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Elevated rates of autism in transgender and gender-diverse individuals

nature.com

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

#161

Post by renaicirc »

timwaagh wrote: post #45

trans people, might reasonably be described as people "whose attempts to make friends are odd and typically unsuccessful". Since that phrase got ripped straight off the dsm diagnostic criteria for autism on https://www.autismspeaks.org/autism-diagnosis-criteria-dsm-5 , it should not be any surprise whatsoever that these are correlated (same as with any other category of significantly 'odd' people).

> trans people, might reasonably be described as people "whose attempts to make friends are odd and typically unsuccessful".

This is a thoroughly bizarre assertion. Why can trans people be described thus?

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

#162

Post by clusterfish »

davmar wrote: post #108
neonate wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd love to hear your theories if you'd be willing to share them.

not op, but i think that western gender roles are a scam. i'm not suggesting that there aren't differences between biological sexes, but gender != sex and the false idea that there are only two ways to express your gender is quite limiting.

And eastern gender roles aren't? Is there something I don't know?

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

#163

Post by tomp »

Pfhreak wrote: post #130
School-Cotton wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That's one means to understand your identity. Generally, if you'd say, "I am a ..." then you identify as that. You might say, for instance, I am a Catholic. Or I am a Muslim. I am a man. I am a woman. I am a chef. I am a zookeeper. I am a gun owner. I am a pacifist. I am a vegetarian. etc. etc. Whatever your "I am a ..." statements are, they are how you identify. You will find some of them you feel strongly about and…

This is a bit simplistic, isn’t it?

Muslim, Christian, pacifist are pretty much opinions, so it doesn’t make sense to call them “identities” as they can change any time (you wouldn’t call “dressed in a suit” or “hungry” identities, would you?)

Chef, gun owner, vegetarian - those are facts. You can say you’re a chef without ever having cooked a thing, or gun owner without owning a gun, or a vegetarian while eating steak, but that doesn’t make it your identity, it just makes you wrong.

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

#164

Post by jauer »

ladberg wrote: post #159
wozzeck wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would be surprised if that carried over to trans women, i.e. people assigned male at birth, especially if most are diagnosed as children (and thus prior to transitioning, in most cases).

I'd bet that jauer meant to say trans men (the terminology can be confusing at first) because autism is typically diagnosed earlier in life than a gender transition, so if it's under-diagnosed in women then it would also be under-diagnosed in trans men.

Transitioned a while back, didn't get it backwards :)

To elaborate: I was wondering if trans men (AFAB) acquire the male-gendered autistic traits and trans women (AMAB) acquire the female-gendered traits (and underdiagnoses from diagnostic criteria being focused on male norms).

Why I'm curious: I was diagnosed with Asperger's as an adult (no access to MH care as a child because raised in a cult), transitioned, and after 3 years of HRT got a new psych who laughed at the idea that I could have AS and removed it from my chart. His reasoning was that my interpersonal skills were not impaired in a way that is typical of autistic people. This is a common reason why women with autism are under-diagnosed.

I had terrible interpersonal skills pre-transition. HRT gave me access to a wider range of emotions, which might have something to do with it. E.g. I can actually understand the emotional currents in movies, which is nice. But, now I'm curious if autistic symptoms are another one of those things that change with hormones.

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

#165

Post by turing_complete »

trans-stealth wrote: post #38

One other correlation I have seen is "intelligence" trans person. It's very weird how many absurdly smart people happen to be trans. It plays into the idea that mental illness correlates with IQ.

Do you have any source on that? It sounds like it might be just anecdotal due to the fact that trans people tend to be more noticeable.

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

#166

Post by simooooo »

echurilov wrote: post #3

The transgender and gender-diverse vs. cisgender effect sizes are equivalent to or larger than the autism vs. non-autism effect sizes and the cisgender male vs. cisgender female effect sizes in non-autistic individuals. if i understand that right, whether you're trans is a better indicator of whether you have autistic traits than a) your assigned sex or b) whether you are diagnosed with autism

That is quite a sentence

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

#167

Post by mvn9 »

neonate wrote: post #22
jmcgough wrote: post #20

My mother's family is all autistic engineers. I and two of my cousins transitioned as teenagers, so I've had my own theories about this for years.

I'd love to hear your theories if you'd be willing to share them.

Not OP, but I fancy this rough theory:

According to armchair psychologists and a joke, the answer to every psychological question is 'your mother'.

If you look at ways to deal with conflicts [1], it could be that being transgender is a form of dealing with inner conflicts.

Being autistic means that there is some distortion (no judgement intended) in the relationship to other people. The distortion most likely originates from the first relationship, i.e. the relationship to the mother. Since there is a need for a fulfilled relationship, it will be fulfilled by one way or another. If e.g. the mother is absent, then the mind looks for another way to fulfil it.

One way for fulfilment is becoming the desired object itself. So, to bring it to a point: Autism can origin from an absent mother. One way to replace the need for a mother is becoming a female object for others.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defence_mechanism

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

#168

Post by knolax »

Psychology is the same field that recommended lobotomies roughly a generation ago. Unlike the difference between medieval plague doctors and modern doctors, it does not seem that psychology has reformed in that time, and as such anything coming out of that field should be regarded as noise.

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

#169

Post by ikt »

clusterfish wrote: post #162
davmar wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

not op, but i think that western gender roles are a scam. i'm not suggesting that there aren't differences between biological sexes, but gender != sex and the false idea that there are only two ways to express your gender is quite limiting.

And eastern gender roles aren't? Is there something I don't know?

what about northern and southern gender roles?

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

#170

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

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…

While carefully not expressing an opinion one way or the other, a more clear-cut example might be body integrity dysphoria: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_integrity_dysphoria, in which some feel that parts of their body are alien to them and should be removed. Should people support those who have this dysphoria and allow them to proceed or do the negatives outweigh the positives?
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