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Elevated rates of autism in transgender and gender-diverse individuals

nature.com

101–110 of 358 posts

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

#101
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People making claims like that generally no nothing of the procedure by which mental health issues are diagnosed - which is to say, mental health treatment is about addressing issues which are negatively affecting someone's quality of life, until they are not. This is the same reason you can't just go through the DSM V and ascribe mental health conditions to people on TV or in the media or whatnot - it doesn't work t…

Don’t they have much higher suicide rates? How happy can that be?

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

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

#102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I wouldn’t really care, to be honest. Nobody has ever done that, so I can’t be sure.

In that case, perhaps you're one of the people out there who doesn't strongly identify with any particular gender.

See, this is an exercise in deliberate confusion. If someone said I was female, of course I would contradict them if it was warranted. My male characteristics are objectively verifiable, up to and including having sired children rather than having given birth to them. My identity has nothing to do with any of this.

And for most people, “man” and “male” are synonyms. This is why people always express confusion about what it means to “identify” one way or the other. Identity is irrelevant to reproductive role, and sex is about reproduction, and gender is about sex.

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

#103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure what that means.

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?

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

#105

I'm gonna be honest, using kernel density estimates on discrete data is almost bad enough to make me discount the result outright. Almost.

"In all five datasets, we investigated if rates of autism diagnosis significantly differed by gender by first conducting χ2 tests (Model 1, unadjusted), and then by conducting logistic regressions adjusted for age and educational attainment as covariates (Model 2, adjusted)." It appears the kernel density estimates is being used as a display of the data, not the actual method of statistical analysis, or perhaps I mis…

Using a technique that's entirely inappropriate for the kind of data you're dealing with doesn't exactly inspire confidence. That it doesn't affect the actual result is lucky, I guess.

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

#106
post #33
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> "If we'd treat schizophrenia the way we treat gender dysphoria, we'd all have to acknowledge the voices they hear and pretend we hear them too." This is easy to dismiss by pointing to evidence based treatment practices. The treatment which is most effective at reducing suicide rates among people experiencing gender dysphoria is gender affirming care [0]. I doubt it is the case that the treatment that is most effect…

can anyone shed light on why this comment is controversial, compared to all the sibling, parent and cousin comments?

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

#107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In that case, perhaps you're one of the people out there who doesn't strongly identify with any particular gender.

See, this is an exercise in deliberate confusion. If someone said I was female, of course I would contradict them if it was warranted. My male characteristics are objectively verifiable, up to and including having sired children rather than having given birth to them. My identity has nothing to do with any of this. And for most people, “man” and “male” are synonyms. This is why people always express confusion about w…

> And for most people, “man” and “male” are synonyms.

OK. If you call someone gay in the 1800s, it'll probably not mean the same thing as doing it today. Terms change; distinctions between similar terms get made as they're needed.

> Identity is irrelevant to reproductive role, and sex is about reproduction, and gender is about sex.

There's several bald assertions in there. I'm infertile, so "sex is about reproduction" makes me chuckle a bit, for example.

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

#108
post #22

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 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.

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

#109
Autists are disproportionally online. This matters for two reasons.

The first is that on the internet you can easily assume any identity.

The second is that the trans lobby has much stronger control over online than offline spaces. The pattern is clearly visible in this thread. Views that you might hear from "the man on the street" are flagged or downvoted.

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

#110
post #29
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I'm not the OC but many of my friends and peers are trans and I find "agender" to be the most useful descriptor to myself. One thing I've noted is that once you start to identify the ways in which gender is fundamentally a social construct the link with autistic/neurodivergent folks makes much more sense. Anybody who struggles to instinctively navigate social norms and behaviors will also struggle to instinctively na…

> 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.

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