How common is it for Aspies to be non-heterosexual?

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Research on the overlap between autism and gender diversity—a term used to define those who, either by nature or choice, do not conform to conventional gender-based expectations—is a relatively new field. Earlier this year, Spectrum, a website dedicated to in-depth analyses of autism research, published an extensive investigation that explores this relatively untrodden ground, explaining that over the past five years, there have been only a handful of studies that trace a co-occurrence between the autism and gender diversity. In one of the first major studies, carried out in Holland, researchers examined 204 children and adolescents who identified as gender-dysphoric—a condition where a person experiences discomfort or distress due to a mismatch between their biological sex and gender identity—and found a 7.8 percent prevalence of autism.

There are case studies of gender diversity on the autism spectrum dating back to 1996, but the first study to assess the convergence of autism and “gender dysphoria” was published just six years ago. Since this point, there have been several studies, with a watershed moment occurring for the world of autism research in 2014. John Strang, a neuropsychologist in the Center for Autism Spectrum Disorders at Children's National Medical Center, in Washington, D.C., assessed gender diversity in children with autism, rather than measuring the incidence of autism among gender-dysphoric children and adolescents as the previous studies had done. The study found that participants on the autism spectrum were 7.59 times more likely to “express gender variance.”