hmm it’s april aka autism acceptance month (obligatory fuck A$!) and social distancing ennui is hitting so i’m gonna unpack something that i’ve been seeing lately that makes me go fucking feral, as an #ActuallyAutistic and trans person (thread)

cw: transphobia, ableism

let’s talk about how there’s a subsection of terfs parroting “autistic girls need diagnoses, not hormones!” as a talking point, and how that’s a) frustrating as hell and b) the natural evolution of how bigots treat autistic adults & trans people lmao

so first i’m gonna unpack the talking point itself -

this is a pretty insidious topic among people who spew bigoted rhetoric: pair a true statement (afab autistic people are underdiagnosed) with unrelated hate (because of The Trans Ideology!!!1!) to inspire outrage

as far as i can tell this is because there’s a slightly higher rate of autistic people who self-identify as trans than allistic people. the theory, for transphobes, seems to be that we’re being pressured into our identities, which... i’ll unpack that further down in the thread.

the simpler (and less supportive of their viewpoints) idea here is that autistic people, who are both likely to be socially ostracized from early childhood and forced into more and deeper self-analysis than our allistic peers (because there’s a pressure to figure out WHY we’re -

- being socially ostracized and how we can learn to act more “acceptable” so that that ostracization, and the psychological abuse that often accompanies it, will stop) are just... more likely to have to think about how we relate to all social structures, including gender.

(there’s also something to be said about how gender is, to an extent, associated with performance. we’re a little more likely to be bothered by that performance, either the physical aspects or the fact that it may feel wrong or disingenuous compared to our internal sense of self)

tl;dr we’re probably not actually more likely to be trans than allistic people (current theory is that gender identity is solidified in the brain at about eighteen months) we’re just more likely to figure it out.

that out of the way: let’s unpack what this rhetoric is actually SAYING.

right off the bat, terf rhetoric already relies on (usually, there are always exceptions) vastly different treatments of transmasculine and transfeminine people.

terf reactions to transfem people strive to paint them as aggressors and invaders - the “men invading female spaces” line that most of us think of first when we hear about transphobia. in terf rhetoric, transfem people are painted as malicious and taking up other people’s space.

we all know this, and it never fails to make me angry. but if you’ve never witnessed the way that (most) terfs treat transmasc people, you might not know how it usually goes.

terf rhetoric, when it acknowledges transmasc people, strives to paint us as confused self-hating women, brainwashed by the patriarchy. they want to “bring us back into the fold” and “save us from ourselves” - and if you think that would be super creepy to experience, it is!

now, let’s talk about how this interacts with specifically anti-autistic ableism.

when ableism is leveled against autistic adults, in my experience, it comes in two flavors - revulsion, or infantilization.

broadly: revulsion is about our behaviors, infantilization is about our capabilities. (again, always exceptions, but this thread is already really long.)

this ableism only reinforces the already existing treatment of us:

for transfem people: inability to perform gender in the way cisnormative society deems “correct” because of executive dysfunction or sensory issues brings threats of transmisogynistic violence, and /typical autistic social skills/ are used as evidence of “male entitlement” -

- or “male socialization” at best, and at worst, are misinterpreted to serve the rhetoric of them as threatening. tone blindness? entitlement. awkward body language? threatening. and don’t even get them started on transfem people who DARE (/sarcasm) to have public meltdowns.

meanwhile, for transmasc autistic people: the idea in this rhetoric is that we can’t make our own decisions and aren’t capable of the critical thought necessary to disagree with people around us. we’re “confused”, we’re “brainwashed”, we’re being “influenced” into our identities.

hell, just look at the original statement - talking about what “autistic GIRLS” need. they mean grownass adult men & nb people. they’re actively disregarding and invalidating the agency of adults who are capable of making their own decisions about their lives and medical care.

anyway, this thread had two goals: a) help any other autistic trans people who have seen this and were bothered by it put words to WHY it made them feel skeeved out and b) spread some awareness! because this is horrible!

if you’re cis, allistic, or both: you are fully capable of helping us call this out! you have a voice! stay vigilant, inform people in your personal circles, criticize this behavior when you see it. the world is pretty bad right now and we all gotta look out for each other. end.