Autism and Gender Identity

Greetings Earthlings! 🙂

Leading on from my previous post about autism and sexuality, this week I’d like to discuss an emerging area of research interest- autism and gender dysphoria.

In recent years, research is mounting that suggests that there is a higher prevalence of gender dysphoria and diversity among autists compared with the neurotypical population i.e. they don’t identify as the sex they were assigned at birth. It has even been estimated that transgender individuals could be 3-6 times more likely to be diagnosed as autistic! 😱

As a cis-gendered woman I cannot personally comment on this issue (apart from thinking it would be a great idea to switch gender at will to avoid dealing with womanhood as a preteen 😛 ), but based on these statistics I would just like to draw some awareness. Life can be hard enough as an autist or an individual with gender dysphoria alone, but when you marry the two, rates of depression and anxiety are reported to be much higher.

While the reasons for gender dysphoria are wide and varied, for autists, there may be a larger biological component as to why many may feel they have been born into the wrong bodies.

As I have discussed previously, MRI scans of autists brains have shown that men with autism have anatomically similar brains to neurotypical women, and women with autism have anatomically similar brains to neurotypical men which could lead to gender confusion. In addition to this, high levels of foetal testosterone in utereo have been linked to the development of autism in recent years. This exposure has been proposed as a possible reason that autistic women may suffer from gender dysphoria, but this does not explain why autistic men may wish to transition. Interestingly the current evidence does indeed support a prevalence of autistic traits among trans-men vs. trans-women. Research is ongoing to investigate the link between gender dysphoria and autism.

Whilst the current evidence suggests that gender dysphoria and autism may be linked, it is important to remember that they are not mutually exclusive. It is useful to know that there may be a link, but bear this in mind when seeking support.