Wow, I feel really seen by the essay and also by the comments by both of you ♥
Because of the author’s book “unmasking autism” I first discovered the labels autigender/neuroqueer. Those helped me a lot to see my gender doubts and internal conflicts as being the products of me as an autistic person trying to assimilate into a gendered society.
Before seriously questioning whether I was cis or not, I specifically looked up autism gender because I’ve long thought I’m too autistic for gender. But since I don’t have an official diagnosis, I never considered using the autigender label and just didn’t think about that for a while longer. I always found it a bit strange that other autistic people could be binary trans because of my own disconnect from gender. Allistic cis people caring about gender was always weird too, but like. They’re allistic. They’re gonna be weird. Why would autistic people go out of their way to embrace the charade of gender? At least teenage me still didn’t use my confusion as a reason to be transphobic.
Hahaha so true! Although I get that autistic people could go either way, either be completely confused by gender and then abandon it as much as possible. Or on the other extreme autistic people might also try to learn all the rules of gender and get it just right?
Wow, I feel really seen by the essay and also by the comments by both of you ♥
Because of the author’s book “unmasking autism” I first discovered the labels autigender/neuroqueer. Those helped me a lot to see my gender doubts and internal conflicts as being the products of me as an autistic person trying to assimilate into a gendered society.
Before seriously questioning whether I was cis or not, I specifically looked up autism gender because I’ve long thought I’m too autistic for gender. But since I don’t have an official diagnosis, I never considered using the autigender label and just didn’t think about that for a while longer. I always found it a bit strange that other autistic people could be binary trans because of my own disconnect from gender. Allistic cis people caring about gender was always weird too, but like. They’re allistic. They’re gonna be weird. Why would autistic people go out of their way to embrace the charade of gender? At least teenage me still didn’t use my confusion as a reason to be transphobic.
Hahaha so true! Although I get that autistic people could go either way, either be completely confused by gender and then abandon it as much as possible. Or on the other extreme autistic people might also try to learn all the rules of gender and get it just right?