Welcome back to Reading the Research, where I trawl the Internet to find noteworthy research on autism and related subjects, then discuss it in brief with bits from my own life, research, and observations.
Today's article demonstrates a phenomenon I've been seeing personally for years. That is, the likelihood for autistic people to be found in the LGBTQIA+ group somewhere. In the group of autistic adults I frequent, gender is typically a low priority topic. While most of the adults typically at least present in line with their physical sex, it's typically just a matter of "not weirding out the neurotypicals" or personal preference.
I put out a post some four years ago to try to explain trans people to a broad audience. It holds up kind of okay still, although I'm getting closer to simply saying, "yeah, she/her is just kind of wrong when talking about me, please just say they/them." I still identify as agender, and still think you should take your gender expectations of me and throw them out the nearest window. Also, I learned recently that dysphoria is for everyone, myself included, so that's fun.
The researchers seem to be puzzled as to why autistic people would be so much less likely to subscribe to the traditional "two genders" system. I'm honestly puzzled as to why they'd be puzzled. Autistic people march to our own beats in a lot of ways. Why would gender be any different? Society shapes and molds biologically male and female humans toward having a matching gender, it's true... But if you're deaf to that guidance, as you're deaf to every other kind of social learning, of course you aren't going to perfectly match the societal "ideal."
In some cases, like myself, you may entirely reject it. It's just another box people want to wrongfully stuff you into, after all. I've got enough expectations on me without people demanding I wear dresses and makeup, or enjoy clothes, interior decorating, pink, and whatever else passes as feminine these days. If other people like those things, more power to them. I simply don't, and resent the expectations that I should.
On a final note, it's refreshing to see Professor Baron-Cohen saying things I agree with. I've typically disagreed with him on a lot of points. However, improving the lives of transgender and gender-diverse people is a cause I can definitely support, and doing so will help autistic and non-autistic people.
(Pst! If you like seeing the latest autism-relevant research, visit my Twitter, which has links and brief comments on studies that were interesting, but didn't get a whole Reading the Research article about them.)
No comments:
Post a Comment