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?

This is too simplistic.
Society on the whole has reverted to sticking to gender stereotypes more and more over the last 20+ years. A girl with short hair in primary school stands out far more than she would have 20 years ago.
Children’s clothes have become more rigidly boy colour vs girl colour, predators vs prey, be adventurous vs be kind.
To go against these stereotypes is to be different.
Every single story about a trans child or teen highlights the role that harmful gender stereotypes play.

For an autistic teen add in the discomfort of growing up, being different from your peers, the ease in which transitioning is encouraged from “responsible” adults.

As for groups, IME they’re all captured. The autism activist community is small and powerful, if you don’t stick rigidly to their beliefs you’re out. The activist community is quickly showing themselves to be a toxic bunch, but because some of their work is undoubtedly good I think think they truly believe that focusing on the T is the right thing to do, and therefore woe betide anyone questioning it.
There are local, small autism charities or groups that are more about local fundraising and getting parents and/or children together. They’re often lgbt+ friendly but not as in your face about it, it doesn’t tend to be a big focus.

Stereotypes had already become deeply entrenched by 20 years ago. When my now teenager was a very short-haired baby, I was asked several times by strangers why i had dressed "him" up as a girl. (Weirdly less often I was asked why i had shaved her head). By the time she was 3 she preferred shorts or trousers to skirts, and still had short hair. Girls at her pre-school told her she was a boy - while some of this was normal for age, there was an element of little girls repeating what their mothers had said. My daughter became so upset by the (sometimes hostile) questions that she dressed in skirts and refused to have her hair cut for nearly ten years.
When I grew up in England in the seventies it was unusual for girls to have hair past shoulders.

https://www.bayswatersupport.org.uk/

would be my first port of call they helped me.

National Autistic Society would primarily put Autism above gender ideology bollox

Bloody hell! Safeguarding is even more important around autism and disability. I was going to go to that show… 😮

I'm catching up on this thread after a bit of time away from MN (it was our daughter's EHCP annual review meeting and I needed to prep for that).

I absolutely feel your pain on this one. When my daughter had a mental health crisis, she needed support. Every route I looked at took us down a "gender affirming" pathway.

It has taken a LOT of effort and a LOT of conversations but I'm now as confident as I can be that this bias is being kept away from her.

Our entry point in to mental health care was via the CAMHS hospital team in to our local CAMHS team. Initially this did not go well but after a lot of persistence and some very difficult conversations (I wrote an article about it. I'll post a link in another comment in case it's helpful), we managed to make progress. I also found a private counsellor who was open to "gender critical" thinking and had experience in autism. Unfortunately my daughter didn't want to engage with the counsellor... so I held on to the weekly spot by using it for myself as a stopgap.. over a year later and I'm still going there and benefiting from it. The stress relating to this whole issue is incredibly difficult to navigate.

In my experience, the key to unlocking conversations with the private counsellor and all the other agencies and groups that support our family has been a) the document that I use which describes my daughter's vulnerabilities and needs in relation to gender identity belief, autism and puberty and b) the "neutral" approach I take about different beliefs: some people believe that we all have a gender identity, some people don't. And for those that don't, the belief (or fact, depending on your viewpoint) that sex is immutable is important when it comes to safeguarding. I have found it much easier to navigate conversations like this because I'm not saying that "being trans is wrong", I'm saying that I'm very concerned that my daughter is being pulled towards a belief (that "we all have a gender identity") as an explanation for her distress about her changing body during puberty. It sets a foundation for a conversation where gender identity doesn't need to be conflated with mental health and/or autism.

Here's the article that I wrote:

https://www.transgendertrend.com/teenage-gender-identity-crisis/

I'm thinking about starting a thread to share how things are one year on in case it's useful to anyone. Lots has happened since then e.g. I had a fantastic conversation with CAMHS last week (the plan is to transfer the "body disassociation" work related to puberty distress that CAMHS were doing to the school's Occupational Therapy team via the EHCP), which has helped to demonstrate that we're still on track to keep a bias towards gender affirmation out of our daughter's care. She no longer talks about whether she may or may not be a girl but unfortunately she does still talk about wanting to remove her breasts when she's older because "I don't need them". If a gender affirming counsellor or clinician was to hear this phrase from her, I have no doubt that she'd be whisked straight in to an affirmation pathway. Her autism, and the fact that she said she'd also like to amputate her right leg (which she apparently doesn't need either) and the reason she self-harms as a response to anxiety and that her body "doesn't matter" or it's "better that I hurt myself instead of someone else" etc etc would all be lost in a diagnostic overshadowing, to use the term from the Cass Review, of gender identity affirmation.

My goodness BonfireLady what a journey. to your DD and you.
That point you make that puberty distress in an autistic girl should not be conflated with gender identity confusion, is so important.

Puberty is hard for all girls but it is traumatic for autistic girls. I would be interested in this thread.

It’s very useful to know how you coped @BonfireLady with your autistic teen and you seem to have been very on top of it all. Inspiring!

Ah, thank you @Slothtoes and @SingleMum11 . It's not been easy. It feels like a giant puzzle, trying to stay one step ahead of understanding where the bias and influence is coming from, then tackling it in as effective a way as I can. I've taken a more "indirect" route, in so far as I've not told my daughter what to think or that it's "wrong" to believe that everyone has a gender identity. It's a precarious place to be, but so far we're navigating it. I try not to bring the subject up now because she reacts adversely e.g. calling me a transphobe. My response to this is as measured as I can make it e.g. "Just because I don't believe in something, doesn't mean I'm against it. I'm an atheist but I'm not anti-christian". I've also had to tone down the "aren't women awesome" side of things as she was getting fed up of that 😬 But thankfully there are ways to show that more subtly too e.g. we've been to see the Lionesses play at Wembley a couple of times. The key thing for me is maintaining a positive relationship which isn't hyperfocused on gender, whilst (somewhat paradoxically) remaining hypervigilent about the influences of gender identity that surround her. Thankfully I've got a good dialogue with the school now too, at senior leadership level, on how to approach things on a whole school basis, not just her EHCP. It's a slow conversation but it's moving in the right direction all the time.

@VitoCorleoneOfMNMafia I'll have a think about how best to summarise everything and will create a thread. I'm wondering about writing another article as that might be the easiest way. The most important thing I've done, from my point of view, is throw myself wholeheartedly in to understanding what this all means from multiple viewpoints. Including talking to the LGBT community at my work to understand their point of view. Suffice to say, there is a large gap in understanding the conflation of autism and gender identity. Particularly so around girls and puberty. The MN board has been invaluable too. I got involved in lots of debates, covering multiple facets of gender identity and its impacts.

@VitoCorleoneOfMNMafia I found this article helpful when I was researching everything:

https://4w.pub/autism-puberty-gender-dysphoria-view-from-an-autistic-desisted-woman/

Also, this is a brilliant set of cartoons that provides a really useful way of unpicking everything:
https://twitter.com/RealityGirlZine/status/1587566678858256394?t=EZrRXCf6kCwad9zFmIcC5g&s=19

I found that there was a fair bit of overlap in the cartoons and my own thoughts when it came to puberty distress, autism and gender identity. The cartoon format is easier to digest but here's my own pinned tweet in written format:
https://twitter.com/BonfireLady/status/1697126765687099612?t=btW5RE2fdfG92nOv9tjJJw&s=19

If you're not on X let me know and I'll grab some screenshots.

Thank you for sharing the links

Is your more formal advocacy for schools available publicly, I was wondering if Safe schools alliance or TT could make it available as a resource for other parents, it sounds really helpful with so many girls and families going through this.

What I'm doing is very informal, so I don't think it could be captured as a resource as such.
I'm so aware that schools are bombarded by TRA materials, from both within their own staff and on education platforms. So my approach has been to effectively "accept" that as a given and offer an alternative view. I've only used regulated resources (e.g. NHS-commissioned Cass Review, EHRC updated guidance) until we're at a point in the discussions where it's appropriate to bring in materials from Safe Schools Alliance and Transgender Trend etc. From the school's perspective, they need to consider materials from "lobby groups" as potentially biased. Obviously this in itself leads to interesting conversations about the origins of the PHSE materials. It's a long conversation but it builds.
Transgender Trend has some fantastic resources on the conflation of autism and gender identity. I was able to discuss all of this with the head of the autism unit pretty early on compared to my general conversation with the SLT. Mostly because everything started there, with the conversations specifically about my daughter's EHCP.

I'm conscious that I still don't want to derail this thread as none of the above is directly linked to autism charities. But on that theme, the reason I walked away rather than stuck with the same type of conversation there is that they are not regulated in the same way as schools. As flimsy as the current statutory DfE guidance is for schools, at least it's there. That's what makes my conversations possible. There is no such regulation on autism charities. As far as I'm concerned they are a lost cause, which is a massive shame, and I will give them a wide swerve. That said, I may take a look at the FB group that's been mentioned in this thread. It's reassuring to hear that it exists.

NC for this. I work for a small autism support charity in the UK. Officially the organisation is very pro trans ideology. There are a few very strident TRA types among staff, and others who are vaguely supportive. But I reckon there are equal numbers of those who would probably be classed as Terfs. Usually the older women. Of course the TRAs are the ones who can bang on about it openly at work.

Staff have signposted to Mermaids and Stonewall fairly recently. I would never do this but I also wouldn't be able to signpost them to the GC or less affirmative organisations. If I was put in that position I would have to pass it to someone else.

I do try and push back gently in ways I can without losing my job. I've been testing the waters. I'm mentally preparing myself for something to come up where I morally feel obliged to speak up, that hasn't happened yet. I'm hoping things will change before I end up losing my job over it. Been here a couple of years.

The gender critical autistics facebook group is fantastic. There are a lot of autistic people who see the harm this is doing to their community but have been terrified into silence.

Got a link for the FB group by any chance ?

I'm glad I've come across this thread. My 10 year DD whom I suspect to have ASD often says she would love to be a boy because it seems 'easier' ( she has trouble with female friendships, is scared about starting periods etc).She has no access to TRA content online currently, but I worry for the years ahead.

I'm autistic myself and gc as they come (degrees in Women's Studies etc). I've noted there seems to be a strong connection between the trans community and autism so it's quite isolating. I had some counselling to work through my late diagnosis with someone who advertised they specialised in that area and was practically shushed for hinting about my beliefs. Worrying.

This is such a positive post to read. I can imagine it's very difficult to navigate this, and potentially upsetting at times if you're seeing vulnerable children being signposted towards something that could lead to harm.

I wonder if the NHS will set up a SEEN network, in the same way as the police did last month (and the civil service before them). Although autism charities aren't in the NHS, CAMHS is. The ripple effect of this kind of change would help anyone who is working in an autism charity who is "GC".

(Only reason for the quote marks is that I'm not personally a fan of GC as a term, but it serves a purpose and I don't have the inclination to find a better term. It will do).

Here's the civil service one:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/civil-service-staff-networks/seen-network

Also a screenshot from the FAQs below.

I believe not.

Autism charities will be inclusive and supportive of all.

If gender-critical autistic people like myself are excluded, then by definition, the charities cannot be "inclusive of all".

This is simple logic.