@PaladinQuinn
There was a person on there saying that although she contentedly presented as a woman, the voice in her head was male. I don't think she was really aware of the possibilities of being Transgender or NB.

I've learnt a lot about gender myself over the last couple of years on the Fediverse.

@shoutcacophony I somehow suspect that number even higher.

@PaladinQuinn that's what i keep hearing as well, the surveyer was expecting higher percentages based on their own experience. especially for non-cisgender + autistic.

@shoutcacophony although I will do a full post on this but it does once bring up the argument if Autistic people or Autistic Trans People should have their classification under LGBT+.

@PaladinQuinn i definitely agree. both as Autistic people and because autgender, gendervague, etc.

have you seen Lydia Brown's pieces on this?

@shoutcacophony nope would love for a link.

@PaladinQuinn one piece, actually (was thinking of a repost) https://thetaskforceblog.org/2016/06/22/gendervague-at-the-intersection-of-autistic-and-trans-experiences/

@PaladinQuinn i'm sure essentialists and terfs (and probably aspie supremacists) will talk dirt, but whatever, it's not like i haven't seen that time and again for decades. "you don't belong." "we've been here forever, what are you talking about." "<identity policing bs>"

@aredridel go mad

@PaladinQuinn

Gender is a social learning process.

There's a lot of hints that autism often brings a different schema for social learning—much more fact-based, and very direct.

Gender, looked at as facts and direct experience is _wack_. That provides the dysphoria and "this system is broken, how fix?"

@PaladinQuinn

Then add that there's a sex assignment skew among autistic folks. Mostly AMAB. This could be a detection problem, but also hints that there's something perhaps linked to that.

And then there's https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/12/11/diametrical-model-of-autism-and-schizophrenia/

Which I have my skeptic hat firmly on about, but I find a fascinating theory.

@aredridel @PaladinQuinn thank you for putting to words my exact reasoning when I started questioning my gender

@backwardsflow @aredridel big relate although for me Autism kinda held me back knowing if ya know what I mean.

@PaladinQuinn @backwardsflow Oh geez yes. Despite providing a nice path to figuring it out sometimes, it completely screws the external part of the process of gendering.

@PaladinQuinn And then on top of it, if one is hypersensitive to stimulus, Not being expected to be a man and 'tough it out' through a lot might well be a thing.

And as far as I know, I _think_ the stats on autism and trans folks mostly bear toward being trans women, and fewer men. But of course, the effect of hormones and social interaction are pretty wildly varied, so I'd expect that not to be a simple determiner.

@aredridel interesting so it's more Trans Women, hmmm --- @shoutcacophony were you aware of that?

@PaladinQuinn @aredridel wasn't aware, no

*reads replies*

I'm trying to steer clear of hypotheticals getting tied to lived experience and social context, we have enough people theorizing about us, then theories get automagically assumed as facts. example: theory of mind

in terms of stats: i think all the stats are fairly preliminary at this point, but personal and acedotal experience strongly points towards higher than general population numbers

@PaladinQuinn @aredridel as such, i think trans women + autistic vs. trans men + autistic vs. enby + autistic, not sure, because the studies (as opposed to surveys, personal reports, as noted) are definitely a thing, but more like a "ok, hunh. interesting." thing, from what i've seen so far.

otoh, that survey i mentioned

http://autisticnotweird.com/2018survey/

definitely got my attention

@PaladinQuinn @aredridel that has no breakdown of non-cisgender, though, save for the stats on enby + autistic

@shoutcacophony @PaladinQuinn Yeah. My personal circles are skewed toward women these days (they weren't always), and there's a lot larger proportion of trans women / non-binary trans women autistic folks than men and non-binary trans masc folks who are autistic in them. Some sample bias: this is a pretty techie heavy crowd.

@shoutcacophony @PaladinQuinn

But there _is_ a really notably large number of autistic trans women in my circles. It may well be half the trans women I know at this point.

@shoutcacophony @PaladinQuinn another interesting feature is that most of the trans women I know who are autistic _are also really happy being visibly trans_.

It's a culture entirely not based on 'passing' — and in fact, 'passing' may be tied up in neurotypicality, and when you can't or won't do that without major distress, maybe that informs how one goes about being trans.

@shoutcacophony @PaladinQuinn I do say this as a probably-neurotypical non-binary trans woman.

But non-binary in my circles also tends to mean "willing or enjoying being visibly trans or non-conformant". Some really strong overlap there. And that leads to a lot of my thinking about how gender is socially constructed.

@aredridel @PaladinQuinn

there's two things here for me, and they overlap: personal experience as a trans/intersexed/autgendered Autistic woman, and being part of the Autistic self-advocacy community

@aredridel @PaladinQuinn

for the first one? that's both refreshing and, speaking entirely, only for myself, complex, but very possibly because of trauma around transitioning. *not* because i'm uncomfortable living as a woman, but because it's x parts "if i have to choose a box, "woman" is ok as boxes go, and it's definitely better than that *ew* other box" to y parts "lol boxes, i'm an array of gendered arrays" for me.

@aredridel @PaladinQuinn

as for Autistic self-advocacy: again, we have huge problems with non-autistic people making decisions for us. think of what we're up against as a mix of how the gender clinics used to control and police transitioning, mixed with conversion therapy, mixed with prison. that's not including those of us who *are* in prison, btw.

@aredridel @PaladinQuinn

as well as people who would potentially be allies in different communities, are more like Family Research Council, very vocally and with huge operating budgets, state funding, etc.

Autism Speaks = "hellworld PFLAG", for example

@shoutcacophony @PaladinQuinn Geez yes fuck those puzzle piece toting bastards.

@aredridel @PaladinQuinn quite.

@aredridel @PaladinQuinn that said, ethnographic work (including autoethnography), phenomenology, epistemology, and so on -- that's definitely important, too! i think one of the things that's happened to us (and happerns to disabled communities in general) is that we have only recent shared histories, because it wasn't that long ago that the default was to institutionalize us, or worse. (and neither of those have gone away, either.)

@shoutcacophony @PaladinQuinn

I've been thinking a lot about the construction of non-binary identity, and it was the autistic friends who exposed binary gender for the sham it is: it's often nonsense. The other key was agender folks, which I'm quite convinced are two piles:

- folks whose major interactions are de-gendered, possibly autistic
- androgynous people with flexible presentation who muck up the system when it's presented oppositionally

@shoutcacophony @PaladinQuinn

The Xenofeminism manifesto too has a line I think is apt: "Let a hundred sexes bloom!" (http://www.laboriacuboniks.net/#parity/1; CN flashy page)

The process of gendering _is_ more nuanced than 'man' and 'woman' in our culture in the US, too, but it's not simple self-construction and self-identification. Gendering is categorizing. For coupling and relationships. If I have to define it, it's that.

& look at how diverse we build that.

@shoutcacophony @PaladinQuinn

From this, I can definitely see myself gendered 'other, trans'. As more trans folks have come out, I'm more aggressively included in 'woman'. As non-binary people come out, more aggressively gendered 'enby' (which I hate)

I definitely see autistic folks getting gendered as austistic, often, more than 'man' and 'woman'. And I think race gets tied up in there too: people get gendered as "dangerous" and "foreign".

@aredridel @PaladinQuinn that's other thing (and one of the reasons i'm careful to point out the ways non-autistics might/are using trans + autistic against us) -- "you're just saying "i'm trans" because that's the autism talking" is one of the ways that this is already getting weaponized by NT researchers and clinicians, as well as being more relatively benignly examined as part of self-expression/identity in general

@shoutcacophony @PaladinQuinn Yeah. Where my reaction to that is "Yes exactly so treat me with the respect and access to interventions I want!"

But cis and NT clinicians gonna be the people they always were. We have so much work to do.

@aredridel @PaladinQuinn exactly! i completely agree.

@aredridel @PaladinQuinn i'm still learning about the agender community, but that makes sense to me

binary gender is definitely nonsense, i agree. i think gender is one of the more dominant social heirarchies in NT society, so it''s one form of nonsense among several

@shoutcacophony @PaladinQuinn YES ABSOLUTELY.

Gender, race. In some places, class or status in big ways. Occupation.

And gender and race are the most arbitrarily constructed.

@aredridel @PaladinQuinn i think there's such a thing as power analysis, though. just because the construction is arbitrary, that doesn't mean that it's not weaponized and part of capitalism

just have to say that, because it gets twisted into "we're all one", like a greeting card or an ad. occupation, like you said

@shoutcacophony @PaladinQuinn Oh HELL yes.

Just because it's arbitrary doesn't mean we can override it. It's _socially_ constructed not _individually_. We ignore the society we live in at our peril. Those of us who are different know this most of all of course.

It is amazingly weaponized. And the parts of our culture that are into strong enforcement do tons of damage. Hence my anti-authoritarianism.

@aredridel @PaladinQuinn well put, i'm anti-authoritarian as well. :)

@aredridel @PaladinQuinn that's the sort of experience i keep hearing about, yup.

@Codeawayhaley @PaladinQuinn throwing out everything that invokes extreme male brain theory or theory of mind, that wouldn't be the worst thing ever, that's for sure