Elevated rates of autism in transgender and gender-diverse individuals

It's well documented that autistic individuals are having difficulties resolving or tolerating emotionally conflicting situations.

If a male non-autist has girlish interests, he might be proud of his uniqueness and thereby accept it as part of himself.

For a male autist, the socially conflicting girlish interests will be much more painful, thereby driving a higher percentage of autists to resolve the conflict by adjusting their gender.

That would also explain the data, but with causality reversed.

And from personal experience: I received a lot of criticism as a kid because I was a guy but I liked purple shorts and playing dress-up with my sisters. It's just that since I never identified with the stereotypical guys from movies, I wasn't bothered that other people considered me unequal to them.

But I've seen how much effort my math genius classmate put into proving his manliness, so I assume the gossip about us having girlish interests must have bothered him a lot more than me.

I can't speak for anyone else, but I transitioned before I had met another tg person. When I transitioned I was already apart of a social group. I didn't need to fit in or find my place. When I was a kid I got along with both boys and girls making friends with both.

People do seek out others like themselves, but transgender communities are rare, because transgender people are rare. There are not many of them. When there are hundreds of people gossiping about transgendered people for every transgendered person it's easy for faulty information to be spread. There is a lot of misunderstandings about transgender people.

It’s a clear disagreement and not “bait”. But yes, I get it.

In psychology how we define a thing is constructed from a series of observable characteristics.

The problem is, there are multiple situations that can cause the same series of characteristics. "Are there leading candidate hypotheses for the cause of autism?" is like asking, "Are there leading candidate hypotheses for the cause of a headache?" There is no single cause.

What we do know is most people with autism do not process facial expressions as much as the average person. This causes a lack of paying attention to body language, which then ripples into most of the characteristics that define autism. Studies have shown eye training on infants can completely remove symptoms of autism.

But a root cause is more complex when there are multiple. Some people get overloaded when they look at people's faces. Some just didn't pick up the proper habits of looking at others when interacting with them. The root cause can vary from person to person.

It never says that the crazy describes all trans people. It doesn't call all trans fakes. You seem to even admit you didn't make it past the title with your uncharitable read, so how do you expect to respond to something it actually claims?

It points out that there are some social contagion factors to some expressions in our youth. Which is completely reasonable given how much clout gives you in modern social media, for example. And that an impressionable girl with low self-esteem can suddenly "become trans" and win social favor, which I don't see how you could find unreasonable if you've ever been a teen.

Maybe approach it a little more open-mindedly. You basically dismiss everyone in the book as just being unable to "cope with loss" which isn't much different than dismissing any group (like trans people) with some convenient reason that leaves your world-view untouched.

Also not sure how your anecdote disproves the craze, especially since the craze is talking about the last 5 years. Your experience in the 90s has little bearing on 2020 where you get instant social proof on social media in some circles by putting a rainbow flag in your username. Times are different. You don't think social contagion could explain any part of the 800% increase in trans identity among the youth? I don't see how you couldn't believe that on any 800% increase in what the youth are doing.

It's like amphetamine abuse among kids. I have extreme ADHD and to some degree depend on the drug to get what I want in life. Just because you could write a book about kids claiming to have ADHD just to get prescribed a great recreational drug (and I bet you could even call it a craze, as it seemed in uni) doesn't mean I can't have ADHD or that everyone is an abuser. I would consider myself weirdly defensive to the point of dismissing inconvenient truths if I were to believe that, yet that's what I see you doing.

That you give yourself so much authority on trans matters, especially in response to such a reasonable point, is kind of an example of what I see as modern trans clout these days. Why wouldn't a teen want that? As the book points out, it's incredibly easy to "be trans" when the rest of your friend group in high school is suddenly on the non-binary spectrum unlike when you were a kid.