#NeurodiverseSquad
Hey #trans folks who are #ActuallyAutistic and/or #ADHD can we start a conversation about how our experiences of gendered socialization affected our presentation and dx of neurodivergent conditions that doesn't center the experiences of cis women? Please??

I've heard so many headlines and stuff about how "girls" are taught to hide their ND conditions, then dx criteria misses them,

But i can hardly even bring myself to read articles on the subject cause relating to the "girls" experiences makes me so dysphoric i wanna crawl out of

My skin. Some pieces are nominally better than others at using gender inclusive *language,* but even those often seem to presume the socialization experiences of cis girls and toss trans boys and nb ppl in as an afterthought

Please please please can i hear some trans ppl talk about this from a trans perspective? (Note: this thread absolutely also welcomes trans women/amab nb ppl to share as well: i hate how these discussions seem to assume trans masc folks are served by being lumped in w cis women...

And trans femme folks don't get space to talk bc they're presumed to have experienced male socialization as cis boys would. It wreaks of transphobia and it needs to change)

For myself, I'm a trans guy. I was dxed "aspbergers" as a young kid, transitioned at 20, and am only just in the ADHD evaluation process now as an almost 24 year old

It's really hard for me to even pin point where gendered norms even show up in how i was punished for being ND,

Bc there's so much i just took for granted until i noticed things changed when i was socially viewed as male

Example: i participated A LOT in class discussions in school: i had interests in a lot of my subjects, and engaging w the material and asking questions and

Making connections helps me learn. Plus if i know an answer and give it the class moves faster if no one else seems engaged

Before i transitioned I'd participate a lot at the beginning of class, then after I'd contributed a lot early my teachers would kind of give me an

"i know you know" thing when I'd raise my hand, and they'd try to get other students to contribute more

I never saw that as a gendered "take up less space" thing. I just thought they wanted to make sure they were teaching all the students. But the semester after i transitioned

I had a few experiences where i was in class, participating a lot, and anticipating that my Prof was about to nudge me to let someone else talk. And they didn't.

It was weird cause i was experiencing the INTERNAL socialization of 20 years of being taught to let others talk,

But the EXTERNAL cis-assumed male privilege of no one telling me to not take up so much space

My social experiences in and out of class the year after i transitioned were really weird bc often I'd be so hyper careful about not talking over the non-men around me that I'd

Actually wind up talking and going on tangents and interrupting ppl LESS than when i was being seen as female

Bc i realized male privilege meant that no one was gonna help me remember to listen and give others space. And having experienced 20 years of being talked over by

Cis men i really didn't want to be That Guy

(Warning: rest of this thread is gonna be scatter shot thoughts about ND stuff and gender wo much structure. Read on if you like non sequiters. Would love to hear others experiences)

- i have no clue how much of me feeling totally out of place in all girl social groups (even the v kind and inclusive one i was in in sixth grade) was dysphoria vs how much was autism. Girl social norms have a lot of nuance, hints, and guess work as social grease, which

Is confusing af for autistic ppl and I've even heard some autistic Actual Cis Women say the same. But i also desperately gravitated towards male social groups in middle school to be "one of the boys." And for a gay autistic trans boy I was actually v good at fitting in w the boys

(except when moments of clearly not being treated as a boy filled me w a pain so intense i can't form it into words. That sucked). And actually now that I've realized that trans men are real men and i don't have to hyper perform masculinity to earn the scraps of gender validation

That i used to crave, I've gotten much worse at socializing w other men. I nominally tried to "dude bro" a bit early in transition but it didn't feel right so i stopped. Being called "man" "dude" or "bro" made me shocked and elated to be gendered correctly, but something still

Didn't feel like they were seeing me for me. I silently questioned for years if I'd made a mistake - maybe i was trans masc non binary person and that's why the "bro" stuff didn't feel right. But i don't think I'm non-binary, i think I'm just a gender non conforming man who's

Too autistic to give a shit about fitting in to dude bro culture. And those phrases signify a friendliness and familiarity that wasn't a literally true reflection of my relationship to the guys calling me that. And the simultaneous friendliness and emotional distance that

Characterizes male social interactions in my culture is honestly just confusing af for anyone who wasn't taught it from a young age

(Big thank you to @AllAutistics for talking about their experiences w autism, gender, and gender norms in a way that helped me see that)

- i don't think "socialized as female" is a fully accurate description of how i was raised. A lot of ND women I've seen discuss their experiences talk about how they were punished for not being feminine enough, or not knowing the right social things to fit in w girls, so

They tried harder to fit in w their girl peers (actively masking and trying to learn female social norms and stuff). I've seen some trans folks say they did similar at points too and that's valid, it just wasn't my experience at all, or only super rarely,

I think it's much more accurate to say "i was socialized as a trans boy who was frequently mistaken for a girl." Cause yes there's obviously times i faced misogynistic double standards about how girls should act and subconsciously internalized them. Or was spared the way

Some ppl read as boys are taught to bury any emotion that isn't rage, etc. But GENDERED SOCIALIZATION IS BOTH AN INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL PROCESS. To say i was socialized as female ignores the fifty million times other ppl assumed i was a boy bc i dressed and acted like one, and

More importantly it ignores how strongly i internally absorbed the expectations of masculinity, and changed my thoughts and behaviors to be more manly

Ffs i spent over seven years thinking i was a lesbian, despite being a gay man, bc i didn't think liking boys fit my

Performance of being "the closest thing to a man I'm socially allowed to be bc trans ppl aren't a thing in my world yet," and i saw the idea, at least in fantasy, of being "the man in the relationship" w a hyper feminine woman as earning me toxic masculinity points,

You can't possibly look at that and say being a boy had no bearing on my socialization until the day i came out as trans

(It also ignores at least two attempts i v clearly and persistently made to socially transition that only failed due to lack of outside validation:

Which implies what i feel is a v fucked up view that trans ppls transition only counts if we use the word trans and do it in certain pre prescribed ways. No. Functionally i socially transitioned and detransitioned twice throughout my childhood, only detransitioning due to

The depression and hopelessness of my best efforts to be who i was not being taken seriously)

Anyway that was a tangent: i think i was saying something about how if i socialized myself as a boy w regard to sexuality that young, i was probably also socializing myself that way w regard to at least some of my autistic and ADHD traits, even if i can't explicitly pin point

Exact examples of doing so

I definitely gravitated towards special interests in a lot more masculine things (football, star wars, etc)

In sixth grade i used to dress like a jedi nearly every day, which was definitely a special interest thing covering for the fact that

The jedi i used to dress up as was a boy, so i was also dressing as a boy by proxy

Excessive day dreaming is apparently a thing a lot of ND ppl do, and helps my brain simulate itself when bored, but also my daydream world self insert was a man named Joseph way before i was...

Socially recognized as such

- idk if i experience alexthemia in the way other autistic ppl describe. I've dealt w similar things for years, but i started to be able to feel my emotions and recognize them much more reliably after i transitioned. I know alexthemia is also

Sometimes associated w trauma, and the times i experienced it most strongly were when i was shoving my gender into the closet and going through the motions of living as begrudgingly female. Zinnia Jones has an excellent blog post about depersonalization and derealization

In pre transition trans ppl, and that's basically my experience to a T (until i started T - sorry for the dad joke)

I also find that growing up ND wo appropriate support and growing up trans where trans ppl don't openly exist cause v similar trauma,

Cn: descriptions of trauma feelings from being closeted as both trans and ND

Like that I'm the problem. That I'm struggling but don't even realize it or know why cause there's not an outward thing i can point to. That my life just continuously kept getting worse as i got older but i didn't get why or have any hope it would improve. That medical and

Mental health providers utterly failed to spot or help this and are still unreliable about being useful when i tell them exactly what i need now. And that accidentally falling down an internet rabbit hole into a community of ppl like me saved my life and made me feel like a...

Whole person capable of having ambitions and finding fulfillment and joy in life.

I have no more memory of other things i wanted to say so I'm gonna shut up for now. Someone please tell me if any of this is relatable i feel like an alien.

Oh also this, which i think is part of why i remembered to write this: https://twitter.com/Joseph_wolfstar/status/1305671719080910849?s=19