(i’ll also crosspost this one in [email protected], since i’m not sure how much overlap our two communities currently have)
I’ve been thinking about this connection for a long time, and it finally struck me: Autistic people are probably more likely to be trans because we sort of…Idk not overanalyze everything but at least in the way I think, gender just never made sense to me? Like, the idea of body=gender is just so backwards to me, because by and large, societies had multiple genders. It’s historically verifiable, and in the modern world, as well.
It’s not like “Oh we’re super logical”, but I feel like we have that higher likelihood because we question things by nature. We sort of go “wait this doesn’t make sense” when something’s just nonsensical. I don’t know how else to describe it because it’s always just been a thing for me and a lot of other autistic people I know. Like, yes, we take things literally, but also when something makes zero sense we question it.
I know I’m kinda rambling, but I just feel like because we examine the world in different ways than neurotypicals, that’s how we arrive at the conclusion that gender isn’t our bodies.
This is something I began thinking about when my bi/enby wife got her autism diagnosis.
Statistically, autistics are more likely to be non-straight, and I can’t help wondering whether that’s due to attraction to binary gender being a largely ridiculous concept, if you really dig down into it. I mean, sure, you can have a penis and prefer the feel of sex with someone who has a vagina, and generally prefer the shape and look of ‘traditionally’ feminine people, but why not also be into having sex with other penis owners? There’s no real sound logic to any of it, outside of wanting to produce a child.
Neurotypicals tend to just go with the flow, and accept that man+woman=normal, then the societal expectations and neuroses all gather together to tell them that no! they must not have a penis and enjoy the act of playing with other penii. Meanwhile, autistics see through those ‘rules’ as just being an arbitrary nonsense.
I feel like I remember reading that ancient Greek men would routinely have sex with other men, even when they were more attracted to women. Like, sex with women was for babies and sex with men was for fun, or something like that? I could be misremembering, or what I read might be wrong. And of course, history being what it is and reliant on the limited sources we have from the time, not knowing what information may have been lost or distorted, it’s hard to know if it was that, or if they were gay but socially expected to also have wives, or what.
But also, as an ace person, it’s very common for some ace people (not all, not me, but a substantial number) to nevertheless have sexual relationships with their partners, even though they are not sexually attracted to them. They can still enjoy it because their body still feeds them the happy chemicals, and they’re still being intimate with their loved one, even though it’s not in the same exact way as someone who does experience sexual attraction might enjoy it.
I’ve also met at least one person who talked extensively about how she is a lesbian, sexually attracted exclusively only to women, but she fell in love with and married a man anyway. Sometimes people react badly when I bring her up because this brings to mind the “gays should be happy in straight marriages!” bigotry that gets pushed, but nevertheless, this couple exists and are (or were last I met them) very happy. I wish there were less… sort of reflexive bigotry? against this kind of relationship, that exists because the right tried (and try) to force gay people into straight marriages against their will. But just because forcing someone to do a thing is bad, does not mean there are no people who want to do the thing for themselves and of their own will. It also kinda still gives the right continued power of gay peoples’ romantic choices, in the roundabout “I’ll deny you so vehemently I’ll limit my own or my community’s options” or a “limiting oneself so as not to ‘give the bigots ammo’” kind of way - it’s not giving the right what they want, but it’s still taking their opinions into account when they could just be ignored altogether.
Anyway. This lines up also with the fact that aces are used to talking about sexual and romantic attraction, plus also sensual attraction, all being different things that can point in different directions. I don’t see any reason to believe that’s less true for straight and gay and bi folks, even though our labels treat romantic and sexual attraction as the same thing. I think at least amongst bi folks people do sometimes talk about how some bisexuals are more sexually attracted to A but maybe more romantically attracted to B? And I hear straight people say shit like “it’s a pity I’m not gay” about people they say they’d totally date if they were sexually attracted to them.
Anyway, I do feel like ADHD and autistic folks do tend to think outside the box more? Something like that which causes us to question this kind of thing more often than others might.
I also think being trans, being as it involves questioning such a deeply societally ingrained idea as binary gender, might predispose trans people to then also question other commonly held ideas, or to do a lot of deep introspection that might lead to the realization that they might have ADHD or Autism and so on.
I’ve learned from my Autistic friends that so many ideas (including ideas people are taking political action on) are vibes-only because they didn’t pick up the vibes themselves, investigated it to see why people thought it was true, and found out it made no sense at all and just felt true to the people who believed it. It’s made me a lot more likely to investigate ideas which appear to make sense intuitively to me.
Okay but same though. Granted, I was always the type to just investigate everything (my poor dad had to take me to the library SO MUCH as a kid), but it’s definitely more urgent (??) now. It feels like you have to do the research just to be sure that you’re not on the wrong side of things.
I think as a society we need to get better at letting it be okay to say, “I don’t know” or “I’m not sure” or “I’d have to research this more first to have an opinion on it” or “I haven’t made up my mind yet.” Instead of Hot Take Extraganza Fight Time. I realize this is the kind of thing that’s much easier to say than to actually do at all, but nonetheless.
I feel you. There’s a ton of misinformation and bad faith argument out there. My favorite thing I’ve heard recently that resonated with me is “I don’t care about being right, I care about being correct.”
