Gender Dysphoria as an Autistic person

Okay, I know I only have 10 or 15 minutes to chat with you. I wish I could be at the conference and unfortunately that's not possible, but I'm just going to share with you snippets of my story as an

autistic

adult and find out in fact, I was a trans

person

, which meant I was born a woman and grew up for many years as a woman. I got married. I had children and I was not unhappy. But I was never complete. I never felt complete. I have a history of being misdiagnosed as a two-year-old intellectually disabled teenager and then at 17 again misdiagnosed as schizophrenic and neither of those things were actually me, but it took me many, many years to finally figure out who I really am. age 42, so 24 years ago I was diagnosed with autism, although when I was very young I didn't speak until around my 5th birthday and everything about me was very retarded, people just assumed it was my intellectual difficulty when in fact it wasn't.

It was, I also have a lot of sensory difficulties. I guess I need to use older lenses. I live with probably misophania, which is just a problem with everything that comes close to me when noise can actually make me quite reactive. Someone eating it near me typing on a computer or all that kind of noise. I feel very uncomfortable. I need the radio and television on very low so that those sensory things I was living with didn't just end with my responses to the environment or to others. It also affected the way I responded to my own body, so I assumed for many years that I didn't like breasts and I wasn't comfortable with having a period, I didn't like touching myself, there were a lot of things happening to me, I assumed it was all because of my autism and it was many years before I met other people who that similar things were happening to them and they talked to me about

gender

dysphoria

and they said you know it's pretty common for people who feel dissociated from their body like you do. do that, in fact, they are not comfortable in the cis

gender

gender they were assigned at birth and this was a big surprise to me, I knew that I was attracted to women, my, my wife and partner of now 34 years in my self.

I love and adore and when I married this man I felt very uncomfortable and couldn't understand what he was and not being able to make connections to things that I think might be more common for those of us on the spectrum that I don't know. If you've heard of something called object permanence, it's about understanding that something can still exist even when we can't see it, and for kids, that can be toys and things in autism, even if mom is out of sight. It seems like she's gone forever and things like metaphors and having things explained to us need to fill in those gaps, so I thought the things I was experiencing were due to things like I had bad object permanence, I had a bad connection. or understanding with myself and others um and I thought I was attracted to women I am a woman therefore I must be a lesbian and I must be a butch lesbian eventually I came to understand that that term was actually tying me and keeping me tied to a gender identity as a woman that was not mine this is not the case for everyone I really believe that there are a number of people who feel dissociated from their body that do not connect with feeling hungry, they may not connect with noticing pain or when they do not they're okay, etc., like

autistic

people or they can become overwired and everything escalates, um, and some of this can happen that could be seen as gender

dysphoria

, if you like, or it could be considered that way when it's actually not.

So. We absolutely need to make sure that it's not just our sensory feeling state that we're separated from, if we actually consider the possibility of gender dysphoria, it's a much bigger story, that's when I understood that it was in my thinking. that my perception in my mind was also very masculine that this was one of those lightbulb moments at the time when things made sense to me so the dysphoria was present throughout the entire history of my life and throughout my thought and my now is being processed for some young people and also for older people.

There is a sense that their disconnection from self and others can be mistaken for a gender issue. There are those of us who truly live with a gender separation in ourselves, our minds and bodies. I don't agree, so there are those who live very happily as non-binary people, they don't really feel masculine or feminine, and in fact, I think maybe there are a lot of women on the spectrum because of a lot of reasons, maybe. due to a late diagnosis and have had years of living and socializing as girls and women, perhaps because they do not have enough female role models and other women to relate to, but typical non-autistic women are not alert or do not portray who we're like autistic people we don't fit in very often autistic women typical women sometimes they just don't share the same thought processing styles or comfort zones or anything like that and then of course you.

I will have autistic women like my two granddaughters who are very feminine and seem to be fine at home, very at home among and with other girls, so everyone's story is different, but we certainly need to listen when it comes to gender because there is no nobody. size fits all that's safe and being non-binary not feeling at home in either gender is absolutely fine this could be absolutely who you are, it's just you and for many years that was it for me, it felt fine . It's just me and I must be of average sex. I must be somewhere other than typical, typically seen as male or female, and I lived like that for many years.

I was 61 years old before I had the diagnostic evaluation confirmed that you are in fact, living with gender dysphoria is the feeling that my identity, knowing and believing who I am was male, but my body said I was female, so , you know, I took steps to then change my body and adapt to my gender identities much more easily. currently you can't change your brain, you can certainly change your body, in the UK there are gender clinics for assessments, there are places we can go to understand what is happening to us, but this is difficult in autism because firstly Firstly, all you have to have is to have a concept of who you are as a

person

, you have to know what you feel, you have to know what you are thinking and this can take times that we really know.

We need to be patient with ourselves. I know some young autistic people who are very clear that they are not the body in which they were born. I know others who haven't even thought about it. They are just themselves and can be more childish at times. They are more feminine and that is life for them, then there are others who are very clear that they are the body they were born with and that they fit into all those stereotypes and since we are all very different and since autism can complicate this problem, we must make sure that we are controlling those things that could be a factor that is impacting our identity, is it a sensory problem?

Is this simply body dysphoria that has more to do with autism than gender, or is it a way of going beyond the body? I continue with my thoughts and how I relate what I am at home, you know, I walked into a store and went to the women's section to buy underwear. I was waiting for someone to come up to me and say, "Hey, what are you doing? This isn't the place." you belong because I didn't feel like I belonged now that's not just a separation from my body that's much more within my mindset using women's bathrooms I never felt comfortable and again just being around women and women's things this was not my home , but it was more than just a non-binary statement, it was more than just role models, I have many role models, it's more than an association and being connected to a self-concept, it was much bigger than this, but it took us a long time. to figure those things out and it's very important that we make our inner self in comparison and relate to others, as autistic people it will take us longer to figure it out and I still have sensory things.

I still have those things. It hasn't really changed for me. I still can't stand my wife getting too close to my ears or the TV being too loud. I still need to wear glasses to help me judge not just the handwriting on a page because I'm dyslexic. but also the distance um I'm not that clumsy I'm still pretty clumsy we're not as bad as it used to be as long as I wear my glasses um now there's no part of my body that's off limits to my wife, whereas before I couldn't stand her around about my breasts, for example, I'm more connected, it's very difficult to explain, but having come to understand who I am and where I fit, what's with me, um, I'm a I'm at home as a more whole and complete person, something that I had never experienced before.

That won't be the case for everyone on the spectrum who feels a sense of separation because separation from your body could simply be a sensory issue of autism and That's something quite different but we still have to explore it so I guess I'll end. this video here. I hope everyone is having a great time at that conference and I really wish I could be there, but anyway, I'll sign off oh. It should just say website www.when we n lawson lawson.com there is a lot more information, videos, things to see and listen to etc. and my email address if you would like to get in touch and jessica kingsley has some fantastic books on gender related topics. and goodbye autism