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gmboy
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03 May 2015, 7:22 pm

There are some lists of symptoms for how autism/aspergers manifests in women. I have also read recently about autism (traits?) being more prevalent among trans men. Does anyone know, whether research-based or anecdotally, how autism manifests in trans men - similar to male presentation, more like in women and girls, a mix or something else?



Edenthiel
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03 May 2015, 10:05 pm

Ugh. Filtering through PubMed and other databases shows a few things: ASD researchers know next to nothing about transgender issues and transgender researchers know next to nothing about ASD issues. The nomenclature is all over the map, which means there's no way to tell if a given study that purports to look at trans people and ASD is referring to subjects assigned female at birth or female identified or cis (or maab, male-identified or cis). Also, too many researchers don't seem to be aware that ASD men and women can show differently. And finally, far too many ASD researchers think that K.Zucker* is any sort of authority on trans simply b/c his name comes up in database searches. I'm thinking we won't be getting really good studies on trans people and ADS for another five years or so.

*Kenneth Zucker is a transphobic psych. who runs the CAMH gender clinic, heads up his own sex/disorders journal and is a huge proponent of reparative therapy for trans kids.


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Magneto
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04 May 2015, 9:17 am

Well, that depends on what the studies are looking for. If it's information about their co-prevalence (?), then there are a few studies around that have found correlations between gender dysporia and aspergers, in both sexes.

Which makes it very surprising that there isn't anyone focusing on the link between them, because it's very important from a therapy standpoint and very interesting from a pure science standpoint.

As for presentation, I do not know. Can autism even be cut along the sex binary like that, rather than presenting differently in people of the same sex and sometimes similarly in people of opposite sex?



gmboy
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05 May 2015, 5:28 am

Wow. I had heard the name Kenneth Zucker before in the context of trans, but that was all. Hadn't realised someone dishing out these kinds of treatments to suppress a child's gender expression was in such a position of power. "Ugh" indeed.

The articles I had identified were from UK and Dutch GICs. I too had picked up on confusing nomenclature in various research. I suppose I hoped there was something better out there, but it looks like those hopes have been dashed for now.

I'm sure that presentation is not neatly divided along a gender binary. That would render non-binary gendered people non-existent for starters. I was coming from the angle of there being recognition that women can present differently, so hoping someone might be aware of something (e.g. one or more resources) which would highlight ways in which trans people may present differently, or at least unpicking aspects which might affect the ease with which a trans person could be diagnosed as autistic.

So I'm getting the impression there isn't any reliable information out there on this topic, research or otherwise.

Thanks for your responses.