Autism, Transmasculine Identity, and Invisibility
The following post was originally published on Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism on February 26, 2018:
Everyone in my life knows that I’m transgender. Comparatively, very few people know about another major part of me: that I’m autistic.
At age twenty-one, I’ve come to understand that many of my young adult years have centered around trying to bridge the gap between my two ways of being: The way that I present myself to the world, and the way that I perceive who I am. I imagine that someday, hopefully soon, those two components of my life won’t feel far apart. And hey, sharing this essay might even help.
I realized I was trans when I was fifteen, but just a year before had come a revelation of similar scale and importance to me; my diagnosis of Asperger’s syndrome (which is now referred to as Autism Spectrum Disorder.) I experience many symptoms or “traits” of ASD, and I won’t mention all of them here, but it’s worth saying that my traits are not obvious to the untrained eye. Underneath the mask, though, lies a deep unsureness of how to regulate social interaction. To cope, I copy, or “mirror” other people in order to appear more socially fluent and less awkward. And it works. Many people close to me might say that I “blend in” very well, in more ways than one.
Now that I’ve been on testosterone hormone replacement therapy for close to three years now, my voice is deeper, my jaw is squarer, and I even have a bit of facial hair. When I tell people that I was assigned the sex “female” at birth, they often say something to the effect of “I would have never guessed!” This is typically meant as a compliment, but to me, it feels patronizing.
In an eerily parallel way, people react very similarly when I disclose to them that I’m autistic. In both scenarios, the disbelief is caused by the preconceived notions of what it “looks like” to be transgender or autistic. I credit the testosterone as the reason I am not read as female, and to some degree, I credit my socialization as a reason I am not perceived as autistic.
Professionals who diagnose Autism Spectrum Disorder are, in general, proficient at recognizing autistic traits in males. After all, the original model for autism was based on studies of mostly young boys. Some doctors are still catching up to being able to recognize such traits in girls and women, but people are becoming increasingly aware that autism presents itself differently in girls than in boys. For example, autistic girls are more likely than boys to be masters of “social camouflage,” which masks their traits of ASD.
So, where do I fit into this framework as a transmasculine person? Yes, I identify as more male than female. However, I lived the first eighteen years of my life as a girl, and so I believe many of my ways of interacting with the world are byproducts of being socialized as female. But when I walk into my doctor’s office, they will likely overlook the significance of my history because they see that I now present as male, despite having a lot of learning experience in the world as a girl.
I’m the same degree of socially clumsy and unsure as when I was presenting as female, yet doctors who are new to my case and doctors who don’t know me well are less likely to agree with my diagnosis. Doctors will commonly overlook my noticeable lack of eye contact and my significant difficulties with Sensory Processing Disorder (which is a common co-occurring condition in autistic people) or severely under-appreciate just how utterly exhausting it is for me to engage with others. Maybe they don’t understand how much my executive dysfunction holds me back. Maybe they don’t believe me when I tell them that when I’m alone, I often flap my hands when I get excited as a means of expression, or that I rock back and forth when I’m focused on something. All of these experiences are very real to me, and yet they seem invisible to so many medical professionals, simply because I don’t outwardly appear to check all the boxes while I’m sitting across from them.
In addition to feeling unheard and unseen, my autistic traits are sometimes swept under the clinical rug and regarded as symptoms of conditions such as depression or severe social anxiety. I suppose it’s an easy enough mistake to make, but such a misunderstanding of my neurotype can lead to misdiagnosis, which could potentially then cause doctors to prescribe medicine and recommend treatments that may do more harm than good.
After receiving handfuls of labels from the DSM as well as literally dozens of unsuccessful psychiatric medications over the years, I’ve learned that much of the way I am is not something to be treated with various therapies and pills. This is not to say that autistic individuals cannot experience things like depression or anxiety which may be very much relieved via therapy and/or medication. I have simply realized that in my specific situation, the best route from here forward is perhaps to make peace with and embrace the qualities that set me apart from neurotypicals, or those who don’t experience neurological differences.
The intersection of being both autistic and transgender is more common than one might think. While the dialogue around autism and gender identity is expanding, I have a bit of trouble figuring out where I fit into the whole picture. So, I decided to do my own research, and while this subject is a fairly new field of study, I found some pretty astounding statistics:
In 2014, a U.S. study of 147 children (ages 6 to 18) diagnosed with ASD found that autistic participants were 7.59 times more likely to express gender variance than the comparison groups. Another study, conducted in the UK in 2015, involved 166 parents of teenagers with Gender Dysphoria (63% were assigned female-at-birth.) Based on parents’ report of their children on the Social Responsiveness Scale, the study found that 54% of the teenagers scored in the mild/moderate or severe clinical range for Autism.
The relationship has only begun to be explored in research in recent years, but I’ve come to realize that there are a lot of autistic trans people out there in the world. As someone who very much values human connection and simultaneously struggles with it, I have to say that looking at those figures provided me an amount of comfort. I discovered that there are a lot of people just like me.
Being autistic and being transgender certainly each has their own respective challenges, though one that they share is a lack of societal acceptance due to stigma. Many people still believe that who I am as a transmasculine person is inherently invalid, just like many other people still believe autism is some kind of tragedy that is to be cured. In contrast, I feel very strongly that who I am as a person is heavily dependent on both my trans and autistic identities, and that they are beautiful things.
I would not be the person I am today if I did not have the incredible perspective that being transgender as well as being autistic has given me. My worldview has been altered by these two factors in particular in ways that I consider enlightening. Sure, I have tough days. But would I exchange all that I am in return for the promise of a simpler, more typical life? Most definitely not. Because after all, I’ve found that one of the best things about being dealt a different hand of cards is the unambiguous and fulfilling joy that is learning to accept oneself wholeheartedly.
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