Today was my first class for my autism and developmental disability summer course and I’ve already encountered something that makes me very uncomfortable and wary but I’m not sure if I have the right of it to feel this way (1/?)

For groups presentations, we sign up by topic and one of the topics is gender identity disorder. I have zero extensive knowledge on this disorder (?) or even ASD + other DDs but just my gut instinct is telling me this is not going to be good (2/?)

I was hoping someone who’s non-cis and autistic or has a developmental disability could assure me that gender identity disorder is not in opposition to the existence and validity of trans and nonbinary genders? (3/?)

Is gender identity disorder legitimate or is that a medical/academic way of pathologizing/discriminating against non-cis individuals? I think I’m going to email the prof about this but I thought it beneficial to get some perspective from actual non-cis autistic people first (4/?)

Idk. I’m not cis and I have always identified with aspects of asd but never as someone *with* asd bc, undiagnosed, extremely uncertain about it, and I’m terrified to think of what that group is going to churn out. (5/?)

A group of uneducated cisgender neurotypicals presenting on the topic of gender identity disorder scares the shit out me. Idk what to do about it, I really don’t want to go 3 months dreading what this class is going to get wrong about gender/sexuality (6/?)

And the assumption I’m making about the group members is just that, an assumption, but I think it’s a valid fear and it’s HIGHLY LIKELY that the assumption is correct. I’m just suddenly worried that this course is going to be absolutely shit for my mental health (7/?)

I think I owe it to myself to email the professor and voice my concerns but my thoughts are too fresh right now. And I’d really just appreciate other perspectives before I do. It’s not the easiest thing to think about but I have so many thoughts to parse through (8/8)