Gender Confussion

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My son is 14 and he as been brought up in a female environment just me and his sister his dad as never wanted to be part of his life, he told me the other day he feels like a girl. Can anyone give me some advice it this because of his Autism ???

I grew up in a mostly female environment, yet I've always felt like a male trapped in a female body. I like to see it as gender confusion, because I know that I wish to be a man and if I had the money or I didn't have masculine features, I would have had gender reassignment surgery a long time ago. I look like Mick Avory of The Kinks did in the 1960s, there's Google Images if you don't know who I'm talking about. If I didn't look like him and/or if I had the money, I would have gotten the operation a long time ago. Though I don't have the money, I live as much of a man's life as possible and I wear androgynous Mod fashions so that I look like a man from a distance. I wouldn't say that I'm gender confused, because I've always known what gender I feel that I am on the inside and that I also wish to be. I've known since I was four years old. I guess my advice is to let him live his life as the gender that he'd prefer to be.

Take a look around WP, lots of threads about people feeling a weak gender-affiliation.
Gender is not important to me, I know what I am and what I prefer but I do not feel strongly feminine.

I don't think gender nonconformity has anything to do with parenting or family or the proportion of female to male relatives or household members. While there are certainly autistic people who are also trans people, there are also plenty of cis-gender (where internal sense of gender and external biology match) people on the spectrum. There's plenty of NT trans people as well.

Sometimes people are just different than what we expect.

I'm not sure from the context whether your son is expressing that he believes he is a different gender than his biological (or "assigned") gender, or that he is just expressing frustration with his family situation and wants more male company. Keep in mind that because AS is a social communication disorder, there is a definite potential for confusion - if I were in your shoes, before I proceeded with anything else, I would want to make sure (in a very nonjudgmental, nonthreatening way) that I have understood exactly what my child meant.

You might want to check out some resources for parents of trans children and find out more. We are fortunate to live in a time when there are many, many resources for parents, children and adults and whole communities of support. PFLAG is as good a place as any to start: http://community.pflag.org/page.aspx?pid=413

I don't think this has anything to do with autism.

In re-reading my post, I realize I used an ambiguous word that probably wasn't clear. Here -

I did not mean AS creates a potential for gender confusion, but that AS creates a potential for misunderstandings because it is a social communication disorder. I wanted to caution the OP to make sure she understood clearly what her son's words actually mean.

I agree with Wreck-Gar that there doesn't seem to be a direct relationship between AS and trans issues: as I pointed out, there's lots of variation within the community and also outside of the community.

Advice? Love him.

Having "gender confusion" is not specific to people with Autism - neurotypical people also feel this way.

Likely, he will grow up to be a productive member of society in spite of his "confusion".

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/pmc2904453/

Based on what limited information I have, I also think gender issues are not related to autism when it comes down to being transgender. I think that for things that are purely a social construct like preferring pink or blue, and that kind of thing, autistic people may not get the signal that girls are supposed to like pink and boys are supposed to like blue, but that is not an issue of being transgender. In Victorian England, I believe I have read, pink was considered a boy color and too strong a color for females. It has nothing to do with real gender issues. Also autistic people sometimes care less about following arbitrary standards, and are more likely to ignore those cues even when aware of them. Again, not a transgender issue.

The other thing is that depending on your son's communication issues, I would probably clarify what he means about feeling like a girl. He may mean he is transgender or he may mean that he feels his home environment feels too feminine and that is his way of complaining about it. I think I would try to ask him specifically what he means. If he is transgender, you can start investigating resources for him. Many times transgendered people can get depressed because of not fitting in, and not knowing where to turn. So, if he is transgender, I would start researching those kinds of resources. This way if he does need help navigating this, you will have already found supports that will specifically geared for assisting him and will not be hostile to him.

Edited to add: Being transgender has nothing to do with living in a girlie environment. It is biological.

I didn't clarify what that link I posted to was about. Anyway, it found that kids with GID (defined by both cross-gender behavior and discomfort with their birth sex) had a higher rate of autistic traits. Which suggests there is a link between autism and transgender (and not just gender-atypical behavior, but actual gender dysphoria).