Female-To-Male Transsexual People Have More Autistic Traits,

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What's wrong with using 'QFT'?

Wait, what does QFT even mean?

"Quoted For Truth".

I find it very pretentious and annoying but that's just me

I know this wasn't addressed to me but I want to say something relating to the OP and the reactions it has caused.

I have no thoughts either way about the research, I just wanted to share my experience and how it relates to the issues the research brings up.

I'm far from being an expert on gender and sexuality. I think very few people are.

When people see a piece of research that they disagree with on a very personal level, I expect them to have the reaction they've had here. I have a similar reaction to evolutionary psychology. I agree that debates should always be open and civil as long as there is no inflammatory intent (which I don't think you had).

I like it and I have used it in the past. I think it is becoming overused, though.

I think it was more of a personality clash than anything else

To get back to Baron-Cohen,

"Girls with a higher than average number level of autistic traits tend to have male-typical interests, showing a preference for systems over emotions. They prefer not to socialise with typical girls because they have different interests, and because typical girls on average have more advanced social skills. Both of these factors may lead girls with a higher number of autistic traits to socialize with boys, to believe they have a boy's mind in a girl's body, and to attribute their unhappiness to being a girl."

It sounds very like the argument of a homophobic parent saying to a young heterosexual male that he can't see his best friend because he's gay - Something might rub off! He might end up gay too if he socialises with gays! He'll get a warped sense of what's "normal" and think it's ok to "experiment"!

Hardly the standard of comment you expect from an eminent scientist is it?

My wonderful little autistic girl was as girly as could be, her friends were almost all girls, her interests were mixed but mostly shared with girls, her room, at her insistence, was princess pink - I loath pink!

No sign of any gender difference or anything else.

Then puberty hit.

Now he's a boy and just as wonderful - he still has mixed interests though he did ask for a skateboard for xmas, he still has more female and straight friends than male, trans or gay, his tastes don't include pink any more but that was heading out before puberty any way.

I don't think it has anything to do with socialising with boys too much, not for him, and probably not for most people who feel they are in the wrong body. You might as well go back to believing autism is caused by the social deprivation inflicted on infants by refrigerator mothers.

This is not an attack on anyone in this thread. It's just the way that I feel and I think it's a cute colour.

That's unusual. Most trans people I know talk about feeling trans for as long as they can remember.

I know a few who didn't really know until puberty or adulthood. It seems to vary from person to person.

I think you are understanding this the wrong way round

He is hypothesising that due to the autism making these females' brains more systemising than emotional/empathising, they are naturally drawn more to male than female friendships, as they have more in common with the males (due to males usually having brains that are more systemising than emotional/empathising) Also, as females are usually more emotional/empathising than systemising, they have better social skills and often reject autistic females for not being the same. So often there's only males as a choice to find friends among - this has certainly been the case for me - I was rejected by other females and more often than not boyfriends had to double up as a friend as well.

So it's not a case of the maleness 'rubbing off on' these females, it's the fact that due to the autism the females already have a systemising type brain, which is what males are more likely to have, hence they tend to have more in common with males than females.

Obviously the degree to which this happens would vary from person to person.

Has your son ever done the AQ test?

This. I didn't realize I was bi-gender until a year ago. Also, sexual orientation appears to be fluid and can be prone to change throughout an individual's lifetime. Maybe the same applies to gender identity as well (though I would postulate on a much smaller scale)?

Anyway, I've always done better with girls than guys. I'm still not liking his hypothesis, but I won't write it off completely until more data is collected.

"Also, sexual orientation appears to be fluid and can be prone to change throughout an individual's lifetime."

So it's a choice then?

The research implies that gender identity is determined before birth, if using the same hypothesis of autism being caused in the womb by levels of pre-natal testosterone.

No. How did you get that from that sentence? I'm saying that people change. Specifically, their brain chemistry and hormonal levels change. Psychological states change as well, causing their worldviews to change. It's still effectively out of their control.