offensive too. I'm neurotypical, but also a research scientist in a maths-y systematising part of science, and the idea that my brain is a "male" brain rather than simply a human brain which happens to have as its particular strengths systematising and thinking logically really infuriates me.

Ok here we are going to have to agree to disagree. I believe everyone should have equal rights and opportunities, you do not. That's all I have left to say on this subject.

I'm more an each according to their needs sort of chap. It may be simply by virtue of biology women need more health care resources than men. So a simple but catchy "I'm for equality" that fails to account for this isn't good enough IMO.

AddictedToDrPepper

Instead of disengaging, why don't you address the comments?

Don't you wonder, when people disagree so vehemently, why they do?

Has Addicted stated their sex?
Because I suspect they are male.

Males benefit massively from there being no societal rules against using their physical strength and the fact they can impregnate women, against women.

Hm, Addicted, do you really, really, really agree that the same rules should apply to everyone?

I propose that the person who has given birth to a child should be the only one to have parental rights over that child. They can choose to give other people limited rights to sign documents on behalf of the child and all such, but the only true legal rights remain always with the birth parent, unless the child is given up for adoption.

That's very nice and equal, isn't it? Everyone has the same opportunities, there. So I am sure you agree with it, do you?

Then perhaps go and tell that to the MRAs.

Equal rights to what, DrPepper?

What rights do men currently have that feminists are withholding from them, for instance?

(Yes, Addicted says she's female and raising children, Vestal)

I believe everyone should have equal rights and opportunities, you do not. And you have completely misrepresented what a number of women have taken time and effort to say in response to you. You know that equality and respect thing you were talking about. How about showing some?

It's easy to say that everyone should be equal but rights for one group can clash with another - women who want sex segregated space for whatever reason should not lose that right in order to validate to members of the opposite sex who have gender dysphoria.

I'm a big believer of "Your right to swing your arm, ends where my nose begins". I will support the rights of trans identified males to be free from discrimination in terms of employment, housing etc, but I will not trample over women's rights to allow them to colonise our spaces. It is asking women to set themselves on fire to keep others warm.

People saying oh, I thought feminists wanted equal rights for everyone, is rather irritating.

Because even when you explain why that doesn't work, they still interpret what you have said as somehow doing men down.

I don't understand why realising that women are structurally disadvantaged is so difficult to grasp. It's studied, proven and statistically evident.

That's a difficult one… when it comes to internal feelings, I can only really speak for myself, though of course I can talk about what I've observed in and talked about with other autistic people (mostly women) to some extent?

There are autistic women who go all-out on femininity; you'd have to ask them, but I think a lot of us spent a whole childhood trying to decode the rules and work out how best to follow them, in order to blend in. Once you have the rules (if you can work them out) it's easy to follow them. I guess some enjoy it and it feels natural to them? I guess you'd have to ask them

But I guess it's possible that sometimes someone feels the opposite sex's rules might be easier to follow…? I don't think it's anything calculating, though.

I think personally it's more of a thing of feeling outside somehow, incapable of instinctively and easily picking up correct social behaviour - I don't fit in as a woman, so where do I fit in? I don't see the point of following this rule or that one, so am I really a proper woman or am I something else - is the reason that I'm not very good at womanning because I'm not meant to be a woman - and why might that be?

When I was younger (preteen/early teens maybe?) I sometimes wished I was a boy, felt like I must be more like a boy that an like a girl, mostly for the pragmatic reason that there was an awful lot of faff and inconvenience and confusion involved in being female. I wasn't very good at playing the female social game and I wasn't weak and silly and dumb and bitchy and keen on dolls and interested in boy bands and all the other bullshit stereotypes I thought I would have to be, and I didn't see the point in pretending to be just so people would like me. I was too clever for all that… I didn't want to be the stereotyped female and couldn't understand all the complexities of how to navigate them.

I guess when it comes to the way I look, at least, I come across kind of androgynous - despite having enormous boobs 😒, I get told off in ladies' toilets and referred to as "sir" in public It's comfort and practicality, a lot of how I suppose I must present. I guess I feel more physically comfortable in clothes that are read as "male". Male-stereotyped clothes are generally less constricting and easier to move about in. I can't walk in heels, maybe because of the coordination problems that are quite common with ASD. I don't like makeup because it takes time, feels nasty, and my face looks okay how it is really… it seems bizarre to me to put makeup on except maybe for fancy dress, or masking serious skin problems if you're embarrassed about them. Totally fine with other people wearing it obviously, it just seems… like an odd thing for half of society to feel they have to be doing in order to fit in, and the other half not to do? But it can't just be my clothes; lots of women wear t-shirts and jeans. There must be something about the way I walk or stand or take up space or something that's not right, but buggered if I know what it is

I'm sorry, that was garbled and didn't really answer your question 😂

But I'm not sure if that's something about autistic brains, or whether it's that autistic people are less likely to conform to societal bullshit around gender and sexuality.

Perhaps it is the cognitive dissonance of believing something wholesale (gender stereotypes) despite it being obviously untrue (no one is a walking stereotype and autistic women often "fail" at femininity.)

There's a cognitive dissonance that perhaps neurotypical people are better able to deal with?

That would mean that autistic people are more likely to identify as trans OR be gender critical, and less likely to be a trans ally that identifies as "cis".
As the cognitive dissonance can be resolved by removing one of the contradicting things.

AddictedToDrPepper

You are advocating for a fully grown, fully intact, heterosexual man, who disagrees with women's boundaries, and demands to share a locker room with your daughter.

I'm assuming, as that is what you're doing, you will also be campaigning for women to do the same. As that is treating everyone equally!

Your lack of concern over the trans issue is telling your daughter that her boundaries are unimportant.

autistocrat - thank you. An awful lot of what you've said resonates with me. I was a total tomboy from ages 7 to 10 driven by the same sort of thought processes. And I was very late to "get" the idea of female solidarity - probably through my teens and early twenties I just thought for instance that I was "above" the bitchiness etc - not realising that all human beings can be nasty, and that calling female nastiness "bitchiness" and distinguishing from male nastiness (talking about verbal nastiness here, not physical nastiness) is a patriarchal trick to divide and conquer. (I do look back on my 20-something self and cringe.)

It's a very neat trick - make "feminine" traits lesser, praise women who show "masculine" traits, thus simultaneously othering the women who are more traditionally feminine while patting the masculine ones on the head so they go away thinking they've been accepted as one of the boys (which of course they haven't been - just try getting pregnant and staying "one of the boys") and don't kick up too much of a fuss. It took me quite a while to see through that trick, and I'm a bright woman with a feminist mother.

Now transwhacktivism's come along, it's upped the ante. It now tells confused teenage girls that better even than being accepted as one of the boys you can actually be a boy... if you'll take these life-changing drugs and mutilate your body... which is all well and good until along comes a rapist and you find they have no vested interested in continuing with the confidence trick, they're just happy to take advantage of it. (One of the saddest things I've read recently was the testimony of that poor transman raped by a taxi driver who kept saying to him "no, I'm a man, you can't do this to me, I'm a man".)

autisticrat

Thanks for answering M0stly's question.

No-one I know is autistic, so I have no experience and I hope I don't say something offensive here.

It seems to me that because you don't read all the societal behaviour, you simply don't apply it to yourself.

It's almost the definition of non-binary. Or genderless, what ever one likes to call it. You wear, and do, what is comfortable and practical.

Almost the exact thing that feminists advocate for.

So, I can totally understand the prevalence of autistic people in the non-binary cohort. But not so much in the trans. As they are definitely embracing a set of behaviours, simply that of the other sex.

Unless, as you say, they feel as though they don't belong, so assume they must be the opposite sex and that is why there is a sense of not fitting. The feeling of not belonging will obviously still be there, but can be explained away by constantly trying to be accepted as the sex you are not.

Thank you for explaining. I hope it doesn't feel too personal.

So, I can totally understand the prevalence of autistic people in the non-binary cohort. But not so much in the trans. As they are definitely embracing a set of behaviours, simply that of the other sex.

The autistic trans people I've met have generally come across something like non-binary from where I was standing but often used the word trans for themselves, so that's what I'm going with. All teens/young adults.

Unless, as you say, they feel as though they don't belong, so assume they must be the opposite sex and that is why there is a sense of not fitting. The feeling of not belonging will obviously still be there, but can be explained away by constantly trying to be accepted as the sex you are not.

Ooh, you've put that well!

I would think most/all trans people who've grown up being socialised as their birth gender, as it were, will have to non-instinctively/consciously portray new learnt behaviours to some extent? If you were socialised as one gender and now identify as the other, it's not going to come as easily as behaviours that have been learnt over a whole childhood; you have to observe and learn the correct behaviours for the gender you want to present as. Which would put autistics on a fairly level playing field with non-autistic trans people.

Not too personal at all; I'm an incorrigible oversharer

So maybe being trans is legitimising the feeling of not belonging. All trans-people have to re-learn. It's acceptable and encouraged. There are even courses to go on.

All trans-people have to re-learn. It's acceptable and encouraged. There are even courses to go on.

That has always baffled me. If they have always been the other gender inside, and transwomen never had male privilege or benefitted from male socialisation ... then why the fuck would they have to learn how to do femininity?

I mean, I know the whole ideology doesn't make sense, but that's one of those obvious contradictions you'd think the trans allies would notice.

I don't understand why realising that women are structurally disadvantaged is so difficult to grasp. It's studied, proven and statistically evident.

No I don't understand it either. What is difficult about the concept of "equality" requiring a level playing field or it's not going to be fair for both teams to play? I even used those words. Agree it's really irritating when people blindly parrot "equality for all!" Without thinking at all what that requires. It's like saying "I don't see race!". Well on the face of it that sounds great but it isn't because if you don't acknowledge race you'll miss that certain races have it harder. Sex/gender exactly the same.

The feeling of not belonging will obviously still be there, but can be explained away by constantly trying to be accepted as the sex you are not.

I think maybe why they are so deeply and angrily invested in it (talking about trans people in general who get involved in activism etc, not necessarily just autistic people) If the entire world would just acknowledge them as the opposite sex everything would be ok. It's those pesky TERFs who prevent this.

venus, that's a bit like those jobless or otherwise unhappy people who think that everything would be okay and they would be awarded the highly paid lovely jobs they (think) they deserve if only those pesky immigrants didn't exist. Nevermind that those pesky immigrants don't actually have the good jobs but have jobs the complainers would never want.

... in fact, now that I think about it, the phenomenons have quite many parallels.

I look on the whole 'social rules' thing, including the ones around gender, as being a bit like English grammar, as she is spoke. The learning of these rules is analogous to picking up a language as a toddler (you learn how to bend, manipulate and break these rules as well - Native Speaker Competence is more like Native Speaker Privilege). If you have ASD you have to learn these rules much more like an adult learning a second language, and you are never quite fluent - you have a foreign accent (a distinct way of behaving and reacting), you have to think about things and you never have the confidence to bend the rules in case you aren't understood.