Gender identity, sexual orientation and adverse sexual exper

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!	magz wrote:
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I think this newly published article about sexual issues of ASD females is a bit interesting:
https://molecularautism.biomedcentral.c ... 20-00363-0

I don't think anything they found goes against the results I presented previously here.

Actually, they still have a lot more to find before they actually understand the problem properly.

There are a number of useful references in the article, but it has a too small population, and some (or even many) of their results are probably just random stuff that will be impossible to reproduce.

In the discussion, they bring up the "extreme male theory" which completely lacks support & relevance for ASD, and they cannot really explain why fetal testosterone would affect males and females differently. They don't go into cause and effect, and their method actually doesn't support that. Their data certainly supports my opinion that it is bad sexual behaviors/abuse that result in asexual and non-cis gender identities, but they cannot prove it since they don't ask for age of victimization.

Also, their sample had no asexual participants, which makes it clear it is biased.

The study shows correlation.
"Correlation is not causation" is a basic mantra for interpreting any statistics.

I don't believe there is anything wrong with being LGBT.

Therefore - more autistic people than neurotypical people are lesbians and trans guys?

So what?

Apart from being inconvenient to cis het guys, I don't get that there's a problem here.

The trans aspect of it certainly points back to the 'male brain' theory. Do we know what it's like amongst trans women? Are there more amab people who are trans in the autistic community or in the NT community? It may be that autistic people are more masculine than neurotypical people.

(Obviously not all lesbians are masculine and even the butchest lesbians don't have male brains. But just in terms of trans guys)

Yes, but they still dwell on the link to the male brain theory and how to interpret the correlations.

However, I think it would be possible to go further by asking at what age sexual abuse happened. If it generally was before the age people start identifying as asexual & LGBT or after will be indicative of the causal route.

The male-to-female trans group cannot be masculinized (they identify as more feminine than their biological sex), and this is more common in the ND population than in the NT population, which kind of makes the whole theory inconsistent.

Many autistic women are feminine and dig men, too.

I don’t believe in the “male brain theory” of autism exclusively.

Ah ok that's what I was wondering about.

I thought it was referring to autistic trans men rather than autistic trans women.

It might be a correalation thing rather than causation then.

NTs are prone to lie if it serves well socially. Autistic people less so.

I am specifying autistic rather than ND because ND includes people who are pathological liars and are not autistic. ND also includes non-autistic people who are prone to delusions.

No NT person is autistic but not all ND people are autistic.

Autistic people might be more open and less closeted about such things. They might not weigh up the social costs as much.

I know myself, when I was younger, I had no idea homophobia was a thing. Within a climate where it wasn't allowed to be taught in schools. As soon as girls were hot and guys were hot, I said 'so and so is hot' or 'I have a crush on so and so'.

My primary theory why transgender is more common in ASD and ND (along with asexual and LGBT) is that the NT gender stereotypes are not valid for NDs, and so they seek other identities that match better. Unfortunately, there is not ND gender "stereotypes", which would be considerably different from the mainstream NT gender stereotypes, and so people need to select what is defined & available. This is not really an attack on the asexual or LGBT communities.

As for the extreme male theory, it's completely invalid for males, and often tomboy females are used to kind of make it credible.

I'm transgender. I identify as male. I can't stand unwanted male attention. I express myself as male with what I have. I've spent years getting my voice to be as deep as I want it to be. I'm thinking of taking the testosterone boosters, sold at Walmart that are advertised on Me TV. If I order a shirt online and it's too small, I won't wear it unless it's a shirt that I really like. I don't want people knowing that I can't afford the operation.

There is nothing here that would suggest the sample is too small. 134 autistic and 161 non-autistic participants is quite large for these studies. Having no asexual participants does not invalidate the results.

There is evidence to support the extreme male brain theory.

Statistics can only show correlation.

No, it's at least ten times to small. The minimum sample for a study like this is a few thousand, but ideally it should be 50,000.

Having no asexual participant when checking autistic women means the dataset is biased. The expected prevalence is close to 50%.



What evidence is that?

Not true. With a sound setup it's possible to show causation too.

Besides, correlation is completely meaningless when researching traits with a high relevance for ASD as all of these are correlated and it doesn't mean anything at all.

The arm-chair statistician chatter in this thread is already pretty cringy. I could dive into the fray, but it brings me no joy.

I will only say that it is worth learning about the differences between, and coupled usefulness of:
- experimental design and statistics
- manipulative studies (aka "experiments") and non-manipulative studies
- categorical and continuous variables

I do wish for Fern’s take on this.