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

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Well I've seen documentaries where gay people were incensed at the very idea that their sexual orientation could change; they said they were born gay ie it was how they were

Isn't your statement dangerous as it might give hope to those clinics in America where gay teenagers get sent to 'persuade' them they aren't really gay?

Saying a worldview changes implies it's a choice as well - a person decides their own worldview

Also if you're saying hormonal levels change and this changes sexual orientation - this fits in with the research implying gender identity might be caused by hormonal variations in the womb

I don't think you've thought all this through very well

I can see how you'd see it that way. It's perfectly fine to express your concern about it.


This hasn't been the case for me. It can take a great deal of effort and courage to change one's worldview, especially if they've been raised a certain way or live in a certain environment.


Please direct me to where I said that hormonal variations in the womb could not factor into gender identity? I'm pretty sure I didn't say that.


I'm sorry you've misinterpreted my stance. I hope this clears it up for you.

While I agree with this sentiment, I think it's unlikely this would happen. I think people are forgetting that the person who implied autistic transpeople have these feelings because of their autism (Simon Baron-Cohen) is not involved in the field of transgender people or their treatment, which is probably why he made a statement which appears to be ignorant of the transgender experience in the first place. As it happens he's not even the originator of this statement - Tony Attwood, who I otherwise respect, made the same one almost word-for-word in his book about AS which was published many years before this study. S B-C almost certainly derived this statement from Attwood, and while it is regrettable that these autism specialists have picked up something of a misunderstanding of transgenderism, if its statement in such a widely-read text about AS has yet to impact transgendered people I don't think a remark in this obscure study will.

On the other hand, the person in the study who IS involved in the treatment of transgendered people made a perfectly reasonable and intelligent comment at the end of the article, which is to say, that the results should not delay transition for those who need it. So the people who are involved in the treatment of transgender people are not mis-interpreting anything.

I actually found the article quite interesting and not at all threatening and was a little surprised to see people reacting with alarm - I find studies of this kind are quite helpful, being someone who is both trans and autistic. If I ever need to explain these things to other people, their reaction is often understandably a bit "What the heck! How did you manage that?".

I think my post earlier in the thread got a little buried in some drama ( ) but I am FtM, and not at all sensitive about the topic because I transitioned so long ago. If I can help others to understand the phenomenon, I'd be happy to, though it is always a difficult thing to explain to people who have not had the experience. If anyone has questions about surgeries, hormone treatment, social effects of transitioning, etcetera, I'm happy to offer my experiences in that regard.

"While I agree with this sentiment, I think it's unlikely this would happen. I think people are forgetting that the person who implied autistic transpeople have these feelings because of their autism (Simon Baron-Cohen) is not involved in the field of transgender people or their treatment, which is probably why he made a statement which appears to be ignorant of the transgender experience in the first place."

Can you explain why his statement appears to be 'ignorant of the transgender experience'? Surely he's only positing a theory to explain the results.

And surely each transgender person's experiences are just that - their experiences, and a separate issue to what causes the actual transgenderism

Hi nessa,

I said "appears to be" because sometimes quotations are taken out of context and I don't pretend to know his thoughts on the issue. However, the way he worded his comment (the same way Attwood worded it) implies that he believes autistic people who are transgender are transgender because they are autistic. There are a couple of problems with this implication. It's certainly true that the obsessive personality of autistic people may contribute to the strength of their transgender feelings in some cases (possibly even in my own), but the first problem is with the generalisation, because for many that won't be the case, and the second problem is the implied suggestion that it is therefore their autistic traits that should be treated rather than the transgenderism, because they are not "really" the gender they say they are. That is the issue which has upset some people in this thread.

However, as I said, I don't actually believe this is an issue to be concerned about because Baron-Cohen is not in a position to influence treatment of transgendered people. And experiences are indeed a separate issue to what causes transgenderism, but I mentioned it because there were questions to that effect earlier in the thread.

I noticed when visiting my gender specialist a year ago that he had a poster on his wall about the link between transgenderism and autism. I think it was actually the people treating gender identity disorders who first picked up on this link because of the high number of people with autistic symptoms presenting for help with gender issues. This is another reason I am optimistic about positive awareness of this subject in the field of gender identity - the gender specialists who keep up with modern research are aware of it at the same time as having an understanding of transgenderism, and they are the ones who are in charge of helping transgendered people.

I wasn't aware of this proposed link between transgenderism and autism until I came across the research I linked to on this thread. I've read about a suggested a link between autism and Anorexia in the past as well, which does have some validity in my mind as Anorexia is an obsessive focus on one thing.

Perhaps, if autism is hormonally triggered (or some types are hormonally triggered), it's only if certain genes get triggered that it becomes autism and if other genes get triggered it causes other conditions, like transgenderism or anorexia, so that generally these people don't always have autism too but sometimes they can

It depends on how susceptible individual genes are to varying hormone levels, so many combinations of response in the person are possible. So some people will just develop autism, some with have autism and transgenderism, some will just have anorexia, some will have autism, transgenderism and anorexia. And this is not to say that other people might not come to have these conditions via totally different ie non-hormonal routes.