Is there such a thing as a GC Autism support charity?

[plipplops]

DD has recently been diagnosed Autistic.

We're flailing and reach out for support to charities and I'm bothered by the fact that they all seem to be affiliated to Stonewall, and have the lines 'Autistic people are more likely to be gender fluid/gender questioning etc..'

Luckily she doesn't seem to be interested in such nonsense but I really want her (and us) to be able to access support without risking her mental health deteriorating further by any suggestion becoming a boy/NB might help.

Anyone know if any charities haven't been captured?

Christ. More vulnerable should mean protection from targeting by TRA ideals, not encouraging it!

Sorry, no useful suggestions but FFS - do they not think anything through?

@plipplops

Sadly most of the charities/support groups seem well and truly captured. Only thing I can suggest is m.facebook.com/groups/gcautistics/?ref=share Gender Critical Autistics on FB. You have to answer various questions to join but possibly someone on there can post you to somewhere that can help.

All autism charities are captured, at least the well known ones. So I would avoid them like the plague.

The GC Autistics Facebook group is probably your best bet in terms of asking members for any charities or professionals who will put the needs and requirements of your daughter first without pushing gender ideology.

Yeah, I noticed this myself. Main autism charity has eradicated the words woman and girl from their pages on periods etc. I have an autistic daughter who found adolescence tough and she has told me she would have been tempted to change sex to escape a changing body. With medical treatment and parental support she's moved through it and is happy being a woman but I am concerned about the pressure other young ND people are facing. Cold, dehumanising language on pages that are supposed to support our CYP is not helpful at all. As others have said, avoid these charities if you can.

<Musing as to why it is that children with autism are so much more likely to declare a gender identity>

It's a serious problem in the autistic community - and not entirely surprising because of the (often)black and white thinking. I suspect, the corruption comes from leaning into lived experience over professional expertise.

Basically all autism charities are totally captured - the latest iteration of the pride/etc flag includes an infinity symbol which (apparently) represents autism…

I found out just how deeply into the GI shitstorm the very charities that should be protecting autistic children are when I couldn’t even speak with someone unless I stated my ASD child’s gender identity, preferred pronouns, sex “assigned at birth”, and preferred presentation. My child was 5.

Thanks all, how incredibly depressing. I'll definitely join the FB group though.

I was trying to book a support call and they asked for her gender - I ticked 'other' and wrote 'her sex is female if that's what you mean'.

It's doubly tricky as (autistic) DH can't engage with my strong feelings about the subject.

Luckily I think (hope) DD is old enough, and I've been banging on about it enough, to resist it x

Sorry but not only are all asd charities captured by gender ideology but they promote the harmful "autism is a super power" and "autism is an identity" which aa an autistic woman and mother to a severely autistic ds gives me the rage

If you are in Surrey/Berks/Hants you might be in luck. My DD wanted to go to a girl's ASD group and I had to talk in person to a trustee before they would sign her up. With hindsight I think they were asking if she was a self I'D or natal girl without using those words, and given that she only wanted to go to meet other ASD girls having the same ASD girl experience, I was also asking the same! I'll PM you.

It's problematic as whenever an autism charity expresses any misgivings they get the lived experience powerful autistics shouting them down with narratives like "are you saying autistic people should not have autonomy and don't know their own thoughts and feelings".
This is extremely difficult to navigate.

I don't think the capturing is as much a capture of gender woo as a capture of the primacy of lived experience.

It’s not an autism support charity but Transgender Trend has done info on autism and might be able to help you find that kind of support or helpful people.

https://www.transgendertrend.com/autism-gender-identity-introduction/

It seems like a GC autism support group really needs to be set up, if it hasn’t already.

Could be all sorts of inter-related reasons....

Plenty of autistic children and adults feel very out of place among their peers, they don't fit in or relate to others or find it hard to find others who share their interests and passions. This is very isolating and it can feel very comforting to be told that not feeling like a girly girl or a rough-and-tumble boy must mean you are trans or non-binary.

Puberty is hard for everyone, but can be even more scary and anxiety provoking for autistic children - the rapid changes, uncertainty, emotional rollercoaster etc can be overwhelming. The (false) promise that taking a pill like puberty blockers etc will stop it all is a tantalising prospect of exerting control over something that feels very out of control.

Autistic people love order, rules, making sense of things and categorising them. The myriad flags and 'genders' can become an exciting way to make sense of oneself and others. Autistic people are prone to obsessive interests so can spend lots of time online researching and reading and thinking and talking about 'gender identity' if it captures their imagination.

Autistic children and adults can also be a bit naive and too trusting - it might not occur to them that strangers on the internet pushing gender nonsense might not have their best interests at heart, or that all the medication and treatments peddled by unethical professionals have more to do with making a steady stream of profit from people's desperation and confusion.

And then there's issues of same-sex attraction, possibly sexual harassment / abuse and other issues that can compound an autistic person's desire to reinvent themselves as a different person.

This, from a desister, is an incredible starting point.

Autism, Pubery and Gender Dysphoria: the view from an autistic desisted woman

I respectfully disagree.

There's plenty of lived experience amongst autistic women that involves not being comfortable with gendered expectations, or one's physical sexed body, but without transition being seen as the answer (usually because we're older and grew up before the ideology took hold). We tend to be old enough that we have successfully worked through and navigated these feelings, and to know that at teens we didn't know our own minds in some respects - like any teens!

But this lived experience is not welcome, the same as our neurotypical TERFy counterparts.

I believe lived experience is an important concept in most spheres when considering minority/disadvantaged groups. Perhaps another baby that will be thrown out with the bathwater because of TRAs batshittery.

I suppose - and tbh I've not considered this before, so thanks for making me think! - it's about the difference between a young autistic person's lived experience, and an older neurotypical person's lived experience. The young person has an insight into being autistic, the older person has more general life experience. Both are relevant in different ways. (And of course the answer is to consult us old wise owl autistic women...! 😉😆)

Do you think it could be something to do with some of the shoutiest people being male, whether they themselves are trans or not?

Autism specialist charities and services do tend to be supportive of LGBT matters, I don't think you'll find what you're looking for.

They are supportive of the T and not necessarily the LGB, else they would be genuinely concerned by the growing numbers of same-sex attracted young people, many of whom are autistic, being led down the conversion therapy route of transgenderism.

It really worries me that vulnerable autistic girls and their families who are looking for support online are so unprotected from what is basically idealogical grooming.

And charity commission should be doing what the government keeps not quite doing with schools, and giving very clear guidance to charities not to proselytise for any ideology to kids

I don't think there is, specifically, but it's not a preoccupation of most of the ASD groups DD and I are associated with.

Our local autism support group has one LGBT+ support group for teens- this is cool as far as I'm concerned because as mentioned upthread ASD can lead to some rigidly 'category' based thinking and I think the most important thing is that young people who are often very socially isolated have somewhere to go they feel they 'fit'.

The issue I think is conflating the 'more kids with ASD/C are trans' with 'more kids with ASD/C are likely to think they may be trans'. And not asking why that might be. It would be interesting to perhaps compare young people who feel very supported in ASD/C friendly environments and those who aren't and are experiencing a range of other distress and cross tabulate that with how many think they are trans.

The 'identity' stuff can get in the bin. Pretty sure my pre teen would identify out of her autism if that's all it took; her life would be 100 times easier.

You could reach out to TransgenderTrend. No specific charities per se to my knowledge but they have worked with women who are brilliant in this area.

This is just gender-critical speak, not everyone agrees with this.

Also interesting to note the OP's daughter has just been diagnosed with autism, and the very first priority OP has is to "find an autism charity that is gender critical".

Literal thinking.

“boys don’t like pink”

”I don’t like pink I just be a boy”.

but also autistic people don’t like change. Becoming a woman is huge change. Feel disgruntled. Don’t like periods. Obvious solution? Be a boy.

etc.

Yeah, this seems to be the case. My cousin, whose daughter is severely autistic, has left all the support groups she was involved with. Gender identity isn't relevant to her daughter, she can't operate at that level, but the kind of backlash for doing things like keeping the house locked so her daughter doesn't go out and play in the road was staggering. And just the general lack of perspective.