Children who believe they are transgender 'could have autism

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Children diagnosed as transgender could be autistic, a controversial psychologist believes.

Latest figures show the number of children under 10 in the UK being referred to the NHS over transgender feelings has quadrupled in five years.

One psychologist says these youngsters are seven times more likely to be on the autistic spectrum.

Dr Kenneth Zucker believes autistic traits of "fixating" on issues could convince children they are the wrong sex.

He makes the claims in a BBC 2 documentary on Thursday at 9pm called Transgender Kids: Who knows best?.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/01 ... roversial/

It seems a disproportionate number of people on the autism spectrum identify as transgender, though I wonder if that's merely because autistic people tend to feel less bound by social boundaries, and are more willing to be honest about themselves as a result. There *could* very well be a biological connection between the two, but it could also boil down to NTs being more likely to stay closeted due to a generally stricter adherence to social boundaries.

From about the age of 9 I had a thing about wanting to change sex. When I became overtly mentally ill the desire to change sex was accompanied by periods of delusional thinking re having female parts.
Over time the desire to change sex has very much taken a back seat.

Was it a delusional obsession that abated as I got less acutely ill. Was it ,as it mentions in the article ,a case of "autistic fixating"?
A part of me says the reduction in the desire was a protective move re the strong probability that due to my mental illness the likelihood of being approved for transition would never occur.

I think the issue of socially fitting into a role is pertinent when it comes to adopting either a male or female role.
I have difficulty socially interacting with others which would not have, in all likelihood,disappeared through changing my sex.
I would merely have changed from being a socially awkward male to a socially awkward transwoman, and would still have had the same social problems.

I have an idea. Some people my not like it but I go on anyway.
I believe, lets say there are boys the don't feel right in their body, because I personally hate my body too as it makes me all kinds of pains and s**t, and they may go like "maybe if I was a girl the body would feel better", which it won't, because it's the badly wired >autistic< body which is kind of annoying them, regardless of gender.
The other theory would be that they can't identify with ANY gender. so if they are boys they want to be girls and if they are girls they want to be boys, not because they can't identify with their biologic gender, but because they can't identify with the concept of gender. I don't know, maybe they want to neutralize their gender, which a gender reassignment would do nicely, as you are neither considered a full blown boy nor full blown girl at the end, but something "in between". like the genetic gender and the given gender neutralize each other, and they don't have to identify with either.
I'm personally very confused about my actual gender, but I take it as it is: mere confusion and indecisiveness. I'm not going to get a surgery or anything just because I'm mentally "genderless". The whole gender stuff don't make sense to me at all and I think that's a thing with autism or PDD.

There is considerable controversy around this programme. Zuckers thinking appears out of step with current informed professional opinion.

The statistic is not Zucker's work, it is from a university of Leyden study.

I have a nasty suspicion it it is bring twisted. The study found amongst Autistic people Gender Identity issues were seven times more common than the population as a whole. My suspicion is that the survey is being twisted to say seven times as many transgender people would be autistic and it is autism not gender issues.

It seems a small and dangerous step to take matters to the point of using interventions such as methods in ABA to suppress the gender issues.

There is a nasty precedent. Lovas, who claimed the invention of ABA claimed a success for the methods to treat what he termed Feminine Boy Syndrome. He gave what appeared a successful case study of a boy formerly presenting as wanting to be a girl becoming healthily adjusted to being a make.

Some years later a follow up found the reverse. After Lovas' interventions the poor person was left a ness, with many subsequent episodes of depression, self loathing, mental illness, and in their thirties the young person subjected to Lovad' intervention took their own life.

Steve Silberman gives an account in "Neurotribes".

My pattern finding Aspie mind is detecting a nasty pattern here, with Transgender people being singled out yo be belittled, their experiences denied and put at risk. There was a recent contoverdisl court decision in a custody case. There are the bathroom bills on the more closed minded US states, and there are the rather nasty voices from one or two individuals claiming to be radical feminists, the name Julie Bindell occurs to me in this context.

Declaration of interest ,: My beloveds are Trans and have experience hostility first hand.

Comment from Sarah Ditum at the New Statesman.

http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/fe ... -childhood

Autistic people have atypical brains so it seems to make sense a higher percentage would have atypical sexualities.

I do agree that there is way too much rushing to label young children these days. Thier brains are wiring itself quickly at that age.

I'm AS and trans. I have known for a long time that scientists believe there is correlation between autism and transgenderism. And I believe it. Many people on the spectrum I have noticed struggle with conventional gender roles.

I never understood the connection between transgender and autism because even NTs can be transgender, anyone can so I don't see how autism has anything to do with it. You can be transgender and still have ADHD or be trans and still have an anxiety disorder or be trans and still have OCD or be trans and still have a intellectual impairment or be a slow learner or be trans and still have Spina Befida and so on. Transgender people are people too so of course they can have any disorder too like anyone else or even have cancer.

Why not say being trans is also part of being a ABDL because I also see many trans in the ABDL community and in the kink community so there must be a connection between trans and being into a kink or being a ABDL.

Thank you Soc. of Autism. Questions stop us getting bogged down in an argument.

Personal testimony first then. Autism was definitely the first thing with me. Signs present in my reactions to nursery school, the way I learn stuff, strong interests . The second area, gender questioning, non conformity was a much slower development, only really appearing around 20 years old, first real black ssoming around 30, going back into the closet around 35, and flowering again from my middle forties onwards, to the point where I am equally confident going out presenting feminine or masculine.

Close testimony next : my brother and his mates went out cross dressed once and had a great laugh, and as far as I am aware he is contentedly cisgender. My beloved on the other hand felt uncomfortable on the gender they were assigned at birth from certainly a bit before puberty, and this disquiet has been a constant until 2007 when they took the first steps to transition. They were born with the female body, and described being very good at the femme presentation, grooming, dress etc, BUT, this always felt like having to make the effort to pass as female.

I actually believe that if I hadn't been on the autistic spectrum I might have been a self aware transgirl . I believe that in my case anyway my being oblivious to such things as social mores , and in particular gender roles has kept me from coming to the conclusion that I am a transwoman . Instead I feel that I am agender , as the very concept of gender seems meaningless to me , perhaps because I possibly lack theory of mind . This is personally beneficial to me , as I have grown up in a social conservative Christian family , whom would have been aggressively adverse to my potentially being transgender , especially with regard to my father . So my being agender as an autistic trait might also have been an adaptive survival mechanism . I did take this test though , and got in the more so feminine side of the gender spectrum though , for what it's worth . http://www.hemingways.org/GIDinfo/sage/ ( with a score of 500)

I hate to seem terribly ignorant but I still can't quite understand the words 'identity' and 'identify' when used in gender conversations. It doesn't seem to mean quite the same as describe, it seems to be used in some way as belonging to a certain category. At least that's how I have been thinking. The topic confuses me terribly. I describe myself as a female based on my body but a lot of people don't go by that sorta thing, they go by something else that I don't think I can understand. I feel no connection to anything like 'girls night out', women's retreats, women's magazines, ect. I don't feel any sense of "sisterhood" or more comfortable in a room of just women. If being transgender is somehow connected to autism can it also somehow be an autistic thing to not even understand all of this? Sorry, just wondering, I've spent two years trying to figure it out. Sorry also if what I just wrote makes very little sense. I might ignore it all together if I thought that was socially possible.

There was an article published in a popular Canadian newspaper that said trans activists may be targeting people on the spectrum.

http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comme ... ge-genders

For my part, I believe that trans people are mentally ill and that it is as foolish to seek to transform a biological male into a female or vice versa than it is to transform an autistic person into an NT. It's better to try and support them into accepting what they are without reservations. The trend of giving grade schoolers hormones in particular is destructive and disgusting.