Michael Craig at Tavi: Are autism and gender dysphoria linked?

[RethinkingLife]

Thoughtful piece.

For six months during the Covid lockdown, Professor Michael Craig sat in remotely on sessions with patients at the Tavistock gender clinic in London. They were children who were being seen for gender dysphoria, the term used to describe a sense of distress caused by somebody feeling that their biological sex does not match their gender identity. But as Craig watched them pass through he says he was “perturbed” by how many also seemed to have another condition: autism.
“There were certainly some days where I was fairly convinced 40-50 per cent of the patients I was seeing were autistic,” he said. Overall, he estimates about 20 per cent might have qualified for an autism diagnosis.
“I was trying to find out what it is that might explain this overlap, but it’s a difficult area to research for all sorts of reasons.”
…
That the two conditions often seem to occur together was highlighted in a review by Dr Hilary Cass this month, on the state of NHS services for children identifying as trans. One of its recommendations is that children presenting at gender clinics should be screened for neurological conditions, especially autism. “Clinicians report seeing teenage girls who have good cognitive ability and are articulate, but are struggling with gender identity, suicidal ideation and self-harm,” Cass explained. “In some of these young people the common denominator is undiagnosed autism, which is often missed in adolescent girls.”

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/autism-transgender-professor-michael-craig-cass-review-2s9tkn8qz

https://archive.ph/P4WfQ

No surprise. I'm sure it's higher than 20%, more like his original 40-50%.

Does that not fall into the 'no shit, Sherlock' bracket?

Well duh.

I expect the capture of fandom spaces has a lot to answer for, as autistic girls and women are vastly overrepresented on sites like Tumblr and the fanfiction site Archive of Our Own.

And that's without going into possible reasons why autistic girls specifically might be more likely to adopt trans and nonbinary identities.

Although many people already knew about this link, it's good to see it getting in to the press.

For anyone hasn't seen it before, this information from Transgender Trend is very good on it all:

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

I also really like this visual way of describing it for autistic girls:
https://twitter.com/RealityGirlZine/status/1587566678858256394?t=i_gBGSYiRBd76ChabSydMg&s=19

And this is my pinned tweet which looks at ROGD in girls, through the lens of autism:
https://twitter.com/BonfireLady/status/1697126765687099612?t=PrFHCOJKZLI2XGsqSaw0zw&s=19

The issue I'm anticipating is that there is a current trend for people with autism strongly advocating on behalf of the autistic community within many areas of provision for autism. Many of there's people are very into trans identity and ideology.

Hence organisations such as the National Autistic Society have had a number of advisors who are both autistic and identify as trans dominating the discourse for children.

Whilst it's very helpful to mould provision for autistic learners at school thanks to input from autistic adults describing they needed to access learning and support self regulation, some believe strongly in gender identity and ideology and are carrying this through to children. (Though I would also say sometimes it isn't that helpful as every autistic child is an individual and many with early diagnosis also have learning difficulties.)

Many autistic children who are academically able are struggling to attend school or being home schooled as they don't qualify for SEND schools.

I know of a forest school which is now an alternative provision for some of these children; a friend whose child is school refusing has been offered some sessions there. The leaders fully believe in gender identity and openly talk about language and pronouns etc.

It's going to be difficult to shift the current narrative

One:no shit sherlock
Two: he’s a fucking coward. Sat there thinking all that when he is in a position to stand up and be heard, but waits until now.

What I thought.

Exactly this.

I was on a really good parenting course recently, accessed through the council support services. Some of the parents' children were autistic.

In the final session, we were given lots of information about further help. Examples of autism charities for parents' info and autism "meet new friends" groups for children were given. A dad on the course was really interested and said that his socially isolated (and also incredibly intelligent) 14 year old son might want to go along to these, particularly as some of them focus on gaming, which is one of his interests.

I'm getting increasingly braver at speaking up in real life. I was already aware that another parent on the course had an older child who had transitioned ("MtF") so I wasn't going to speak up in front of the whole group. I didn't want to go there. However, I did get chance to take this dad aside and explain why I haven't introduced my daughter to these groups. I also had chance to talk about the links with gaming/anime and the specific risk that this poses to autistic boys his son's age when it comes to being influenced to believe in gender identity.
The conversation went well and he hopefully had some helpful food for thought 🤞

I got a book for my autistic teenage daughter by Siena Castellon. It's mostly very practical advice, however there is a whole chapter on gender which presents the concept of an innate gender identity as fact.
It does actually offer some useful pointers though as to why autistic girls are more likely to identify as trans.

It's a familiar linkage to FWR posters, but I wonder if it's as well known to other people. I like seeing material in the MSM that gets what might be (relatively) niche information out to the rest of the people who need to know.

I have a friend in their early 20s who is surrounded by transitioning friends is autistic (as am I) they are clear that the biggest need for teens is a whole heap more counselling/therapy and to not necessarily refuse PB because else they hit 18 and rush into the whole works.

That is an agenda that needs pushing more funding (he'll knows where from) to counsel these struggling teens, so they get every assessment under the sun and guide them through why they feel like they do and hopefully to acceptance and realisation that changing their bodies isn't required to live in a way that makes them feel happy and "true to self".

Getting ridding of our misogynistic culture of male privilege would help too <<never going to happen>>

*who knows where from!

I think you’d see even stronger evidence of a “link” if you looked in parent support groups and small charities or activities for autistic parents and children. It’s a very real problem for people who need those groups.

The capture is really deep @BonfireLady, I'm really concerned as it's only gaining in speed and growth from what I see.

I teach in a send school and most are autistic; we don't have anyone who is confused about 'gender.' Gender is a social concept. A significant proportion of the children have very limited understanding and concepts of social interaction. Some are pre verbal. Many don't understand symbols and we need to actively teach links between the concrete real world and symbols that can be used to represent them.

The autistic children who are most vulnerable to this are often in mainstream (not always) and have a level of social peer interaction and understanding

On my Puberty Blockers thread there is a link to a potential treatment of autism which was apparently really bad for autistic kids, and yet really good for 'trans' kids.

Guess what it was?

I don't have much time to post so am a being hurried; the other issue I've noticed locally is the merging of inclusion and SEND positions at local universities. Some researchers/ lecturers are giving courses on neurodivergence, inclusion, changing the environment (good) but also including lgbtq as a part of that.

It seems to be so mutually accepted that the actual university led teaching is "how to approach teaching a child with autism and gender diversity. "

Was that the awful experiments they did where they claimed that pb actually "treated" autism?

And then the irony of next big research area in menopause; this paper looks at how autistic women (it's sprinkled with women, people and afab) can have more challenging symptoms than neurotypical women.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/13623613241244548?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0BMQABHbMeBXPBwb5Foc9gfQ-QyLYP1YYatSA7ZM93oN8sPTljnk18alWYWG89wwaemAYhSUubG-1dXyuM3pCupMDctzZWAMrvuZ-ypAiycluwW0AN7Ip7-Rnvjy0YCVj-UEuc

SO HOW THE FUCK CAN THEY ARGUE FOR DELIBERATELY INDUCING MENOPAUSE IN YOUNG AUTISTIC GIRLS

I'm always surprised the estimates of the autism rate in trans people are so low. The prevalence of autistic symptoms in the ones I meet / know about seems much higher.

I wonder what would happen to the numbers if the idea of the "broader autism phenotype" were to be taken into account.

OMG, that's AWFUL!! 😢😡

I missed this as I haven't caught up on the PB thread for quite a while.

Thank you for signposting to it on here @AlisonDonut and for the link @WarriorN

So he admits he noticed and did nothing.

I am also always surprised that it's so low.

I saw a post on X where it was stated that 80% of referrals to gender identity clinics are autistic but it had no link to any source for this so I scrolled past. It stuck in my mind because that sounds very representative of what I'm hearing anecdotally. However, without data it's just opinion, even if it does align with my own.

Yes very much so

". People with autism feel less compulsion to conform to societal norms, he says — an idea also mentioned by Baron-Cohen in his study. “This frees us up to connect more readily with our true gender,” Lawson said."

This idea treats gender identity as a given, and then proposes that there are people who are suppressing their "true" gender identity in order to conform to societal norms.
This idea appears in Castellon's book. My feelings are that it would appeal to the autistic trait of wanting to be "right", in the sense of being more "authentic", of being an individual.
I don't believe there is such a thing as an innate gender identity. There are characteristics of males and females including bodyshape, preferences for play and activities, and that some of these are also associated with autism. Hence Baron-Cohen's "extreme male" theory of autism.
So I think that autistic girls who act more like boys and look more masculine is one factor.

I’m the parent of a 14 year old autistic girl , albeit one who was diagnosed at two . So many resources and groups for girls with autism in particular are drenched with trans ideology, it’s utterly depressing.