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Elevated rates of autism in transgender and gender-diverse individuals

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Re: Elevated rates of autism in transgender and gender-diverse individuals

#141

Post by Pfhreak »

empthought wrote: post #133
Pfhreak wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And the distinction among “man,” “woman,” and “non-binary” without referencing sex is explained... how exactly? It's the difference between "maleness" and "manliness". Those words are clearly related, but they mean different things. See also: "femaleness" vs. "feminine". The latter term in either case describes cultural behaviors, clothing, accepted roles, and a whole bunch of other stuff that isn't the same as the…

See, I view this as a system of oppression. “Manly” characteristics are those that are societally praiseworthy for males but considered negative for females, and “womanly” the reverse. I actively seek to avoid that game, as it is untenable in a just society.

I think a lot of trans/nonbinary people would agree with you. :D

Re: Elevated rates of autism in transgender and gender-diverse individuals

#142

Post by joshuamorton »

School-Cotton wrote: post #103
joshuamorton wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll ask the question a different way: when people perceive and address you like a man, do you feel any reason to disagree with how they address or perceive you?

No, I don’t. Is that really the entirety of “identifying as” something - not disagreeing with other people identifying you as that?

To add to what Pfhreak says: no, identity can be more nuanced than that (identities can change, and identity only as a negative may not even make sense in non-binary contexts), but the easiest way I find to address the issue to (presumably) cis people is to address particular identities in terms of being perceieved as the opposite, because that can highlight the discomfort of self- and other-identity mismatching.

Re: Elevated rates of autism in transgender and gender-diverse individuals

#143

Post by joshuamorton »

bobthechef wrote: post #138
ceejayoz wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Abused children also have high suicide rates, but that's presumably not because of some inherent internal tendency to suicide, right?

Not a question of inherent tendency but cause of. Those who have elected to adapt to their convictions through surgery, hormones, etc. still have very high suicide rates. The studies (I don’t have them handy) undermine the notion that the increased risk and incidence of suicide of “pre-transition” individuals with gender dysphoria are suicidal because they’re “forced” to live in a way that seems to then to be at odds…

> But we find that “post-transition” we still see high rates

But lower than pre-transition.

> but I believe that was also addressed and found unconvincing.

I can't say I understand how a paper would account for systemic discrimination, but even if they did so successfully, treatments for most things don't have 100% rates of success.

> On the other hand, I have heard therapy for gender dysphoria (GD)

Yes, and this is normally part of treatment for GD for anyone. It just very often doesn't work.

Re: Elevated rates of autism in transgender and gender-diverse individuals

#144

Post by Pfhreak »

empthought wrote: post #122
Pfhreak wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Simplified explanation that leaves out the discussion of people who are agender, genderqueer, etc.: If you conceptualize gender as 'manliness' or 'femininity', you can pretty easily see that some folks are more or less 'manly', that gender must therefore exist as a spectrum. There are men who are very feminine, and women who are quite manly, so in my mind, these spectrums have some overlap. Most folks have a pretty r…

I think you might overestimate how strongly or rigidly people in general conceive of how they “fit” on a daily basis, or how strongly they link activities, dress, or title to “manliness” or “womanliness.” For a simple example, some days I want to listen to Tori Amos and cry, and other days I want to listen to Metallica and punch things, but nothing in any of this has any bearing on my identification with any gender.…

Many of us are not tightly attached to all parts of our identities. For some, they might care deeply about their identity as a devout Christian/Muslim, others might not really care. Some might care about their political party affiliation, others might not care. Some might care about their gender deeply, others might not care.

Re: Elevated rates of autism in transgender and gender-diverse individuals

#145

Post by geofft »

hh3k0 wrote: post #18
vmception wrote: post #11

Some detractors often say transgender people have mental health issues. But they mean it in the sense that they should be in an asylum or should not be catered to. A reality is that: A) Gender dysphoria is an imbalance of neural state. Therefore that would by definition be a mental health issue but not like the detractors say. B) Acknowledging and accommodating gender dysphoria discomfort costs cisgender people nothi…

> But they mean it in the sense that they should be in an asylum or should not be catered to. I have often heard it in a sense of "should not be catered to but rather given medical help". A fellow student once told me that he considers the current way of treating gender dysphoria irresponsible and that, if we'd treat schizophrenia the way we treat gender dysphoria, we'd all have to aknowledge the voices they hear and…

I'd like to argue a little bit for treating the voices in your head as real.

There is a phenomenon of "plurality" where you perceive yourself as a system of multiple people/personas with unique personalities and interests and identities. Psychologists would generally classify patients who show up this way as having dissociative identity disorder - but only if they meet the criterion of the symptoms causing distress/affecting your lives, and many plural systems seem to be just fine with it.

https://www.reddit.com/r/plural/wiki/faqs is probably a good starting point for reading about it from an inside-the-community view. (There's a plural community for essentially the same reasons that there's a transgender community.) https://smallcedarforest.org/on-transgender-and-plural-exper... is an interesting post from someone who connects plural and transgender identity. (FWIW, the one person I know IRL who is out about being plural is also trans.)

Going further back, we have stories across cultures of people who (either positively or negatively) claimed the ability to communicate internally with other personalities/identities, and occasionally those personalities would "front" (in the language of the contemporary plural community).

And then, of course, there's the case of the woman who heard voices insisting that she get a CT scan. Her psychologist, who was giving her medication to suppress the voices, decided to do the scan just to prove she was fine - and she had cancer that required operation. When she woke up after surgery, they said, "We are pleased to have helped you. Goodbye," and they never returned. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232271307_A_difficu...

And while I was trying to find that story, I found this one, of an organization that helps people who hear voices in their heads by telling them the voices are real and helping them work through it: https://www.minnpost.com/mental-health-addiction/2014/04/mos...

Re: Elevated rates of autism in transgender and gender-diverse individuals

#146

Post by valenciarose »

fock wrote: post #93
valenciarose wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not sound and ultimately it’s based in the grief of people who believe they have somehow lost their child (or spouse, or sibling) because they transitioned. I don’t want to minimize the pain of people who have this mindset, no matter how destructive it is. Their sense of loss is genuine and it drives them to the same level of commitment that you see from parents who lose a child to a drunk driver. But, while the…

so could you produce some numbers about transitions? because frankly this discussion (just as the more street-oriented fraction of BLM...) seems driven by a very vocal but ultimately minuscule number of people. And if now in some avantgarde-circles (which never were related to the majority of people and also today generally have their very own orthodoxy... ) trans is en vogue, I doubt that this is the mass phenomenon…

It’s not a mass phenomenon. Neither is Autism. Fewer people are trans than are gay, but nobody really knows. At the bottom end it’s 0.3%-0.6% of the population, but that’s only people who are out. If you survey people in their low 20s, it’s higher. We’re a little less common than redheads in all likelihood. Gay people in the early 80s knew there were a lot more gay people than straight people saw, but they had no idea what the true numbers were. It’s like that.

Most of the trans people I know aren’t remotely avant-garde. I know a bunch of suburban women in monogamous relationships with their spouses or partners. I know a couple of suburban trans guys who are still married to the men they married before they figured it out, one of them with kids. I know several trans guys in health care. I do know a few trans people who are artist and writer types and are more flamboyant. The first trans woman I met worked at the same Wall Street brokerage I did and was very quiet.

When I go to (back when travel was a thing) places that are less friendly than the coasts and people see the trans flag pin on my bag, I frequently have people come out to me and talk about how they can never transition.

There is really no orthodoxy beyond believe people about their gender. Trans people are very different from each other and their experience of being trans varies wildly. There’s some agreement around language and tropes that seem to provoke violence towards us, but many trans people use language to describe themselves that other trans people would be offended by. But that’s true of gay people too.

Re: Elevated rates of autism in transgender and gender-diverse individuals

#147

Post by empthought »

Pfhreak wrote: post #141
empthought wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See, I view this as a system of oppression. “Manly” characteristics are those that are societally praiseworthy for males but considered negative for females, and “womanly” the reverse. I actively seek to avoid that game, as it is untenable in a just society.

I think a lot of trans/nonbinary people would agree with you. :D

I think a lot of people of any identity would agree with me... but are we outnumbered by those who are rigorously inspecting what toys a four-year-old is playing with, as a lens towards gauging their future conformity to one traditional gender role or the other?

Re: Elevated rates of autism in transgender and gender-diverse individuals

#148

Post by empthought »

Pfhreak wrote: post #144
empthought wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you might overestimate how strongly or rigidly people in general conceive of how they “fit” on a daily basis, or how strongly they link activities, dress, or title to “manliness” or “womanliness.” For a simple example, some days I want to listen to Tori Amos and cry, and other days I want to listen to Metallica and punch things, but nothing in any of this has any bearing on my identification with any gender.…

Many of us are not tightly attached to all parts of our identities. For some, they might care deeply about their identity as a devout Christian/Muslim, others might not really care. Some might care about their political party affiliation, others might not care. Some might care about their gender deeply, others might not care.

But for you, as gender fluid, it seems the thing you care deeply about is the ability to be free to conform or not conform to gender expectations of any particular sort?

If so, isn’t this freedom something that would just be good for anyone?

Re: Elevated rates of autism in transgender and gender-diverse individuals

#149

Post by klipt »

seba_dos1 wrote: post #123
klipt wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anybody who struggles to instinctively navigate social norms and behaviors will also struggle to instinctively navigate gendered norms and behaviors, simply because the two are inextricable. But if masculine and feminine gender roles are equally difficult to navigate, that doesn't explain why transitioning would help. You'd just be swapping out one difficult gender role with another.

They may be "equally difficult to navigate" in a grand scheme of things, but they're probably not equally difficult for a particular person. Everyone got their own set of traits and interests that may make adhering to a particular gender role easier than the others.

So that would imply that non autistic people may also feel like their brains don't match their bodies, but since they're better at navigating gender roles, they're more likely to just adapt around the dysphoria instead of transitioning?

Re: Elevated rates of autism in transgender and gender-diverse individuals

#150

Post by throwaway26473 »

ceejayoz wrote: post #132
empthought wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, people who lose their ability to walk are still human, and people who lose their ability to produce sperm are still male.

What is the "correct" gender for an intersex person, or someone born without genitalia, or someone with 45,X/46,XY mosaicism?

"My hair is purple."

"No it's not, I'm looking at you and I can clearly see it's brown. Unless you've dyed it for the entire time I've known you it's a natural brown."

"You can't assign hair colors based on physical characteristics like that! What is the 'correct' hair color for someone born without hair, or someone with hair heterochromia? Even though I do not belong to any of these tiny genetic minorities, the fact that these categories do not neatly apply to them must mean they are totally meaningless and I can assign whatever hair color I want to myself."

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