autistic appropriation by trans women

[Autisticappropriation]

NC for obvious scaredy cat reasons. Yes it’s another trans thread. No I’m not articulate or well versed in academic feminism but I do fear for women’s rights and safety.

I’ve noticed with alarming regularity that a large number of recently out trans women are also now calling themselves autistic and that a huge portion of the actually autistic community whether trans or not are becoming highly vocal TRAs.

I am an autistic women, uterus owner, born that way will probably die that way. I feel like I’m being pushed out of all my safe spaces by self identifying trans women who are also now self identifying as autistic. I fought so bloody hard to get a diagnosis and access to the pittance of support that is available for autistic women and now women seeking diagnosis after me may find themselves shunned, silenced or ignored in favour of self identifying autistic trans women. I have concerns on so many levels, not least because of the vulnerability of officially diagnosed actually autistic women and the insurgence and potential influence of highly vocal self diagnosed label collectors.

I’m writing this post because a once quite high profile “disabled” man who bullied me on Twitter and set hundreds of his followers onto me trying to doxx me and shut me up has not only in the past few years become a trans woman but also is now claiming to be autistic. They now claim, along with many other trans autistics to be vocal representatives of actually autistic women worldwide and people are listening... but they don’t represent me or my needs or the needs of so many other women formally having or currently seeking diagnosis. We haven’t been listened to for years and when the opportunities start to arise, transwomen are taking them from us. It’s so hard to be taken seriously as a woman seeking diagnosis and only now are diagnosticians recognising the differences in presentation between male and female autistics, I worry about women missing out on diagnosis because trans women present themselves as representatives of autistic women without having the lifetime experience of autistic women.

I was misdiagnosed as schizophrenic and medicated as such despite never meeting the diagnostic criteria. Everyone agreed it was the wrong diagnosis but nobody knew what else could be causing my life’s problems and so I was parked there are told to accept it. This is not an uncommon experience for many autistic women diagnosed later in life (ie adulthood beyond teens) but it doesn’t appear to be the pathway to diagnosis for transwomen. If diagnostic practices and hard won victories of women to be recognised as autistic are lost due to men appropriating so many areas of their life, I fear women will return to a life of enforced misdiagnosis and heavy sedating medications. I feel so bloody helpless and I’m scared to speak up in my usual arena (twitter) because autistic appropriation and trans domination essentially silences me. I can’t be the only female, feminist autistic concerned about this.

I don’t think I have a point I just needed to get it off my chest and introduce an area I’ve not seen being discussed before.

Male brain stuff as an autism hypothesis is flawed as it relies on gender stereotypes and misses the fact that gender stereotypes are yet another unwritten rule that needs to be navigated.

There's a massive discussion to be had wrt diagnosed vs self ID. Self ID is something lots of us autistic women go through, and as diagnosis can be difficult depending on the expertise of the diagnosing team, self ID can be as far as some women can go. Problems arise when vocal sjw self ID'd people act like the mouthpiece for autism everywhere and act professionally offended at every turn, fully embrace the use of cis and think that trans women are indeed women, and it's impossible to get any other view across. Thinking of several on Twitter, they don't share my experiences as an autistic woman and they don't speak for me. Thinking of some autistic transwomen I know of (can't claim to know them personally), they come across as extremely self absorbed and possibly narcissistic, not helped by their legions of followers who agree with every word they say.

Too right @cliques. I hated my body during puberty because I'd long intrernalised the patriarchal narrative of my body as a commodity - something to be objectified and externally appraised.

It’s so very important that women’s presentation isn’t drowned out by the louder voices of transwomen. They have not been taught to be compliant from day one. They have not learned to mask and hide in the same ways.

There are many men who present atypically too, men who wouldn’t have been diagnosed without more and more women presenting atypically.

This is a good blog post that has a look at "we're all a little bit autistic".

@cliques totally spot on. As a child I wished I was a boy. Why? Because they could pee while standing up. I preferred and still do traditionally “boys toys” and “boys” clothes but I always knew I was a girl and would have argued with anyone who told me differently. Now I’d have had to fight people trying to convince me I was male growing up alongside people trying to convince me I was mentally ill etc. Oh I’ve forgotten the point I was trying to address. Too much going on here. Needless to say I agree with what you’re posting :)

@cloudperson thanks for the long no, I’ve bookmarked it as “we’re all a little bit autistic” is one of the most common responses to hearing I’m autistic. It minimises my experience as a woman who is quite severely disabled by autism in a way that wouldn’t be done if I had a compendium learning disability

*co-morbid not compendium. On phone feeding baby at same time

It’s so nice to have a space I can say all this out loud. Normally dh has to bear the brunt

That blog is great.

The point is that autistic people pick up on the loud messages, not the quiet ones. I knew girly stuff was rubbish and boys’ stuff was cool. I liked physical play more than imaginative play. I am logical and good at maths. I don’t understand fashion.

These are my autistic traits, not my womanly ones. I am enormously loving and caring, but not at all touchy feely. I look cold and distant, but I’m not. I prefer a pair of trousers with many pockets, than a dress (Although I am a sucker for a dress with pockets).

For a while I thought I must be agender. That must be how I define myself. But that would be accepting gender as something within us all, and it so clearly isn’t. Agender doesn’t fit with the fact that I really love being a woman now. I’m just a woman. Just an autistic woman. Both those things are a big part of my identity. I won’t have anyone telling me they’re not mine.

Cliques, agree with everything you say about puberty. I would also have argued that I was a boy as a teenager if I'd been handed it as an explanation for feeling "wrong". I'm so pleased I'm in my 40s now and not my teens.
Now is a scary time for younger people to be growing up in.

Cloud, it really is. I worry so much for young autistic people. We are so susceptible to mental heath issues already (more than 80% in those without a LD), I can’t imagine how much worse this could make the (already appallingly high) suicide rates amongst autistic adults.

I absolutely agree with that. I was often mistaken for a boy at primary school, I had very short hair and did all the ‘boy’ things, football, chess club, d&d.

When I was a teenager I flipped between hyper feminine and grungy boyish clothes, I simultaneously loathed the changes to my body and felt horribly jealous of all the other girls (I was a very late developer and it was just one more layer of not fitting it).

If becoming a boy had been an option for me I would have leaped at the chance. Fortunately it wasn’t and I am now, in my late thirties, a proud woman, mother, wife. I don’t perform much femininity and I still don’t fit in anywhere but I’ve found a happy path.

I don’t have an autism diagnosis (I do have Bipolar), but it wouldn’t come as a shock tbh. I do firmly believe that the explosion in teenage girls transitioning has a massive correlation to the underdiagnosing of autism.

This is going to badly skew the data on girls and autism, which is already a bit scant.

So much on this thread resonates with me, both as a woman who comes from a family with autistic traits in both the men and the (totally undiagnosed) women, and also as the mother of a child who has ASD and is obsessive about whatever the latest "thing" is.

I’ve been jumped on for saying I was a pregnant woman and not person

This is so weird - that biological women are decried for stating they are women, while it is proclaimed loudly that transwomen are women.

This is why I love sharing my experiences with other autistic women. All those things that were weird about me, were actually shared experiences with autistic women. I see so much of myself in them. I present as a very run-of-the-mill autistic woman.

I need to know how puberty and the menopause will affect me. I need to know how other autistic women have experienced them. I need this information, I need to know how my biology interacts with my autism. This is what I need from autistic women’s spaces.

So many tangled issues here. We seem to have;
(i) A situation where many women are autistic but struggle for a diagnosis because autism is seen as a male condition.
(ii) A situation where just generally autism is often hard to get an official diagnosis of so many autistic people self-identify out of necessity.
(iii) An unexplored correlation between autistic people who also identify as trans.
(iv) A number of TIMs self-identifying as autistic. Some of these might be autistic and some might not.
(v) Whatever the above they are taking all the oxygen in the room (as usual) and leaving autistic women voiceless.

I'm willing to bet (vi) also applies. This is that many of the most vocal TIM autism advocates are self-identifying and the same shouty TRAs who usurp women's rights and privileges more generally.

This is just another women's space and thus one they must have access to and control.

My very cobbled together theory on why trans is over-represented in autistic people is that in part it's easier to be special than to have a disability or additional needs. We've had quite a lot of people publically rubbishing the autism diagnosis. I would imagine it's hard to accept it when people are quick to think you're just over-indulged or badly behaved. If you have autism, it's for life. If you're trans, you only need to make a few changes (and demand society does too) and you're fixed. That must be so appealing. I know I wanted to feel special at 20 because it was so frightening taking on the big wide world and being invisible and lonely.

I can only look at a girl I vaguely know, who I'm fb friends with (who is possibly autistic but I obviously can't say 100% and don't want to diagnose her casually. She definitely has additional needs of some sort and multiple mental health issues) and say she has obviously struggled for years with being herself. Suddenly the trans label is making her special instead of wrong.

Her fb has been an explosion of 'I'm an enby.' (Non-binary). It's such a cutesy name. She's obviously getting a lot of attention and social support so it's clearly far more socially acceptable to be an 'enby' than autistic. It feels like the equivalent of goth or emo. She never used to post much on fb, now it's 4-5 posts a day about being dysphoric and needing her friends to get her through the day. One minute she'll post saying 'I'm going to leave fb for a while. Just so you don't worry about me I'm so caught up in thinking about who I am/I have 50,000 confusing thoughts about my gender/I am the saddest fairy in the castle.' Then an hour later there'll be posts saying 'anyone want to come to the cinema with me?' Or 'ooh cheese on toast for supper.' And several more completely normal posts over the course of the next few days.

I hope that doesn't offend anyone. I might be completely wrong with associating her with anyone with autism. I had a female friend at university who was diagnosed with autism and I know she suffered terribly in many different ways. I don't want to minimise it. If we were more understanding of autism I'm sure it would help. Some people are so rude and dismissive.

Can I ask questions? Or will that be viewed as a bit off?

Datun, I’m happy to answer questions

Slightly ot, but there is a test online (the sages test - not to be confused with the (SAGES) sex and gender ethics society!) that is apparently very close to part of the transgenderism diagnosis. Take a look at it and see how closely the questions parallel with those for autistic diagnosis...

Me too datun, crack on :)

Happy to answer questions too.

Questions are good datun

Copper- that is very interesting.

Cliques

Thank you. I don’t want to appear rude and unfeeling. I realise it’s a distressing condition.

The poster upthread who said autistic women need feminism. I have noticed that there are quite a few autistic women on the feminist boards.

And I have asked a similar question before. I hope I can phrase it properly.

I see social cues everywhere. My life is littered with them. In as much as I, like many, can multitask, (like doing the cooking and helping with homework), I can also see six different social cues at the same time.

It can actually be quite exhausting.

Feminism tells me that I am responding to my socialisation to read signals and make everyone happy.

Social cues that tell me how to present myself, I also know, (fashion, etc) but I respond less to those (although I do respond). No real explanation other than I can’t be arsed.

So, according to feminism, that all comes under the heading of gender, which is a societally enforced role. Both reading the cues and accepting them.

And here is my question.

If you are autistic, and you don’t read those cues, can that state describe what feminists want? I.e. a genderless society.

Does the distress arise out of realising that everyone else sees those cues and you don’t. But if everyone else didn’t, you wouldn’t be distressed?

I hope that makes sense. And isn’t an odd question.

Very considerate of you, Datun, but I prefer blunt and clear

Good question!

I learned very early that I don’t get those social cues on anything but a conscious level. So I started mirroring people and learning how to “perform” femininity to communicate. None of it comes naturally to me.

My distress arises from just how many things I have to hold in my head to communicate and be understood. I need to read your body language, your tone, your expressions, and work out what you mean, at the same time as putting on body language, putting on appropriate expressions, and saying the “right thing”.

As a girl I would be told off constantly for getting things wrong, so I either had to learn or disappear into the background.

I would say that I live in a genderless world. I do not recognise any value in gender. It’s a game I have learnt to play, but hate. I do not “get” it at all. Most of my friends (autistic and not) don’t conform to gender roles and don’t describe themselves as in any way atypical for their sex. We just are.

It does seem like neurotypical people assign a lot of value to things that make no sense at all to me.

I’m not sure I’ve answered your question. Feel free to ask again so that I do.