I’m so in agreement. Ive always wondered why people just blindly follow some rules that seem unnecessary. I will give you one example: I’ve always hated saying “Bless You” when someone sneezes. Why do we have to say it? Your soul isn’t actually escaping through your nose. We don’t say it when people burp or fart. I just don’t understand that rule.
Us Autistics like rules that make sense, the vast majority of societal rules don't make sense and just make shit unnecessarily difficult for everyone, such as the norms that the "Gender Critical" movement push.
“You were an autistic girl who was tricked!” I was tricked for 26 years?! Being trans in the U.S. when I came out and having unsupportive parents meant I had to wait until I was 18 for any treatment at all, and insurance didn’t cover trans healthcare back then, so I had to wait until I was 24 - bc I was too broke to go on testosterone. I’ve been on testosterone for 14 years now, the “GC” crowd insists that I will *eventually* regret it… but I’m happy? Like, who is fooling who here? Like, if my autism affects my gender identity… like, no shit, it affects everything! Am I not allowed a gender identity if I’m autistic?!
It's very interesting indeed, they like to call the surgery done to change your sex "genital mutilation". Personally a woman born in the female body, I find that surgery the most frightening one to undergo. Transphobes seem to agree with me on that, but they don't process the idea that people are willing to undergo that "genital mutilation" because living in the alternative body is THAT much more important, than staying the way they are. Maybe I can't relate to the struggle of wanting a sex change, but the idea that anyone is tricked into doing that while still calling a surgery such a dismissive and cruel name is a type of cognitive dissonance I can't relate to. Most people understand their body better than anyone from the outside could tell.
disability rights and youth liberation are very connected issues. it is bad when disabled adults are treated like children, but we also shouldn't treat children that way. we all need to be taken care of by others to varying degrees throughout our lives. your autonomy and personhood shouldn't be taken away because you need support and care. we all need those things... if you don't right now you will one day
Exactly! The minute you start adding criteria to personhood, you are seeking to alienate and ostracise people from that personhood. The term “minor” feels incredibly icky to me
Infantalizing the mentally divergent is (needless to say for those who must bear the burden of knowledge, usually first-hand) a form of abuse - gaslighting to be precise. The abuser generally does not see their antisocial* behavior as abuse, and is generally incapable of self-reflection. They are highly narcissistic, and it is therefore psychologically necessary for them to see themselves as effectively blameless and omniscient, and selected others as essentially wrong. You'll notice that ableists are not only arrogant towards neurodivergent and mentally ill people, but towards soooo many other marginalized demographics. *antisocial does not mean shy, it means being harmful to others
I have a cis friend who has ADHD and thought for a while she might be trans because she felt uncomfortable in most girl's clothes and I can absolutely guarantee that it isn't as simple as "being manipulated into thinking everything will be solved if you transition". She was confused for a while and given a transmasc friend had talked about a similar feeling, she thought she might also be trans, and thanks to her supportive friends she allowed herself to try out different identities, pronouns and expressions and... she came to the conclusion that she was actually cis, and that was it. It sounds incredibly stupid to me that people would try to frame this as her friends trying to "manipulate her into transitioning" when most they did was help her find out what she was most comfortable with. Sincerely, a neurodivergent trans "child" who knew I was trans and non-binary long before I had any terminology for it and would tell my friends I should've been born a “hermaphrodite”. Edit: Just a little psa for people passing by, as someone bellow pointed out the word hermaphrodite isn’t proper terminology for intersex people, I’m using it to quote myself when I didn’t understand intersexuality and gender identity stuff properly, but it isn’t a term that should be used when talking about actual intersexuality and intersex people.
yes!! this!! i think we should all allow ourselves to explore our identities more - whether that be through changing physical appearance (hair, clothes) or trying out new names and pronouns to see what fits us best..and if it turns out to be a phase, then hey! you can always change your hair, clothes, name, and pronouns back to what suits you best, with no consequences.
@@margaret77777 I think a lot of people in transphobic groups have this idea that the moment someone says “hey I might be trans” they’re immediately put on hrt/puberty blockers and surgeries, which not only isn’t true but specifically in the case of puberty blockers is meaningless given they are completely reversible. It’s a lot of pointless paranoia that’s just getting in the way of people exploring themselves properly as if them getting to understand themselves better would do anything but help lower regret rates.
As an autistic guy myself, the infantilization is so goddamn annoying (doubly so because I'm also aroace). I'm really tired of these weird bigots treating us like toddlers who have no agency or awareness. Thanks for making this video.
My hypothesis as an autistic cis woman is that autistic folks are forced by circumstance to be a lot more introspective and self-analytical, making autistic folks more likely to be 'out' than neurotypical folks. Do not read into that as me saying that being autistic is inherently superior to being allistic, because I think all neurotypes have their own strengths and challenges. I just think being outside of what is considered the default forces a person to examine themselves quite a bit.
I also think (as an autistic cis women) that autistic people are slightly less vulnerable to social pressures to conform, because we can't typically do that anyway, slightly less likely to be influenced by societal expectations about how we express ourselves. This makes exploring gender identities other than cis a bit less daunting than it might be to a neurotypical person.
My friend and I have pretty much come to the same conclusion on that, my trans friends main theory on the autism and trans thing is that the brain chemistry is already doing some funky stuff but there’s not a major correlation. She’s not a neurologist so take that with a grain of salt and I might be wrong on how she worded it. But it’s along those lines
I am a trans man and this video is so important to me. My parents recently stumbled upon an article about the correlation found between autism and being trans and they were trying to manipulate me into getting an appointment with a psychiatrist to figure out if I have autism, because they were "concerned" thay I could have mistaken my autism with being trans. What's scary is that I have been researching autism for years now and suspect I could be autistic, and I actually started liking that about myself. After years of pain and isolation because the other kids at school thought I was "weird" and "in my own world". And now that very thing I was becoming proud of as I celebrated my traits was being used against me. "Why can't I be autistic AND trans? Why is my autonomy always questioned as "my own mind fooling me"? Even before I figured out I am (probably) autistic, I have always been aware and horrified by the way people undermine or straight up remove the autonomy of disabled people, mentally ill people, neurodivergent people- the list goes on. And now finally experiencing it for myself (I have before but not as blatantly ableist) as my parents are becoming increasingly aware of how they damaged me mentally (without actually taking accountability for it) and as they fight more intensely against my identity it's completely destroying me. This video. This video is the summary of everything I wish I could tell them. And I wish I could show it to them, but they would say this video "manipulated" me...I am so tired.
@@Ember_Green I am slowly building up every condition I need to find my peace thank you for the words of support and thank you for your wonderful work!!
The last bit bugs me a lot. The resources you bring forward have to be invalidated despite it containing actual critical thinking, but the resources they bring that are propaganda or misinformation at best have to be trusted. Articles implying you can't be autistic and trans ignores that there's 0 reason for it to conflict. It is arguing that you are lesser but pointing that out is dismissed, and any resource that can help back up your argument is dismissed. It sounds like they only want to hear information that they can use to manipulate you into changing your mind. They don't want to value your voice, and they might even think their personal arm chair diagnose gives them more reason to ignore the things you say. All I can say is if you send them this video and they say them ask them to tell them what part was a manipulation tatic and how it was twisting the facts. Also, I'm curious, would your parents insist that you can only be autistic and heterosexual as well? If they don't then can they give you a good reason for it? If they can't and they refuse to accept that it's one of the many reason why it's an argument based on nothing but bias then all you can really tell them that you have no reason to trust their judgment because they insist that it's impossible for a discussion to happen if you don't just nod and agree.
Rowling: “I grew up being bullied by girls because I didn’t conform to their standards.” Also Rowling: *Uses her platform to bully, muckrake and humiliate anyone who doesn’t conform to her standards of what a woman is and supports others who do likewise whether it’s appearance, height, behaviour, autism and so much more.*
Not to mention she wrote GNC AFAB person with colored hair, who strongly dislikes her given name and goes by her neutral family name, who is distanced from her Very Conservative family, *who is a shapeshifter.* And then she had that woman meet A Good Man(tm), start going by a feminine diminutive of her once-hated name, get married, have a kid and then die. :| (and this is not bashing Remus' character, only how he was used in Tonx' narrative.)
my mom said that i couldn’t be bisexual because my “autism” was confusing me. that happened 4 years ago and i’m still bi. this stuff is just ableism and transphobia mixed together. thank you for touching on this topic, have a good day/night ❤️
I knew I was queer before age 5, it wasn't until after I was 30 when I finally had the language to explain that I am sexuality queer, genderqueer, and neuroqueer... or as others might call it: really fucking queer, lol.
@@coda3223 seriously, I knew I was into women from elementary school onwards lol. it actually was society which made me only date guys and it taking me alot to time to reconnect with my bisexual side.
"You only THINK you're attracted to two genders." "So...I'm tricked... To think I'm attracted to people?" "Nooo!!! You are attracted to people! Only the gender that would make you straight, though lol" "So... Why?" "Because access to information is manipulation !Now... Look at this pendulum! "YOU are straight!!You are straight!"
@@CristalianaIvor Yep. Stories like that convinced me to tell people I'm bisexual even if it's not a big thing for me because generally I'm romantically more attracted to women or to what I perceive as femininity (which includes what is considered by most as masculine traits/expression, like short hair, small breasts, wearing "men's clothing", or being taller, or what have you, so yeah, to hell with consistency or what other people think), so that will include more women than anyone else, and you also need the other person to be into you, so most of the relationships I had were with a woman, simply because of a statistical likelihood. So by sheer accident and likelihood I avoided things like:" You should just date [someone from the opposite sex] to avoid problems with society." Other people do experience that and it's just f'ed up, just like it's f'ed up to tell someone to behave more neurotypical to avoid problems. It implies that being different is the problem and it's just not. It's gaslighting and victim blaming, and it costs me nothing to just tell people I'm bi. Nothing worthwhile anyway. People who are worth my time and attention simply accept it and move on. It did also mean that women close to me are more comfortable telling me they think a guy is hot 🤣 So there's that 🤣 Some people also responded with:" Oh that's why you like wearing more feminine clothing", and I'm like wtf does that have to do with anything? Because I honestly have no clue. It might have everything to do with my bisexuality, or nothing, and I have no idea. I just like style and women's clothing are just more diverse and men's "stylish" clothes I like just cost more than my monthly income. Sooooo... increase my salary to 50k a year and I might have a useful answer to that question :p Probably not though. You remember that dress from the supposed French guy in The Matrix, second movie/first sequel? Doesn't look feminine to me at all, and I absolutely F'ing LOVE IT!
dear god i'm in tears. beautiful video. i'm a nonbinary transmasc person myself, disabled due to sensory issues related to autism and therefore i'm unable to go to work, stuck with abusive parents who don't understand me and don't care to. you talking was like a balm to me. even with the friends i have online, i often forget that there are people who understand that i'm not crazy, that i'm not worthless, that i'm somebody who should be allowed to live. this is a very kind video. you are an incredibly kind person.
@Reesey depending on what country you are in, you don't have to be stuck living with abusive parents. Canada, most of the UK, and even the US have disability programs that include a community support worker (or something similar) to help you advocate for your self. Covid definitely impacted housing wait lists, but there are programs out there. You deserve to feel safe and to live somewhere that supports your happiness.
Autistiphobia is linked to transphobia and homophobia. As Dr Nick Walker teaches us; when an ABA practitioner forces an autistic child behave like a non-autistic boy or girl, they inadvertently impose heteronormative gender roles and ways of moving on that child. Nobody ever thinks "How can I make this child act like a non-binary non-autistic child?". Binary gender roles are implied as part of neuronormativity. So it's society that imposes gender roles on autistic children, not the trans community. It's no wonder so many of us only rediscover our neuroqueerness while unmasking later in life. As for autistic acceptance and empowerment, that will only come when society no longer views us as a pathology, which means removing ourselves from the DSM of mental disorders. Excellent work on this video, Mica, as always!
@nnglnd it is. The amount of people who use "they're autistic" as a reason to deny someone's gender identity or sexuality, the strong overlap between the autistic and LGBT community, and the fact that LGBT conversion therapy and abusive behaviourist treatments designed to coerce autistic people to hide their autism are literally the same methods developed by many of the same psychologists at around the same time in the 60s and 70s.
Wouldn’t that mean the therapist would ask themselves “how do I make this kid act binary and non autistic?” If non binary isn’t heteronormative, why would the therapist try to make the child act non binary and non autistic?
A thing about your story of kids and gendered clothes / gender expression: my mum never really liked the pink girly girl clothes so she'd often get my shirts from the boys section when I was a kid because they seemed more neutral, I rarely wore dresses because they're kind of impractical when you're running around outside or sitting on the floor all day and I still grew up to be a pretty feminine woman... Clothes for small kids shouldn't be divided by gender, change my mind
Fun fact: before the early 1900s, both boys and girls typically wore white or neutrally colored dresses until age five, when boys were introduced to pants. Around the 1940s is when gendered clothing for children really started to take off; the era the boomer generation grew up in. Which… explains a lot.
this is why it always confuses me when people ask queer parents how they're going to dress their kid, like as in if they're going to raise them as their assigned gender (until the kid can let them know otherwise) my parents are conservative (ugh) but when I was an infant they dressed me in gender neutral clothes, and around 5 or 6 I started choosing my own clothes, so I feel like it's a non issue? clothes aren't inherently gendered anyway, and kids can choose what clothes they like best pretty young I don't have any problem with the question to be clear, the answer just seems obvious to me?
when cis people step up for trans people it makes me so happy. thank you so much for this. aside: i'm the parent of an autistic child and i was struck by how much authority people seemed to think this gave me to speak about autism. and it's weirdly similar to treating ex-spouses of trans people as authorities on trans issues, which is a common pattern i've seen in GC spaces.
I appreciate you speaking to this and thank you for allowing your child autonomy. As an autistic adult, I'm very much disappointed by the way some neurotypical parents treat/think of the ND community.
It's good to see the parent of an autistic child who is not an autism parent TM. I can't stand those allistic people who act like they know autism better than autistic people themselves because they have an autistic child.
honestly GC people do the same with parents of trans people, it's how the falacious book about rapid onset gender dysphoria came to be from a study without a single trans participant in it
I support you but the problem is BCBAs have a privileged position in lower education, it's like wanting to go to school for chemistry to become a chemistry teacher but schools allocate a specific part of the budget for hiring alchemists.
Anyone who thinks autistic people are easy to "hoodwink" must not know any autistic people. With my kids, at least, it's the opposite. You can't convince them to do anything unless they are already predisposed to do it. My eldest in particular is extremely immune to manipulation. It can be really frustrating now as a parent, but I expect it will benefit them in the long run. EDIT: You addressed this later in the video. Thank you!
Exactly! I'm Autistic and probably the most defining aspect of my childhood was how difficult is was to get me to do anything without a good reason. I needed a full, cohesive explanation for why I should go along with something my parents (teachers, etc.) wanted me to do - and if their logic wasn't convincing enough I would give counter arguments (which sometimes ended up changing their mind!) or eventually I would simply refuse to co-operate. "Because I said so" or "because that's what you're supposed to do" or "because you'll be in trouble if you don't" had absolutely no effect. I think the idea of Autistic people being 'easily manipulated' is VERY commonly misunderstood. The way we can sometimes be manipulated is only in relation to our understanding of social bonds - e.g. judging other people's intentions and whether or not they are being genuine - NOT in relation to whether or not a concept is valid or whether an argument makes sense. When it comes to our understanding of important topics, our principles and our decisions, we are generally more critical in our approach and more steadfast in our conclusions than a lot of neurotypical people.
It’s like when my dad accidentally hit the gas line while digging a hole and came inside telling me I had to get out now, and my first instinct was to ask why
Thank you so much for this. I'm a trans autistic man and I've approached this problem more from the trans side than the autistic side. I didn't know how much I needed this.
I met one autistic woman who is a full pro-Rowling Terf. She fell for that misinformed lie about "autistic girls forced to transition". I can only hope she wises up and wish her nothing but safety.
As an autistic nb, yeah, I am lucky that I lean towards my AGAB and my social dysphoris is fairly minimal (tho if that's just how it is or if it seems that way because I'm not very socially active irl is a mystery), and while I am thankful for that, it definitely makes me scared for my trans sibilings out there
Being autistic doesn’t mean you have to believe you’re the opposite sex because you aren’t and never will be. It’s ok to be gender non conforming but never claim to be a real man or woman.
Honestly it's more like they're unfamiliar with what works for us because for them it definitely doesn't work .. So they process it only from their perspective. I'm sure if there was more social awareness towards well just us a lot of people would be supportive and kind. At this point they just don't know... And frankly it just never became common knowledge. Just something the parent of an autistic child would notice .. And depending on the type of person who's your parent, you may not get validated and they may not try to learn how to accommodate you.
@@samf.s.7731 There are soo many people who look at what others do and think to themselves "if i did that I'd hate it. Therefor through my unchallengeable logic and reasoning, they must also be miserable and just deluding themselves into thinking they're happy. Because enjoying something I don't is a physical impossibility. I should tell them why they are wrong/try to bully them into changing/pass laws that make it illegal for them to be that way. It'll be for their own good after all"
@@WhichDoctor1 or sometimes they are like "I would enjoy that. I am not able to do it. therefore I will behave like nobody would ever enjoy that". people are crazy and too involved with what other people do with their life lol. in Germany we say "sweep infront of your own door first"
I'm trans and autistic, and I've dealt with a lot of abusers and manipulators in my life. I find that frequently, even when I don't initially realize somebody is attempting to manipulate me, the manipulation attempt fails because I don't act according to the script the manipulator has set for me in their head. Unfortunately lost my job because my boss tried to manipulate me, and it didn't go how he wanted. Also, the one thing *every* single one of my abusers have had in a common is this persistent belief that they knew me better than I know myself. They all have/had this set image of me in there heads that poorly resembles my actual self, and there was no contradicting that image no matter what the evidence was. Now, who does that sound like?
The statement that they thought they knew you better than you did is actually kinda funny considering that they “you” they “knew” was more likely a masked version of yourself not the actual you
@@rosepuppy1984 Honestly, in my similar experiences, it generally doesn't even bear a whole lot of similarity to that. It's truly, deeply baffling the level of illusion these people can put up, get mad when you don't fit it, and insist their version is right. Just hit 30, and my parents still don't see me. Even more, that disconnect is honestly more traumatising by itself than all the rest of the abuse put together. The failed struggle to be seen is what still haunts my nightmares, and every mistreatment that sticks out has that jarring dissonance at its heart.
When I found out I was autistic at around age 21, I *wanted* it to explain everything. I *wanted* it to explain all my 'weird gender feeling', my 'sensory issues' that weren't actually sensory issues but dysphoria (or both). I didn't *want* to have another thing going on. I wanted to be contend with having this one thing, and it explaining everything. It took until 31 for me to admit that I am trans. That only both, in combination, explain my life, and my issues. I wasn't manipulated. I tried for so long to have my autism explain my gender, that I didn't look to trans people to see how much I related. So much denial. It pains my how explicitly *fascist* TERFs are when you look at the combination of trans and autism.
I want to say thank you for writing this because I realised my experience was almost exactly the same! I was younger, a teenager when I figured I was autistic. I thought I'd figured every piece of the puzzle but deep down I knew something was missing. My depression tendencies were getting worse every year and it wasn't until I finally broke out of the trans denial and started presenting masculine again that I started getting happier.
Oh yeah, terfs are absolutely facists It’s almost amusing have some of them seem surprised that Nazis keep showing up at the rally’s. It’s like…dude…you have the same positions, you’re fighting for the same things. Terfs work with groups trying to overthrow reproductive rights too, etc.
Slightly off topic rant: I've had a big issue with NT parents sharing so many of thier children's personal issues & disclosing thier child's diagnosis. Isn't it up to each person when and to whom to share such intimate information? I'm not a parent, but it seems so odd to willingly give the world so much access to your child. I appreciate your channel and look forward to forward to once again being a patron once finances aren't so frightful 💜
Unfortunately, they think their child is in some way a _mysterious creature to gaze in excessive awe_ at. Y'know, "autism won today :(", "God gives his toughest battles to his strongest warriors!!1!", and the quintessential filming their child having a meltdown. That or abusing their child in whatever way comes first, despite knowing their child is autistic. Then again, a lot of people don't see children as human beings. I mean, even in preteens it's fairly popular to dislike children. Hating them for being developing human beings who are going to make mistakes. As embarrassing as it is to admit, i used to be one of those people, but now I'm aware of just how important children are. Especially the neurodivergent, poc, lower class kids. None of them should be treated the way they are now, and for as long as this low-key/high-key abusive parenting has gone on for.
@ferret yeah that's perfectly valid! Just when it isn't consensual (like most things) it's a huge problem. I don't know what it'll take for allistic people to see us as human.
I'm trans and aut!stic and my assessors at my gender clinic were straight up terfs about it. They tried conversion therapy for a while, but I'm 28 and wasn't having it. They kept trying to find the reason that I 'developed' the idea that I was trans, naming all of the examples you named and then some. 'it's rigid thinking, like for example some clients I see think they're girls because they like dresses and disney princesses, so what's your reason?' (that's really what he said) 'well because you're aut!stic, I can imagine that you've been influenced and confused by other people' 'maybe you just like masculine clothing because they're more comfortable, less constricting, and you dislike the feeling of ticklish long hair' 'the reason you hate your chest is that feeling it move or touch fabric gives you sensory processing issues, it's not actually dysphoria' 'maybe you had a special interest in a specific movie character and want to look like him because of that' 'you're bad at socializing with girls, and that's why you think you're not one of them' 'you became obsessed with the LGBT community and convinced yourself you were part of it' 'because you mask, you are not really capable of knowing who you are underneath that mask, so you can't know if you're trans' 'you dislike change, and that's why you disliked the changes your body went through during puberty, it wasn't dysphoria.' 'aut!stic people are known to be less capable of overseeing long term consequences, so I think you're going to regret transition.' 'aut!stic people are known to have issues and delays with identity formation, so we think maybe you need to wait and develop your identity further.' (Again, 28 years old.) And of course they also accused me of internalized misogyny, s3xual trauma and body dysmorphia, but those weren't autism related. It didn't really matter how often I told them I was just trans without a reason or how much research I quoted at them, because they didn't believe that was possible. It had to have a cause, and once they found the cause, they might be able to course-correct me, which they saw as the 'least invasive option for treatment'. They wanted to be noble and 'first do no harm', and they defined 'harm' as surgical and hormonal intervention on a healthy body, so their solution was conversion therapy. Funny huh? I don't know who put in a good word for me at their monthly team meeting where they decide which trans people get permission to transition, but I somehow got through. They did still tell me they wanted me to decide not to go through with it, so it was a close call, I'm sure I got really close to getting rejected, but I'm through and I never have to go through that torture ever again ^^ The nerve of these people to call themselves 'therapists' and 'allies', to my face, when all they ever did was dehumanize and traumatize me. Never trust a 'gender therapist' when they try to speak for trans people. Lots of gender clinics are infiltrated by terfs. PS this type of conversion therapy is called 'gender explorative therapy', which is basically reparative therapy but for gender. It's pushed by Genspect. You showed a couple of their tweets in this video. They're a terf organization that mainly lobbies against conversion therapy bans, and that works with gender clinics like the NHS directly.
Oof, what a load of bollocks they were throwing at you. Glad that you got through it and got to transition. Awful to think about all the trans people who have to put up with transphobic medical 'professionals'.
I've no doubt Kemi Badenoch probably supports this. I saw a video recently where she completely dismissed a committee discussing the effects of menopause on workers because 'the committee was principally left leaning and the government is right leaning'. Just dismissed it out of hand for ideological reasons. Society will not improve as long as people like her are in government, or her entire party frankly.
This makes me so mad! People with so little (genuine) empathy for both LGBT and Autistic people should not be working in healthcare for trans and autistic people
As an autistic transmasc and SEN specialist, thank you for this. I see so many people infantilise autistic and disabled people when they do not conform to society or their expectations and wants, with expectations that they cannot make decisions for themselves because their decision is "wrong" in the accuser's eyes. It's ableism in it's most insidious, veiled form, and seeing people who don't have the first clue about autism outside of a vague stereotype try and make their flawed argument is frustrating to say the least. Thank you for this well informed and researched video on the topic, it's very refreshing to see.
My sister works in ABA therapy, I’m autistic. I confronted her about it and my parents ended up supporting her side of things, even going as far to say “but some kids actually need it” it makes me want to vomit.
Try asking if gay people need conversion therapy. If they are horrified by conversion therapy, there's hope. If not.... I think you turned out amazing!
One of my best friends is an ABA therapist and college professor and I'm autistic. The closest I've ever come to walking away from 25 years of friendship was watching her with a 9 year old client, clicking at him like he was a naughty dog because he wasn't making eye contact while she spoke to him. I still shake with rage when I think about it. Allistic bs is even more infuriating when they think their highly biased education gives them any authority.
@@newtpollution I am now asking people who believe in ABA if they believe in conversion therapy. So far, no one in my circles supports conversion therapy (that would probably be a dealbreaker on my friendship). I ask them why not.... And then ask what the difference is between conversion therapy and ABA.... It requires that all my needs are met, so I have the patience to ask all the questions in a calm, slow, methodical way, and give them plenty of time to talk it through. As a member of both communities, it's pretty overwhelming to exert this much energy to help someone else refind their own humanity. Definitely worth it, just incredibly exhausting....
@@newtpollution You should not be friends with that person. What a fucking monster. If I were you I'd end the relationship, explain to her exactly why you're doing it and then just completely ghost her.
ok to be fair though, autism is a wide spectrum that reaches from "you're normal, but different" to "you can't stop screaming and shitting yourself when you hear a man speak" which... idk what ABA therapy is, but if you're suffering from the latter, therapy might actually help! The "autism course" I followed that was going to "cure" my autism however, was just an excuse for a woman to treat a group of kids like stray dogs and get paid for it. a scam if you will. (no, she wasn't kind to stray dogs, very shouty, probably couldn't find a husband and blamed it on all men kind of type. total karen)
The intersection between transphobia and ableism is very real. Thanks for this, as a genderqueer autistic. Fun fact: the man responsible for ABA also hand in the development of conversion therapy.
PLEASE. Even back when I was still really naive I had friends try to rope me into all kinds of cults, pyramid schemes and snake oilery and I was like.. how do you fall for this, it’s so clearly a scam lmao EDIT: Oh and I never smoked, drank alcohol or did stupid teen shit until I was old enough (my late twenties lol) to want to try it for my very own personal edification. Peer pressure my ass
I was thinking this exact thing. Like, group pressure never worked on me, because if it wasn't something I wanted then I didn't see the point in it. The only thing I did dread was having to wear make up. I tried it a little, listed all the things (for myself) why it doesn't work for me and quit using it. It feels like most autistic people are critical thinkers.
“… might genuinely want to believe that somehow if they were another sex, that all these problems would disappear.” Ah yes, because me transitioning would convince everyone in the world to stop using overhead lights as opposed to lamps
Wait, hold up. Preferring lamps to overhead lights could be an autistic thing? I know that’s a dumb way to put it, but that’s just one more thing that’s resonated with me in my current self-assessment situation lol
As an autisstic person who uses neopronouns I find this video very important. As if it wasn't bad enough that binary trans autistic people are told they don't understand themselves, I've been told, MANY times, that I not only don't understand my own identity, but that I simply MUST be trolling with my identity. And this most often comes from allistic trans people. Like sorry that even-less-standard identities shatter your worldview so much?
I’ve always kind assumed that the high rates of trans and non-binary autistic people had to do with autistic kids being LESS likely to be susceptible to gender socialization, not more.
@Ville no, I don’t see a question. Maybe it’s a TH-cam glitch. The only comment I can see starts with “it’s not REAL” and is a statement that seems to be missing context. Or maybe I’m just missing something. Either way I don’t know what you are trying to convey.
Agree, but probably a bigger factor in younger people at least is that children are not routinely screened for autism, but I know for a fact that in the UK at least, you will *definitely* encounter a psychiatrist as a trans person seeking healthcare, who may identify autism as part of that process. It always strikes me that identifying autism is primarily done by the state when it is something they see as a stick to beat us with, not as something society should be looking to identify as early as possible in order to actually help us. We don't have routine screening because autism is still seen as 'bad'. And that then enables it to be used against us because it is 'bad'.
I'm a 16 year old autistic trans guy living in the UK. My mum subscribes heavily to gender critical ideology and it's made my life hell. I'm scared to go home every day. I was outed as trans by my school when I was 13, I still vividly remember the confrontation from my parents when I arrived home on the day I was outed. I don't think I can keep dealing with the transphobia and ableism I experience at home, and she claims she's just protecting me from the "irreversible damage" that transitioning would cause me? I don't think I'll ever psychologically recover from the shit she's done and I can't see my relationship with her and the rest of my family existing after I turn 18, but she claims she's protecting me from "irreversible damage". It's so frustrating and I'm so glad that there are cis people standing up to GCs, because gods know that they won't listen to trans people.
I'm so sorry. I'm more on the non binary don't feel strongly either way, but tbh even I freaking hate it when people expect me to be a "good girl". Like I don't even know what that is... Sure doesn't come naturally to me, but seems like other people don't struggle as hard. But for you.. No you need to start your gender affirming therapy. I know that 16 is the age of consent in the UK, but can you sign for yourself at this point? Talk to someone in the healthcare field, and in social services, they may have a way to help you with your mom. I am terribly sorry 😔
It might not be feasible for you depending on where you are based, but you might want to try referring yourself to the Albert Kennedy Trust or to Stonewall Housing. In the UK you do not need to be 18 to leave home but it is very difficult to do so without other support.
I'm not trans but I agree, the way transphobes discuss autistic trans mascs is disgustingly ableist AND misogynistic, they believe trans men are women, and like, is this how you talk about autistic women? All these bigoted ideologies support each other, and we need to address them
If they're so concerned about people being forcibly sterilized, they should be advocating for the removal of sterilization as a requirement for bottom surgery. They don't, though, because that sterilization likely serves their end goals much better than its absence.
"they should be advocating for the removal of sterilization as a requirement for bottom surgery" ....You'd have to take that up with Mother Nature because that's more of a lack of technology issue more than a voting issue.
@@MK_ULTRA420 There's a vast difference between something being a consequence of doing something and it being a requirement to do the thing. Requiring it is like demanding someone have a body part paralyzed in order to get a treatment which might result in paralysis.
@@charlespentrose7834 Idk what your point is. FTM bottom surgery will lead to the sterilization of the patient. I'm not against it but I won't sugarcoat it either. If nature is transphobic too then that's a personal problem.
@mkultra3034 There's multiple kinds of bottom surgeries, particularly for trans masc folks, That have no impact on the organs required to reproduce, yet often things like Hysterectomies have been required for folks to have access to these procedures
@@MK_ULTRA420 Oh sweetie no. You do realise that most people's reproductive organs are waaaaay on the inside right? Like you cited "Mother Nature" there. Did you think babies explode out of testicles or something?
Oops and I just realized that a lot of people in my life are way more lowkey misogynistic, transphobic and ablist then I once thought. Great timing, totally not making plans to move
A woman, is an adult human female, it is not an "identity" or a feeling, dress, attitude etc., that whole line of thinking is regressive in the extreme. Claiming there is some "essence" to "womanhood" that also males can access, but the reality is that women do not have to look or act any certain way, all females who reach adulthood are women regardless of how they feel or look, and the one thing they ALL have in common, the one experience they ALL share, is that they are FEMALE, they do not have to "identify" as anything, they physically ARE women because they are female. Explain exactly why it is that we can't expand the definition of "man", but we apparently MUST redefine "woman" to accommodate delusional sexist males. Why? "Words change, words evolve", so they can so easily change back as well when we realise the new definition is nonsensical and only convolutes understanding rather than increases it. All people claiming to be "trans women" are MALE. The definition of woman is adult human female - and you lot think we should completely uproot that objective reality based definition in order to appease male emotions (delusions) , but in turn redefining "man" is out of the question? And you claim to be fighting sexism? Males who are drawn to sexist stereotypes associated with the female sex cannot be seen as "men" anymore, because they aren't "manly" enough, so we should see and "accept" them as "women" - that is what you lot are pushing for, and it's regressive and sexist to the core, yet you will scream til you are blue in the face that it is about progress and equality, "human rights" and "feminism". What a load of cobbled together utter nonsense.
@@ambientjohnny Wait, who said redefining "man" is out of the question? Personally, as a cis male, I say go ahead and expand it to include trans men, gate's open, come on in, let's go fix a car and drink beer or something, it'll be fun! Or is it only you saying that because erasure of trans men, which you didn't mention once, is the only way your "but why can't 'man' be expanded?" argument makes any sort of sense? We don't really need "man" and "woman" to mean "male" and "female", we already have words for the biological sexes. However, now that there is discussion about gender, we can repurpose "man" and "woman" to describe people possessing the traits typically associated with those biological sexes. (Roughly paraphrased Merriam-Webster definition of gender, sense 2b, since dictionaries get you so hot and bothered. This one's even showing ankle!) I agree that "the reality is that women do not have to look or act any certain way", and neither do men. A woman that's into big machines and things that go boom is as much a woman as one that's into frilly pink dresses and homemaking, and the same goes for men. All they have to do for me to consider them as either or neither is to let me know what word describes them better. I'm more likely to hang out with the big machines and things that go boom crowd, because it's almost like their personality is more socially relevant than their genitals. Fancy that.
As a gender non-conforming gay man with significant sensory issues around light and sound, I never once considered that if I were to start living as a woman, those would go away; I would just be a woman who hates bright light and loud noises. I seriously doubt anyone else ever has thought this, either.
28:48 I remember my friend being pressured to get the coil implant immediately after giving birth, even having people make appointments on her behalf without her knowledge. Her refusal to get the implant was seen as her not complying with the social workers and they used that against her when it came to visitation rights. Thing is, the coil she used to have was actually messing up with her hormones, and given her existing hormonal issues and the fact that she literally just gave birth, her doctor decided she shouldn't go back on it. It was the social workers that were pushing for it, against all medical advice. I know precisely why they did this. Eugenics. My friend is poor and disabled and they straight up didn't want her to get pregnant again. Looking into it, I found out that the government actually does this a lot with poor women, and will withhold services or prevent them from seeing their children until they get an implant. It's so fucked up.
Not Zoë, but I would assume they meant that it's not Ponderful's duty to talk about trans issues specifically. They could have focused on issues relating only to cis autistic people's experiences, and that would have been fine, but chose to focus on this intersection of transphobia and ableism
I never thought such a video on such an aggravating topic could be so calming. I think it's because I think you explain things wonderfully clearly and your voice has a brilliant cadence for video essays in my opinion - I particularly enjoyed the few times you allowed yourself to mock or scoff at the absurdity of TERF alarmist, ableist rhetoric. It feels grounding to actually just take a moment, autistics among autistics, to recognise how ridiculous this all is.
I think there's a huge link between autistic masking and the performativity of gender. The more I taught myself to mask, the more I realized I had been performing a role this whole time, and then I began to see that my whole life as a man had been a role I was playing, and that playing that role brought me a great deal of emotional distress. And since I knew I had just been performing a role this whole time, I realized I could adopt another one, one that actually brought me joy and fulfillment instead of pain and discomfort.
My doctor admitted that i probably have autism, but she said that there's not "a point" in getting a diagnosis bc there's no cure. Ma'am... what (I'm hopefully getting tested soon)
Having an official autism diagnosis also opens you up to systemic discrimination, from mistreatment to straight up DNRs, and also immigration restrictions (ie New Zealand). Consider getting a diagnosis off the books, ie private, if you feel like you really could use a diagnosis for your own needs. I did that with my "Transsexualism" diagnosis (yea lol outdated), it's not tracked inside of our centralized system, and the diagnosis confirmation paper only comes out when I need it to. Also, yes, as an adult, if you get an autism diagnosis, you might just find out that the system has nothing to offer you, as I've heard again and again. Not even cures - no meaningful support groups (aside from, ahem, ABA), nothing of value. I've seen people get their autism diagnosis, see the options and say "well, fuck, now what". Your doctor, as much as the "cure" thing is twisted, accidentally has a point.
The part about autistic people being harder to hypnotize definitely explained a lot for me. As someone who most likely is autistic, but doesn't have the means to get properly diagnosed, my experiences with trying to let myself get hypnotized have felt more like I was just pretending to be hypnotized. And the idea of not thinking about anything except what I'm being told to think about? Forget it.
I'm neither trans nor autistic but some of my friends are both and it really annoys me how gender critical belittle autistic people. They're not stupid, my friends have done so much self reflection to get to where they are now and they're happier than before, especially when they're around other people like them who understand and accept them. I come from a relatively small town and over the last few years there has been a community of pretty young queer people building up because most of the people who started it where really tired of this isolation and now there's a bunch of people working to create spaces for everyone to be themselves and it's really beautiful but also a little sad that young people had to start building a community from the ground up. These two things aren't directly related but people thrive in communities where they can just exist.
ok i just.. i have to rant for a second. parents, esp moms for some reason, who speak like they are inside their childs head, act like they know their child better than the kid themselves; its so fucked up. its like so dehumanizing honestly, like this is a person yk, even if its your kid that doesnt mean yk what they are feeling or how they think. my mom never even did that kinda shit to me, she never paid enough attention to realize i was/am autistic. even when i told her abt it and asked her to think if it made sense based on what she remembered from my childhood, she said she couldnt remember...... now im just trauma dumping smh. my point is: parents cant speak for their kids, at least not entirely. i dont want to speak in absolutes because everything is grey yk. also i tend to be kinda hyperbolic. but i just kinda wanted to vent abt how much this kinda shit annoys me. i see so many parents speaking abt autism like THEY have it, but theyre neurotypicals speaking abt an experience they dont have. its like they cant admit they dont know as much as they assume. if you read all of this ty :) but ill stop ranting now and get back to the video lol
god, this is a huge mood - these mothers treat their AFAB kids like they're literally an extension of themselves and aren't allowed having their own opinions, in addition to any toxic beauty standards they might be projecting onto them resulting from their own failure to live up to those standards
Oh god it's relatable. Though it wasn't gender related, when I was pretty young and learning about the LGBTQ+ community, i came out (kinda) to her as asexual. Of course, i was like 11 so she just said "you aren't thinking about that stuff yet so you can't say that for sure" and me and my little sister just rolled our eyes. In fact, I think I even cried after. Then when it came to learning about autism, wondering if I was autistic (beforehand thinking it was add, and now worried it's both), to this day she still doesn't believe it. Calls it "Asperger's syndrome" no matter how many times I correct her. Like autism is a curse word. Preferring the possibility of me having ADHD over autism to the point she'd wrongly say i was more "concerned" about ADHD when it was moreso autism. And even _then_ because of little white boy stereotypes she doubted that as well. Couldn't catch a break for shi. Even when it's not really related to my identity, my mom takes whatever I'm mediocre at and claims it to be from her side of the family. My supposed artistic talent? Hers, she used to draw when she was younger! My like for all kinds of weird and popular music? Hers, she loved dancing and singing to music! My love for writing and desire to be a reader? Of course I was, she was just as excellent of a writer in school as I am! Liking pizza to an (unhealthy, admittedly) degree? Duh, she ate pizza all the time when she was preggers with me. I mean, that last one could be a little more valid than the rest but you get what I'm trying to say. And all of this because we share a birth month. Because we're _TAURUSES._ I thought horoscopes were demonic, what happened to that?! I apologize for my rant as well, but like you I both hope and don't hope others can relate.
@@Vesperad0 im really sorry your mom treats you like that. i hope you can find more accepting ppl to be around, and or that your mom sees the error of her ways. i really wish you the best navigating dealing with whatever your going thru (i dont want to assume so im gonna be kinda vague lol). it can be hard enough accepting yourself without other ppl being dismissive/demeaning abt it. my heart goes out to you, i relate (to an extent) and ik how isolating it can feel. i wish i could help more but im just a stranger on the internet so i should probably shut up idk lol. i just wanted to show you some support, i hope this helped even just a tiny bit
One off my most traumatic memories from grade school confused me for the longest time, it took years for me to figure out WHY it was so traumatic. In 4th grade I wore a jumper that probably should have had an undershirt but it was 90 degress out. Another child's mother pulled me aside and scolded me, said that as a girl I should have more modesty so that the boys don't get tempted. On one hand I 'knew' I was a girl but on the the other hand I, and all the other boys, knew I was one of them. After that I could feel the other boys pull away, and I was beside myself with grief. It felt like every grade I became less and less of a boy, but it was the 90s and while I had heard of gays and lesbians, I wouldn't hear the word trans for 2 decades. I was thirty before I realized that up until that point, due the way my mother had raised me and how I had been allowed to socialize at school, I was a girl that was a boy in every way that could possibly matter to a child - and then I had that stripped from me. The idea that my fellow boys would see me as a girl, treat me as the women in my life warned me they would, it shattered me. I grew to hate boys, hate men. I would remind myself how terrible they were to chase away feelings of jealousy and envy. And the women in my life were more then willing to help me along in that mindset. It took so long to break free of that poisoning mindset. Would that I could have simply had the freedom to grow up a young gay man, preferably one who had gotten an earlier autism diagnoses to boot lol
Man I remember when I was in middle school and me and my male friends were lying on our stomachs on the trampoline in my backyard, and I couldn't really do it because of breast buds and thinking "is this it? Do I have to be a girl now? Can I no longer pretend to be one of the guys?" But yeah I got similarly told off in kindergarten when it was hot out and all the kids were taking off their shirts but all the girls were scolded for doing it because "it's inappropriate if you're a girl." Like ma'am we're 5.
Interesting thing about the sensory issue thing. I’m autistic and a trans guy. When I had breasts I had massive sensory issues with bras and the movement of my breasts. I also had HORRID dysphoria about my breasts. Top surgery alleviated both of these things. Now I’m on testosterone and am horribly sweaty. I’ve been getting really miserable acne as hair follicles all over my body develop. As you can imagine this is a sensory nightmare and has been triggering the skin picking I had mostly kicked before. Yet at the same time I am not experiencing gender dysphoria about it, but gender euphoria
I remain shocked (as both bigender and autistic) at how completely jo and her cohorts misunderstand dysphoria. You describe yourself as a quintessential tomboy. I grew up called a tomboy but also internally had very different ideas about gender than you describe. There is a huge differnce between "my boobs and period are uncomfortable" and "my primary sex traits make me wanna die." Like, there is a big difference between " patriarchy and descrimination are bs" and "my body feels legit wrong". How can they not see that. Also, thank you for explaining how we autists are so frequently called "stubborn," "defiant", "disobedient". Cause omg, i was the nightmare child and learning i was autistic explained why my childhood behaviors were what they were. And thank God My mom just took it as my personality cause i can't even imagine how much more shit school would have been if I'd been stuck in 90s garbage special ed....
Considering the comment above me, i wonder what they think of trans individuals without dysphoria? Like a guy who just knows he's a guy, and wants top surgery, and the only thing he's annoyed by is being called his birth name (bad example lol). Like the only reaction they have to things that don't correlate with who they are...is annoyance. Do non-dysphoric trans people inherently prove their ""rapid onset gender dysphoria"" bullshit wrong (like everything else they spew)? I don't know what gender i am; if I really do know but the amount of possiblities I've seen online makes me second guess myself, or if I sincerely don't know since everything and anything with expectations makes me irritated. Simplest answer? Afab non beanie. But the possibility of me being an enby is nearly equal if not more likely than being a cis lesbian or a trans gay man, which is even more confusing. Idk how I got here, someone please help me. Still, all of those feel wrong to me. Obviously not if you are one of those above, but for me personally. And sometimes I really do wish I had gender dysphoria beyond wanting a more androgynous voice, androgynous face, androgynous appearance overall. Because then, if I ever come out to my family, for the most part they'll be unable to doubt me (tho i know some still would, it doesn't matter how much you know yourself people will still act like they know you better than you do). But the way I am now, fluctuating between liking my chest and being annoyed by it-aka wanting it chopped off as they might describe it-i can only assume my identity will confuse terfs more. Maybe irritate them if I'm lucky. Then again... I'm likely autistic with a chance of ADD so shit they still might use the autism argument. Just because I questioned gender roles and pretty much everything as a probs autistic child doesn't mean I'm overthinking who I am! I didn't even know trans people existed yet I was daydreaming about looking like Percy effing Jackson and ironically, Harry Potter. Short black hair, boyish features and all.
@@Vesperad0 are you me? Sounds like my experience. Afab non beanie here too (I love the phrase non beanie and I’m going to start using it now 😂). I kinda gave up a while ago on “figuring out” my gender. It is an enigma. For a while I was obsessed with that, but now I just do what makes me happy. One of those things happened to be micro-dosing testosterone for six months, then stopping because I like my voice & face now. Another was getting top surgery. That one took a few years to decide on, and I’m glad my parents made me wait a few years until I was really sure, but didn’t make me wait longer after I knew I wanted it. (I was like 14 or 13 when I first brought it up, 16 when I got it). I’m only 19, but I’m pretty happy gender-wise these days and I def don’t regret either choice. But anyways my advice would be not to focus TOO much on labels. They can be useful to describe yourself easily to others and to feel like you’re not alone, BUT, don’t try to fit yourself into a box that doesn’t fit you just because of those things. You’ll find it eventually, or you’ll just not care anymore. Ironically you may have the best chance of finding the right label when you’re not looking for it.
@@Vesperad0 I'm writing a story right now about a transmasc guy who lived all his life thinking he was a lesbian, but now that he's transitioning in his late 20s he's considering that oh hey maybe he's actually a gay man. In the end, I think he's gonna settle on "IDK but make it gay"
I've been recommending your "Gender Criticals Don't Understand Female-Only Spaces" to anyone who'll listen. And this is another great analysis. Thanks! ContraPoints made one of the definitive... erm...points about JKR's article when she pointed out that "You're not less of a bigot because your bigotry has a tragic backstory". Your analysis highlights how JKR's decision to double-down has also entailed a refusal to listen to the very people she paternalistically claims to be protecting.
A woman, is an adult human female, it is not an "identity" or a feeling, dress, attitude etc., that whole line of thinking is regressive in the extreme. Claiming there is some "essence" to "womanhood" that also males can access, but the reality is that women do not have to look or act any certain way, all females who reach adulthood are women regardless of how they feel or look, and the one thing they ALL have in common, the one experience they ALL share, is that they are FEMALE, they do not have to "identify" as anything, they physically ARE women because they are female. Explain exactly why it is that we can't expand the definition of "man", but we apparently MUST redefine "woman" to accommodate delusional sexist males. Why? "Words change, words evolve", so they can so easily change back as well when we realise the new definition is nonsensical and only convolutes understanding rather than increases it. All people claiming to be "trans women" are MALE. The definition of woman is adult human female - and you lot think we should completely uproot that objective reality based definition in order to appease male emotions (delusions) , but in turn redefining "man" is out of the question? And you claim to be fighting sexism? Males who are drawn to sexist stereotypes associated with the female sex cannot be seen as "men" anymore, because they aren't "manly" enough, so we should see and "accept" them as "women" - that is what you lot are pushing for, and it's regressive and sexist to the core, yet you will scream til you are blue in the face that it is about progress and equality, "human rights" and "feminism". What a load of cobbled together utter nonsense. Further, "Trans" ideology is at times extremely homophobic, as evidenced by a significant amount of people trying to redefine same-sex attraction as "gender attraction", and the phenomenon of males denying their own homosexuality under the "trans" banner, by claiming to "transition gender" into "women" and thus reframe their same-sex attraction to other males as "not gay" because they are now claiming to be "women attracted to men" - AND, the attempted erasure of lesbian reality by males claiming to be "lesbian" by "transitioning to a woman" and being attracted to females - they are not gay, they are males attracted to females, they are straight, yet trying to redefine same-sex attraction as "same-gender" attraction, which tons of lesbians are appalled by, yet their concerns get shouted down as "transphobic".
I'm autistic and I literally had a mental breakdown the day before yesterday due to my mental conditioning I went through. That stuff was absolutely f'ed up and this therapist who put me through this is still practicing
As a fellow sufferer of years of trauma from therapists, I feel ya. Though I am sure yours was more blatant, damn they can mess you up. Hope the best for you, whatever you choose.
As soon as I heard the 'Autistic people love rules' thing, I knew they couldn't know that many autistic people. A lot of autistic people might like structure, but most I know are far more likely to question a set of rules that are kinda silly and don't make real sense, like the 'rules' of gender. Thus, yeah, it makes a lot more sense to me that a higher percentage of autistic people than allistic just come to realise they're not cis or want to break out of the binary they were told they belonged to. (Edited for clarity)
I can understand the idea that autistic people love rules, as an autistic person myself, but the definition of "rules" people think of is not necessarily the one that is true of that statement. The rules autistic people often like are usually ones we make ourselves by accident, rather than ones put in place by authority, especially if they seem arbitrary. Now, granted, I do personally get anxious when going against the latter, but that's more of a "fear of authority/being judged" thing than a "must follow rules" thing. For example, I would be uncomfortable if I "broke the rule" my brain has of only having lunch between 12 and 2, but if I see an unattended "keep off the grass" sign in front of a significant shortcut, I'm just gonna walk that way. You can't just make a rule and expect that autistic people will follow it because it's a rule, we're not robots. And I will be honest, I actually have some skin in this game because as a little girl I was pretty sexist because I think part of my brain just thought that was the rules. This was even against my parents' will, they were very good about this sort of thing, but I was very "girl = pink, boy = blue" and actually missed out on a lot of cool cartoons etc because they were for boys (or sometimes, were just not specifically for girls). However, once I picked up critical thinking skills and understood the history of the world, that rule kind of dissolved because it stopped making sense. I have a hard time imagining anyone who has this rigid and old fashioned understanding of gender, but would be ok with transitioning (much less think it's the solution) because I feel like in order to realise that transitioning is an option you have to at least somewhat realise those rules are constructed. I don't think you can get to "trans man" without passing "tomboy" in the way that these transphobic ableists seem to think.
"...might genuinely want to believe that somehow if they just were another sex, that all these problems would disappear" Hoooly fuck that is hilarious! Assuming my sound sensitivity would have ANYTHING to do with my gender is just mind-bogglingly stupid. Like "oh dear, if only i weren't a GIRL the fridge wouldn't bother me anymore" (sarcasm) (also thank the algoritm for putting this in my recommended. definitely subbing :) )
I know right? It's very unlikely that an autistic person would mistake sensory sensitivities with gender dysphoria assuming they know what gender dysphoria is. It would be like someone mistaking a headache for being gay. Doesn't happen. But it sounds superficially plausible to people with a poor understanding of autistic people's lived experience. Most people think that autistic sensory sensitivities are emotional in nature, that's why we're sometimes offered exposure therapy to get over our "fears". When they aren't fears! I think there was a study where they found that 75% of *doctors* incorrectly thought that autistic sensory sensitivities were emotional and behavioural problems.
I think this is because these women GENUINELY do not like being women and perceive womanhood as inherently suffering and only through the lense of what bad things they experience. So they project this negative image of their own gender on to trans people and assume it must be the negative that drives people. That somehow trans people are betraying all that suffering by trying to escape it when you're supposed to be a martyr for your gender because it gives the gender credibility and authority or some shit. They ALWAYS talk about suffering first whenever they criticise trans women, they always talk about suffering first whenever they criticise trans men, or non binary people. They *LITTERALLY* cannot imagine, as women, *wanting* to be a woman. So they assume this is how everyone's gender identity works. edit: Oh shit this was form a year ago, sorry.
Amazing video!! I'm recently diagnosed autistic. I'm also non-binary and I identify with autigender demiboyflux more. I feel like my gender is tied to my neurodivergence. My family still doesn't believe me when I told them I'm autistic or an ADHDer. I'm so glad that you made this! 💕💕💕💕💕
The bit about "why doesn't my autistic son do this?" -"because they don't want to. " I did make me laugh. My job is in part explaining this, which should be obvious.
It’s always a red flag to me when parents of autistic children think they’re more of an expert on autism than their OWN children- as though their child’s disability makes them incapable of speaking for themselves. I’m not sure how it is for people with more severe forms of autism, but for those of us with more mild forms of it, I’ve found that we almost ubiquitously have better understandings of our own emotions and how we process them vs neurotypical people because it’s one of the most needed skills for our survival, ESPECIALLY as adults. I’ve found that neurodivergent people (at least that I’ve known on and offline) are also more likely to reject religion and traditions because we prefer to analyze everything to see its flaws vs accepting it at face value. SO MANY parents of autistic people are willing to brush off everything their child says because “well, you’re mentally disabled in [X] way, so therefore you’re mentally disabled in ALL ways and your opinion doesn’t hold any weight.” It’s a complete dismissal and infantilization, and it’s such a horrible thing to do to your OWN child. I’m so thankful that my own family has acknowledged my strengths while helping with my issues, and has encouraged debate and discussion of ideas despite having such different opinions. My sister and I largely changed their opinions on the queer community this way. Tl;dr: Parents of autistic children often infantilize their own kids and refuse to acknowledge their strengths, and should never be seen as a more important “unbiased” resource than actual autistic people and researchers. (Edited to add tl;dr)
God I relate so hard with everything you're saying. My mom is normally a perfect mom but everyone has their flaws, and the second I admitted that I'd left islam behind, she went exactly how you described. I think it's honestly her coping mechanism - my daughter can't go to hell because she's too autistic to make the decision to leave Islam, so she's safe. Luckily I managed to convince her I am still a muslim and that 'leaving islam' was just a depressive episode/phase during covid. Sucks that I must hide the secret, but I can't do anything about it unless I want my mother to cry :(
I’m a Autistic Person, I’m Genuinely Disgusted, Appalled, and Horrified by how we are used by people on the right as a scapegoat and a justification for they’re ideologies.
Love the testimonials you included at the end! Conversations about autism so often treat autistic people as if they're a monolith without voices of their own. It's so patronizing because clearly, they have a _much_ better understanding of things than the people who want to speak over them.
As a Bi Autistic Cis man who is very immersed in several trans communities and has a very supportive family and friend group. Trans people are not trying to convert gay people. I have been confused for a woman many times (I'm very androgenous) and I've cross dressed many times. Yet none of these things turned me trans because. I'm not trans. And the trans people around me are respectful of other people's gender identity.
If anything, I would think the trans people are a lot more likely to understand just how important it is for people to be who they are! This is the same bullshit of trying to claim the gay people are trying to “recruit” people If anyone is trying to recruit people, it’s cishet people. All of society is trying to convince everyone that they’re cishet, and until recently we didn’t even allow people to know that not everyone was. And the facists want it that way again.
The thing about "if I were born 30 years earlier...maybe I would have tried to transition" is that they should have been allowed to do that if they really wanted to. Everyone should be given the information they need about transition and access to a supportive community, and then allowed to make the decision for themselves
I’m AFAB (exploring non-binary identity), and I wasn’t diagnosed with autism until last year at the age of 23. It’s explained a hell of a lot, and there’s still a lot I’m finding I have to un-learn in terms of expectations for myself and my limits. My boyfriend is a trans man who came out to me years ago not long after we first got together. I remember how afraid he was to tell me because his last girlfriend wrote it off as a “phase” and that he was just trying to go along with what was trendy. He didn’t bring it up again with her after that. His gender identity didn’t bother me one bit (and honestly, didn’t really surprise me either), he’s had my full support the whole time since. He’s two years on T now, and has just overall been doing so much better for himself. He’s overall in a better place than he used to be, he takes better care of himself than he used to. It baffles me how some people can look at someone like him and say he’s going to regret it or any of the other BS the GC crowd likes to toss around. He’s not diagnosed with anything, but he’s definitely neurodivergent in some way. So what if autistic people have a higher chance of “being” trans? People forget, not every trans person even wants bottom surgery. Being trans doesn’t always mean infertility. If baby making is their concern, it shouldn’t be. Just sounds like rehashed homophobia to me.
I started wondering if I was autistic around the age of 39 or 40. It took me about 8 years of thinking about it before I got in touch with my GP and said I think I might be autistic and to be referred to an autism assessment and last year I had my assessment and they said you are autistic at the age of 47/48. It was such a relief that I was autistic and not that I was stupid and a slow learner for all life. I knew I was asexual in my teens(didn't have the words at the time though, thanks Maggie for section 28). It was only around the age of 45 when my hair started to recede and go bald that I thought I was trans and now I identify as non binary trans fem though I am not out openly yet, don't know if I ever will be. I been DIYing the last 21 months on HRT and T blockers. Blood tests say everything is okay. The waiting lists for gender health care is very long, am looking at up to a 10 year wait or more. I wasn't prepared to wait. I would rather take the risk by DIYing. Sod the system.
I always had a problem saying no to people. Do you think I might have had ABA as a kid and just don't remember it? It is possible since I virtually remember zero of my childhood(this can be embarrassing as someone will say hi when out and about and I am like who are you and they say they are so and so from school, I suffer from face blindness a bit, after a few hours people's faces are just completely blank in my memory but I remember a few names in some cases even their birthday, I tend to recognise people by their dog or what clothes or coat they are wearing). I know I had speech therapy as a young child and my schools were always assessing me and that I was in extra classes from Junior school onwards. I also remember the bullying I suffered, the taunts, the teasing, the abuse, even from teachers at times. Remember the phase "Sticks and stones..." it is complete rubbish. Physical scars heal and fade with time but mental scars never go away, it is still there, hurting.
@@daviniarobbins9298 It's not always ABA that causes that, the world in general tends to teach autistic people that they don't have the right to say no to things. ABA just makes it explicit.
My parents responded the same way to me having more "boyish" or more "girly" interests as a kid, and let me stop wearing skirts, or cut my hair really short (this one's recent), without trying to push me to reconsider. I didn't feel the need to conform to some "feminine ideal" myself either. And I'm pretty sure they never said they wished I were a boy, or that they thought I should have been one. On the contrary, when I once asked my mom if she thought dad would've preferred if I were a boy, she actually said it's in some ways better that I was a girl, because he might've been harsh to a boy. As a girl, it was more acceptable for me to be soft or sensitive. I'm transmasc genderfluid. I'm not sure if my parents even know non-binary people exist, given how gendered the Russian language is. Even native English speakers, who already have a gender-neutrality-friendly language with existing neutral words and pronouns, don't understand (or simply choose to be assholes about) enby people. And about the "autistics are obsessed with following rules/norms or conforming" thing, I wanna add- It appears that I'm likely autistic. (Hesitant to attempt getting an official/professional diagnosis, because I heard it might be a barrier to trans healthcare in the future) When I was in elementary school, a bunch of times I whited out bad grades in my grades book thingy and replaced them with better ones (grading is stupid anyways tbh). After a certain point in middle school I stopped doing homework altogether for any class. I wore a fedora to school for some time. I was also often drawing and/or stealthily eating during class. I'm genderfluid, and would like to play around with my presentation. If I looked and sounded more masculine (and lived in a more queer-accepting country), I would wear dresses/skirts sometimes, because I like the idea of being a man in a dress. I'm on the aro spectrum, with little to no desire for a romantic partner, despite the widespread assumption/belief that everyone is better off in an exclusive, romantic, long-term coupled relationship, and that everyone is seeking such a relationship (amatonormativity), and the fact that societal pressures try to push people towards that. I'm on the ace spectrum as well. Everyone is expected to desire (and engage in) romance and sex, to the point where many can't comprehend the idea that some aren't into it, and some are convinced it must be a miserable experience, and yet here I am chilling on the aroace spectrum, not bothered by it. Do I look like I care about rules, or conformity, or norms. The point about neurodivergent people being more prone to introspection is definitely true. When you're out of the norm and you realize that, you're more likely to try and figure out why. I was always bad at socializing, for instance. It seemed to come naturally to everyone around me, but not me. Sometimes it felt like other people knew or understood something I didn't. An inability to read social cues would certainly explain that. (Apologies for the long comment. Also, you have a nice voice!)
Your story abut growing up and being young and the most stereotypical "tomboy" is fascinating. I'm a trans guy, I felt the same about almost everything you described, but when I learned I could transition I was like "oh shit, that's what I'm going to do". I was so confident, and still am. When I learned trans people existed it was an instant "shit why do I check all the boxes I'm trans aren't I". I couldn't fathom growing up and being anything other than a man. The thought grossed me out quite frankly. The best way I've heard it put, is if you know all of the barriers and social and societal stigma that comes with being trans, and your biggest concern is "What if I'm not trans?", you're probably trans, because any cis person would think "What if I'm trans?", not the other way around.
Oh, wow…I mean I spend a huge amount of time worrying that I’m not trans (not the trans part which I don’t care about, but worrying that I’m really my agab…I want to be cis, but not like THAT as I don’t know who I’d be if I were turned into a letter after L type person like the terfs want…I wouldn’t be me, it would be someone else. ) So did you… it sounds like maybe you experience something similar in reverse, like letter after L-ness for me has always felt disgusting and like an infection and mutation. I didn’t learn trans people existed until I was a teenager, and then immediately was like connecting it to all my feelings I’d had. The fascists want to keep it a secret, force everyone into thinking that cishet is the only thing there is.
Nonbinary autist, I grew up being denied my autistic identity by my father for most of my life. Either he’d downplay it or tell me I just “didn’t have it” it felt like his own identity revolved around the appearance of a happy functioning family and that somehow me and my brother being neurodivergent was an obstruction of that. On top of this he was very absent physically and emotionally when it came to school, my mom was the one who handled my IEP (individualized education plan) which unfortunately didn’t take into account bullying from peers and teachers. I’ve been able to reconcile this with my mom as we had communication issues back then and I know if she knew what was happening at the time she’d destroy those who hurt me. However I never told my dad about this and I’m sure he’d deny me having an unhappy childhood if I did. What confuses me most however is that he readily accepts my queerness but not my neurodivergency.
As a trans man possibly on the spectrum, the TERF has a real and frustrating impact on some sexologists in more restrictive countries like my own. I was told basically that to be trans, autism needs to be ruled out, that there are “too many” trans men who are autistic and this must be indicative of… something bad. I guess some kind of insincere cope to bullying. Cuz trans people never get bullied and there’s no way someone who is already prone to questioning social norms would also be questioning gender norms?
My parents will never accept that I'm trans, I'm from Brazil and so it's pretty common and the rate of homelessness for trans women in specific is very, very high. I'm living with a couple of roommates, which is honestly pretty uncommon here, but being queer and ADHD in a queer and ND space is honestly so, so much better and healthier than what I was going through just shutting down my feelings for all of my teenage years and never learning how to deal with stress, instead just shutting in my room and reading and playing games until time passed. Was a miserable time of my life, and I would give literally anything for even just a slightly more accepting pair of parents, let alone society as a whole. I already knew why TERs are bullshit, and not feminists, but thanks for illuminating it and giving me more ammunition and good arguments when talking to actually sane human beings who are willing to listen. I feel like a LOT of the middle aged wine-moms got suckered into this movement, because it's just exactly the kind of thing they already advocated against in the past, just with a new label slapped onto it, and in the UK those people have a whole lot of political pull with their wealth. Good to analyse structures while we're at it. I wish people would accept others a little easier, just any amount of effort would do. Sigh.
Thank you so much for this. I came across trans content on YT around the time I was getting my autism diagnosis, immediately realizing how much our life experiences are similar: being seen as sick, broken, not whole, not functioning, because we deviate from the norm in things that the majority assumes to be the correct way of being human (be it because of ableism/bigotry or just out of ignorance). Therefore when I learned that the ND spectrum and the LGBT+ spectrum have a high overlap I was amazed, but not really surprised. Still, not being trans myself, I was really curious to hear from trans autistics their opinion on the matter. So thank you so much for this great video, and thanks to all the people who participated sharing their invaluable contributions!
Your whole point about autistics being famously known for not following rules they don't understand, and being seen as "stubborn" and "defiant" by allistics.... I can't believe that never occurred to me before in regards to terfs calling them easily manipulated. Like, I knew their point was bullshit, paternalistic, ableist... but I never thought of how ridiculous it sounds when you compare it to the neurotypical stereotype of autistic kids. You cannot make an autistic kid wear a shirt he doesn't want to wear, you cannot force them to abide by social norms they find unpleasant or nonsensical like eye contact and small talk, and we're supposed to believe they are changing their gender to follow trends? It makes no sense at all and I'm embarrassed it had to be pointed out to me before I saw it from that perspective. Not to mention the potential for sensory meltdowns when their body begins to change with HRT. Thank you for this video.
Growing up with autism and pathological demand avoidance it was frustrating being around people that never understood me. I never did what I was told because I didn't care about authority. I saw everyone on my level, everyone was just another human to me. I remember in secondary school we had a couple trans students, I didn't understand why people where bothered by it, they just seemed like other kids to me. Now I'm older I understand it alot better but I will still never fully comprehend how someone can hate people for being themselves.
Great video. I'm cis and autistic, and I often had troubles performing the more toxic parts of masculinity. A possible source of "manipulating people into transition" are LGBT-phobes, that sometimes spiced up their homophobia with occasional transphobia. My stepfather often told me to "cut off my d*** and put on a dress" for wanting to wear protective gloves for some gardening work. People often misremember things as they get older, and they might misremember the sources of such "jokes".
Wooow. Your stepfather sounds “well”. Yes, trash your hands to be manly 🙄 I love that you’ve seen through some bs of toxic masculinity stuff! That’s awesome. And it seems like we’re if anything more likely to see through nonsensical societal rules, not less like I guess the terfs think 🙄
I cannot even begin to put into words how seen I feel by this video. It's been hard grappling with the fact that masking and staying in the closet compounded each other for so long, and how much of my youth I lost out on for it. It's a relief knowing this is getting talked about and fewer people will feel that loss. 💙
Weird how nobody questions my ability to know my own mind and body when I’m cis and autistic… it’s almost like they don’t actually care about helping me understand myself and my gender and just care about forcing me to conform to their rigid social rules… 🤔 they’re perfectly happy with me being manipulated as long as I’m manipulated into behaving in a way they deem to be “socially acceptable”
My favorite is being told im too incompetent to know my gender identity, but those same people think im competent enough to want to have an raise a child. I can decide I want to get married too, which is technically reversible but definitely complicated. The only time someone (in my life, I know autism can bar you from doing a lot of these things in other places) is against me making my own decisions is when it comes to gender identity. And personally, I'm nonbinary, I don't even want to transition medically. Is it so harmful for me to change my name and use different pronouns?
Well, actually, a lot of people think autistics are incompetent to raise a child too, there's a real problem in the UK that social services are biased against autistic parents and presume incompetence and danger.
I'm a transdude and I've always found clothes uncomfortable to be in. As a kid I'd just be naked as often as I could get away with it but then puberty came along which is my case meant massive, massive dysphoria so that's the only connection I see between those two things, having hormones and surgery definitely has made life easier in that I can once again be naked at home without too much discomfort (I haven't had bottom surgery yet so that bothers me but it's still better). It's absurd to me when terfs try to argue that I've been tricked into being trans, I knew I was trans since I was a kid, I am highly self-aware, I've done the doubting bit very throroughly by this point and like... I knew I was trans well before I even heard anyone mention transpeople, we weren't talked about back then, not where I was growing up for sure. Just so many ridiculous statements. Of course, the point isn't to convince *me* the point is to make cis people doubt that we know what's best for ourselves. And it is fucking scary, that shit. They want it to be the way it was when I was growing up but on steroids, where it's enforced and far more deliberate. This has been a bit of a ramble, my brain isn't really co-operating very well at the moment.
Abigail Thorn's video on mental health where she mentioned feeling like a very big and bulky person (in the way, sticking out like a sore thumb, an obstacle, not at all feeling how she wished to feel, etc.) reminded me a lot of how since I was a toddler I related simultaneously to super girly fairy princess characters (e.g. Barbie from Fairytopia specifically when she doesn't have her wings and navigates the world without wings better than her winged peers) and hulking, meat-head henchman/bouncer types (e.g. Rhino, The Ventriloquist's tank henchman, from Batman the animated series). Having lived in both a wealthy expat community full of overachieving NT children with tiger parents, in which I was considered below average (took a while to see the point in being verbal when I could communicate just fine non-verbally, and didn't see why reading fictional books was praised more than reading non-fiction - leading to me getting a below average reading grade because I only read books I enjoyed and in a nook in the library the teachers ignored, so they thought I just couldn't read when I was actually reading science and history books well beyond my age group's arbitrary "reading level") AND lived in a poor, working class mining town (when we moved back to England) that was far less ethnically diverse and less accepting of any minute difference (also ostracized me because I was suddenly deemed "the smart kid"). In both the henchman relation and the "smart kid" denotation, for years I was socially isolated and only contacted when someone needed to make use of my physical strength or mental assistance. Since, being autistic, I don't give into social pressure easily, I would often tell people to f-off unless I had literally nothing better to do, and since I had no social life until reaching year 11, I usually didn't have anything better to do. Experimenting with gender mostly came from me trying to "leave behind" the part of me that related to Fairytopia barbie, since I associated it with both China (where I lived before) and being very young. People have always seen me as "mature", but I think that's again down to my non-verbal preference, selective mutism and seeing the misbehavior of my peers as a learned behavior that I had difficulty rationalizing a reason to do myself, I just found life easier doing what I wanted quietly in my little bubble away from the chaotic and nasty NT people that seemed to get joy from inflicting pain and frustration onto others. Embodying a "masculine" aesthetic was me latching onto how I related to characters like Rhino. I took pride in what I now (but didn't at the time) realize are autistic traits, equating them to being much like a bouncer. Another aspect of this character trope, I've noticed, is many seemingly "dumb", bulky, tough characters either loving very stereotypically "girly" things, like unicorns, or actually turning out to be very intellectual / intelligent people (I think in one of the BTAS comics, Rhino turns out to be an expert in fine art; another example of this is Heavy from TF2, another character I very much relate to). That time, while trying to cope with the mental and emotional distress of the extreme social isolation and bullying I faced in school (a very common experience for most autistic people) by fostering a superiority complex regarding what turned out to be autistic traits (which I described as a better than average work ethic, toughness, extreme levels of focus and productivity - which turned out to be just me hyperfocusing on my special interests during break time and at home because I never had social plans to fill that time instead) and a derogatory view to NT people (whom I saw as lazy, clingy, erratic and pathetic; views which I didn't voice but which I increasingly felt the more they acted hostile unprompted to me and other students), I tied a lot of my self-worth to my productivity, intelligence and physical strength - overexercising and becoming basically a femcell from year 6 to year 9. Papyrus is a character I relate to both before that time, and Heavy mostly to after. The way Heavy speaks in the TF2 comics just reminds me of exactly how I talk in general (only with a British accent). It took changing to a STEM school in year 10, which coincidentally had a high number of autistic students in attendance (thus the teachers were experienced in helping and listening to autistic students, rather than being trained to treat them the way ABA does - it was actually my maths teacher here that first suggested I am autistic), for me to accept both parts of me instead of leaning too far into one or the other. They're both me. I know non-binary is a spectrum that can include those in-between, both, and neither of the extremes in gender expression, but I think genderfluid is probably the most apt way of describing me. Yes, I'm both, but whether I present more masc, femme or neither really varies across time, and I feel validated provided I am perceived as what I'm aiming for but don't take offence if not.
Yet so many professionals still don't get it. I'm studying disability studies and many of my class mates are nurses, special ed teachers or social workers by profession. Most of them are of the opinion that autistic children "need to get used to it" along other harmful opinions on the topic. E.g. we were discussing the advantages and disadvantages of online classes like we had during the pandemic and I mentioned how a sibling of mine had the best time of their school life during those times and how they would still profit from a hybrid solution like 2 to 3 online days a week. But my classmates didn't want to hear it. They praised in-person classes as the be all end all solution and said that autistic kids just need to get used to it. Basically they need this enforced socialization with peers no less than five days a week for 12 years straight, or otherwise they would fail later in life. No matter the sensory overstimulation. No matter the bullying.
It really bothered me how my sister would always describe me as being "in my own world" and "stubborn", especially given how airheaded and out of touch with reality my sister is (along with her constant need to have the last word in arguments, even though her side is almost always unsubstantiated, but apparently it isn't stubborn when she does things like that but I'm stubborn for simply existing).
It's "stubborness" and "black and white thinking" when it's something that NTs disagree with, but "common sense" and "right-mindedness" when it's something they support.
Thank you for this. Nonbinary AuDHD here. When you were sharing the autistic person's mother's description of high intensity sensory processing disorder, I was practically screaming "HOW COULD YOU THINK THAT ANYONE WHO EXPERIENCES THAT WOULD THINK THAT TRANSITIONING WOULD MAKE THAT EASIER" Edit to add: The health and care plan thing is terrifying to me. This is the reason I advocate for people being careful about getting an autism diagnosis if they don't need to - as an autistic survivor of childhood trauma, being controlled by and legally bound to my parents forever, would have been a death sentence - unrelated to my gender entirely. If you are reading this and you are not autistic, please realize that Autism is not a disorder of mental ability. It's often misunderstood that way by allistics usually because we are not listened to or given autonomy, agency, or an ability to communicate that is effective between us and our community.
Smh. I know it isn't logical. I know it's their fears and that trans existence forces everyone else to reconsider the structures that exist and what personal liberty means and how non liberated we all are. It's easier to attack us than the powers of control and financial servitude. Whatever. 😮💨
What an amazing cat! Great video as well. I think I might be on the spectrum but have withrawned this thought from my analyst because, being trans, I didn't want that to interfere with my transition. That concern is motivated by the fact that it might have made the whole process longer, which is a thing that happens and I couldn't wait any longer since I was already on my 30s. Nevertheless I was infantilized by relatives and "friends" claiming that I was making that up or that I would face major difficulties in the world, like I was not aware already.
I can't claim to be trans or autistic. I am however, gender nonconforming. I did always struggle against my family and my school's expectations of me as male, both in terms of my appearance and my interests. As an adult, and out of a marriage which similarly limited my self expression due to her expectations of gender roles, I am finally happy and confident in myself and have friends who appreciate me for who I really am.
Uuuugh, yeah, this garbage hurts cis people too!! It blows my mind how important it is to bad people that everyone be cishet AND conform to stupid gender rules.
Several people in my life have "accused" me of being autistic, for impenetrable reasons I don't care to speculate on. In any case it does help me empathise a little better with the way that autistic people are infantilised and othered by society in ways that simply bear no resemblance to the actual traits characteristic of autism. For most allistic people the word just means "weird" in some nebulous way they can't explain.
I'm reminded of this one post, that's like, "Yeah, autistic people are more likely to be trans, because gender is stupid, and we're not stupid." I'm autistic and trans myself., and like, yeah, that
And let's not forget that the absolute easiest way to get screened for every personality disorder, neurodivergence and mental illness is to tell your doctor you're transgender. Source: I've been screened for ASD, anxiety, depression, NPD, BPD, paranoia etc. etc. by three separate health instances because that's literally a requirement for being offered gender-affirming care in Norway
Geez 😡 Like…you can have any or all of those things and it doesn’t change whether you’re male or female or non-binary! And being trans and not being supported or getting treatment can LEAD to depression, anxiety, etc. 🤦🏻♀️
Those screenings are no official requirements where I live but the psychologist who signed off on my transition recognized my ADHD too and helped me get diagnosed. I think the fact alone that trans people are mandated to see a mentral health care professional or three in a lot of countries could increase the likelyhood of additional diagnoses in trans people compared to the cis population.
God listening to the testimonies of trans autistic people gave soooo much clarity and rationality to the subject to the point where you're absolutely dumbfounded as to how it were ever an argument for terfs. Listening to them was so powerful bc it felt like seeing people taking back a voice that was stripped away from them but it also made me so hopeful (and very emotional omg) for a society outside of the irrationality of gender roles under patriarchy thank you so much for this
I'm glad you gave autistic trans people a voice in this when we are so often belittled and ignored on the basis of our neurology and gender identity. I really appreciate this video and your allyship ♥️ Your work is wonderful and meaningful to me personally, it made me learn a lot more about my autistic self than I have in the 10+ years I spend getting professional help
As an autsitic transman I think I completly agree with the idea of autistic people being more likely to realize they are trans. I spent my whole life having confused thoughs about everything - including gender - and a huge dificulty to understand things that everyone else seemed to "get". And at the time I thought everyone was like that. That everyone questioned their gender and wanted to force themselfs in the norms anyway. At 18 I discovered I had autism (I was diagnosed as 17 but my therapist and my parents kept it from me?) and the more I understanded about it more I realized that not everyone else had the thoughs and doubts and confusion I had. And I was forced to understand that if this was the case than this meant that maybe the ways I felt about my gender also weren't just a normal experience for cis people. That other people didn't necessarialy felt forced into their gender, didn't felt the way I did. That it wasn't that everyone around me had a silent pact to lie I had no clue about but was forced to participate. And that knowledge was what alowed me to reshearch and understand my gender experience and well it was very clear that I was not a woman at all.
36:26 "Can you imagine having a brain that only briefly quiets down while sleeping?" Yes, how strange that other people's brains are...active. Her asking this question answered all of mine.
I just call them TERFs anyway. But since TERFs aren't really feminist, to me it means Trans-Exclusionary Radical Fascist, which I think is more descriptive.
Just a funny thought. I am an autistic woman. For sensory and practical reasons I have short hair, no makeup, no jewelry. It looks kind of masculine. However, I always wear a dress. I can't stand the feeling of pants. They are uncomfortable. So are tights. I wear loose, not snug leggings. Ones that are easy to bend in. I wear a dress because there is no band in the middle that I would have to feel, the band on the leggings is bad enough. The dress has to be loose enough to be comfortable and short enough to not get in the way of movement. If I was a man, I would hate to wear pants and would want the same outfit, a short loose dress, but I would still have short hair and not wear jewelry (maybe I would wear pants to not draw attention to myself, but I would change the minute I got home and wish I did not have to wear pants). None of this would have anything to do with gender identity, just comfort and practicality.
Trans and autistic here, I really don't understand this idea of being easily hoodwinked. Personally I do an incredible amount of research on basicly everything I think or feel. Researched the hell out of autism and came to yep I have autism. Got the diagnosis from there. Realised my general disphoria and gendered disphoria didn't come from my autism alone. Realisation of autism not explaining my gendered disphoria is what pushed me to further seek out what was the case. Turns out my inherant internal desire to have breasts wasn't autism. I'm pretty sure wearing a bra is far more of a sensory ick than not needing to.
One thing I'd like to point out. Many Autistic people, myself included, have to work a lot harder to find our place in the world. It's harder to just go with the flow and pick up on other's expectations of us. That can lead to us having a better understanding of who we are, because we have to actively, not passively explore these things as we mature. It's easier to discover things about yourself when you're actively looking. Part of autism is finding yourself, who you really are vs what the world wants from you, so is it any surprise that we're more likely to find traits that others might have been pressured to hide and ignore?
I am 28 old trans woman and I am also digonosed with autistim. I know gender criticals are haveing it wrong. They are just making it worse. We autistic people know our gender identities.
I’m a trans man and part of my transition involves giving my self injections once a week. I’d be interested to see how people with sensory issues might feel about the idea of that, especially given the GC pretrial of transitioning as ‘more comfortable’ for those with sensory issues. I’m sure the experience varies but it would be interesting to learn more about.
I have sensory issues. Giving myself injections so often sounds like absolute hell. But i'm still prepared to do them, because, and i hope they get this, my gender dysphoria makes me want to kill myself and my autistic symptoms are nothing but a roadblock in my need to correct that. A lot of autistic sensory issues/upset can even get a little better after self training. For years, my long feminine hair was a sensory REQUIREMENT. it helped me to be surrounded in something soft and hide from people, i was so scared and didn't want people to try to make eye contact with me and they didn't. After getting a more short masculine haircut i had a period of utter dysfunction while i was getting used to it. It was spiders crawling everywhere after that huge security blanket was missing. But now... i'm even better than before. I have completely adapted to the sensory intake and it's even more freeing than long hair. So in many ways my efforts to transition have not been comfortable at all. Especially binding, starving myself during puberty, etc... but i adjusted to the sensory patterns because it is what i needed in my life. This is a random heavy recount of my own experience but, the stereotypical medically transitioning transgender experience for both genders is utterly brutal on the autistic senses 24/7, i'm glad i have the experience to know it is NOT a mistake or by choice.
I don't know if I'm autistic, but I am trans and have sensory issues! Weekly injections are how I get my estradiol. It's pretty annoying and frustrating, but I can't say personally it's ever really caused any direct issues with my sensory sensitivities and such. Sublingual tablets, on the other hand, were *awful* to try and deal with every day. Having a gross powdery feeling stuck under my tongue for half an hour while it dissolves was miserable.
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I swear this is so ironic
"Autistics LOVE societal rules!"
Bro I spent all my life wondering why people even follow them
I’m so in agreement. Ive always wondered why people just blindly follow some rules that seem unnecessary. I will give you one example: I’ve always hated saying “Bless You” when someone sneezes. Why do we have to say it? Your soul isn’t actually escaping through your nose. We don’t say it when people burp or fart. I just don’t understand that rule.
💯 this
Us Autistics like rules that make sense, the vast majority of societal rules don't make sense and just make shit unnecessarily difficult for everyone, such as the norms that the "Gender Critical" movement push.
TRUEEEE lol
i spent most of my life not even realizing there were societal rules
“You were an autistic girl who was tricked!” I was tricked for 26 years?! Being trans in the U.S. when I came out and having unsupportive parents meant I had to wait until I was 18 for any treatment at all, and insurance didn’t cover trans healthcare back then, so I had to wait until I was 24 - bc I was too broke to go on testosterone. I’ve been on testosterone for 14 years now, the “GC” crowd insists that I will *eventually* regret it… but I’m happy? Like, who is fooling who here?
Like, if my autism affects my gender identity… like, no shit, it affects everything! Am I not allowed a gender identity if I’m autistic?!
Damn what a King
Yes, put your gender identity in the fucking bag the federal government is taking it (for your own safety of course)
Bro, my grandma thinks that my gender doesn't exist and wonders why I don't hang out, I felt this post on a deep personal level. (23 NB here)
It's very interesting indeed, they like to call the surgery done to change your sex "genital mutilation". Personally a woman born in the female body, I find that surgery the most frightening one to undergo. Transphobes seem to agree with me on that, but they don't process the idea that people are willing to undergo that "genital mutilation" because living in the alternative body is THAT much more important, than staying the way they are. Maybe I can't relate to the struggle of wanting a sex change, but the idea that anyone is tricked into doing that while still calling a surgery such a dismissive and cruel name is a type of cognitive dissonance I can't relate to. Most people understand their body better than anyone from the outside could tell.
common ted schwartz W
disability rights and youth liberation are very connected issues. it is bad when disabled adults are treated like children, but we also shouldn't treat children that way. we all need to be taken care of by others to varying degrees throughout our lives. your autonomy and personhood shouldn't be taken away because you need support and care. we all need those things... if you don't right now you will one day
Exactly! The minute you start adding criteria to personhood, you are seeking to alienate and ostracise people from that personhood. The term “minor” feels incredibly icky to me
Infantalizing the mentally divergent is (needless to say for those who must bear the burden of knowledge, usually first-hand) a form of abuse - gaslighting to be precise. The abuser generally does not see their antisocial* behavior as abuse, and is generally incapable of self-reflection. They are highly narcissistic, and it is therefore psychologically necessary for them to see themselves as effectively blameless and omniscient, and selected others as essentially wrong. You'll notice that ableists are not only arrogant towards neurodivergent and mentally ill people, but towards soooo many other marginalized demographics.
*antisocial does not mean shy, it means being harmful to others
Totally agree!
I consider adultism to be a form of ableism. Children are disabled within the social model of disability and should be treated far better
I'm so glad someone is saying this.
I have a cis friend who has ADHD and thought for a while she might be trans because she felt uncomfortable in most girl's clothes and I can absolutely guarantee that it isn't as simple as "being manipulated into thinking everything will be solved if you transition". She was confused for a while and given a transmasc friend had talked about a similar feeling, she thought she might also be trans, and thanks to her supportive friends she allowed herself to try out different identities, pronouns and expressions and... she came to the conclusion that she was actually cis, and that was it. It sounds incredibly stupid to me that people would try to frame this as her friends trying to "manipulate her into transitioning" when most they did was help her find out what she was most comfortable with.
Sincerely, a neurodivergent trans "child" who knew I was trans and non-binary long before I had any terminology for it and would tell my friends I should've been born a “hermaphrodite”.
Edit: Just a little psa for people passing by, as someone bellow pointed out the word hermaphrodite isn’t proper terminology for intersex people, I’m using it to quote myself when I didn’t understand intersexuality and gender identity stuff properly, but it isn’t a term that should be used when talking about actual intersexuality and intersex people.
yes!! this!! i think we should all allow ourselves to explore our identities more - whether that be through changing physical appearance (hair, clothes) or trying out new names and pronouns to see what fits us best..and if it turns out to be a phase, then hey! you can always change your hair, clothes, name, and pronouns back to what suits you best, with no consequences.
@@margaret77777 I think a lot of people in transphobic groups have this idea that the moment someone says “hey I might be trans” they’re immediately put on hrt/puberty blockers and surgeries, which not only isn’t true but specifically in the case of puberty blockers is meaningless given they are completely reversible. It’s a lot of pointless paranoia that’s just getting in the way of people exploring themselves properly as if them getting to understand themselves better would do anything but help lower regret rates.
there is a gender related to ADHD though. does your friend know?
@@kaiyodei no there isnt 💀
@@actualgoblin Yeah it does, if people identify with it then it exists, it’s a personal experience thing, don’t be an ass for no reason
As an autistic guy myself, the infantilization is so goddamn annoying (doubly so because I'm also aroace). I'm really tired of these weird bigots treating us like toddlers who have no agency or awareness. Thanks for making this video.
Honestly, people need to stop treating *toddlers* as having no agency or awareness, too.
@@Roitame yeah, childism is real
Yet your response here is very infantile, you're almost throwing a tantrum about not being taken seriously, as a typical kid does.
@@peezieforestem5078 silly thing to say
@@peezieforestem5078 bro really thought he did something
My hypothesis as an autistic cis woman is that autistic folks are forced by circumstance to be a lot more introspective and self-analytical, making autistic folks more likely to be 'out' than neurotypical folks. Do not read into that as me saying that being autistic is inherently superior to being allistic, because I think all neurotypes have their own strengths and challenges. I just think being outside of what is considered the default forces a person to examine themselves quite a bit.
Exactly. We're forced, by circumstance, to be more introspective - it's not just a cool personality trait. Thanks for the comment!
I also think (as an autistic cis women) that autistic people are slightly less vulnerable to social pressures to conform, because we can't typically do that anyway, slightly less likely to be influenced by societal expectations about how we express ourselves. This makes exploring gender identities other than cis a bit less daunting than it might be to a neurotypical person.
from what I see, when people type things. it's as if "I'm not like other girls" turns into "but have you thought, maybe you aren't a girl?"
@@kaiyodei what
My friend and I have pretty much come to the same conclusion on that, my trans friends main theory on the autism and trans thing is that the brain chemistry is already doing some funky stuff but there’s not a major correlation. She’s not a neurologist so take that with a grain of salt and I might be wrong on how she worded it. But it’s along those lines
I am a trans man and this video is so important to me. My parents recently stumbled upon an article about the correlation found between autism and being trans and they were trying to manipulate me into getting an appointment with a psychiatrist to figure out if I have autism, because they were "concerned" thay I could have mistaken my autism with being trans. What's scary is that I have been researching autism for years now and suspect I could be autistic, and I actually started liking that about myself. After years of pain and isolation because the other kids at school thought I was "weird" and "in my own world". And now that very thing I was becoming proud of as I celebrated my traits was being used against me. "Why can't I be autistic AND trans? Why is my autonomy always questioned as "my own mind fooling me"? Even before I figured out I am (probably) autistic, I have always been aware and horrified by the way people undermine or straight up remove the autonomy of disabled people, mentally ill people, neurodivergent people- the list goes on. And now finally experiencing it for myself (I have before but not as blatantly ableist) as my parents are becoming increasingly aware of how they damaged me mentally (without actually taking accountability for it) and as they fight more intensely against my identity it's completely destroying me. This video. This video is the summary of everything I wish I could tell them. And I wish I could show it to them, but they would say this video "manipulated" me...I am so tired.
I'm so sorry for all you're going through. I truly appreciate your words & I hope you can find peace & acceptance.
@@Ember_Green I am slowly building up every condition I need to find my peace thank you for the words of support and thank you for your wonderful work!!
The last bit bugs me a lot. The resources you bring forward have to be invalidated despite it containing actual critical thinking, but the resources they bring that are propaganda or misinformation at best have to be trusted. Articles implying you can't be autistic and trans ignores that there's 0 reason for it to conflict. It is arguing that you are lesser but pointing that out is dismissed, and any resource that can help back up your argument is dismissed.
It sounds like they only want to hear information that they can use to manipulate you into changing your mind. They don't want to value your voice, and they might even think their personal arm chair diagnose gives them more reason to ignore the things you say.
All I can say is if you send them this video and they say them ask them to tell them what part was a manipulation tatic and how it was twisting the facts. Also, I'm curious, would your parents insist that you can only be autistic and heterosexual as well? If they don't then can they give you a good reason for it? If they can't and they refuse to accept that it's one of the many reason why it's an argument based on nothing but bias then all you can really tell them that you have no reason to trust their judgment because they insist that it's impossible for a discussion to happen if you don't just nod and agree.
As my people (the Quakers) put it, I am holding you in the Light, @i_have4dream987
.
@@chilljelloton2089 Exactly :((
Rowling: “I grew up being bullied by girls because I didn’t conform to their standards.”
Also Rowling: *Uses her platform to bully, muckrake and humiliate anyone who doesn’t conform to her standards of what a woman is and supports others who do likewise whether it’s appearance, height, behaviour, autism and so much more.*
Height? Women don't judge people's height unless they're cismen.
@@MK_ULTRA420 lol, ok buddy
Not to mention she wrote GNC AFAB person with colored hair, who strongly dislikes her given name and goes by her neutral family name, who is distanced from her Very Conservative family, *who is a shapeshifter.* And then she had that woman meet A Good Man(tm), start going by a feminine diminutive of her once-hated name, get married, have a kid and then die. :|
(and this is not bashing Remus' character, only how he was used in Tonx' narrative.)
@@TurbopropPuppy Sounds like a personal problem, buddy.
If you look at her writing, it becomes pretty clear that she never had a problem with bullying. She had a problem with who got to be the bully.
my mom said that i couldn’t be bisexual because my “autism” was confusing me. that happened 4 years ago and i’m still bi. this stuff is just ableism and transphobia mixed together. thank you for touching on this topic, have a good day/night ❤️
I knew I was queer before age 5, it wasn't until after I was 30 when I finally had the language to explain that I am sexuality queer, genderqueer, and neuroqueer... or as others might call it: really fucking queer, lol.
@@coda3223 seriously, I knew I was into women from elementary school onwards lol.
it actually was society which made me only date guys and it taking me alot to time to reconnect with my bisexual side.
"You only THINK you're attracted to two genders."
"So...I'm tricked... To think I'm attracted to people?"
"Nooo!!! You are attracted to people! Only the gender that would make you straight, though lol"
"So... Why?"
"Because access to information is manipulation !Now... Look at this pendulum! "YOU are straight!!You are straight!"
well autistic or not as long as you like banging girls and guys you are bi so no confusion needed here
@@CristalianaIvor Yep. Stories like that convinced me to tell people I'm bisexual even if it's not a big thing for me because generally I'm romantically more attracted to women or to what I perceive as femininity (which includes what is considered by most as masculine traits/expression, like short hair, small breasts, wearing "men's clothing", or being taller, or what have you, so yeah, to hell with consistency or what other people think), so that will include more women than anyone else, and you also need the other person to be into you, so most of the relationships I had were with a woman, simply because of a statistical likelihood.
So by sheer accident and likelihood I avoided things like:" You should just date [someone from the opposite sex] to avoid problems with society."
Other people do experience that and it's just f'ed up, just like it's f'ed up to tell someone to behave more neurotypical to avoid problems. It implies that being different is the problem and it's just not. It's gaslighting and victim blaming, and it costs me nothing to just tell people I'm bi. Nothing worthwhile anyway. People who are worth my time and attention simply accept it and move on.
It did also mean that women close to me are more comfortable telling me they think a guy is hot 🤣 So there's that 🤣
Some people also responded with:" Oh that's why you like wearing more feminine clothing", and I'm like wtf does that have to do with anything? Because I honestly have no clue. It might have everything to do with my bisexuality, or nothing, and I have no idea. I just like style and women's clothing are just more diverse and men's "stylish" clothes I like just cost more than my monthly income. Sooooo... increase my salary to 50k a year and I might have a useful answer to that question :p Probably not though. You remember that dress from the supposed French guy in The Matrix, second movie/first sequel? Doesn't look feminine to me at all, and I absolutely F'ing LOVE IT!
dear god i'm in tears. beautiful video. i'm a nonbinary transmasc person myself, disabled due to sensory issues related to autism and therefore i'm unable to go to work, stuck with abusive parents who don't understand me and don't care to. you talking was like a balm to me. even with the friends i have online, i often forget that there are people who understand that i'm not crazy, that i'm not worthless, that i'm somebody who should be allowed to live. this is a very kind video. you are an incredibly kind person.
@Reesey depending on what country you are in, you don't have to be stuck living with abusive parents.
Canada, most of the UK, and even the US have disability programs that include a community support worker (or something similar) to help you advocate for your self.
Covid definitely impacted housing wait lists, but there are programs out there. You deserve to feel safe and to live somewhere that supports your happiness.
Autistiphobia is linked to transphobia and homophobia. As Dr Nick Walker teaches us; when an ABA practitioner forces an autistic child behave like a non-autistic boy or girl, they inadvertently impose heteronormative gender roles and ways of moving on that child. Nobody ever thinks "How can I make this child act like a non-binary non-autistic child?". Binary gender roles are implied as part of neuronormativity. So it's society that imposes gender roles on autistic children, not the trans community. It's no wonder so many of us only rediscover our neuroqueerness while unmasking later in life. As for autistic acceptance and empowerment, that will only come when society no longer views us as a pathology, which means removing ourselves from the DSM of mental disorders. Excellent work on this video, Mica, as always!
I don't think autisticphobia is linked to transphobia
@nnglnd it is. The amount of people who use "they're autistic" as a reason to deny someone's gender identity or sexuality, the strong overlap between the autistic and LGBT community, and the fact that LGBT conversion therapy and abusive behaviourist treatments designed to coerce autistic people to hide their autism are literally the same methods developed by many of the same psychologists at around the same time in the 60s and 70s.
@@nnglnd you could’ve just ended your comment after the first 3 words
Wouldn’t that mean the therapist would ask themselves “how do I make this kid act binary and non autistic?” If non binary isn’t heteronormative, why would the therapist try to make the child act non binary and non autistic?
I was tortured by ABA therapists as a kid. I still have flashbacks and nightmares.
A thing about your story of kids and gendered clothes / gender expression: my mum never really liked the pink girly girl clothes so she'd often get my shirts from the boys section when I was a kid because they seemed more neutral, I rarely wore dresses because they're kind of impractical when you're running around outside or sitting on the floor all day and I still grew up to be a pretty feminine woman... Clothes for small kids shouldn't be divided by gender, change my mind
Okay.
Gender is something we made up to create unnecessary hierarchical structures.
They shouldn’t be. Just give kids clothes that let them run around and have fun without being uncomfortable!
They shouldn’t be. Just give kids clothes that let them run around and have fun without being uncomfortable!
Fun fact: before the early 1900s, both boys and girls typically wore white or neutrally colored dresses until age five, when boys were introduced to pants.
Around the 1940s is when gendered clothing for children really started to take off; the era the boomer generation grew up in. Which… explains a lot.
this is why it always confuses me when people ask queer parents how they're going to dress their kid, like as in if they're going to raise them as their assigned gender (until the kid can let them know otherwise)
my parents are conservative (ugh) but when I was an infant they dressed me in gender neutral clothes, and around 5 or 6 I started choosing my own clothes, so I feel like it's a non issue? clothes aren't inherently gendered anyway, and kids can choose what clothes they like best pretty young
I don't have any problem with the question to be clear, the answer just seems obvious to me?
when cis people step up for trans people it makes me so happy. thank you so much for this.
aside: i'm the parent of an autistic child and i was struck by how much authority people seemed to think this gave me to speak about autism. and it's weirdly similar to treating ex-spouses of trans people as authorities on trans issues, which is a common pattern i've seen in GC spaces.
Honestly the amount of parents who mistreat their autistic children is crazy
I appreciate you speaking to this and thank you for allowing your child autonomy. As an autistic adult, I'm very much disappointed by the way some neurotypical parents treat/think of the ND community.
It's good to see the parent of an autistic child who is not an autism parent TM. I can't stand those allistic people who act like they know autism better than autistic people themselves because they have an autistic child.
Where do you need me to stand up for you, @kmaginn? I'll be there, if I can get a ride.
honestly GC people do the same with parents of trans people, it's how the falacious book about rapid onset gender dysphoria came to be from a study without a single trans participant in it
This is why I'm going back to school for psychology. We need more neurodivergenent voices in the field
I support you but the problem is BCBAs have a privileged position in lower education, it's like wanting to go to school for chemistry to become a chemistry teacher but schools allocate a specific part of the budget for hiring alchemists.
Anyone who thinks autistic people are easy to "hoodwink" must not know any autistic people. With my kids, at least, it's the opposite. You can't convince them to do anything unless they are already predisposed to do it. My eldest in particular is extremely immune to manipulation. It can be really frustrating now as a parent, but I expect it will benefit them in the long run.
EDIT: You addressed this later in the video. Thank you!
^^^ you decided to scam clicks on THIS comment?
NT's: "Autistic people are easily tricked"
Also NT's: "I'm going to buy a car I can't afford because the advertising works on me"
Exactly! I'm Autistic and probably the most defining aspect of my childhood was how difficult is was to get me to do anything without a good reason. I needed a full, cohesive explanation for why I should go along with something my parents (teachers, etc.) wanted me to do - and if their logic wasn't convincing enough I would give counter arguments (which sometimes ended up changing their mind!) or eventually I would simply refuse to co-operate. "Because I said so" or "because that's what you're supposed to do" or "because you'll be in trouble if you don't" had absolutely no effect.
I think the idea of Autistic people being 'easily manipulated' is VERY commonly misunderstood. The way we can sometimes be manipulated is only in relation to our understanding of social bonds - e.g. judging other people's intentions and whether or not they are being genuine - NOT in relation to whether or not a concept is valid or whether an argument makes sense. When it comes to our understanding of important topics, our principles and our decisions, we are generally more critical in our approach and more steadfast in our conclusions than a lot of neurotypical people.
It’s like when my dad accidentally hit the gas line while digging a hole and came inside telling me I had to get out now, and my first instinct was to ask why
Thank you so much for this. I'm a trans autistic man and I've approached this problem more from the trans side than the autistic side. I didn't know how much I needed this.
I met one autistic woman who is a full pro-Rowling Terf. She fell for that misinformed lie about "autistic girls forced to transition".
I can only hope she wises up and wish her nothing but safety.
also, hello my autistic sibling on the spectrum.
As an autistic nb, yeah, I am lucky that I lean towards my AGAB and my social dysphoris is fairly minimal (tho if that's just how it is or if it seems that way because I'm not very socially active irl is a mystery), and while I am thankful for that, it definitely makes me scared for my trans sibilings out there
I also didn't realize how much I needed this.
Being autistic doesn’t mean you have to believe you’re the opposite sex because you aren’t and never will be. It’s ok to be gender non conforming but never claim to be a real man or woman.
I love how JKs whole premise for her opinions is, “well I’m easily manipulated, so everybody must be!”
😂 Right?
JK was quite easily manipulated into going full, far right TERF bc people convinced her it’ll ease her trauma from being SA’d.
@Stop IGBT and?
@@InsertMyChineseUsername phobes are sending bots into this video
@@InsertMyChineseUsername don't bother replying to the bots
Autists are free spirits.
We do what works for us and some people see that as a threat.
Honestly it's more like they're unfamiliar with what works for us because for them it definitely doesn't work ..
So they process it only from their perspective.
I'm sure if there was more social awareness towards well just us a lot of people would be supportive and kind.
At this point they just don't know...
And frankly it just never became common knowledge. Just something the parent of an autistic child would notice ..
And depending on the type of person who's your parent, you may not get validated and they may not try to learn how to accommodate you.
@@samf.s.7731 There are soo many people who look at what others do and think to themselves "if i did that I'd hate it. Therefor through my unchallengeable logic and reasoning, they must also be miserable and just deluding themselves into thinking they're happy. Because enjoying something I don't is a physical impossibility. I should tell them why they are wrong/try to bully them into changing/pass laws that make it illegal for them to be that way. It'll be for their own good after all"
@@WhichDoctor1 or sometimes they are like "I would enjoy that. I am not able to do it. therefore I will behave like nobody would ever enjoy that".
people are crazy and too involved with what other people do with their life lol.
in Germany we say "sweep infront of your own door first"
I'm trans and autistic, and I've dealt with a lot of abusers and manipulators in my life. I find that frequently, even when I don't initially realize somebody is attempting to manipulate me, the manipulation attempt fails because I don't act according to the script the manipulator has set for me in their head. Unfortunately lost my job because my boss tried to manipulate me, and it didn't go how he wanted.
Also, the one thing *every* single one of my abusers have had in a common is this persistent belief that they knew me better than I know myself. They all have/had this set image of me in there heads that poorly resembles my actual self, and there was no contradicting that image no matter what the evidence was. Now, who does that sound like?
To answer your question: It sounds like a puppet with no autonomy, no free will, nor the ability to think for themselves.
The statement that they thought they knew you better than you did is actually kinda funny considering that they “you” they “knew” was more likely a masked version of yourself not the actual you
@@rosepuppy1984 Honestly, in my similar experiences, it generally doesn't even bear a whole lot of similarity to that. It's truly, deeply baffling the level of illusion these people can put up, get mad when you don't fit it, and insist their version is right.
Just hit 30, and my parents still don't see me. Even more, that disconnect is honestly more traumatising by itself than all the rest of the abuse put together. The failed struggle to be seen is what still haunts my nightmares, and every mistreatment that sticks out has that jarring dissonance at its heart.
Broooo trans autistic solidarity let's gooooo
@@marsfeathers Let's fucking gooooooooooooo
When I found out I was autistic at around age 21, I *wanted* it to explain everything. I *wanted* it to explain all my 'weird gender feeling', my 'sensory issues' that weren't actually sensory issues but dysphoria (or both). I didn't *want* to have another thing going on. I wanted to be contend with having this one thing, and it explaining everything.
It took until 31 for me to admit that I am trans. That only both, in combination, explain my life, and my issues.
I wasn't manipulated. I tried for so long to have my autism explain my gender, that I didn't look to trans people to see how much I related. So much denial.
It pains my how explicitly *fascist* TERFs are when you look at the combination of trans and autism.
I want to say thank you for writing this because I realised my experience was almost exactly the same! I was younger, a teenager when I figured I was autistic. I thought I'd figured every piece of the puzzle but deep down I knew something was missing. My depression tendencies were getting worse every year and it wasn't until I finally broke out of the trans denial and started presenting masculine again that I started getting happier.
Oh yeah, terfs are absolutely facists
It’s almost amusing have some of them seem surprised that Nazis keep showing up at the rally’s. It’s like…dude…you have the same positions, you’re fighting for the same things.
Terfs work with groups trying to overthrow reproductive rights too, etc.
Slightly off topic rant:
I've had a big issue with NT parents sharing so many of thier children's personal issues & disclosing thier child's diagnosis. Isn't it up to each person when and to whom to share such intimate information?
I'm not a parent, but it seems so odd to willingly give the world so much access to your child.
I appreciate your channel and look forward to forward to once again being a patron once finances aren't so frightful 💜
Unfortunately, they think their child is in some way a _mysterious creature to gaze in excessive awe_ at. Y'know, "autism won today :(", "God gives his toughest battles to his strongest warriors!!1!", and the quintessential filming their child having a meltdown. That or abusing their child in whatever way comes first, despite knowing their child is autistic.
Then again, a lot of people don't see children as human beings. I mean, even in preteens it's fairly popular to dislike children. Hating them for being developing human beings who are going to make mistakes. As embarrassing as it is to admit, i used to be one of those people, but now I'm aware of just how important children are. Especially the neurodivergent, poc, lower class kids. None of them should be treated the way they are now, and for as long as this low-key/high-key abusive parenting has gone on for.
@ferret yeah that's perfectly valid! Just when it isn't consensual (like most things) it's a huge problem. I don't know what it'll take for allistic people to see us as human.
I'm trans and aut!stic and my assessors at my gender clinic were straight up terfs about it. They tried conversion therapy for a while, but I'm 28 and wasn't having it.
They kept trying to find the reason that I 'developed' the idea that I was trans, naming all of the examples you named and then some.
'it's rigid thinking, like for example some clients I see think they're girls because they like dresses and disney princesses, so what's your reason?' (that's really what he said)
'well because you're aut!stic, I can imagine that you've been influenced and confused by other people'
'maybe you just like masculine clothing because they're more comfortable, less constricting, and you dislike the feeling of ticklish long hair'
'the reason you hate your chest is that feeling it move or touch fabric gives you sensory processing issues, it's not actually dysphoria'
'maybe you had a special interest in a specific movie character and want to look like him because of that'
'you're bad at socializing with girls, and that's why you think you're not one of them'
'you became obsessed with the LGBT community and convinced yourself you were part of it'
'because you mask, you are not really capable of knowing who you are underneath that mask, so you can't know if you're trans'
'you dislike change, and that's why you disliked the changes your body went through during puberty, it wasn't dysphoria.'
'aut!stic people are known to be less capable of overseeing long term consequences, so I think you're going to regret transition.'
'aut!stic people are known to have issues and delays with identity formation, so we think maybe you need to wait and develop your identity further.' (Again, 28 years old.)
And of course they also accused me of internalized misogyny, s3xual trauma and body dysmorphia, but those weren't autism related.
It didn't really matter how often I told them I was just trans without a reason or how much research I quoted at them, because they didn't believe that was possible. It had to have a cause, and once they found the cause, they might be able to course-correct me, which they saw as the 'least invasive option for treatment'. They wanted to be noble and 'first do no harm', and they defined 'harm' as surgical and hormonal intervention on a healthy body, so their solution was conversion therapy. Funny huh?
I don't know who put in a good word for me at their monthly team meeting where they decide which trans people get permission to transition, but I somehow got through. They did still tell me they wanted me to decide not to go through with it, so it was a close call, I'm sure I got really close to getting rejected, but I'm through and I never have to go through that torture ever again ^^
The nerve of these people to call themselves 'therapists' and 'allies', to my face, when all they ever did was dehumanize and traumatize me. Never trust a 'gender therapist' when they try to speak for trans people. Lots of gender clinics are infiltrated by terfs.
PS this type of conversion therapy is called 'gender explorative therapy', which is basically reparative therapy but for gender. It's pushed by Genspect. You showed a couple of their tweets in this video. They're a terf organization that mainly lobbies against conversion therapy bans, and that works with gender clinics like the NHS directly.
Oof, what a load of bollocks they were throwing at you. Glad that you got through it and got to transition. Awful to think about all the trans people who have to put up with transphobic medical 'professionals'.
Thank you so much for this comment
Good grief that’s terrible. Glad you made it through!
I've no doubt Kemi Badenoch probably supports this. I saw a video recently where she completely dismissed a committee discussing the effects of menopause on workers because 'the committee was principally left leaning and the government is right leaning'. Just dismissed it out of hand for ideological reasons. Society will not improve as long as people like her are in government, or her entire party frankly.
This makes me so mad! People with so little (genuine) empathy for both LGBT and Autistic people should not be working in healthcare for trans and autistic people
As an autistic transmasc and SEN specialist, thank you for this. I see so many people infantilise autistic and disabled people when they do not conform to society or their expectations and wants, with expectations that they cannot make decisions for themselves because their decision is "wrong" in the accuser's eyes. It's ableism in it's most insidious, veiled form, and seeing people who don't have the first clue about autism outside of a vague stereotype try and make their flawed argument is frustrating to say the least. Thank you for this well informed and researched video on the topic, it's very refreshing to see.
My sister works in ABA therapy, I’m autistic. I confronted her about it and my parents ended up supporting her side of things, even going as far to say “but some kids actually need it” it makes me want to vomit.
Try asking if gay people need conversion therapy.
If they are horrified by conversion therapy, there's hope.
If not.... I think you turned out amazing!
One of my best friends is an ABA therapist and college professor and I'm autistic. The closest I've ever come to walking away from 25 years of friendship was watching her with a 9 year old client, clicking at him like he was a naughty dog because he wasn't making eye contact while she spoke to him. I still shake with rage when I think about it.
Allistic bs is even more infuriating when they think their highly biased education gives them any authority.
@@newtpollution I am now asking people who believe in ABA if they believe in conversion therapy.
So far, no one in my circles supports conversion therapy (that would probably be a dealbreaker on my friendship). I ask them why not....
And then ask what the difference is between conversion therapy and ABA....
It requires that all my needs are met, so I have the patience to ask all the questions in a calm, slow, methodical way, and give them plenty of time to talk it through.
As a member of both communities, it's pretty overwhelming to exert this much energy to help someone else refind their own humanity.
Definitely worth it, just incredibly exhausting....
@@newtpollution You should not be friends with that person. What a fucking monster. If I were you I'd end the relationship, explain to her exactly why you're doing it and then just completely ghost her.
ok to be fair though, autism is a wide spectrum that reaches from "you're normal, but different" to "you can't stop screaming and shitting yourself when you hear a man speak" which... idk what ABA therapy is, but if you're suffering from the latter, therapy might actually help!
The "autism course" I followed that was going to "cure" my autism however, was just an excuse for a woman to treat a group of kids like stray dogs and get paid for it. a scam if you will.
(no, she wasn't kind to stray dogs, very shouty, probably couldn't find a husband and blamed it on all men kind of type. total karen)
The intersection between transphobia and ableism is very real. Thanks for this, as a genderqueer autistic. Fun fact: the man responsible for ABA also hand in the development of conversion therapy.
More like super depressing and not so fun fact
@@dolfuny its one of those things that makes you want to shake neurotypicals and say: and you think *we're* the ones with the problem?
15:50 not only did I, an autistic person, not fall prey to MLMs, I also tried to talk my mum out of being it them.
right?? if anything we are less susceptible to that kind of thing
PLEASE. Even back when I was still really naive I had friends try to rope me into all kinds of cults, pyramid schemes and snake oilery and I was like.. how do you fall for this, it’s so clearly a scam lmao
EDIT: Oh and I never smoked, drank alcohol or did stupid teen shit until I was old enough (my late twenties lol) to want to try it for my very own personal edification. Peer pressure my ass
I was thinking this exact thing. Like, group pressure never worked on me, because if it wasn't something I wanted then I didn't see the point in it. The only thing I did dread was having to wear make up. I tried it a little, listed all the things (for myself) why it doesn't work for me and quit using it. It feels like most autistic people are critical thinkers.
Same here, my "rigid" social rules are just critical thinking lol
Real
“… might genuinely want to believe that somehow if they were another sex, that all these problems would disappear.”
Ah yes, because me transitioning would convince everyone in the world to stop using overhead lights as opposed to lamps
Or stop them from screeching on the phone
Abolish all overhead lights rn. Lamps of varying hues of yellow to white in every goddamn room.
@@Vesperad0together we can destroy the bane of our existence that is overhead lights, I’m sure of it
Or using cars everywhere in the city.
Wait, hold up. Preferring lamps to overhead lights could be an autistic thing? I know that’s a dumb way to put it, but that’s just one more thing that’s resonated with me in my current self-assessment situation lol
As an autisstic person who uses neopronouns I find this video very important. As if it wasn't bad enough that binary trans autistic people are told they don't understand themselves, I've been told, MANY times, that I not only don't understand my own identity, but that I simply MUST be trolling with my identity. And this most often comes from allistic trans people. Like sorry that even-less-standard identities shatter your worldview so much?
I’ve always kind assumed that the high rates of trans and non-binary autistic people had to do with autistic kids being LESS likely to be susceptible to gender socialization, not more.
@Ville I’m not sure I understand what you’re saying
@Ville no, I don’t see a question. Maybe it’s a TH-cam glitch. The only comment I can see starts with “it’s not REAL” and is a statement that seems to be missing context. Or maybe I’m just missing something. Either way I don’t know what you are trying to convey.
Agree, but probably a bigger factor in younger people at least is that children are not routinely screened for autism, but I know for a fact that in the UK at least, you will *definitely* encounter a psychiatrist as a trans person seeking healthcare, who may identify autism as part of that process.
It always strikes me that identifying autism is primarily done by the state when it is something they see as a stick to beat us with, not as something society should be looking to identify as early as possible in order to actually help us. We don't have routine screening because autism is still seen as 'bad'. And that then enables it to be used against us because it is 'bad'.
I'm a 16 year old autistic trans guy living in the UK. My mum subscribes heavily to gender critical ideology and it's made my life hell. I'm scared to go home every day. I was outed as trans by my school when I was 13, I still vividly remember the confrontation from my parents when I arrived home on the day I was outed. I don't think I can keep dealing with the transphobia and ableism I experience at home, and she claims she's just protecting me from the "irreversible damage" that transitioning would cause me? I don't think I'll ever psychologically recover from the shit she's done and I can't see my relationship with her and the rest of my family existing after I turn 18, but she claims she's protecting me from "irreversible damage". It's so frustrating and I'm so glad that there are cis people standing up to GCs, because gods know that they won't listen to trans people.
@KQRO oh that's cool what does the I stand for?
I'm so sorry.
I'm more on the non binary don't feel strongly either way, but tbh even I freaking hate it when people expect me to be a "good girl".
Like I don't even know what that is...
Sure doesn't come naturally to me, but seems like other people don't struggle as hard.
But for you..
No you need to start your gender affirming therapy.
I know that 16 is the age of consent in the UK, but can you sign for yourself at this point?
Talk to someone in the healthcare field, and in social services, they may have a way to help you with your mom.
I am terribly sorry 😔
It might not be feasible for you depending on where you are based, but you might want to try referring yourself to the Albert Kennedy Trust or to Stonewall Housing. In the UK you do not need to be 18 to leave home but it is very difficult to do so without other support.
@@Youssii thanks so much, I'll take a look
Sending you love and good vibes 💜
Thank you so much for this video! I'm an autistic trans man and have barely seen anyone address the ableism against us mentioned in Joanne's "essay"
I'm not trans but I agree, the way transphobes discuss autistic trans mascs is disgustingly ableist AND misogynistic, they believe trans men are women, and like, is this how you talk about autistic women?
All these bigoted ideologies support each other, and we need to address them
Yeah, no.
@fleetstreet11 no what? Rowling's essay does have ableism in it.
@@robokill387 Be silent.
@@fleetstreet11 You're indoctrinated.
If they're so concerned about people being forcibly sterilized, they should be advocating for the removal of sterilization as a requirement for bottom surgery. They don't, though, because that sterilization likely serves their end goals much better than its absence.
"they should be advocating for the removal of sterilization as a requirement for bottom surgery"
....You'd have to take that up with Mother Nature because that's more of a lack of technology issue more than a voting issue.
@@MK_ULTRA420 There's a vast difference between something being a consequence of doing something and it being a requirement to do the thing. Requiring it is like demanding someone have a body part paralyzed in order to get a treatment which might result in paralysis.
@@charlespentrose7834 Idk what your point is. FTM bottom surgery will lead to the sterilization of the patient. I'm not against it but I won't sugarcoat it either.
If nature is transphobic too then that's a personal problem.
@mkultra3034 There's multiple kinds of bottom surgeries, particularly for trans masc folks, That have no impact on the organs required to reproduce, yet often things like Hysterectomies have been required for folks to have access to these procedures
@@MK_ULTRA420 Oh sweetie no. You do realise that most people's reproductive organs are waaaaay on the inside right?
Like you cited "Mother Nature" there. Did you think babies explode out of testicles or something?
Oops and I just realized that a lot of people in my life are way more lowkey misogynistic, transphobic and ablist then I once thought. Great timing, totally not making plans to move
Sadly, most people suck
I hope you are ok
Can you share what things you've recognised, please?
A woman, is an adult human female, it is not an "identity" or a feeling, dress, attitude etc., that whole line of thinking is regressive in the extreme. Claiming there is some "essence" to "womanhood" that also males can access, but the reality is that women do not have to look or act any certain way, all females who reach adulthood are women regardless of how they feel or look, and the one thing they ALL have in common, the one experience they ALL share, is that they are FEMALE, they do not have to "identify" as anything, they physically ARE women because they are female.
Explain exactly why it is that we can't expand the definition of "man", but we apparently MUST redefine "woman" to accommodate delusional sexist males. Why? "Words change, words evolve", so they can so easily change back as well when we realise the new definition is nonsensical and only convolutes understanding rather than increases it. All people claiming to be "trans women" are MALE. The definition of woman is adult human female - and you lot think we should completely uproot that objective reality based definition in order to appease male emotions (delusions) , but in turn redefining "man" is out of the question? And you claim to be fighting sexism? Males who are drawn to sexist stereotypes associated with the female sex cannot be seen as "men" anymore, because they aren't "manly" enough, so we should see and "accept" them as "women" - that is what you lot are pushing for, and it's regressive and sexist to the core, yet you will scream til you are blue in the face that it is about progress and equality, "human rights" and "feminism". What a load of cobbled together utter nonsense.
@@ambientjohnny Wait, who said redefining "man" is out of the question? Personally, as a cis male, I say go ahead and expand it to include trans men, gate's open, come on in, let's go fix a car and drink beer or something, it'll be fun!
Or is it only you saying that because erasure of trans men, which you didn't mention once, is the only way your "but why can't 'man' be expanded?" argument makes any sort of sense?
We don't really need "man" and "woman" to mean "male" and "female", we already have words for the biological sexes. However, now that there is discussion about gender, we can repurpose "man" and "woman" to describe people possessing the traits typically associated with those biological sexes. (Roughly paraphrased Merriam-Webster definition of gender, sense 2b, since dictionaries get you so hot and bothered. This one's even showing ankle!)
I agree that "the reality is that women do not have to look or act any certain way", and neither do men. A woman that's into big machines and things that go boom is as much a woman as one that's into frilly pink dresses and homemaking, and the same goes for men. All they have to do for me to consider them as either or neither is to let me know what word describes them better.
I'm more likely to hang out with the big machines and things that go boom crowd, because it's almost like their personality is more socially relevant than their genitals. Fancy that.
As a gender non-conforming gay man with significant sensory issues around light and sound, I never once considered that if I were to start living as a woman, those would go away; I would just be a woman who hates bright light and loud noises. I seriously doubt anyone else ever has thought this, either.
28:48 I remember my friend being pressured to get the coil implant immediately after giving birth, even having people make appointments on her behalf without her knowledge. Her refusal to get the implant was seen as her not complying with the social workers and they used that against her when it came to visitation rights. Thing is, the coil she used to have was actually messing up with her hormones, and given her existing hormonal issues and the fact that she literally just gave birth, her doctor decided she shouldn't go back on it. It was the social workers that were pushing for it, against all medical advice.
I know precisely why they did this. Eugenics. My friend is poor and disabled and they straight up didn't want her to get pregnant again. Looking into it, I found out that the government actually does this a lot with poor women, and will withhold services or prevent them from seeing their children until they get an implant. It's so fucked up.
I watched a medical documentary, the coil was mentioned. it is horrible
@kaiyodei The coil can be wonderful for many people, but it's not for everyone and it shouldn't be pushed on others.
That is atrocious! People should be able to have kids if they want to.
I'm ftm and when I got my tubal ligation I had to sign a waiver because I was on medicad.
As an allistic trans woman, your channel means a lot to me. You don’t have to back us up, but you do. Thanks.
Thank you!
please don't say people don't have to back you up, trans rights are human rights, solving transphobia means solving a whole lot of other issues
More of us cis women than the media pretends also back you up. ❤️ If all of us don't win, then none of us wins.
Not Zoë, but I would assume they meant that it's not Ponderful's duty to talk about trans issues specifically. They could have focused on issues relating only to cis autistic people's experiences, and that would have been fine, but chose to focus on this intersection of transphobia and ableism
Mee too❤
I never thought such a video on such an aggravating topic could be so calming. I think it's because I think you explain things wonderfully clearly and your voice has a brilliant cadence for video essays in my opinion - I particularly enjoyed the few times you allowed yourself to mock or scoff at the absurdity of TERF alarmist, ableist rhetoric. It feels grounding to actually just take a moment, autistics among autistics, to recognise how ridiculous this all is.
Thank you so much!
I had the same thought lol
I think there's a huge link between autistic masking and the performativity of gender. The more I taught myself to mask, the more I realized I had been performing a role this whole time, and then I began to see that my whole life as a man had been a role I was playing, and that playing that role brought me a great deal of emotional distress. And since I knew I had just been performing a role this whole time, I realized I could adopt another one, one that actually brought me joy and fulfillment instead of pain and discomfort.
My doctor admitted that i probably have autism, but she said that there's not "a point" in getting a diagnosis bc there's no cure. Ma'am... what (I'm hopefully getting tested soon)
Having an official autism diagnosis also opens you up to systemic discrimination, from mistreatment to straight up DNRs, and also immigration restrictions (ie New Zealand). Consider getting a diagnosis off the books, ie private, if you feel like you really could use a diagnosis for your own needs. I did that with my "Transsexualism" diagnosis (yea lol outdated), it's not tracked inside of our centralized system, and the diagnosis confirmation paper only comes out when I need it to.
Also, yes, as an adult, if you get an autism diagnosis, you might just find out that the system has nothing to offer you, as I've heard again and again. Not even cures - no meaningful support groups (aside from, ahem, ABA), nothing of value. I've seen people get their autism diagnosis, see the options and say "well, fuck, now what". Your doctor, as much as the "cure" thing is twisted, accidentally has a point.
The part about autistic people being harder to hypnotize definitely explained a lot for me. As someone who most likely is autistic, but doesn't have the means to get properly diagnosed, my experiences with trying to let myself get hypnotized have felt more like I was just pretending to be hypnotized. And the idea of not thinking about anything except what I'm being told to think about? Forget it.
As much as I hate living in a world where we need to even have this discussion, I do love your sense of humor
I'm happy to hear I managed to walk the line between humour & seriousness!
I'm neither trans nor autistic but some of my friends are both and it really annoys me how gender critical belittle autistic people. They're not stupid, my friends have done so much self reflection to get to where they are now and they're happier than before, especially when they're around other people like them who understand and accept them.
I come from a relatively small town and over the last few years there has been a community of pretty young queer people building up because most of the people who started it where really tired of this isolation and now there's a bunch of people working to create spaces for everyone to be themselves and it's really beautiful but also a little sad that young people had to start building a community from the ground up.
These two things aren't directly related but people thrive in communities where they can just exist.
ok i just.. i have to rant for a second. parents, esp moms for some reason, who speak like they are inside their childs head, act like they know their child better than the kid themselves; its so fucked up. its like so dehumanizing honestly, like this is a person yk, even if its your kid that doesnt mean yk what they are feeling or how they think.
my mom never even did that kinda shit to me, she never paid enough attention to realize i was/am autistic. even when i told her abt it and asked her to think if it made sense based on what she remembered from my childhood, she said she couldnt remember...... now im just trauma dumping smh.
my point is: parents cant speak for their kids, at least not entirely. i dont want to speak in absolutes because everything is grey yk. also i tend to be kinda hyperbolic. but i just kinda wanted to vent abt how much this kinda shit annoys me. i see so many parents speaking abt autism like THEY have it, but theyre neurotypicals speaking abt an experience they dont have. its like they cant admit they dont know as much as they assume.
if you read all of this ty :) but ill stop ranting now and get back to the video lol
god, this is a huge mood - these mothers treat their AFAB kids like they're literally an extension of themselves and aren't allowed having their own opinions, in addition to any toxic beauty standards they might be projecting onto them resulting from their own failure to live up to those standards
Oh god it's relatable.
Though it wasn't gender related, when I was pretty young and learning about the LGBTQ+ community, i came out (kinda) to her as asexual. Of course, i was like 11 so she just said "you aren't thinking about that stuff yet so you can't say that for sure" and me and my little sister just rolled our eyes. In fact, I think I even cried after.
Then when it came to learning about autism, wondering if I was autistic (beforehand thinking it was add, and now worried it's both), to this day she still doesn't believe it. Calls it "Asperger's syndrome" no matter how many times I correct her. Like autism is a curse word. Preferring the possibility of me having ADHD over autism to the point she'd wrongly say i was more "concerned" about ADHD when it was moreso autism. And even _then_ because of little white boy stereotypes she doubted that as well. Couldn't catch a break for shi.
Even when it's not really related to my identity, my mom takes whatever I'm mediocre at and claims it to be from her side of the family. My supposed artistic talent? Hers, she used to draw when she was younger! My like for all kinds of weird and popular music? Hers, she loved dancing and singing to music! My love for writing and desire to be a reader? Of course I was, she was just as excellent of a writer in school as I am! Liking pizza to an (unhealthy, admittedly) degree? Duh, she ate pizza all the time when she was preggers with me.
I mean, that last one could be a little more valid than the rest but you get what I'm trying to say. And all of this because we share a birth month. Because we're _TAURUSES._ I thought horoscopes were demonic, what happened to that?!
I apologize for my rant as well, but like you I both hope and don't hope others can relate.
@@Vesperad0 im really sorry your mom treats you like that. i hope you can find more accepting ppl to be around, and or that your mom sees the error of her ways.
i really wish you the best navigating dealing with whatever your going thru (i dont want to assume so im gonna be kinda vague lol). it can be hard enough accepting yourself without other ppl being dismissive/demeaning abt it. my heart goes out to you, i relate (to an extent) and ik how isolating it can feel.
i wish i could help more but im just a stranger on the internet so i should probably shut up idk lol. i just wanted to show you some support, i hope this helped even just a tiny bit
One off my most traumatic memories from grade school confused me for the longest time, it took years for me to figure out WHY it was so traumatic. In 4th grade I wore a jumper that probably should have had an undershirt but it was 90 degress out. Another child's mother pulled me aside and scolded me, said that as a girl I should have more modesty so that the boys don't get tempted. On one hand I 'knew' I was a girl but on the the other hand I, and all the other boys, knew I was one of them. After that I could feel the other boys pull away, and I was beside myself with grief. It felt like every grade I became less and less of a boy, but it was the 90s and while I had heard of gays and lesbians, I wouldn't hear the word trans for 2 decades. I was thirty before I realized that up until that point, due the way my mother had raised me and how I had been allowed to socialize at school, I was a girl that was a boy in every way that could possibly matter to a child - and then I had that stripped from me. The idea that my fellow boys would see me as a girl, treat me as the women in my life warned me they would, it shattered me. I grew to hate boys, hate men. I would remind myself how terrible they were to chase away feelings of jealousy and envy. And the women in my life were more then willing to help me along in that mindset. It took so long to break free of that poisoning mindset. Would that I could have simply had the freedom to grow up a young gay man, preferably one who had gotten an earlier autism diagnoses to boot lol
Man I remember when I was in middle school and me and my male friends were lying on our stomachs on the trampoline in my backyard, and I couldn't really do it because of breast buds and thinking "is this it? Do I have to be a girl now? Can I no longer pretend to be one of the guys?"
But yeah I got similarly told off in kindergarten when it was hot out and all the kids were taking off their shirts but all the girls were scolded for doing it because "it's inappropriate if you're a girl." Like ma'am we're 5.
Interesting thing about the sensory issue thing. I’m autistic and a trans guy. When I had breasts I had massive sensory issues with bras and the movement of my breasts. I also had HORRID dysphoria about my breasts. Top surgery alleviated both of these things. Now I’m on testosterone and am horribly sweaty. I’ve been getting really miserable acne as hair follicles all over my body develop. As you can imagine this is a sensory nightmare and has been triggering the skin picking I had mostly kicked before. Yet at the same time I am not experiencing gender dysphoria about it, but gender euphoria
I remain shocked (as both bigender and autistic) at how completely jo and her cohorts misunderstand dysphoria.
You describe yourself as a quintessential tomboy. I grew up called a tomboy but also internally had very different ideas about gender than you describe.
There is a huge differnce between "my boobs and period are uncomfortable" and "my primary sex traits make me wanna die."
Like, there is a big difference between " patriarchy and descrimination are bs" and "my body feels legit wrong". How can they not see that.
Also, thank you for explaining how we autists are so frequently called "stubborn," "defiant", "disobedient". Cause omg, i was the nightmare child and learning i was autistic explained why my childhood behaviors were what they were. And thank God My mom just took it as my personality cause i can't even imagine how much more shit school would have been if I'd been stuck in 90s garbage special ed....
@green mayo man🇺🇦 THERE IS A HUGE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN 'MY BOOBS AND PERIOD ARE UNCOMFORTABLE' AND 'MY PRIMARY SEX CHARACTERISTICS MAKE ME WANNA DIE'
Considering the comment above me, i wonder what they think of trans individuals without dysphoria? Like a guy who just knows he's a guy, and wants top surgery, and the only thing he's annoyed by is being called his birth name (bad example lol). Like the only reaction they have to things that don't correlate with who they are...is annoyance.
Do non-dysphoric trans people inherently prove their ""rapid onset gender dysphoria"" bullshit wrong (like everything else they spew)?
I don't know what gender i am; if I really do know but the amount of possiblities I've seen online makes me second guess myself, or if I sincerely don't know since everything and anything with expectations makes me irritated. Simplest answer? Afab non beanie. But the possibility of me being an enby is nearly equal if not more likely than being a cis lesbian or a trans gay man, which is even more confusing. Idk how I got here, someone please help me.
Still, all of those feel wrong to me. Obviously not if you are one of those above, but for me personally. And sometimes I really do wish I had gender dysphoria beyond wanting a more androgynous voice, androgynous face, androgynous appearance overall. Because then, if I ever come out to my family, for the most part they'll be unable to doubt me (tho i know some still would, it doesn't matter how much you know yourself people will still act like they know you better than you do). But the way I am now, fluctuating between liking my chest and being annoyed by it-aka wanting it chopped off as they might describe it-i can only assume my identity will confuse terfs more. Maybe irritate them if I'm lucky. Then again... I'm likely autistic with a chance of ADD so shit they still might use the autism argument.
Just because I questioned gender roles and pretty much everything as a probs autistic child doesn't mean I'm overthinking who I am! I didn't even know trans people existed yet I was daydreaming about looking like Percy effing Jackson and ironically, Harry Potter. Short black hair, boyish features and all.
@@Vesperad0 are you me? Sounds like my experience. Afab non beanie here too (I love the phrase non beanie and I’m going to start using it now 😂). I kinda gave up a while ago on “figuring out” my gender. It is an enigma. For a while I was obsessed with that, but now I just do what makes me happy. One of those things happened to be micro-dosing testosterone for six months, then stopping because I like my voice & face now. Another was getting top surgery. That one took a few years to decide on, and I’m glad my parents made me wait a few years until I was really sure, but didn’t make me wait longer after I knew I wanted it. (I was like 14 or 13 when I first brought it up, 16 when I got it). I’m only 19, but I’m pretty happy gender-wise these days and I def don’t regret either choice. But anyways my advice would be not to focus TOO much on labels. They can be useful to describe yourself easily to others and to feel like you’re not alone, BUT, don’t try to fit yourself into a box that doesn’t fit you just because of those things. You’ll find it eventually, or you’ll just not care anymore. Ironically you may have the best chance of finding the right label when you’re not looking for it.
@@Vesperad0 I'm writing a story right now about a transmasc guy who lived all his life thinking he was a lesbian, but now that he's transitioning in his late 20s he's considering that oh hey maybe he's actually a gay man. In the end, I think he's gonna settle on "IDK but make it gay"
not all transgender people have dysphoria.
I've been recommending your "Gender Criticals Don't Understand Female-Only Spaces" to anyone who'll listen. And this is another great analysis. Thanks! ContraPoints made one of the definitive... erm...points about JKR's article when she pointed out that "You're not less of a bigot because your bigotry has a tragic backstory". Your analysis highlights how JKR's decision to double-down has also entailed a refusal to listen to the very people she paternalistically claims to be protecting.
A woman, is an adult human female, it is not an "identity" or a feeling, dress, attitude etc., that whole line of thinking is regressive in the extreme. Claiming there is some "essence" to "womanhood" that also males can access, but the reality is that women do not have to look or act any certain way, all females who reach adulthood are women regardless of how they feel or look, and the one thing they ALL have in common, the one experience they ALL share, is that they are FEMALE, they do not have to "identify" as anything, they physically ARE women because they are female.
Explain exactly why it is that we can't expand the definition of "man", but we apparently MUST redefine "woman" to accommodate delusional sexist males. Why? "Words change, words evolve", so they can so easily change back as well when we realise the new definition is nonsensical and only convolutes understanding rather than increases it. All people claiming to be "trans women" are MALE. The definition of woman is adult human female - and you lot think we should completely uproot that objective reality based definition in order to appease male emotions (delusions) , but in turn redefining "man" is out of the question? And you claim to be fighting sexism? Males who are drawn to sexist stereotypes associated with the female sex cannot be seen as "men" anymore, because they aren't "manly" enough, so we should see and "accept" them as "women" - that is what you lot are pushing for, and it's regressive and sexist to the core, yet you will scream til you are blue in the face that it is about progress and equality, "human rights" and "feminism". What a load of cobbled together utter nonsense.
Further, "Trans" ideology is at times extremely homophobic, as evidenced by a significant amount of people trying to redefine same-sex attraction as "gender attraction", and the phenomenon of males denying their own homosexuality under the "trans" banner, by claiming to "transition gender" into "women" and thus reframe their same-sex attraction to other males as "not gay" because they are now claiming to be "women attracted to men" - AND, the attempted erasure of lesbian reality by males claiming to be "lesbian" by "transitioning to a woman" and being attracted to females - they are not gay, they are males attracted to females, they are straight, yet trying to redefine same-sex attraction as "same-gender" attraction, which tons of lesbians are appalled by, yet their concerns get shouted down as "transphobic".
@@ambientjohnny ahhh- come here to talk over autisic folk too?
@@Aarenby Still only got deflection and lies then?
@ambientjohnny you tried to tell me I'm not gay.. you tried to use conversion therapy language and techniques.
@@ambientjohnny adult human chicken
I'm autistic and I literally had a mental breakdown the day before yesterday due to my mental conditioning I went through. That stuff was absolutely f'ed up and this therapist who put me through this is still practicing
Report them.
As a fellow sufferer of years of trauma from therapists, I feel ya. Though I am sure yours was more blatant, damn they can mess you up. Hope the best for you, whatever you choose.
As soon as I heard the 'Autistic people love rules' thing, I knew they couldn't know that many autistic people. A lot of autistic people might like structure, but most I know are far more likely to question a set of rules that are kinda silly and don't make real sense, like the 'rules' of gender. Thus, yeah, it makes a lot more sense to me that a higher percentage of autistic people than allistic just come to realise they're not cis or want to break out of the binary they were told they belonged to.
(Edited for clarity)
a crystal is a structure. A rule is giving to a non-crystal object a crystal shape.
that is, as an autistic girl, how i see what you are saying.
I can understand the idea that autistic people love rules, as an autistic person myself, but the definition of "rules" people think of is not necessarily the one that is true of that statement.
The rules autistic people often like are usually ones we make ourselves by accident, rather than ones put in place by authority, especially if they seem arbitrary. Now, granted, I do personally get anxious when going against the latter, but that's more of a "fear of authority/being judged" thing than a "must follow rules" thing. For example, I would be uncomfortable if I "broke the rule" my brain has of only having lunch between 12 and 2, but if I see an unattended "keep off the grass" sign in front of a significant shortcut, I'm just gonna walk that way. You can't just make a rule and expect that autistic people will follow it because it's a rule, we're not robots.
And I will be honest, I actually have some skin in this game because as a little girl I was pretty sexist because I think part of my brain just thought that was the rules. This was even against my parents' will, they were very good about this sort of thing, but I was very "girl = pink, boy = blue" and actually missed out on a lot of cool cartoons etc because they were for boys (or sometimes, were just not specifically for girls). However, once I picked up critical thinking skills and understood the history of the world, that rule kind of dissolved because it stopped making sense. I have a hard time imagining anyone who has this rigid and old fashioned understanding of gender, but would be ok with transitioning (much less think it's the solution) because I feel like in order to realise that transitioning is an option you have to at least somewhat realise those rules are constructed. I don't think you can get to "trans man" without passing "tomboy" in the way that these transphobic ableists seem to think.
“I’d need a good reason to live within rules that hurt me” is such a powerful statement
"...might genuinely want to believe that somehow if they just were another sex, that all these problems would disappear" Hoooly fuck that is hilarious! Assuming my sound sensitivity would have ANYTHING to do with my gender is just mind-bogglingly stupid.
Like "oh dear, if only i weren't a GIRL the fridge wouldn't bother me anymore" (sarcasm)
(also thank the algoritm for putting this in my recommended. definitely subbing :) )
I know right? It's very unlikely that an autistic person would mistake sensory sensitivities with gender dysphoria assuming they know what gender dysphoria is. It would be like someone mistaking a headache for being gay. Doesn't happen. But it sounds superficially plausible to people with a poor understanding of autistic people's lived experience. Most people think that autistic sensory sensitivities are emotional in nature, that's why we're sometimes offered exposure therapy to get over our "fears". When they aren't fears! I think there was a study where they found that 75% of *doctors* incorrectly thought that autistic sensory sensitivities were emotional and behavioural problems.
Well, they think you are very stupid.
I think this is because these women GENUINELY do not like being women and perceive womanhood as inherently suffering and only through the lense of what bad things they experience. So they project this negative image of their own gender on to trans people and assume it must be the negative that drives people. That somehow trans people are betraying all that suffering by trying to escape it when you're supposed to be a martyr for your gender because it gives the gender credibility and authority or some shit.
They ALWAYS talk about suffering first whenever they criticise trans women, they always talk about suffering first whenever they criticise trans men, or non binary people.
They *LITTERALLY* cannot imagine, as women, *wanting* to be a woman. So they assume this is how everyone's gender identity works.
edit: Oh shit this was form a year ago, sorry.
Amazing video!!
I'm recently diagnosed autistic. I'm also non-binary and I identify with autigender demiboyflux more. I feel like my gender is tied to my neurodivergence. My family still doesn't believe me when I told them I'm autistic or an ADHDer. I'm so glad that you made this!
💕💕💕💕💕
The bit about "why doesn't my autistic son do this?" -"because they don't want to. " I did make me laugh.
My job is in part explaining this, which should be obvious.
It’s always a red flag to me when parents of autistic children think they’re more of an expert on autism than their OWN children- as though their child’s disability makes them incapable of speaking for themselves. I’m not sure how it is for people with more severe forms of autism, but for those of us with more mild forms of it, I’ve found that we almost ubiquitously have better understandings of our own emotions and how we process them vs neurotypical people because it’s one of the most needed skills for our survival, ESPECIALLY as adults.
I’ve found that neurodivergent people (at least that I’ve known on and offline) are also more likely to reject religion and traditions because we prefer to analyze everything to see its flaws vs accepting it at face value.
SO MANY parents of autistic people are willing to brush off everything their child says because “well, you’re mentally disabled in [X] way, so therefore you’re mentally disabled in ALL ways and your opinion doesn’t hold any weight.” It’s a complete dismissal and infantilization, and it’s such a horrible thing to do to your OWN child. I’m so thankful that my own family has acknowledged my strengths while helping with my issues, and has encouraged debate and discussion of ideas despite having such different opinions. My sister and I largely changed their opinions on the queer community this way.
Tl;dr: Parents of autistic children often infantilize their own kids and refuse to acknowledge their strengths, and should never be seen as a more important “unbiased” resource than actual autistic people and researchers.
(Edited to add tl;dr)
Yeah- I am sick to the back. Teeth of parent's thinking they understand thier child's struggles.
They don't. They can't. They not thier kids.
God I relate so hard with everything you're saying. My mom is normally a perfect mom but everyone has their flaws, and the second I admitted that I'd left islam behind, she went exactly how you described. I think it's honestly her coping mechanism - my daughter can't go to hell because she's too autistic to make the decision to leave Islam, so she's safe. Luckily I managed to convince her I am still a muslim and that 'leaving islam' was just a depressive episode/phase during covid. Sucks that I must hide the secret, but I can't do anything about it unless I want my mother to cry :(
I’m a Autistic Person, I’m Genuinely Disgusted, Appalled, and Horrified by how we are used by people on the right as a scapegoat and a justification for they’re ideologies.
same for the left
@@legofanguyvid?
@notNajimi the left will use you for their purposes, same as the right will.
Love the testimonials you included at the end! Conversations about autism so often treat autistic people as if they're a monolith without voices of their own. It's so patronizing because clearly, they have a _much_ better understanding of things than the people who want to speak over them.
As a Bi Autistic Cis man who is very immersed in several trans communities and has a very supportive family and friend group. Trans people are not trying to convert gay people. I have been confused for a woman many times (I'm very androgenous) and I've cross dressed many times. Yet none of these things turned me trans because. I'm not trans. And the trans people around me are respectful of other people's gender identity.
If anything, I would think the trans people are a lot more likely to understand just how important it is for people to be who they are!
This is the same bullshit of trying to claim the gay people are trying to “recruit” people
If anyone is trying to recruit people, it’s cishet people.
All of society is trying to convince everyone that they’re cishet, and until recently we didn’t even allow people to know that not everyone was. And the facists want it that way again.
The thing about "if I were born 30 years earlier...maybe I would have tried to transition" is that they should have been allowed to do that if they really wanted to. Everyone should be given the information they need about transition and access to a supportive community, and then allowed to make the decision for themselves
"This thing improves people's lives so often that I might have even tried it, God forbid."
If I was easy to manipulate then my parents would have a clean house.
I’m AFAB (exploring non-binary identity), and I wasn’t diagnosed with autism until last year at the age of 23. It’s explained a hell of a lot, and there’s still a lot I’m finding I have to un-learn in terms of expectations for myself and my limits. My boyfriend is a trans man who came out to me years ago not long after we first got together. I remember how afraid he was to tell me because his last girlfriend wrote it off as a “phase” and that he was just trying to go along with what was trendy. He didn’t bring it up again with her after that. His gender identity didn’t bother me one bit (and honestly, didn’t really surprise me either), he’s had my full support the whole time since. He’s two years on T now, and has just overall been doing so much better for himself. He’s overall in a better place than he used to be, he takes better care of himself than he used to. It baffles me how some people can look at someone like him and say he’s going to regret it or any of the other BS the GC crowd likes to toss around. He’s not diagnosed with anything, but he’s definitely neurodivergent in some way.
So what if autistic people have a higher chance of “being” trans? People forget, not every trans person even wants bottom surgery. Being trans doesn’t always mean infertility. If baby making is their concern, it shouldn’t be. Just sounds like rehashed homophobia to me.
I started wondering if I was autistic around the age of 39 or 40. It took me about 8 years of thinking about it before I got in touch with my GP and said I think I might be autistic and to be referred to an autism assessment and last year I had my assessment and they said you are autistic at the age of 47/48. It was such a relief that I was autistic and not that I was stupid and a slow learner for all life. I knew I was asexual in my teens(didn't have the words at the time though, thanks Maggie for section 28). It was only around the age of 45 when my hair started to recede and go bald that I thought I was trans and now I identify as non binary trans fem though I am not out openly yet, don't know if I ever will be. I been DIYing the last 21 months on HRT and T blockers. Blood tests say everything is okay. The waiting lists for gender health care is very long, am looking at up to a 10 year wait or more. I wasn't prepared to wait. I would rather take the risk by DIYing. Sod the system.
I always had a problem saying no to people. Do you think I might have had ABA as a kid and just don't remember it? It is possible since I virtually remember zero of my childhood(this can be embarrassing as someone will say hi when out and about and I am like who are you and they say they are so and so from school, I suffer from face blindness a bit, after a few hours people's faces are just completely blank in my memory but I remember a few names in some cases even their birthday, I tend to recognise people by their dog or what clothes or coat they are wearing). I know I had speech therapy as a young child and my schools were always assessing me and that I was in extra classes from Junior school onwards. I also remember the bullying I suffered, the taunts, the teasing, the abuse, even from teachers at times.
Remember the phase "Sticks and stones..." it is complete rubbish. Physical scars heal and fade with time but mental scars never go away, it is still there, hurting.
@@daviniarobbins9298 It's not always ABA that causes that, the world in general tends to teach autistic people that they don't have the right to say no to things. ABA just makes it explicit.
My parents responded the same way to me having more "boyish" or more "girly" interests as a kid, and let me stop wearing skirts, or cut my hair really short (this one's recent), without trying to push me to reconsider. I didn't feel the need to conform to some "feminine ideal" myself either. And I'm pretty sure they never said they wished I were a boy, or that they thought I should have been one. On the contrary, when I once asked my mom if she thought dad would've preferred if I were a boy, she actually said it's in some ways better that I was a girl, because he might've been harsh to a boy. As a girl, it was more acceptable for me to be soft or sensitive.
I'm transmasc genderfluid. I'm not sure if my parents even know non-binary people exist, given how gendered the Russian language is. Even native English speakers, who already have a gender-neutrality-friendly language with existing neutral words and pronouns, don't understand (or simply choose to be assholes about) enby people.
And about the "autistics are obsessed with following rules/norms or conforming" thing, I wanna add-
It appears that I'm likely autistic. (Hesitant to attempt getting an official/professional diagnosis, because I heard it might be a barrier to trans healthcare in the future)
When I was in elementary school, a bunch of times I whited out bad grades in my grades book thingy and replaced them with better ones (grading is stupid anyways tbh). After a certain point in middle school I stopped doing homework altogether for any class. I wore a fedora to school for some time. I was also often drawing and/or stealthily eating during class.
I'm genderfluid, and would like to play around with my presentation. If I looked and sounded more masculine (and lived in a more queer-accepting country), I would wear dresses/skirts sometimes, because I like the idea of being a man in a dress.
I'm on the aro spectrum, with little to no desire for a romantic partner, despite the widespread assumption/belief that everyone is better off in an exclusive, romantic, long-term coupled relationship, and that everyone is seeking such a relationship (amatonormativity), and the fact that societal pressures try to push people towards that. I'm on the ace spectrum as well. Everyone is expected to desire (and engage in) romance and sex, to the point where many can't comprehend the idea that some aren't into it, and some are convinced it must be a miserable experience, and yet here I am chilling on the aroace spectrum, not bothered by it.
Do I look like I care about rules, or conformity, or norms.
The point about neurodivergent people being more prone to introspection is definitely true. When you're out of the norm and you realize that, you're more likely to try and figure out why. I was always bad at socializing, for instance. It seemed to come naturally to everyone around me, but not me. Sometimes it felt like other people knew or understood something I didn't. An inability to read social cues would certainly explain that.
(Apologies for the long comment. Also, you have a nice voice!)
Your story abut growing up and being young and the most stereotypical "tomboy" is fascinating. I'm a trans guy, I felt the same about almost everything you described, but when I learned I could transition I was like "oh shit, that's what I'm going to do". I was so confident, and still am. When I learned trans people existed it was an instant "shit why do I check all the boxes I'm trans aren't I". I couldn't fathom growing up and being anything other than a man. The thought grossed me out quite frankly. The best way I've heard it put, is if you know all of the barriers and social and societal stigma that comes with being trans, and your biggest concern is "What if I'm not trans?", you're probably trans, because any cis person would think "What if I'm trans?", not the other way around.
Oh, wow…I mean I spend a huge amount of time worrying that I’m not trans (not the trans part which I don’t care about, but worrying that I’m really my agab…I want to be cis, but not like THAT as I don’t know who I’d be if I were turned into a letter after L type person like the terfs want…I wouldn’t be me, it would be someone else. )
So did you… it sounds like maybe you experience something similar in reverse, like letter after L-ness for me has always felt disgusting and like an infection and mutation.
I didn’t learn trans people existed until I was a teenager, and then immediately was like connecting it to all my feelings I’d had.
The fascists want to keep it a secret, force everyone into thinking that cishet is the only thing there is.
Nonbinary autist, I grew up being denied my autistic identity by my father for most of my life. Either he’d downplay it or tell me I just “didn’t have it” it felt like his own identity revolved around the appearance of a happy functioning family and that somehow me and my brother being neurodivergent was an obstruction of that. On top of this he was very absent physically and emotionally when it came to school, my mom was the one who handled my IEP (individualized education plan) which unfortunately didn’t take into account bullying from peers and teachers. I’ve been able to reconcile this with my mom as we had communication issues back then and I know if she knew what was happening at the time she’d destroy those who hurt me. However I never told my dad about this and I’m sure he’d deny me having an unhappy childhood if I did. What confuses me most however is that he readily accepts my queerness but not my neurodivergency.
As a trans man possibly on the spectrum, the TERF has a real and frustrating impact on some sexologists in more restrictive countries like my own. I was told basically that to be trans, autism needs to be ruled out, that there are “too many” trans men who are autistic and this must be indicative of… something bad. I guess some kind of insincere cope to bullying. Cuz trans people never get bullied and there’s no way someone who is already prone to questioning social norms would also be questioning gender norms?
My parents will never accept that I'm trans, I'm from Brazil and so it's pretty common and the rate of homelessness for trans women in specific is very, very high. I'm living with a couple of roommates, which is honestly pretty uncommon here, but being queer and ADHD in a queer and ND space is honestly so, so much better and healthier than what I was going through just shutting down my feelings for all of my teenage years and never learning how to deal with stress, instead just shutting in my room and reading and playing games until time passed. Was a miserable time of my life, and I would give literally anything for even just a slightly more accepting pair of parents, let alone society as a whole. I already knew why TERs are bullshit, and not feminists, but thanks for illuminating it and giving me more ammunition and good arguments when talking to actually sane human beings who are willing to listen.
I feel like a LOT of the middle aged wine-moms got suckered into this movement, because it's just exactly the kind of thing they already advocated against in the past, just with a new label slapped onto it, and in the UK those people have a whole lot of political pull with their wealth. Good to analyse structures while we're at it. I wish people would accept others a little easier, just any amount of effort would do. Sigh.
Thank you so much for this.
I came across trans content on YT around the time I was getting my autism diagnosis, immediately realizing how much our life experiences are similar: being seen as sick, broken, not whole, not functioning, because we deviate from the norm in things that the majority assumes to be the correct way of being human (be it because of ableism/bigotry or just out of ignorance).
Therefore when I learned that the ND spectrum and the LGBT+ spectrum have a high overlap I was amazed, but not really surprised. Still, not being trans myself, I was really curious to hear from trans autistics their opinion on the matter.
So thank you so much for this great video, and thanks to all the people who participated sharing their invaluable contributions!
Your whole point about autistics being famously known for not following rules they don't understand, and being seen as "stubborn" and "defiant" by allistics.... I can't believe that never occurred to me before in regards to terfs calling them easily manipulated.
Like, I knew their point was bullshit, paternalistic, ableist... but I never thought of how ridiculous it sounds when you compare it to the neurotypical stereotype of autistic kids. You cannot make an autistic kid wear a shirt he doesn't want to wear, you cannot force them to abide by social norms they find unpleasant or nonsensical like eye contact and small talk, and we're supposed to believe they are changing their gender to follow trends? It makes no sense at all and I'm embarrassed it had to be pointed out to me before I saw it from that perspective.
Not to mention the potential for sensory meltdowns when their body begins to change with HRT.
Thank you for this video.
Growing up with autism and pathological demand avoidance it was frustrating being around people that never understood me. I never did what I was told because I didn't care about authority. I saw everyone on my level, everyone was just another human to me. I remember in secondary school we had a couple trans students, I didn't understand why people where bothered by it, they just seemed like other kids to me. Now I'm older I understand it alot better but I will still never fully comprehend how someone can hate people for being themselves.
Great video.
I'm cis and autistic, and I often had troubles performing the more toxic parts of masculinity. A possible source of "manipulating people into transition" are LGBT-phobes, that sometimes spiced up their homophobia with occasional transphobia. My stepfather often told me to "cut off my d*** and put on a dress" for wanting to wear protective gloves for some gardening work. People often misremember things as they get older, and they might misremember the sources of such "jokes".
Wooow. Your stepfather sounds “well”.
Yes, trash your hands to be manly 🙄
I love that you’ve seen through some bs of toxic masculinity stuff! That’s awesome.
And it seems like we’re if anything more likely to see through nonsensical societal rules, not less like I guess the terfs think 🙄
Yes it's the classic "accuse others of what you would do" projection.
I cannot even begin to put into words how seen I feel by this video. It's been hard grappling with the fact that masking and staying in the closet compounded each other for so long, and how much of my youth I lost out on for it. It's a relief knowing this is getting talked about and fewer people will feel that loss. 💙
Thank you for recommending this, I'm so glad I watched it
Weird how nobody questions my ability to know my own mind and body when I’m cis and autistic… it’s almost like they don’t actually care about helping me understand myself and my gender and just care about forcing me to conform to their rigid social rules… 🤔 they’re perfectly happy with me being manipulated as long as I’m manipulated into behaving in a way they deem to be “socially acceptable”
My favorite is being told im too incompetent to know my gender identity, but those same people think im competent enough to want to have an raise a child. I can decide I want to get married too, which is technically reversible but definitely complicated. The only time someone (in my life, I know autism can bar you from doing a lot of these things in other places) is against me making my own decisions is when it comes to gender identity. And personally, I'm nonbinary, I don't even want to transition medically. Is it so harmful for me to change my name and use different pronouns?
Well, actually, a lot of people think autistics are incompetent to raise a child too, there's a real problem in the UK that social services are biased against autistic parents and presume incompetence and danger.
honestly the most dangerous part about me being trans and autistic is having executive disfunction to not do proper scar care...
I'm a transdude and I've always found clothes uncomfortable to be in. As a kid I'd just be naked as often as I could get away with it but then puberty came along which is my case meant massive, massive dysphoria so that's the only connection I see between those two things, having hormones and surgery definitely has made life easier in that I can once again be naked at home without too much discomfort (I haven't had bottom surgery yet so that bothers me but it's still better).
It's absurd to me when terfs try to argue that I've been tricked into being trans, I knew I was trans since I was a kid, I am highly self-aware, I've done the doubting bit very throroughly by this point and like... I knew I was trans well before I even heard anyone mention transpeople, we weren't talked about back then, not where I was growing up for sure. Just so many ridiculous statements. Of course, the point isn't to convince *me* the point is to make cis people doubt that we know what's best for ourselves. And it is fucking scary, that shit. They want it to be the way it was when I was growing up but on steroids, where it's enforced and far more deliberate.
This has been a bit of a ramble, my brain isn't really co-operating very well at the moment.
Abigail Thorn's video on mental health where she mentioned feeling like a very big and bulky person (in the way, sticking out like a sore thumb, an obstacle, not at all feeling how she wished to feel, etc.) reminded me a lot of how since I was a toddler I related simultaneously to super girly fairy princess characters (e.g. Barbie from Fairytopia specifically when she doesn't have her wings and navigates the world without wings better than her winged peers) and hulking, meat-head henchman/bouncer types (e.g. Rhino, The Ventriloquist's tank henchman, from Batman the animated series). Having lived in both a wealthy expat community full of overachieving NT children with tiger parents, in which I was considered below average (took a while to see the point in being verbal when I could communicate just fine non-verbally, and didn't see why reading fictional books was praised more than reading non-fiction - leading to me getting a below average reading grade because I only read books I enjoyed and in a nook in the library the teachers ignored, so they thought I just couldn't read when I was actually reading science and history books well beyond my age group's arbitrary "reading level") AND lived in a poor, working class mining town (when we moved back to England) that was far less ethnically diverse and less accepting of any minute difference (also ostracized me because I was suddenly deemed "the smart kid").
In both the henchman relation and the "smart kid" denotation, for years I was socially isolated and only contacted when someone needed to make use of my physical strength or mental assistance. Since, being autistic, I don't give into social pressure easily, I would often tell people to f-off unless I had literally nothing better to do, and since I had no social life until reaching year 11, I usually didn't have anything better to do.
Experimenting with gender mostly came from me trying to "leave behind" the part of me that related to Fairytopia barbie, since I associated it with both China (where I lived before) and being very young. People have always seen me as "mature", but I think that's again down to my non-verbal preference, selective mutism and seeing the misbehavior of my peers as a learned behavior that I had difficulty rationalizing a reason to do myself, I just found life easier doing what I wanted quietly in my little bubble away from the chaotic and nasty NT people that seemed to get joy from inflicting pain and frustration onto others. Embodying a "masculine" aesthetic was me latching onto how I related to characters like Rhino. I took pride in what I now (but didn't at the time) realize are autistic traits, equating them to being much like a bouncer. Another aspect of this character trope, I've noticed, is many seemingly "dumb", bulky, tough characters either loving very stereotypically "girly" things, like unicorns, or actually turning out to be very intellectual / intelligent people (I think in one of the BTAS comics, Rhino turns out to be an expert in fine art; another example of this is Heavy from TF2, another character I very much relate to).
That time, while trying to cope with the mental and emotional distress of the extreme social isolation and bullying I faced in school (a very common experience for most autistic people) by fostering a superiority complex regarding what turned out to be autistic traits (which I described as a better than average work ethic, toughness, extreme levels of focus and productivity - which turned out to be just me hyperfocusing on my special interests during break time and at home because I never had social plans to fill that time instead) and a derogatory view to NT people (whom I saw as lazy, clingy, erratic and pathetic; views which I didn't voice but which I increasingly felt the more they acted hostile unprompted to me and other students), I tied a lot of my self-worth to my productivity, intelligence and physical strength - overexercising and becoming basically a femcell from year 6 to year 9. Papyrus is a character I relate to both before that time, and Heavy mostly to after. The way Heavy speaks in the TF2 comics just reminds me of exactly how I talk in general (only with a British accent).
It took changing to a STEM school in year 10, which coincidentally had a high number of autistic students in attendance (thus the teachers were experienced in helping and listening to autistic students, rather than being trained to treat them the way ABA does - it was actually my maths teacher here that first suggested I am autistic), for me to accept both parts of me instead of leaning too far into one or the other. They're both me. I know non-binary is a spectrum that can include those in-between, both, and neither of the extremes in gender expression, but I think genderfluid is probably the most apt way of describing me. Yes, I'm both, but whether I present more masc, femme or neither really varies across time, and I feel validated provided I am perceived as what I'm aiming for but don't take offence if not.
"The only treatment for autistic suffering is environmental change" hell yeahhhh this quote is fire
Yet so many professionals still don't get it. I'm studying disability studies and many of my class mates are nurses, special ed teachers or social workers by profession. Most of them are of the opinion that autistic children "need to get used to it" along other harmful opinions on the topic. E.g. we were discussing the advantages and disadvantages of online classes like we had during the pandemic and I mentioned how a sibling of mine had the best time of their school life during those times and how they would still profit from a hybrid solution like 2 to 3 online days a week. But my classmates didn't want to hear it. They praised in-person classes as the be all end all solution and said that autistic kids just need to get used to it. Basically they need this enforced socialization with peers no less than five days a week for 12 years straight, or otherwise they would fail later in life. No matter the sensory overstimulation. No matter the bullying.
It really bothered me how my sister would always describe me as being "in my own world" and "stubborn", especially given how airheaded and out of touch with reality my sister is (along with her constant need to have the last word in arguments, even though her side is almost always unsubstantiated, but apparently it isn't stubborn when she does things like that but I'm stubborn for simply existing).
It's "stubborness" and "black and white thinking" when it's something that NTs disagree with, but "common sense" and "right-mindedness" when it's something they support.
Thank you for this. Nonbinary AuDHD here.
When you were sharing the autistic person's mother's description of high intensity sensory processing disorder, I was practically screaming "HOW COULD YOU THINK THAT ANYONE WHO EXPERIENCES THAT WOULD THINK THAT TRANSITIONING WOULD MAKE THAT EASIER"
Edit to add:
The health and care plan thing is terrifying to me. This is the reason I advocate for people being careful about getting an autism diagnosis if they don't need to - as an autistic survivor of childhood trauma, being controlled by and legally bound to my parents forever, would have been a death sentence - unrelated to my gender entirely.
If you are reading this and you are not autistic, please realize that Autism is not a disorder of mental ability. It's often misunderstood that way by allistics usually because we are not listened to or given autonomy, agency, or an ability to communicate that is effective between us and our community.
Smh.
I know it isn't logical. I know it's their fears and that trans existence forces everyone else to reconsider the structures that exist and what personal liberty means and how non liberated we all are. It's easier to attack us than the powers of control and financial servitude.
Whatever. 😮💨
not to mention an official diagnosis can result in a significant loss of agency if the government/doctors etc think you're intellectually diminished
gender criticals don't have a singular thought going on behind that skull
@green mayo man🇺🇦 I often just feel its just thoughts in general since they attack their own so much
Oh, I don't entirely agree. Seething hatred and contempt technically count as thoughts. :D
@@dinosaysrawr yeah but they dont come up with it
It's just regurgitation of what they're told to believe
They have one thought: penis penis penis….
One thing I've noticed about "Gender Critical" "feminists" is that they are very quick to talk on behalf of and over other women!
What an amazing cat! Great video as well. I think I might be on the spectrum but have withrawned this thought from my analyst because, being trans, I didn't want that to interfere with my transition. That concern is motivated by the fact that it might have made the whole process longer, which is a thing that happens and I couldn't wait any longer since I was already on my 30s. Nevertheless I was infantilized by relatives and
"friends" claiming that I was making that up or that I would face major difficulties in the world, like I was not aware already.
This isn't relayed to your comment but your pfp is amazing
@@lordanzu8763 thanks! I didn't come up with the idea: It's from the book Transgender Marxism.
I can't claim to be trans or autistic. I am however, gender nonconforming. I did always struggle against my family and my school's expectations of me as male, both in terms of my appearance and my interests. As an adult, and out of a marriage which similarly limited my self expression due to her expectations of gender roles, I am finally happy and confident in myself and have friends who appreciate me for who I really am.
Uuuugh, yeah, this garbage hurts cis people too!!
It blows my mind how important it is to bad people that everyone be cishet AND conform to stupid gender rules.
Several people in my life have "accused" me of being autistic, for impenetrable reasons I don't care to speculate on. In any case it does help me empathise a little better with the way that autistic people are infantilised and othered by society in ways that simply bear no resemblance to the actual traits characteristic of autism. For most allistic people the word just means "weird" in some nebulous way they can't explain.
I'm reminded of this one post, that's like, "Yeah, autistic people are more likely to be trans, because gender is stupid, and we're not stupid." I'm autistic and trans myself., and like, yeah, that
Oh, yeah, you can definitely ask trans autistic people about our experiences with gender. We literally won't shut up about it
And let's not forget that the absolute easiest way to get screened for every personality disorder, neurodivergence and mental illness is to tell your doctor you're transgender.
Source: I've been screened for ASD, anxiety, depression, NPD, BPD, paranoia etc. etc. by three separate health instances because that's literally a requirement for being offered gender-affirming care in Norway
Geez 😡
Like…you can have any or all of those things and it doesn’t change whether you’re male or female or non-binary!
And being trans and not being supported or getting treatment can LEAD to depression, anxiety, etc. 🤦🏻♀️
Those screenings are no official requirements where I live but the psychologist who signed off on my transition recognized my ADHD too and helped me get diagnosed. I think the fact alone that trans people are mandated to see a mentral health care professional or three in a lot of countries could increase the likelyhood of additional diagnoses in trans people compared to the cis population.
God listening to the testimonies of trans autistic people gave soooo much clarity and rationality to the subject to the point where you're absolutely dumbfounded as to how it were ever an argument for terfs. Listening to them was so powerful bc it felt like seeing people taking back a voice that was stripped away from them but it also made me so hopeful (and very emotional omg) for a society outside of the irrationality of gender roles under patriarchy
thank you so much for this
I'm glad you gave autistic trans people a voice in this when we are so often belittled and ignored on the basis of our neurology and gender identity. I really appreciate this video and your allyship ♥️
Your work is wonderful and meaningful to me personally, it made me learn a lot more about my autistic self than I have in the 10+ years I spend getting professional help
As an autsitic transman I think I completly agree with the idea of autistic people being more likely to realize they are trans. I spent my whole life having confused thoughs about everything - including gender - and a huge dificulty to understand things that everyone else seemed to "get". And at the time I thought everyone was like that. That everyone questioned their gender and wanted to force themselfs in the norms anyway. At 18 I discovered I had autism (I was diagnosed as 17 but my therapist and my parents kept it from me?) and the more I understanded about it more I realized that not everyone else had the thoughs and doubts and confusion I had. And I was forced to understand that if this was the case than this meant that maybe the ways I felt about my gender also weren't just a normal experience for cis people. That other people didn't necessarialy felt forced into their gender, didn't felt the way I did. That it wasn't that everyone around me had a silent pact to lie I had no clue about but was forced to participate. And that knowledge was what alowed me to reshearch and understand my gender experience and well it was very clear that I was not a woman at all.
You are such a brilliant and important creator, Mica. Thank you for being so clear and funny and unimpeachable on all the bad faith things.
36:26 "Can you imagine having a brain that only briefly quiets down while sleeping?"
Yes, how strange that other people's brains are...active. Her asking this question answered all of mine.
Since they don't like TERF how about FART (Feminist Appropriating Reactionary Transphobes) wish I could take credit for that
sounds perfect
I’ve been calling them Gender Cops. It has the bonuses of falling under the ACAB category as well as still having the same initials as Gender Critical
@@CraftyVegan i love that
I just call them TERFs anyway. But since TERFs aren't really feminist, to me it means Trans-Exclusionary Radical Fascist, which I think is more descriptive.
@@electronics-girl ooh i like that too
Just a funny thought. I am an autistic woman. For sensory and practical reasons I have short hair, no makeup, no jewelry. It looks kind of masculine. However, I always wear a dress. I can't stand the feeling of pants. They are uncomfortable. So are tights. I wear loose, not snug leggings. Ones that are easy to bend in. I wear a dress because there is no band in the middle that I would have to feel, the band on the leggings is bad enough. The dress has to be loose enough to be comfortable and short enough to not get in the way of movement. If I was a man, I would hate to wear pants and would want the same outfit, a short loose dress, but I would still have short hair and not wear jewelry (maybe I would wear pants to not draw attention to myself, but I would change the minute I got home and wish I did not have to wear pants). None of this would have anything to do with gender identity, just comfort and practicality.
Trans and autistic here, I really don't understand this idea of being easily hoodwinked. Personally I do an incredible amount of research on basicly everything I think or feel. Researched the hell out of autism and came to yep I have autism. Got the diagnosis from there. Realised my general disphoria and gendered disphoria didn't come from my autism alone. Realisation of autism not explaining my gendered disphoria is what pushed me to further seek out what was the case. Turns out my inherant internal desire to have breasts wasn't autism. I'm pretty sure wearing a bra is far more of a sensory ick than not needing to.
One thing I'd like to point out. Many Autistic people, myself included, have to work a lot harder to find our place in the world. It's harder to just go with the flow and pick up on other's expectations of us. That can lead to us having a better understanding of who we are, because we have to actively, not passively explore these things as we mature.
It's easier to discover things about yourself when you're actively looking.
Part of autism is finding yourself, who you really are vs what the world wants from you, so is it any surprise that we're more likely to find traits that others might have been pressured to hide and ignore?
oh fuck yeah time to ponder some shit
I do be pondering
I full of ponder
I am 28 old trans woman and I am also digonosed with autistim. I know gender criticals are haveing it wrong. They are just making it worse. We autistic people know our gender identities.
as an autistic woman, never in my life have i thought "oh, if only i'd been born a boy, then i wouldn't hate textures and sounds". lol
I’m a trans man and part of my transition involves giving my self injections once a week. I’d be interested to see how people with sensory issues might feel about the idea of that, especially given the GC pretrial of transitioning as ‘more comfortable’ for those with sensory issues.
I’m sure the experience varies but it would be interesting to learn more about.
I have sensory issues. Giving myself injections so often sounds like absolute hell. But i'm still prepared to do them, because, and i hope they get this, my gender dysphoria makes me want to kill myself and my autistic symptoms are nothing but a roadblock in my need to correct that. A lot of autistic sensory issues/upset can even get a little better after self training. For years, my long feminine hair was a sensory REQUIREMENT. it helped me to be surrounded in something soft and hide from people, i was so scared and didn't want people to try to make eye contact with me and they didn't. After getting a more short masculine haircut i had a period of utter dysfunction while i was getting used to it. It was spiders crawling everywhere after that huge security blanket was missing. But now... i'm even better than before. I have completely adapted to the sensory intake and it's even more freeing than long hair. So in many ways my efforts to transition have not been comfortable at all. Especially binding, starving myself during puberty, etc... but i adjusted to the sensory patterns because it is what i needed in my life. This is a random heavy recount of my own experience but, the stereotypical medically transitioning transgender experience for both genders is utterly brutal on the autistic senses 24/7, i'm glad i have the experience to know it is NOT a mistake or by choice.
Personally, I'm hoping to get the cream or patch.
I don't know if I'm autistic, but I am trans and have sensory issues! Weekly injections are how I get my estradiol. It's pretty annoying and frustrating, but I can't say personally it's ever really caused any direct issues with my sensory sensitivities and such. Sublingual tablets, on the other hand, were *awful* to try and deal with every day. Having a gross powdery feeling stuck under my tongue for half an hour while it dissolves was miserable.