Divergent: The emerging research on the connection between trans identities and neurodivergence
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(i'll also crosspost this one in !lgbtq_plus@beehaw.org, since i'm not sure how much overlap our two communities currently have)
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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.
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.