Lack of research on females with autism and transitioning

[idontlikepinkandimstillfemale]

I'd love to know if anyone has anything to share on studies to do with autism and girls transitioning. I use as a disclaimer here that these are just some of my personal ideas and anecdotal, I welcome anyone who has any research to contribute.
I have a friend with a daughter diagnosed with Aspergers. There were many things about her that I identified with myself. I subsequently did a lot of reading into Aspergers (at least 30 books, countless articles online, not just a few websites) in females, and sought a diagnosis for myself. Good god, I had a job getting to see anyone, there are so few experts on this due to the ways in which autism presents itself differently in girls, and the historical gender bias in the data. Because it took so long I eventually left the country before I had the chance to go through the diagnostic process. So in any case, I can't claim to have a diagnosis (as a lot of women don't, for the same reasons as mine), so I won't say absolutely I am on the spectrum, but I do have a wide variety of traits.
Autistic people (I don't use person centred language as a lot of autistic people themselves don't like it) tend to be gender non-conforming. This could be due to lesser sensitivity to social conditioning which go along with impaired issues with processing social information. I'm personally gender non-conforming, from my earliest memories I felt 'different' to other girls, I didn't identify with how they reacted to social interaction, expressed themselves, their interests. I have always hated it when girls and boys are put into separate groups, when there were separate dress codes, any separate rules at all really made me feel really uncomfortable and still do. Girls are socialised to be nurturing and caring and generally expected to be better at social behaviour than boys. Once they get to puberty and social communication becomes more complex, particularly for girls, this can be where they start to have real problems. Autistic kids often describe feeling like an alien that has somehow landed on a planet where they don't belong, and this is how I felt too. I said countless times right into my late teens that I wondered if I was really male, or if I should be male, despite having no issue with my actual body. A disproportionate amount of autistic people are also gay or bisexual. All this adds up to looking very similar to being trans. But it's not, it's being autistic, and possibly also gay. I'm trying to suggest that because there is so little knowledge on the presentation of autism in females, this could cause problems in correctly determining which issues are to do with autism and which are to do with gender identity.

@NeurotrashWarrior that's interesting that she is deeply religious, I was like that too and my parents weren't (went to church with my friend and her family, prayed and read the bible every day going through the whole thing a few times - haha! That's all gone..) It definitely gave me a structure, a set of rules to follow and a comfort that there was some underlying system of justice in the world (that's gone too...)but I don't know for sure if I have ASD as I have a few other issues with childhood trauma too.

@numptynuts I'm sorry it took you so long. How is that right? Women waiting until they're in their 40s to get an autism diagnosis, but then kids being transitioned so quickly?

To be honest there are a lot of men not diagnosed with autism until they are in their forties either. Teachers and parents didn’t know the signs twenty or thirty years ago. People didn’t understand autism as a ‘spectrum’.

If you weren’t Rain Man you were just a weird kid and they didn’t look any deeper into it.

Nowadays teachers are better trained and adults are a bit more informed. Which is why it’s so terrible that children are being pushed down the transition route instead of referred to an autism specialist first. What do they have to lose?

^Q: Gina What is your “favourite” piece of neurotrash and why?

Gina: There’s a great one recently where there was media coverage of a study sex differences in male/female aggression. it was actually on mice. By the time it got passed down the media chain, it had morphed into a study with men and women and was heavily illustrated with Shades of Grey images.^ F*in' 'ell! I can just envision the stock images of some blurred out man in the background with his tie undone and the back of a woman with a crop!

@AspieAndProud That's true re men. What's most worrying, with all the neurotrash around (I've stolen it too, nice expression) is that they'll then start associating being trans with being autistic, like the two are meant to go together, whereas one IS an actual difference within the brain, and the other has yet to have any evidence for being so.

Thank you for this thread, marking to read properly tomorrow.

I've never been able to articulate quite how I feel about all this, how I felt as a teen. This thread is fab.

Too tired to post now but I recently diagnosed as autistic and am gender non-conforming and grew up to be bisexual and not trans.

I would've been so confused by trans ideology if growing up now and most probably would've identified as trans before my sexual orientation became apparent (early 20s).

I put all this in my GRA response. I am concerned about young autistic girls struggling with this.

Interesting thread. I'd noticed the high frequency co-occurrence of those with "trans" and " autistic" in their Twitter bio. Nearly every time. Also wasn't it reported that 2 thirds of girls referred to gender clinic were autistic?

Also wasn't it reported that 2 thirds of girls referred to gender clinic were autistic

The exact wording was: autistic traits.

Those twitter bios... pretty sure many are self identified autistic

If gender is socially constructed as a wealth of evidence suggests, then the main reason for gender variance would be a difference in how an individual responds to the socialisation process. Given that girls have been massively underdiagnosed I personally can see why there are a lot if self identified trans people have also self identified as autistic. The absolute disgrace is that they have been guided into a process of extreme self harm.

@bitheby I'm glad to hear that you put this in your GRA response, it's obviously important that autistic people are heard on this. Do you know if any autistic organisations have spoken up on this issue?

I'd also be interested to know if there's any difference (if possible to quantify) between children who have been educated in autism specific settings (sen schools) and mainstream.

In my direct experience there's more freedom to be yourself simply as you're not trying to conform to neurotypical ideals generally.

NeurotrashWarrior - excellent point, surely this needs to be studied.

Do you know if any autistic organisations have spoken up on this issue?

Did you not read the thread on the NAS endorsing Mermaids?

In my direct experience there's more freedom to be yourself simply as you're not trying to conform to neurotypical ideals generally.

That’s a good point.

I put all this in my GRA response. I am concerned about young autistic girls struggling with this.

I did too.

@pennydrew - :/ No, I'm new here. I'll have a look, thanks.

For anyone else reading who's new to all this and isn't aware:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3384565-National-Autistic-Society-and-Mermaids-Title-edited-by-MNHQ

(and to regular posters sorry if the content of this post is repetitive, I hope it at least adds a few new voices to the mix)

Sorry I should have linked you to the thread myself! It was very disappointing. They have replied to me via email but they absolutely shouldn’t be linking to that organisation.

Hi, I was wondering if the parents of a transitioning child are assessed by a psychiatrist? It states on the NHS website that family therapy or counselling support are offered, but that's not the same thing. The reason I ask is because for all the parents out there who are no doubt trying to support their kids as best they can, there are obviously going to be narcissistic and otherwise abusive parents who could use a transitioning child as a weapon in their own personal arsenal. There are a considerable number of narcs and psychopaths out there, but they're not always easy to detect.