Autigender-what's your opinion?

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I don't think people with autism have a specific gender but I do think that autism makes knowing what one wants in a relationship harder which might make "picking a side" harder.

It is disturbing when I read something that seems to imply all people with autism should be genderfluid.  Speaking for myself, genderfluidity is not the case.  However, I can imagine some poor kids -- those already confused about having autism -- worrying that having autism and being gender-specific is somehow wrong; thus deepening their confusion and their anxiety.

I imagine that because a lot of autistic people have issues understanding/relating to social norms, they're more likely to place less importance on society's expectations of gender. There's still this subconscious idea of separation between "pink/dresses/dolls" "blue/jeans/hotwheels". Being NT would lead a person to try to fit more into some form of gender stereotype due to peer pressure.

You see often in people who call themselves non-binary, when asked why they don't just call themselves male or female, it's because they "don't feel they fit into either role" It has nothing to do with biological parts, no body dysmorphia or anything like that, just the subconscious idea that pink=girl and blue=boy that deciding to enjoy things regardless of gender really screws with that idea and leads them to create these new labels in an effort to both understand themselves while still holding onto those ingrained ideas.

And since autistic people are more likely to deviate from social norms, they're more likely to fall into that category. I think that's why this kind of thing is very prevalent in the community.

But if giving themselves other labels helps overcome the anxiety that comes along with the whole "men do this, women do this, but I do...?" then I don't really care either way. Not really hurting anyone. I DO however, get annoyed when someone tries to police other people and forces it on them. There was a woman at my husband's workplace who would ask anyone she met what their preferred pronouns were before she even asked their name. He recently hired a man who I guess didn't look "traditionally" masculine enough for this woman and she insisted on calling him with they/them pronouns and would say "Oh, they're clearly non-binary, they just don't know it!" That kind of stuff drives me nuts.

By specific gender meant an autism only gender. People with autism can be any gender an NT is. Obviously male and female is the first and foremost gender but others is like opening a can of worms.

Autism is very confusing especially if undiagnosed and getting confused about gender being added to the mix only causes more problems. I noticed more people with autism seem to be trans but I don't really understand why.

What's PSA? I tried to find out, but could find no definition that seems to fit it here:
https://acronyms.thefreedictionary.com/PSA

It's a shame if the occasional person would get extremely offended by my reluctance to work very hard finding out about these issues of gender politics, but I challenge anybody to explain how they figure me to be a real threat to them. I think it's entirely possible to be a reasonably harmless person without being an expert on every minority group in existence. Like I said before: "If somebody tells me they have a particular special need, I'll listen and give their argument fair consideration."

It's not offensive to me if a person is completely unaware of ASD or hasn't been interested in boning up about it. If I meet them and a problem comes up for me that can't be solved without informing them of some aspect of my condition, I don't get offended that they haven't educated themselves in any profound way about the "autistic community," and I'm likely to simply explain what I'm having trouble with, e.g. "Crowds really drain the life out of me, can we go somewhere a bit quieter instead?" If they refuse to take that on board, then that's another matter. If they're genuinely skeptical, we might have a conversation to try and clear the thing up and then I might raise the matter of ASD.

I'm very one-on-one, and studying people by their group affiliations seems to me to risk the problems of reductionism, because nobody ever quite fits the stereotype for any particular group. So even though I don't try to get a degree in minority group studies, I'm always willing to hear from an individual about what they need from me and how we can help each other out. If a member of a minority group takes offense at my attitude and thinks I don't want to understand their group, maybe that's because they don't understand me. Anybody who expects the rest of the world to already know all about their particular wishes and needs is going to be disappointed sometimes, and they would do well to accept that and to be prepared to respectfully explain what they want. It's not as if I were a policeman or anybody else likely to come into contact with them in a situation where I had much power to harm them. Obviously for anybody doing that kind of job, they probably need some understanding of minority groups so that they don't end up tasering a disabled person for having a meltdown at an airport.

Public Service Announcement

I posted in order to hopefully enlighten other people on the issue. I myself commonly used to say I was colour blind, and then I had somebody (A Person of Colour, or POC) explain to me exactly why that was wrong.



The bold emphasis is mine. Since we are talking about discrimination and prejudice, it is *exactly* as if someone refuses to accept your polite request, and insists that you are in the wrong for making such a suggestion. And then, if you say, "Well I have ASD," for them to then be outright nasty, belittling, and mean, and STILL accuse you of being in the wrong for wanting to have your basic needs met.

The reason there is such minority sensitivity of late is because of such discriminatory practices that POC or people of alternate gender experience over something they can't help (no more than you or I can help our diagnosis). It is not to say *you* can't understand this, but many people who are NT and can easily handle the nuance of being respectful of others choose not to, and many more NT people who can do something to be helpful don't because they are "blind" to the issue.

The problems persist because of how extremely subversive and insidious these prejudices are. many prejudicial people are quite happy and content to pretend the issue doesn't exist and say they are color blind, and encourage others to be similarly color blind...and because everyone is "blind" to the issue of color, no one pays attention when the person who is prejudiced does something overtly prejudicial.



A lot of authority figures do not get this sort of training. In the U.S. specifically, it is a major issue, and not only are law enforcement officers not well trained, many of them carry their own biases and prejudices, and would rather shoot (not with tasers but with lethal force) than ask questions and try to be understanding.

This affects people in the black communities more, but there were one or two outstanding cases where a person with ASD was shot and killed by law enforcement because the law enforcement officers were not trained well enough to understand what was happening. In one instance, the law enforcement was told that the person had ASD, and the person trying to aid the ASD person begged for law enforcement NOT to shoot BECAUSE that person had ASD. And it didn't go very well.

I hope this helped. I get the feeling, however, that I am not being clear on this subject, and having a hard time explaining what I am trying to convey, which makes it hard to get the point across. To be clear, I am not accusing anyone here of being bigoted or prejudiced, or being incapable of understanding this issue. Honestly I kinda expect several people here to be able to understand this issue probably better than many NT people (Who let their emotions get in the way).

This deserves an upvote.

No, I don't think autistic people in general count as another "gender." Yes, I can see how many autistic people might take a distinctive path to becoming non-binary, given that alienation from social expectations is a common feature of both states.

I vaguely remember seeing a thread here some time ago about someone on Youtube who claimed that autism is their gender, but I don’t remember any videos being included and I didn’t look them up. It seems completely ridiculous to me to try to lump all autistic people into one gender. From what I have observed, there is at least as much variety in that (including plenty who are cisgender) as there is in non-autistics, and I’ve never seen anyone try to claim that “neurotypical” or “allistic” is a gender.

Personally I consider myself agender, because I do not fit into any category in any way but physically (but I left it as “female” in my profile because I’m accustomed to everything pertaining to my sex; I tried using gender-neutral pronouns for myself for a little while and it felt really weird), but I’m sure that has a lot more to do with also being asexual and aromantic than it does with being autistic. Because I do not have any inclination toward anything sexual or romantic, sex and gender really aren’t pertinent to me in any way. But never will I try to claim that it isn’t pertinent to other people, including in things not relating directly to sex or romance, and including other people who are asexual/aromantic. I never claim to speak for anyone other than myself (though sometimes I don’t think to specify that I don’t).

But I will not try to argue with anyone who wants to say that autism is their gender, as long as they don’t try to insist that that is the case for everyone who is autistic. I can see the argument that some aspects or traits of autism might affect one’s gender, but most of those can also be highly variable from one person to the next. We’re just as variable in most things as NTs, even if percentages may be different (such as percentage of binary or non-binary people).

Edit: Oops, missed the “no personal stuff,” I probably thought this was the same thread and so didn’t read the first post when I had an answer put together

Last edited by dragonsanddemons on 09 Aug 2021, 4:10 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I’'m not that delusional to believe I’m physically anything other than male, but non physically, for as long as I can remember, I’ve found it impossible to define myself as assuredly masculine or feminine. If I was with a group of men talking about the kind of things groups of men often talk about I’d feel like a fish out of water. The same with women.

That failure to clearly identify may or may not have anything to do with being an autistic person. It’s not something I’ve thought deeply about. At a more basic level I feel like a triangle in a world where most people are circles or squares.


At one point in the early 1980's I had a dx of schizophrenia with disorder of gender identity. I was adamant I wanted SRS. The trouble was the desire outstripped the ability to look anything other than a poor version of Jack Lemmon in 'Some like it hot'.You can add to that being a major clodhopper. The schizophrenia scuppered any chance of SRS.

In the end,around the time I met my future wife in psych hospital, I came to terms with that. There was no way I could've coped with the 'two years living as a woman' criteria I didn't have the skills needed to avoid the high possibility of being beaten up by a transphobic thug. I was a rather inadequate man who would've just become a rather inadequate woman.

Oh brother. I have not heard about that one before. I am tired tired of this whole thing where people on the spectrum are 75% LGBT. As I am said, I am tired of the politicized stuff with the so-called "Autism self-advocacy movement."

I don't see why being colour blind would blind somebody to an act of injustice. If I hadn't even noticed a victim was black, I'd still have seen the event. I'd still have seen whatever it was that was unfair about it.

I don't go along with all the rules of political correctness. I wouldn't use the phrase "people of colour" because I gather most black people would rather be called black, so that's what I call them, if I call them anything at all apart from their individual names.

https://prejudiceanddiscrimination.com/ ... -called-2/

Similarly, I'm not a "person-with-autism." The term smacks of somebody trying too hard to police language in the hope that it will change something real, and I think its main effect is to make language more cumbersome. A more effective strategy might be to film these nasty events and get the results into the public domain so the culprits can be dealt with. Thanks to smartphones and the Cloud, that's starting to happen. Some police officers are sociopathic and won't stop till society identifies them and plucks them out. It's not a matter of education and training for their sort.

I can sorta relate. I have a hard time identifying as masculine. In fact I prefer associating with women more, and while I can (now that I am older) mask somewhat so that I can fit in with a group of guys, I still kinda feel like I am a bit like a fish out of water on most subjects. But while I prefer the company of females from a social perspective, I also...don't always get them either.

I am very definitely male. Not just biologically, but in terms of gender. But one could easily mistake me for being A-sexual up until sex becomes relevant (In which case I am pretty obviously male/masculine and cis).

I can see *why* people might think that Autigender might make sense, but I stand by my previous statement in that I think it is moot and a bit silly. For myself I would identify as Non-Binary leaning towards Cis-male, or just agree to be lumped in with Cis-male altogether. I do not feel the need for an extra label just to define a circumstance that I can't otherwise differentiate from Non-binary.

Since this topic is veering more towards politics, I am only going to note that the term "Colour Blind" suggests you see that a crime is committed against a person (No differentiation on race), and because of your lack of differentiation you overlook the statistical info that these crimes occur more against people of colour.

I don't think that is the case with you, but that is the reason why the term is a bit offensive. There are people who claim to be "Colour Blind" who actively try to minimize the issue to make fixing the issue harder to do. It is done malciously.

As for the term "person with autism," I know this is a loaded term. I struggled to avoid using it (It isn't my preference either) while still being descriptive, so I want to clarify that I was not using it to describe any one person, but just...people who are autistic as a general phrase.

Anyway, that is my final word on the issue, since again it is starting to veer heavily political, and this isn't the right forum for it.

I'm male but without some of the stereotyped psychological features such as brashness, preference for sex first and getting to know and love a partner second, great interest in seeming hunky and fearless, desire to take the lead, disdain for art and emotional matters, obsession with football, etc. When I was a teenager I took a few self-portraits of myself and the ones I felt were the most successful at the time were those in which I looked female. Don't quite know what that was about. I think I saw men as rather ugly creatures and I wanted to look attractive, and I guess I had no idea what girls thought was attractive. Though the male fashions of the time were rather female in some ways.

I think that Texans should be declared a "gender".

So...from henceforth there will now be three genders: men, women, and Texans.

OH...and autistics.

Four genders: men, women, Texans, and autistics!

And why stop there?

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Exactly HOW is "autistic" equivalent to male or female as a category? And how exactly is making autistic a "gender" any less stupid than making...vegans, Texans, and Roman Catholics, in to their own "genders"?

I like pizza. That's a gender.