#dysphoric autistic culture is

[spiderfreedom]

I honestly owe detrans people, and especially detrans women, so much, because reading about their experiences has taught me a lot about... well, everything? About myself and my own trauma re: femaleness, autism. About the factors that lead people to transition. About resilience and moving forward and making a life for yourself in a world where there's no space for you.

Some of my favorite writings from detrans people:

somenuancepls (Michelle Alava, active on substack) has multiple great posts, especially on resilience and growth for detrans people. I recommend "Actually I was just crazy the whole time" (on the mindset that leads medical transition to be viewed as a panacea), "We Shouldn't Have to Be Here" (on how detrans people are expected to act as martyrs) and "Let's Talk About How We Talk About Detransition" (on how to ethically and compassionately talk about transition and detransition without harming (de)/transitioners).

destroyyourbinder (no longer active) has so many amazing posts that I really can't list them all, but "Unriddling the Sphinx: Autism and the Magnetism of Gender Transition" was genuinely revelatory for me as a gender non-conforming autistic woman. (It also kinda sent me spiraling for a few days so if you are also an autistic gnc, read with caution)

funkypsyche has been writing a lot about 'woke' culture in a way I don't agree with, but "The Archetypal FTM Sensitive, Quirky, Artistic Weird Girls" (on the type of people attracted to transmasc identification and the ways society fails them - do you see also see yourself in this list?) is a good read. As a supplement, there is "The History of Tumblr: Gender and Woke Indoctrination, Video Essay", and if you can get through the parts about, well, 'woke indoctrination', it provides a perspective on tumblr and its relationship to mental illness and gender. You do not realize how much mental illness is normalized and glorified on tumblr until you see someone explaining it from the outside and you go "huh, I did not realize that happens and that I do that, too..."

Max Robinson wrote "Detransition: Beyond, Before, and After", the only academic text on detransition to my knowledge. An in depth view on factors influencing transition such as lesbophobia, and the relationship between gender dysphoria and body dysmorphia and how the latter is treated as frivolous and vain while the former is treated as profound and serious.

And there are a lot of tweets I've collected I can't really link here, there are many detransitioners on Twitter. I really do recommend reading a broad variety of detransitioned people, detrans women and men. Even read people who retrans like CrashChaosChats, who once wrote on detransition but then retransitioned after finding that she was unable to deal with dysphoria. If you actually care about dysphoric people, trans people, and detrans people, you need to read broadly to understand the full range of reasons people transition or detransition or retransition.

Feel free to reblog with your additions of writings by detrans people, or people you follow on Twitter or other social media if they don't have long-form content.

[dykeulous]

about me.

hello! i am apollo and i am aspiring to be an author and an activist someday. i come from a small, underdeveloped “post-socialist” country. i hope my blog will be helpful to everyone, and i try to be as open-minded on most topics as i can be. this is how i would describe myself:

i am a butch lesbian with heavy sex (& social) dysphoria. i would refer to myself as transmasc, and i am still very much trans-identified, as dysphoria has caused me much trouble over my formative years, and it has been making my life a true agonizing hell :)). i approach trans issues with sensitivity and criticism. i try my best not to be black-and-white about things; and i always try to be well-informed before speaking on anything. i love gender acceleration, and i would describe my views as gender critical. i am explicitly anti-racist, anti-capitalist & anti-imperialist. my views align with marxist feminism/proletarian feminism & radical feminism– which is why i would describe myself as a dual system feminist. my analysis & beliefs come from dialectical materialism, rather than idealism, which is why i’ve found myself in opposition with most trans rights activists. i am for abolishing the prison system, and i believe rehabilitation should be the goal, rather than punishment. drug addicts & recovering addicts have a special place in my heart ❤️‍🩹. i’m not vegan, but i appreciate & love all my ecofeminist sisters: i try my best to be vocal about animal liberation & climate activism. i believe the bpd diagnosis is being hyper-sold to female people, and this is because of medical misogyny & institutional sexism– it is being used as new age female hysteria. oh, and i’m also autistic. i love autistic women, and i wholeheartedly want to smash medical misogyny whenever i see how my neurodivergent sisters are being treated. 🇵🇸 FROM THE RIVER TO THE SEA PALESTINE WILL BE FREE!!!

my special interest is gender abolition (i’m very very passionate about this!!!) and marxist politics. my current hyperfixations are harry potter (i’m a slytherin 🐍), greek mythology & mbti. i unironically use the word kinnie; my highest kins are severus snape, twilight sparkle and diane nguyen. i love punk rock music, and i love riot grrrl. ask me about ww2, i used to be very hyperfixated on it last year– i reviewed a lot of ww2-themed movies critically & pointed their historical revisionism out. i am a slavic patriot by heart, and will punch a westerner who chooses to ignore our beautiful history. tito, lenin, che guevara, rosa luxemburg apologist. also i’m very interested in soviet history (the night witches are so fascinating!!), north korean culture & cuban cuisine.

if you wish to block me, go ahead. if you don’t, cool. i don’t block people, i allow a wide range of people to interact, and quite frankly, i think dni lists are useless. won’t hold back if you’re going to attack me. will engage in respectful arguments, and also will engage in disrespectful arguments, with the same energy you give me.

check out @pokegyns! it’s a group blog modded by nuancefem discord server members, owned by our precious pikalay @tirfpikachu.

links to some of the posts of mine i find quite useful for people who are going to hate-scroll through my blog, and also for people who are interested in radical feminism, but are scared we’re a hate group.

1. My Thoughts on Intersex People, Transitioned Trans Women & Transitioned Trans Men, My Addition to a Trans-Positive Feminist’s Post, Are Trans Women Privileged?

2. Feminist Praxis & Tactics: Separatism VS Proletarian Feminism, My Personal Critique of Radical Feminism

3. Transmedicalists VS Queer Theorists

4. Listen to Dysphoric Voices

5. What is Gender?

6. The Word “Cis”

[tempestgnostic]

The Werewolf: Archetype and Identity

Someday I’ll make a list of my alterhuman and otherhearted identities, but I’m not sure when that will be. For now, I’ll just talk about the the most prominent one: The Werewolf. I capitalize the name for both its significance and the fact that it’s an archetypal identity, so to speak. (I also use he/him throughout this essay, simply because I’m speaking of The Werewolf in relation to myself, and as myself.) I’m not a specific werewolf in any sense, and I’m not drawn from just one piece of folklore, or even one broad interpretation. It’s much bigger than that. Of course, explaining all the finer details would require an essay, and time is at a premium nowadays. Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit, and tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes, I will be brief. Pay no attention to the appropriately-timed readmore.

Let’s look at an example of what I mean: the eponymous baron in Bisclavret is a specific werewolf, but he’s also one of many depictions of The Werewolf as a somewhat noble being who is wronged by others—in this case, his wife—as a consequence of his true nature. This “noble beast” interpretation can be contrasted with folk tales of feral werewolves who threaten villagers and fear neither torch nor blade. Werewolves aren’t solely monsters meant to inspire empathy or fear, however. They can also serve specific literary functions, often as symbols of broader concepts and experiences. The werewolf story can be used as a metaphor for a young person coming-of-age, a challenging tale of tangling with the darker aspects of human nature, or even as an exploration of queer identity and the liminal spaces we occupy. These are certainly not unique to werewolves, and the latter is especially common among other creatures embraced by the horror genre.

Each broad interpretation of The Werewolf feels to me like a part of my identity on some level. I’m the werewolf who feels guilty for the harm he’s done, who tries to resist his feral urges, but I’m also the one who embraces that side and indulges in it. I’m the werewolf who was born this way, the one who was blessed (or cursed) by some spirit or deity, but also the one who was bitten or scratched—forever changed out of cruelty, indifference, or even a dark perversion of love. The only bits of werewolf folklore I won’t engage with on some level are those from practices and cultures that are closed for me. They’re not mine to claim on any level—certainly not in any way that would be respectful.

Like so many in our community, my connection to The Werewolf is intricately intertwined with almost all other aspects of my identity. I’m genderqueer, yet I strictly use he/him pronouns. I have a beard—a thick one, at that—and a flat chest, yet I also identify myself as butch and sapphic. It’s been uniquely gender-affirming for me to have partners who identify as lesbians—to be fully seen and understood as butch. It would feel incredibly uncomfortable and even dysphoric for me to be with a straight woman. Even within queer spaces, at times I feel either gravely misunderstood or utterly invisible. I am, on some level, expected to conform, and my refusal to do so marks me at best as ‘confused,’ and at worst as a threat.

I embrace the androgyny in my voice and mannerisms, and I easily—often unintentionally—slip into different social presentations depending on who’s around me. (I’m also autistic, to no one’s surprise.) Code-switching comes naturally to me, likely as a result of having to cobble together adequate social skills over the course of a decade, but also as a matter of safety as a queer person who’s only ever lived in red states. The Werewolf is a liminal creature, existing in several different worlds at once and moving through them with varying levels of ability. I am no different—charming and quick to make friends when I know the social landscape, and terribly awkward and clumsy when I don’t.

In the interest of keeping this even remotely readable in one sitting, I’ll wrap this up here. The Werewolf can be a charismatic yet dangerous lover, a pitiful and wretched thing, a creature just beyond the veil of understanding, or even a kindred spirit. I am and have been all of these things, both in my external life and my mind’s inner world. I experience phantom and mental shifts, and I see myself in so many depictions of werewolves in media. This part of my identity plays a vital role for me in kink—though I’ll save the details for a properly 18+ post—in my relationship dynamics, in my pagan spirituality, and many other parts of my life. It fits neatly over my gender expression like a second skin and provides a backdrop for my social presence. I am The Werewolf As Archetype: a being representing liminality, transformation, and embracing authenticity—at any cost. It is a vital part of me, without which I would cease to be.

[ndcultureis]

undiagnosed autistic afab non-binary culture is having all the symptoms of autism in girls which feels dysphoric and wrong because you're not a girl :(

.

[radtoken]

call me van(ya). autistic, rad-leaning feminist and anarcho-communist. poc. 20 years old.

i'm a dysphoric butch who is currently discontinuing testosterone. any pronouns, no gender. i include all females in my feminism, no matter what they choose to identify as.

transsexual-tolerant but still critical about current transgender culture. i generally respect preferred pronouns but i do not use them for creeps or criminals. i tend to use "it" for men, simply because they are subhuman and annoying (joking.... for the most part). if any of that upsets you, this ain't the blog for you.

I will also reblog non-radfem stuff/my other interests.

this blog is safe for crypto-radfems and those who are just interested in radical feminism! Feel free to dm :)

Males need not follow.

I include trigger warnings in tags for pedophilia (#tw pedophilia), sexual assault/rape (#tw sexual assault), and abuse (#tw abuse). I also tag usage of the word queer (#tw q slur).

My opinion on...

Medical transition for adult TI people

"Consent" in sex work/porn

Reclaiming "queer"

Commonly Used Tags

#tims gonna tim | self-explanatory

#yapping | personal opinions/posts

#⚢ | lesbian posting

#resource | radfem resources like pdfs, print-outs, etc!

#van's book club | talking about books (NEW!)

[dimyristoylphosphatidylcholines]

INTRO

My name is Ollie/Oliver. I use he/she pronouns but I like he/him better. I'm 18. I'm now going to talk about myself.

I'm autistic. I'm medically diagnosed but I don't think that self-diagnosis is invalid like that's stupid what.

I am transmasculine and nonbinary. Very socially dysphoric and somewhat body dysphoric, but I love my tig ol manbitties.

I'm a lesbian. I will call myself a dyke a whole lot, but I'll tag that so dw.

I love love love love worms! The classic earthworm is my favorite.

I'm a theatre kid and proud of it.

I like MLP, Teen Titans, Owl House, Don't Hug Me I'm Scared, and SpongeBob.

I also love shitty reality TV. 90 Day Fiance, RuPaul's Drag Race, and Hell's Kitchen my beloved.

My favorite musicians are My Chemical Romance and Fall Out Boy, but I also enjoy Green Day, Weezer, Arctic Monkeys, Jack Off Jill, System Of A Down, The Dresden Dolls, Meet Me @ The Alter, Paramore, and Foo Fighters!

Bigots of any kind get off my blog. You're not and will never be welcome.

My favorite movies are But I'm A Cheerleader, Shrek, Shrek 2, and Heathers.

I read Danger Days comics and Sparklecare Hospital.

I ate cringe culture and puked it out.

[questioning-aspec-culture-is]

Questioning aspec culture is not knowing whether your aromantic and/or asexual, or youre too autistic to enjoy the allistic form of flirting/romantic relationship, or youre too dysphoric to enjoy a romantic relationship rn, or all of the above

<3

[trans-disabled-culture-is]

Trans disabled culture is having joint pain that could be anywhere from nonexistent to keeping you awake at night, knowing you'd probably be diagnosed with SOMETHING if you were cis, and also feeling dysphoric because your posture is so bad because you have tits, even though you know that isn't the only reason and your posture is odd because you're in pain and autistic. And feeling bad about even considering that a mobility aid such as a cane could possibly help you because you feel like a faker. Maybe just me though

Trans disabled culture!

[sweetrays]

About me: 

Just call me by my username I don't like using real names anymore

(bisexual transsexual male & 2 yrs on T) 

I write novels, short stories, and fanfiction

I draw novel illustrations and favorite characters

I'm autistic and therefore can be perceived  a little bit strange 

My dominant special interest fandom wise is Peter Pan stories. (Hook is my absolute favourite Peter Pan movie. You'll mostly see me talking about the character Rufio) 

I liked OUAT Peter Pan for a little while last year but it's not my thing anymore 

My other special interest is historical (mostly 19th century) fashion

A quick heads up:

I enjoy NSFW art, but I don't post any. There might be some reblogging of that here occasionally. 

A lot of the fanfictions I post are openly based off- have some sort of connection to my somewhat disturbing fetishes that involve characters dying or being hurt

I know some might not be comfortable with that.

If you'd like to be my friend please just skim through the readmore just in case you find my opinions distasteful. If you do, just block me I don't want trouble

My Internet Discourse Opinions

Stupid but very important in order to avoid ugly confrontations nowadays 🙁

"Proshipping" 

-the good pure holy shipping vs. icky yucky nasty evil creepy freak shipping stuff is bullshit. If you give me/a mutual shit over FICTIONAL ship your ass is getting blocked cause that's just a whole nother level of ridiculous. I do not condone the bullying and harassment that is so common in 'woke' fandom culture nowadays. It is disgusting that people are throwing around paraphilic accusations and words like p**o at innocent fanfiction authors who are just enjoying characters with no real malicious intentions. 

I come across ships on ao3 that absolutely disgust me on a day to day basis, even so, the last thing I'd want to do is be mean to the author/anyone who enjoyed that ship. That's because the author has just as much a right to write about just as I have the right to be uncomfortable. No character ship is illegal and people are allowed to be as gross or weird as they like as long as it remains fictional (which in 99.99% of cases no one is actively trying to encourage and/or normalising pairing that would be illegal irl) That's never how fandom, art, or fiction has ever worked. If you think otherwise, all I'm saying is you have some serious issues and you need help. 

When I write an age gap pairing I don't parade my fic around going "EVERYBODY START DATING YOUR FATHER!!" I tag with many warnings to avoid upsetting people who would be opposed to reading it + add a disclaimer explaining how I do not support such things in real life situations because I don't and neither does anyone else who ships 'problematic' things. 

Transgender discourse (neopronouns, etc) 

As a transgender male myself, I don't care what pronouns someone uses or what gender they claim to be. I am pro-block anti-harassment when I see someone I disagree with. 

However, I do block quite liberally when I see people saying that transgenderism is possible without dysphoria. Because it is not. Being trans is not a choice. Dysphoria is the cause of being trans. Even if it's just a tiny bit of dysphoria you are still valid. If you're a feminine presenting trans male, that is fine, if you're a masculine presenting trans female, that's fine too because even if you're trans you absolutely do not have to abide by society's confining gender stereotypes. 

But, if you are feminine presenting non-dysphoric afab going by he/him or a masculine presenting non-dysphoric amab going by she/her. That is not transgender. You just picked different pronouns. Which again, I don't care about the pronouns thing so whatever, but just please don't call that transgender because my brother in Christ, we are not the same. 

Therefore please leave me alone if: 

You have some sort of weirdly obsessive morality/legality bias against people minding their own business with character shipping in fandom

OR

Think that being trans is a choice. 

Thats all, have a nice day. Don't forget to block if you don't like me lol.

[some-teeth-in-a-trench-coat]

I think if I were to remake that poll I would condense and limit the trans and nd options to "experiencing dysphoria, dysmorphia, or dissociation" for starters to include nonbinary folks and dissociative disorders more explicitly and I guess also shave off experiences that I suspect are less related to one's relationship to one's body (though I myself am dysphoric and don't know what being a nondysphoric trans person is like so I might be wrong about that part). Additionally I would try to redefine the "tool" vs "part of me" binary as more about "my body is a random circumstance of my existence and I am not defined by it" vs "my body is part of my identity and I wouldn't fully be me if my brain/consciousness/soul were in a different body" (though obviously I wouldn't fit that in the poll options I'd have to shorten it but like explain what it's short for).

If possible I'd also include a factor of physical disability/illness since a lot of people have shown that's a big part of their reason. Several stories about "my body tried to kill me it's my enemy" and similar. Idk how to condense that into nine options still leaving room for "other" (even though some people really can't read and think there's nothing to vote for if they don't fall into my oversimplified binaries) but I don't wanna try because I liked when I could read my notes in real time. Not putting myself through that again especially since the poll isn't even over. MAYBE after it's dead I'll try again.

[somekindafairy]

thinking about how much of the perception of gender feels like a performance. wondering what it means to be a man once you strip away biological essentialism and the performance of masculinity.

maybe i would be less dysphoric if i put more effort into my performance. thinking about the idea of it "coming naturally" like men and women "naturally" behave differently and how that maps on to how people perceive trans people. or what it means to "feel" like a man or a woman to others, as if that isn't intimately connected to cultural gender preformance. or that your ability to master said performance proves something innate about you.

thinking about being autistic and having to learn a new script whole cloth when i barely (read: not at all) managed the first one, wondering if this one would come more naturally if i let it, and if it doesn't what does that mean.

thinking about the performance of gender as a different culture, like learning a new dialect. idk

[dysphoric-culture-is]

Neurodivergent Dysphoria culture is having your father claim your Dysphoria is a result of your autism

Dysphoric culture is!

Also, mod deals with this too and isn’t it even the policy in some places to say this? Like in UK gender clinics mod has heard that they turn away autistic trans people.

It’s just ableism, transphobia and infantilization combining to make lives difficult for ND trans people and hopefully someday people will realize that it’s wrong to deny ND people (medical) transition care.

[watermelinoe]

misogyny is a bigger problem than "transphobia." period. it's the oldest form of oppression and it targets half of the earth's population.

transphobia is the hatred of... whom, exactly? how do you even define a trans person in any material way? and what does it look like to oppress someone based on an internal sense of self? trans people, i'm told, are not necessarily dysphoric, not necessarily gender nonconforming, and not necessarily transitioning medically (or even want to), and they also may partially or almost entirely identify with their "agab."

but in that case, they're oppressed because.... people don't think they're valid? in which case, atheists who openly say that god isn't real are oppressing abrahamic religious followers. denying that god exists is hate speech. closer analogy: saying that souls don't exist is hate speech. you're denying someone their soul! is gender identity that different?

so what does "transphobia" really look like? there are several forms of oppression at work imo. dysphoria is a medical condition, and the denial of appropriate treatment + reasonable accommodations (that do not infringe on anyone else's rights) is a form of ableism. gender nonconformity makes people a target for violence and discrimination, but not all trans people are gnc, and not all gnc people are trans. historically, people have associated gender nonconformity with homosexuality, so in practice it's arguably homophobia and misogyny. (enforcement of a gender binary can also be racist, but not validating every system of gender that exists in any given culture is not racist... a practice is not more moral bc the person doing it isn't white :/)

i'm just not seeing how there's a true axis of oppression here, and certainly not how it can be more of a crisis than women's rights, disability rights, gay rights, any of the other umbrellas that trans issues reasonably falls under. and yet the transactivist movement stands in opposition to these movements.

gay and women's rights are often covered on here, but we don't talk enough about how transactivism funnels money into corrupt pharmaceutical companies and the plastic surgery industry, which takes advantage of physically and mentally disabled patients. transactivists say that informed consent is hate speech, that doctors should not be allowed, let alone required, to disclose the full medical ramifications of their "care." transactivism preys on gender nonconforming autistic girls, further pathologizing them.

and it claims to represent people with sex development disorders, but many of those people are victims of the same invasive medical practices that transactivists claim have no side effects, and do not see themselves as a third sex, while their conditions are treated as "proof" that sex is a spectrum - and not, as i've seen explained, that there are many ways to be male or female.

i've posted before that i don't think "trans people" exist in any meaningful way, because identifying as trans is what makes you trans, so i don't think transphobia exists in a material way either. the issues trans people face are not different from what dysphoric people face (whether they're detrans, reidentified, or never transitioned), or gay/bi people, or other gnc people, and if a trans person doesn't fall into any of those categories... i'm sorry, but not being treated as the sex you wish you were, but are not, is not oppression.

misogyny should always take priority.

[ndcultureis]

transgender autistic culture is having a go to outfit and it makes you dysphoric becuz skinny jeans but if you wear any other pants, they will feel absolutely awful so you just deal with the dysphoria

.

[sg-x00-airgetlam]

You realize that the arguments you're making about why gender isn't a social construct are making you seem like a transphobe/transmed, right? You just said that all trans women have always wanted breasts, you implied that the only reason why someone wouldn't want surgery or hormones would be medical side effects, you implied that there's a medical or psychological reason for transness, and all of these are used as arguments by transmeds and transphobes to explain why being LGBTQ is a disease/ is curable and as evidence of which trans people are or aren't allowed to have their identity taken seriously. It's all also extremely racist because you're specifically going off of European standards of gender identity, whereas these experiences are basically unheard of in Eastern and Indigenous cultures.

Tldr; you're just a racist truscum, Becky, and you're very fucking wrong. Sincerely an autistic queer NDN archeology student working on my master's.🖕

I used breasts as a common recurring element, I never said all. You can keep misunderstanding this point for the sake of being rude, but I'm done addressing it.

I never implied the only reason some people wouldn't want a given procedure is side effects. Some people might not want breasts larger than they've developed on their own. Some people don't feel dysphoric about their genitals, so they don't want srs. There are lots of reasons someone might be unable or unwilling to get either and it's a personal choice.

Having an innate feeling of being trans, without it being purely due to social influences (if anything, social influences often work to push people into the closet), would imply that there is something on a neurological level that causes it. So if you want to call that a medical reason you can. I think the reason it upsets people like you so much is that the instant someone calls it a medical condition, you assume it means they view it as a negative or as something to be fixed. That's not true. Heterochromia is a medical condition. Nobody is launching a crusade to cure it or implying that having different colored eyes is a bad thing.

I understand the frustration with the medical community entirely. I have probably spent more time in my personal life arguing with doctors and therapists, ranting to my current supportive therapist, and talking to friends and other students about it than anyone reading this. I'm not going to give up on and demonize medicine and science as a whole just because I run into obstacles, gatekeepers, and assholes on the way.

As for it being a psychological condition, I actually strongly disagree with that. Gender as a social construct actually supports the idea that being trans IS a psychological condition. Terfs constantly argue that gender is a social construct and that trans women are just psychologically damaged men.

As for the baseless accusations of racism, you do realize that the gender as a social construct argument is a product of white liberal people in affluent, lgbt safe cities, right? There was another person who is actually from Asia that was making a really great argument about it on the original ask thread with punkrockboifriend. And given a similar set of desires and transition goals appears to show up in several Asian cultures, I'd say it's extremely far from "unheard of". Telling someone their gender is just a social construct and nobody's gender is actually real is some white liberal arts major Becky nonsense.

Tl;dr calling someone who doesn't share your exact opinions on trans issues transphobic, racist, a transmed etc isn't the instant win card you think it is. I think your arguments about trans people are harmful and wrong, but you're misguided and ignorant. Being a stupid asshole doesn't automatically make you a transphobe, stupid asshole. Your convictions are so strong you're on anon for one of the lowest risk arguments you could get into on tumblr. I hope your archeology skills improve, so you can dig your head out of the ground.

[destroyyourbinder]

Unriddling the Sphinx: Autism & the Magnetism of Gender Transition

When people note that "trans children" tend to have autistic traits and that children with an autism diagnosis (particularly natal girls, but also boys) are massively overrepresented in the population that is referred to assessment and treatment for gender dysphoria, many trans people's (and allies') response is that it is a kind of dehumanization and denial of agency to claim that autistic people cannot be transgender, do not have the right to seek gender transition, or that they may be vulnerable to being exploited by the transgender healthcare system. Most recently, this claim has come up again with regards to a recent piece by Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling, where among many other things she notes the enormous increase in child referrals to gender clinics, including a disproportionate number of autistic children, to explain her reticence to endorse the political stances of modern transgender movements.

This is my response as an autistic woman, who was once an autistic child, who is a lesbian with experiences of gender dysphoria and who once wanted to transition to male.

-----

1.

Recognizing our vulnerability to social predation and to cultural systems that we do not understand because they were not made for us is not offensive. As autistic people, it is key to claiming our autonomy as a particular kind of disabled person. We often do not recognize our limitations in reference to greater social systems not because we are "too stupid" (i.e. cognitively or intellectually limited) but because we have different value systems than neurotypical people and hierarchical institutions built for their benefit. Autism is a pervasive developmental disability, and it is a way of being. It is not merely being a "regular person" minus various clinically defined psychological capacities or skills. It is a difference across all domains of life, and as a disability that causes differences in our social and sensory perception it is also a disability that causes differences in what we want and what we care about. Both those who exhibit condescending "concern" for autistic people and those people who naively defend our right to do whatever we see fit miss this component of being autistic. It is not that we are merely vulnerable because we are missing parts of our decision-making or social skills apparatus. It is not that we are merely being unfairly denied what we want to do, and our autism is immaterial, just some excuse for the denial.

It's that we aren't recognized as having wants, only "special needs". It's that we aren't given the skills to know what it is that we want, or that it might be different from those around us. It's that we are never told how to get what we want in safe and healthy ways, or that there is even a potentially safe and healthy way to get it. It's that we are deemed automatically pathological and empty of internal experiences as autistic people. It's that we're not given any help on how to navigate our deep differences from others and how to navigate being deprived of social resources and networking in a way that doesn't tell us to just cover it up and deal with it. It's that most people who dedicate their lives to "helping" us do not care about any of these things, merely that we can be trained to act in a way that doesn't disrupt the lives of neurotypical people. Given this context, it is far more insulting to me to insist that having autonomy renders us somehow invulnerable to exploitation than to correctly perceive that we are in fact an intensely vulnerable people. By nature of our disability, we are always on the margins of social resources and social networks, and exercising our autonomy unfortunately often puts us even further outside social acceptability and social protection rather than somehow shielding us materially from the consequences of living a self-actualized autistic life. Few autistic people are prepared for this when they begin trying to make decisions "true to self" in adolescence.

I believe nearly every autistic person is traumatized from the consequences of living in this world and what others do to us. Clinicians do not usually recognize that autistic children and adults can be traumatized, that there is even anything there to traumatize. (Why else could they feel so comfortable shocking us, shackling us, or feeding us bleach?)

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2.

I think because we are not neurotypical we often struggle to understand just why a neurotypical person would feel ok excluding us, or maybe even anyone. Many of us autistic people have little impulse to do such things, and if we do, we rarely have the social power to make someone that we've cut out of our lives unemployable, unable to access medical care, food, housing, and so on. But neurotypical institutions are set up, from top to bottom, to create hierarchies of value with extreme material difference between the top and bottom. They are set up to stratify the "worthy" people from "unworthy" people.

Autistic people are almost universally considered "unworthy" in these systems, and to the extent that we can curry favor from them we must consent to our exploitation: to entering into a transaction on neurotypical terms, where we can get some sort of worth through providing a "benefit" to this hierarchical resource system which is not made according to our value system or for us whatsoever. This is common to all marginalized people. But it is often particularly poignant to autistic people, who struggle to find community with any social group of human beings. There is no "elsewhere" for us, there is no "home". We are stuck, as they say, on the "wrong planet", and the spaceship was destroyed.

The idea that exercising our autonomy would protect us from this world rather than render us more vulnerable because we are refusing to transact correctly or refusing to provide a benefit is utterly absurd. Our autonomy is perfectly compatible with our continued social ostracization and exploitation. It usually coexists with our continued social ostracization and exploitation.

In social skills classes-- or just the wild, wild world-- you are not taught how to deal with the fact that everyone will hate you for being you. You are taught to be someone else. You are not taught about your native autonomy. You are taught about how to put your hands here or here, how to choose between actions that are condescendingly and ridiculously normal. You are not taught how to take responsibility in a way you understand, that is harmonious to your own values and others'. You are taught to hold yourself accountable for your abnormality.

So forgive me if I do not believe for one second that impersonal, well-funded medical systems that were built off of medically experimenting on intersex children and adults (the nightmares wreaked by John Money at Johns Hopkins) or psychologically experimenting on behaviorally aberrant children (UCLA, where behaviorist torturer of autistic children Ivan Lovaas tinkered with gender nonconforming children alongside conversion therapist George Rekers) have autistic people's self-defined well being in mind.

And forgive me if I do not think informed consent clinics have autistic people's self-defined well-being in mind when they're more interested in rubber stamping hormones while shielding themselves from legal liability than assisting autistic adolescents and adults, who have an intrinsically different way of understanding gendered social norms, navigate the enormous complexity of how to interface with the single most fundamental social fixation of the neurotypical world as someone who will always and automatically fail.

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3.

I do not think most gender clinicians even have the first understanding of what it means to be autistic and what this does in and of itself to your understanding of gender and sexuality. What J.K. Rowling said in her piece-- a straightforward accounting of facts-- is far, far less insulting to me than what Diane Ehrensaft-- one of the premier "experts" in the United States on pediatric transgender cases-- published in a peer-reviewed journal on autism. In a 2018 letter to the editor reading remarkably like new-age material on Indigo Children, she writes that she likes to call autistic transgender children "Double Helix Rainbow Kids" and declares us "freed" from the restrictions of gender as "more creative" individuals. This article ends with an anecdote about an eight year old autistic female child with limited language use who begins speaking, making eye contact, and relating more appropriately with clinic staff after she is socially transitioned by her family. Ehrensaft muses, "“Could gender be an alleviator for the stressors of autism?”

She is not the only one to pontificate about the magical changes a gender transition brings on autistic children. Norman Spack (the first clinician in the US to use GnRH agonists on gender dysphoric children as puberty-suppressing drugs) claims in a coauthored, peer-reviewed 2012 paper (insults upon insults, in the Journal of Homosexuality) that in his clinical experience the symptoms of comorbid diagnoses--including "problems with social competence"-- "decrease and even disappear" with gender treatment. In the same paper, this passage appears:

Although the question of whether gender dysphoria is simply a symptom of an autism spectrum disorder has been raised by mental health clinicians in the field, we feel it is equally worth questioning the validity of an autism diagnosis among transgender youth, particularly of those diagnosed with Asperger’s disorder. Perhaps the social awkwardness and lack of peer relationships common among GID-Asperger’s patients is a result of a lifetime of feeling isolated and rejected; and maybe the unusual behavior patterns are simply a coping method for dealing with the anxiety and depression created from living in an “alien body,” as one patient described it.

Do autistic trans people-- who rightfully protest against mainstream autism organizations focusing on a "cure" for autism rather than respectful accommodations for our differences and medical needs-- know that very well-connected, very respected, and very powerful gender doctors are claiming that gender transition cures the symptoms of autism? Do autistic trans people-- who rightfully discuss the implications of denying that someone can both be autistic and hold a meaningful gender variant identity-- know that it is an active clinical debate as to whether or not their disability and all its struggles is "just" a result of somehow ending up in the "wrong body"?

If they do not, they should know that this is how doctors are perceiving the pervasive issues that the children in their care are having: not as the result of a life-long, stigmatized, but eminently livable disability, but as the result of a mystical gender failure that can be medically corrected. That essentially, the disability "goes away" so long as outsiders no longer perceive a problem with a child's conformity to gender norms. That either an autistic girl somehow is transfigured into a non-autistic child through transition, or more likely, an autistic girl's autistic behavior is unfitting for her as a girl but not for her as a boy. That the "proof" of pediatric transition's effectiveness and standard of an autistic child's happiness is how much the child wishes to participate in neurotypical society on neurotypical society's terms.

I cannot pretend that this isn't ludicrously disrespectful to autistic people, or that it isn't a total erasure of our experience as human beings. To these gender doctors, the fact that a girl might see the world in a different way and care about different things and thereby struggle in a world not made for her does not matter whatsoever, except maybe as a tokenistic "journey" she can go on alongside her wonderfully progressive and affirming doctors. What "autism" is for them is a particularly severe and inconvenient social adjustment problem which can be forcibly corrected through body modifications, should an autistic child or adult rightly note that they can't do gender right and this is causing problems for them. They are more interested-- like in a long history of abusive and even deadly "treatments" for autism-- in correcting the problem for them than for the autistic person. How convenient for neurotypical people both the gender incongruous behavior and the social noncompliance goes away once you medically modify a child to look like the other sex.

I cannot be anything but sick that "increased eye contact" is a sign an autistic child needed medical meddling in the intimate process of navigating and negotiating their sexual and gender development. I cannot trust that these doctors aren't missing enormous parts of their autistic patients' experiences, if this is what they are so gleeful to report as a positive transformation and their justification for disrupting and surveilling children's bodies. What do they think of autistic people and those who are gender non-conforming if they are so willing to believe that existing as a person with a stigmatized disability is actually just a misdiagnosis for the pseudoscientific condition of being a man in a woman's body, or vice versa?

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5.

It takes many, many years and quite a bit of luck and support for most autistic people to fully understand and come to terms with how their autism affects them and sets them apart from both individual neurotypical people and neurotypical society at large. It takes years-- often far, far into adulthood, especially for those abused under a medical model or for those who went decades undiagnosed-- to understand the differences between social and non-social aspects of this disability.

It takes years to not resort to chalking up all of your own distress and difficulties to being a "retard".

I have not met an autistic woman yet who did not have extreme difficulty integrating her autistic differences in values with a broader sense of self that includes whatever version of herself she uses to navigate a world in which women's values are simultaneously invisible (since she has no right to determine them herself) and nitpicked to death (since it is important she complies).

In a world like this why would it not be difficult for autistic people to know when it is they are being fooled or exploited while participating in transgender communities or while seeking transgender health care? Autistic people-- especially those who are dependent on caregivers or health systems for basic care, as well as those who depend on the goodwill of their families, employers, or welfare benefit institutions to remain as independent as they can-- have to make continual compromises just to maintain enough acceptability to communicate with the outside world nonetheless do things like "make a friend", "go to the doctor", "find a job".

I do not think neurotypical people understand or care that when I speak or write it is always with a similar effort as with a second language. Language-- whether it is verbal or nonverbal, with all the extensive symbology of the neurotypical world-- does not ever get to be something other than "translation" for me. As someone with an Asperger's-profile of abilities who has studied the neurotypical world intensely for years, I have the opportunity to translate in a way that allows others to understand me at least some of the time. Many autistic people who are more affected live in the world which gives "autism" its name, where nobody cares to do the translation for us and we are left totally and utterly alone.

The 20th century philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (who, perhaps not coincidentally, was likely autistic) was fixated on questions about the meaning of communication. About whether a language of one could make any sense, about what it would mean to speak about something hidden from everyone else or perhaps even ourselves. In a famous passage debated vociferously, he wrote, "If a lion could speak, we would not be able to understand him."

Many have resolved the question posed by this statement by claiming that for fuck's sake, a lion is a lion, and has nothing to say.

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6.

Gender transition appealed to me because it was cloaked in the farcical notion that there was some version of me and my body that could finally speak directly. I never quite understood the whole Adam and Eve story as an autistic child-- just don't eat it!-- but if there truly were a serpent's apple for autistic folks it would consist of this promise: that there was a world where the glass and the fog would dissolve, that we weren't covered in a repulsive and bumbling slime made of our own desires to understand, that instead of our words and hands glancing off the skin of everyone around us we could do that magic everyone else could and hold someone's heart in our hands. I was fooled because like many struggling autistic people, I wanted the problem to be me. Because then it was fixable. I would let them take my only body (which was such a sensory drag) to convert me into one of these blessed transponders that normal people were, receiving and sending all these messages like shooting stars blazing through the unimpeded vacuum of space. Without my femaleness and without the Difficulties That Should Not Be Named, I could send whatever message I wanted to whoever I wanted and it would be received, I could be gregarious, important, sexually compelling; my will and autonomy wouldn't be stifled by 140 pounds of dumpy, itchy flesh with an overbite and slack hands.

When I imagined myself as a man I didn't imagine myself like most of the childhood boys I managed to ingratiate myself with, who lisped, repeated themselves, and tripped over their own shoes. I imagined myself as a musician who was absolutely magnetic, I imagined myself as a writer with a legacy, I imagined myself telling other guys they were stupid shits and they could fuck off. I imagined being able to hold onto a football without dropping it, being able to smoke weed without getting a migraine, being able to talk without squeaking or letting out a little drool.

I thought I would finally be a human being with no embarrassments and nothing that could get me bullied in the bathroom between class. I thought when I would say "no", other people would listen. I would enter whatever mystical world it is that Ehrensaft names, made of messages and meanings, where every twist of word and piece of clothing said something, connected by a fine filament back to that Necronomicon filled with the runes of social symbology. And it would make sense.

I would become a lion, not a house cat. And the lion would speak. And we would understand him.

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7.

It is a neurotypical narrative that this is what transition can do for you, because it is what someone else's transition does for neurotypical people. A gender transition is magical because it decodes the lion. It unriddles the sphinx. The autistic person must be happier now, because the neurotypical person is happier now. (And who has an empathy deficit?)

But if I have learned to be afraid of anything as an autistic person it is not my own neuroticism and fixations, but those of the so-called "normal people". Forget double helix rainbows: being an autistic person is like your DNA is a converted school bus trundling through the world in spray-painted glory and the whole world has an HOA. I understand why autistic people who see themselves as transgender see "concern" as the busybody stupidity of the neurotypical world. They aren't wrong. But it exists alongside other mundane and brutal busybody stupidities, such as grant funding, progressive saviorism, and psychiatric god-complexes.

To understand and resist what the neurotypical world communicates to us about our worth is not to protest back to them in their own language. I am an autistic woman and like many other autistic women I am tired of not only making myself more palatable but translating my existence into something intelligible to outsiders, who are both men and the non-autistic. Radical feminists miss one of these; trans activists and allies miss the other. But I am irrevocably othered from both.

When you are autistic you are taught only one symbolic structure. It is not your own, but it is the only medium you will ever have to communicate with any complexity. More sinisterly, it becomes the only medium we have to communicate to ourselves, the only medium we can use to work around the silent and jumbled parts of our bodies and minds. Am I hungry? It is not always obvious. To ask the question I find myself translating, even when alone.

My fantasy about lions and men was that whatever world a lion lived in and whatever he had to say, he did not need to translate, and especially never to himself. When a lion says something he does not stop to ask if he means what he says or who is saying it. When a lion looks into the water hole and sees his own reflection, he does not need to reconcile anything. The lion does not need to speak to understand himself. A lion is made of teeth and blood and claws and the lion just does.

I do not use the symbolism of transgenderism to explain the little gaps and incongruities that are my problems with gender, with my sexed body, with sexuality. It is not only a language born of neurotypical neuroses and regulation, but it is always and forever fundamentally a translation. As an autistic woman I have spent my whole life avoiding these dual facts, through both my time thinking of myself as trans and while trying to understand this whole thing afterwards: I am my body and I am not my body. Because I speak, but I do not understand. Because I understand, but I do not speak.

I will, unavoidably, always have to translate to speak and understand. But my autonomy requires that at bottom I must respect the native communication of my own body and mind. I refuse to use force or coercion to get it to talk, to interrupt its silence, to confabulate stories on its behalf, to speak for it using assumptions it cannot confirm or deny. I have to make peace with the fact that sometimes the blanks of my body or the redacted corners of my mind will say nothing. I have to make peace with the fact that translation is always inaccurate, that something is always beyond that constellation of symbols and words. The autistic body and the autistic mind have their own boundaries, and I refuse to believe that exercising my autonomy requires breaking them.

I do not know if J.K. Rowling knows this. I hope you do.