I wasn’t sure whether to put this on my autism blog or my LGBTQ+ blog, but I guess it doesn’t really matter. This post is about transgender autistic people and how our experiences with discrimination are often times different from allistic transgender people. I’ll start off with a personal story.
I was talking to a family member of mine who doesn’t understand much about being transgender, and as I tried to explain my feelings to her, it became more and more obvious that she had something on her mind but she didn’t want to say it. Finally, she said, “Well, you know, you have autism and you tend to get obsessed with things, and when you get obsessed with things, you usually drop them later on, so I’m worried you’ll start to transition and then get out of this phase and regret your decisions.” And I was incredibly shocked that she would even believe that, because no one had ever told me that before. But I started to realize that’s how the majority of my family that I’m currently out to sees it. They think that since I’m autistic and have special interests, I’m just going through another one of my “phases” (as they call it) and that I’m not actually trans.
Another thing my family member pointed out is that since I’m so often outcast in quote on quote “normal” friend groups, she assumed that maybe I’ve found a community and that makes me happy. When, in reality, I still get rejected by allistics in the trans community, as well, because allistics are fucking assholes no matter what community they’re in.
It’s true that I’ve gone through “phases” in my life. I had a girly phase, I had an emo phase, I’ve had plenty of phases in my 21 years of life, but I can say with confidence that being trans is NOT one of those phases.
Special interests fluctuate, but being trans is not a special interest. It’s an experience. And when I told my gender therapist about what my family member said to me, she said that it was a very common sentiment among family members of autistic trans people. Which reminded me that in some states, if you’re diagnosed with autism, you can be denied HRT and gender affirming surgeries, as well as anything else that will help you legally or medically transition. Some states require consent from a close relative or spouse if you’re autistic and want to transition. And it’s assumedly because autistic people go through “phases” and because we “can’t decide for ourselves.”
God forbid an autistic person identifies as something other than binary male or female, too. A lot of non-binary genders are often attributed to people being autistic because of the ableist idea that we identify with “weird/uncommon” things more than allistics do (not saying non-binary is weird or uncommon, because it’s not). As a matter of fact, one of the number one insults transphobes use against people with uncommon genders is, “they must be autistic, lmao.” Not to mention how often transphobic people throw around the r-slur, and how autistic trans people are directly targeted by them because we have autism.
When you’re trans and autistic, you’re always being infantilized, denied resources, and second guessed. You can never win. And it’s not just cis allistics that are guilty of discriminating against autistic trans people. Plenty of trans allistics also treat us like shit when we do or say literally anything involving being trans. It’s fucking exhausting.
Please, for the love of God, THINK before you say something to an autistic trans person. We have feelings and we are capable of a lot more than you think we are.
Allistics don’t fucking derail this post.
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