Stimpunks Foundation

Mutual Aid and Human-Centered Learning for Neurodivergent and Disabled People

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Queer and Neurodivergent Liberation are Entwined

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Home/Why Sheets / Queer and Neurodivergent Liberation are Entwined

▶ Table of Contents

  1. Table of Contents
  2. Double Rainbows
  3. Fluid and Multidimensional Nonconformity
  4. ABA and Conversion Therapy
  5. Our Liberation is Entwined
  6. Our Dual Identities Are Not Competing
  7. References

Table of Contents

Double Rainbows

  • People who do not identify with the sex they were assigned at birth are three to six times as likely to be autistic as cisgender people are.1
  • Autistic people are more likely than neurotypical people to be gender diverse, several studies show, and gender-diverse people are more likely to have autism than are cisgender people.2
  • Children on the autism spectrum are more than seven times more likely to show signs of gender variance.3
  • People who feel significant distress because their gender identity differs from their birth sex have higher-than-expected rates of autism.4
  • People with autism appear to have higher rates of gender dysphoria than the general population.5
  • Rates of autism and autism traits appear to be higher in those identifying as genderqueer.6

Fluid and Multidimensional Nonconformity

  • Neurodivergent people are more likely than the general population to be gender non-conforming.7
  • Examining gender from an autistic perspective highlights some elements as socially constructed that may otherwise seem natural and supports an understanding of gender as fluid and multidimensional.8
  • Due both to their ability to denaturalize social norms and to their neurological differences, autistic individuals can offer novel insights into gender as a social process.9
  • Autistic perceptions of gender identity are far more diverse, and put interests, rather than gender identity, at the core of autistic people’s identity perception.10
  • Autistic people often state repeatedly in their accounts how confusing and emotionally taxing ‘doing gender’ is for them, explaining why they may explicitly reject being confined to traditional and binary gender norms.11
  • Knowing how to navigate in a world that is not really friendly with people who are trans can be tricky when you are missing social cues.12
  • Learning that they are autistic can show people that they are not wrong for living outside prescribed social rules and norms, including ones for gender and sexuality. Once they accept that they are autistic, they realize that a lot of social norms are constrictive and should be questioned.13
  • Gender norms should not be imposed on people with autism to make the rest of the world more comfortable.14
  • We can see that a lot of the social rules around gender are bullshit basically.15

ABA and Conversion Therapy

  • In many ways, the impulse to repress transgender people from expressing their true identity is rooted in the same impulse that makes people want to stop people from flapping their hands.16
  • Autistic and queer folks share some dark history—and some bad actors.17
  • Learning about the shared DNA of gay conversion therapy and ABA reaffirmed what Martin Luther King wrote in 1963 “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.”18
  • Both gay conversion therapy and ABA were built on behaviourism—the scientific belief that human behaviour is determined by conditioning from our immediate environments, and should be controlled through manipulating those environments.19
  • Behaviourist psychology has always seen queer and autistic identities as deviant, and so the pathologies around both were constructed at the same time, and from the same body of research. This is why many autistics today argue that ABA is actually its own form of conversion therapy. 20
  • The only government-funded therapy for autistic children is called Applied Behaviour Analysis, an approach developed in tandem with discredited anti-LGBTQ2S+ practises.21
  • ABA also acts as a form of queer conversion because “autistic genders and sexualities are inherently pathologized as abnormal.”22
  • Plenty of autistic people are LGBTQ and experience a double portion of discrimination. The desire to eliminate the traits that make autistic people unique is rooted in the same impulse to suppress people from affirming their gender identity or sexuality.23
  • ABA and its conversion therapy kin are with us still, all too alive and well.24
  • I don’t need a cure for me.25
  • Conversion therapy is wrong. Conversion therapy does not work.26

Our Liberation is Entwined

  • LGBTQI+ people with an Autistic diagnosis have two separate rainbows — and two separate coming out stories.27
  • Protecting queer kids protects also neurodivergent kids—and vice versa. The fight is for inclusion and acceptance—for all operating systems, for all of our different ways of being human.28
  • Members of the neurodiversity movement adopt a position of diversity that encompasses a kaleidoscope of identities that intersects with the LGBTQIA+ kaleidoscope by recognising neurodivergent traits as natural variations of cognition, motivations, and patterns of behaviour within the human species.29
  • “Queer,” in any case, does not designate a class of already objectified pathologies or perversions; rather, it describes a horizon of possibility whose precise extent and heterogeneous scope cannot in principle be delimited in advance.30
  • Queer and neurodivergent liberation are entwined.31
  • Being both autistic and gender non-conforming, some children face a double-challenge in responding to society’s biases.32
  • Masked Autism and being a closeted gender minority often go hand in hand, and the experiences share a lot of features.33
  • When your belief system teaches that disability and gender variance are embarrassing and disgusting, it’s hard to look at your child and recognize those traits.34
  • We have to make society over again from the ground up, our own little neuro-queer microsocieties. Because no one else will think to include us.35

Our Dual Identities Are Not Competing

  • When a person’s gender is doubted because they are autistic, this paves the way for removing autistic people’s agency in all kinds of other ways.36
  • To blame trans identities on autism is to say that autistic people cannot understand or be aware of their own gender.37
  • Too frequently, autistic people are denied basic rights to make decisions about our own bodies and health care, including when it comes to expressing our gender identity.38
  • Trans autistic people often lack access to services and supports that understand and respect all aspects of their identity.39
  • Our dual identities are not competing; they are complementary.40
  • Autistic people know what they want and need. They are the ones who know best about their identities and how to ensure that their bodies line up with what is in their minds.41
  • Why doesn’t presumption of competence get applied to gender as well?42

References

  1. Largest study to date confirms overlap between autism and gender diversity ↩︎
  2. Largest study to date confirms overlap between autism and gender diversity ↩︎
  3. 🌈🌈 Neurodiversity and Gender: You Hit So Hard With All the Colors That There Are – Stimpunks Foundation ↩︎
  4. Living between genders | Spectrum ↩︎
  5. Living between genders | Spectrum ↩︎
  6. Living between genders | Spectrum ↩︎
  7. 🌈🌈 Neurodiversity and Gender: You Hit So Hard With All the Colors That There Are – Stimpunks Foundation ↩︎
  8. Gender Copia: Feminist Rhetorical Perspectives on an Autistic Concept of Sex/Gender: Women’s Studies in Communication: Vol 35, No 1 ↩︎
  9. Gender Copia: Feminist Rhetorical Perspectives on an Autistic Concept of Sex/Gender: Women’s Studies in Communication: Vol 35, No 1 ↩︎
  10. Working with Autistic Transgender and Non-Binary People ↩︎
  11. Working with Autistic Transgender and Non-Binary People ↩︎
  12. PrideSource – Transgender Youth More Likely to Have Autism ↩︎
  13. We’re Not Broken: Changing the Autism Conversation ↩︎
  14. Focus on autism must broaden to include non-binary genders | Spectrum ↩︎
  15. We’re Not Broken: Changing the Autism Conversation ↩︎
  16. Eric Michael Garcia on Twitter ↩︎
  17. 🌈🌈 Neurodiversity and Gender: You Hit So Hard With All the Colors That There Are – Stimpunks Foundation ↩︎
  18. Eric Michael Garcia on Twitter ↩︎
  19. Why the ‘treatment’ of autism is a form of conversion therapy | Xtra Magazine ↩︎
  20. Why the ‘treatment’ of autism is a form of conversion therapy | Xtra Magazine ↩︎
  21. Why the ‘treatment’ of autism is a form of conversion therapy | Xtra Magazine ↩︎
  22. Why the ‘treatment’ of autism is a form of conversion therapy | Xtra Magazine ↩︎
  23. We’re Not Broken: Changing the Autism Conversation ↩︎
  24. 🌈🌈 Neurodiversity and Gender: You Hit So Hard With All the Colors That There Are – Stimpunks Foundation ↩︎
  25. AURORA – Cure For Me Lyrics ↩︎
  26. Rights and Respect (Proud and Supported Series) – Autistic Self Advocacy Network ↩︎
  27. About Us – Twainbow ↩︎
  28. 🌈🌈 Neurodiversity and Gender: You Hit So Hard With All the Colors That There Are – Stimpunks Foundation ↩︎
  29. The Beauty of Collaboration at Human Scale: Timeless patterns of human limitations ↩︎
  30. Saint Foucault: Towards a Gay Hagiography ↩︎
  31. 🌈🌈 Neurodiversity and Gender: You Hit So Hard With All the Colors That There Are – Stimpunks Foundation ↩︎
  32. Study: Autistic kids more likely to be gender non-conforming | PhillyVoice ↩︎
  33. Unmasking Autism by Devon Price ↩︎
  34. Unmasking Autism by Devon Price ↩︎
  35. Unmasking Autism by Devon Price ↩︎
  36. Blaming trans identities on autism hurts everyone | autisticality ↩︎
  37. Blaming trans identities on autism hurts everyone | autisticality ↩︎
  38. Autistic Self-Advocacy Network, LGBT Groups Release Statement on Needs of Trans Autistic People | Autistic Self Advocacy Network ↩︎
  39. Autistic Self-Advocacy Network, LGBT Groups Release Statement on Needs of Trans Autistic People | Autistic Self Advocacy Network ↩︎
  40. We’re Not Broken: Changing the Autism Conversation ↩︎
  41. We’re Not Broken: Changing the Autism Conversation ↩︎
  42. What Does Gender Have To Do with Presuming Competence? | CommunicationFIRST ↩︎

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