The Science of Autism & Gender Dysphoria (with @NOAHFINNCE) | Sci Guys Podcast #176

Autism and Gender Dysphoria seem to have some link that scientists have yet to crack, but our Patrons tasked us with getting to the bottom of this. So NoahFinnce, the fifth Sci Guy, joins us this week as we discuss the relationship between being autistic & being trans...

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[SciGuys]

Are you autistic? Do you have gender dysphoria?

[rockinrobin]

For me, the day I thought to myself "screw masking, I'm never going to be a normie anyway, " was also the day I realized I'm not cis.

[freshestavacado]

I have autism and am non-binary, but instead of normal gender dysphoria, I get almost exclusively social dysphoria from not looking like the person I truly am. I don't like that people perceive me the way they do, which includes people not seeing me as non-binary. So if I were with myself only, I wouldn't experience any dysphoria at all because there's nobody there to perceive me "wrong".

Edit: I do get some gender euphoria though when I'm alone by looking myself in the mirror and I'm able to see a glimpse of myself.

[zsuzsisz]

I think a really cool way of thinking about being neurotypical and neurodivergent is like being right handed or left handed. It's not a defect or some weird add on, but it's still harder to be a lefty in some cases because our world is set up for right handed ppl. Yes it is harder to use right handed scissors if you are left handed but it's not because your hands are not working

[Hyzentley]

As an autistic person (I think cis but not fully sure) this transphobic idea of autistics being to dumb and incompetent to even know their own gender makes me so angry, but also I hate how little this is talked about

[he.said.teenjiejer]

45:18 i think it’s worth noting that the “demigods have adhd because they’re battle-ready” thing definitely wasn’t born of science, it was just the author giving demigods adhd because his son has adhd and he wanted him to relate to them

[tal]

I have autism and adhd and im a trans guy so I'm so excited to listen to yall talk about this because it's something I just love. trans autistic ppl are awesome

[Johnny_T]

I'm autistic and trans, I also have ADD. I always thought that the reason why lots of autistic people are trans is because we don't typically have the urge to fit in socially, or to mimic what we see in others as much.
As we tend to be better on our own since childhood, we might be less permeable to norms in general, and have a very personal sense of self, including gender. There simply isn't any incentive strong enough to force an autistic child to do something if it makes them uncomfortable, hence the impression that we are socially inept.
I would rip my skirts and dresses up, until my mom stop trying to make me wear them, I didn't care how I looked in public with a tattered dress, just didn't care about what others think.
I think that's the thing : we don't mold ourselves to please others. And... Cupcake!

[greengreysolarpunk]

Something as an autistic trans person that has always stood out to me as a reason we may be more likely to identify as trans is that we simply don’t understand *why* gender is considered how it is. Something that I (and most neurodiverse people I know) have always done is question why I have to do/be certain things. For me, I’ve never really internalized gender as something that matters, and I’ve always felt really weird about being given “roles” to play because of perceived gender. But I never really understood and social things, so I thought it was just that and performed my gender a little to the left of what the other girls did. That didn’t stop me from wondering why we had to go to specific bathrooms or why the boys were told to do things I wasn’t or why people cared about having friends of your own gender. It was only in my teenaged years that I was able to accept that I’m neurodivergent and trans, and because of that I haven’t held back questioning social things anymore, because I shouldn’t be ashamed of being different and wondering why I’m not accepted in the normal.

[nefree]

Here’s my question/theory. As a Non-Binary person who also suspects that they are nurodiverse… could the fact that in general Trans people are very self aware and aware of how they feel in their body that they are therefore more likely to notice neurological differences to others? Because a large amount as being a trans person, for me, was self discovery and identifying how I feel in society

[thebutterfly]

Woman aspie here! I’ve been taking my time thinking through my gender for the past few months, and I think the reason I haven’t been able to settle in being a “woman” despite being female is largely due to the never ending messaging about how/what a woman should be like. I never felt insecure in of myself, but rather had a hard time navigating gender as a social construct because the criteria for “woman” vary so wildly. Learning about gender and exploring your own gender is never the issue - it’s being forced to navigate it based on others’ terms

[ferndoesart]

I’m autistic and experienced gender dysphoria through my teenage (13-17) years (though luckily not anymore). I no longer ID as trans, and don’t really comprehend the idea of gender or anything like that, and just express myself physically how I feel on the day as just “me”. I dress gender non conforming regularly and for me autism definitely affects my perception of gender in myself and others.
Reminder to everyone that being trans, queer, autistic, neurodivergent etc. is beautiful and you deserve love!

[anatomy_antonym]

1:07:20 this almost makes it seem like being autistic doesn’t mean you’re more likely to be trans, it just means you’re more likely to be out

[LeoEelis]

I am trans and I have ADHD and I am on the spectrum. I am 42, I started my transition socially 1, 5 years ago, and now I finally have my first appointment with the gender clinic in December (long, long waiting list). When I started to accept my transness, I started to pretend less, and more myself I was, more "symptoms" came about form the neuro side. I can see now, looking back my life, I was trans and I had these neuro-issues all my life, but the will and need to fit in was so incredibly strong, that I did all I could to escape any more labels ( I was heavily bullied at school). More than anything I am just angry. Not a single adult in my life wanted to know how I was, and tried to understand my behaviour. I would have had so much easier life, if I'd had the support I needed. Now, at the ripe age of 42 I have to learn myself completely new.

[ryn]

Thanks for mentioning the intersection of ableism and transphobia there. My gender therapist thinks I can't know myself because I'm aut!stic and I mask.

[chargremlin]

8:06 funnily enough, this IS my first Sci Guys episode and I decided to have a listen bc I'm autistic and non-binary. and the banter in this first 8 minutes was enough to make me subscribe, so that's your answer there

EDIT: also now that I've gotten to this part of the video, THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR ADDRESSING THE ABLEISM AND TRANSPHOBIA AROUND TRANS AND AUTISTIC PPL. it's gotten so bad to the point that any mention of "oh a lot of trans people are autistic" puts my guard up, and I even went into this video with a lot of caution because of that. I'm fairly certain my autism has a lot to do with me being non-binary, because I feel like I'm on an entirely different playing field gender-wise. like I have ascended society's view of gender. but that doesn't mean I'm a poor little child who can't think for themself and can't tell what gender they are. I know what I want and how I feel just fine

[gremli]

Probably the most respectful discussion of autistic people i've heard yet on the internet by allistics (sorry if that assumption is wrong tho, im a first time viewer and it seems like other than noah they're all allistic?). Just wow, the amount of times I was about to add something in my head and then it was said made me feel so happy and so so seen. I'm autistic, so its great to see such a great discussion about it. I rarely watch podcasts but I sat through this whole thing. Never knew about this podcast before (I came bc i saw Noah and kinda knew of him), but I'm defintiely checking you all out now. :))) Again, best discussion i've seen about autistics in a good while, even down to exact terminology being used, identity first wording by the head-person of the discussion, and even discussing the details of the autistic experience. tysm!! 💛

[spoilsofthedead]

Also!! To add to the convo around 44:16 I once saw a post somewhere talki g about while mental health was terribly taken care of in the “olden days” a lot of people wouldn’t be biased or care about autistic/ADHD people existing because they would be things like farm hands just working the fields and such and I believe a paraphrased quote from the post was “oh him? That’s Jeff, he doesn’t talk much and is a little odd, but he can pick 80 beans a minute and is great at checkers”
This ramble is mainly to contribute to the fact that a lot of autism symptoms are negative effects of modern society (meltdowns, sensory overload, burnout, etc.) so back in the day when those things weren’t really present, not only did people not think to diagnose people, there wasn’t really a need to.
Obviously there was still a ton of horrible things being done and that wasn’t always the case, but in little pockets of the world people just worked along side each other with differences.

[MidnightEkaki]

This is a perfect and timely episode. Just the other day I was talking with my mum and therapist about my gender dysphoria and my mum bought up the idea of testing to see if I was autistic because apparently that would explain my social dysphoria. I was feeling quite frustrated about that, because gender dysphoria is not a symptom of autism. I hope that I am able to communicate to her that so she doesn't discount and ignore my feelings of dysphoria.

[cryptidflower]

I loved the discussion about subjects and categories because it’s something I’ve been contemplating for a while. In my opinion, the way we are taught subjects in schools doesn’t really “work.” It’s all too isolated, and after a while those gaps create disconnects that the curriculum will have to account for; you can’t learn advanced biology without a certain level of math skills, you can’t properly analyze a non-fictional text if you don’t know the historical context.
It’s easier to test students if subjects are taught categorically, but I think a much better (and long lasting) understanding would be easier to achieve if that type of teaching wasn’t as normalized.