terfs keep mentioning the % of autistics who are trans/nb and that we’re ‘brainwashed’
and because i’m an asshole, i decided to look into why so many autistic folks are trans/nb. it’s not an inaccurate statement, at least the first half, but terfs lie through their teeth so i decided to get to the scientific root of it.
the answer blew my fucking mind.
the study on gender and autism i found said two very specific things about autistic people: we are more mentally resistant to things like social conditioning and binarism. we like our secret third things, y'know.
an excerpt:
“The finding that non-binary identities are most elevated seems to support hypotheses focussed on autistic resistance to social conditioning, which are consistent with existing evidence of the same effect with respect to self-description of sexual orientation. Perhaps elevated rates of trans identity in autism might result from a rejection of the binary cisgenderist norm, which combined with a below-typical concern for social norms could promote the disclosure of the identity.”
94% of autistics surveyed for that paper identified themselves as non-binary.
other studies have found autistic people have higher levels of critical thinking, and require more evidence to maintain or convert to a belief system (hence why many of us eventually fall away from religion) than allistic people.
which means, at least from my perspective, that:
a) the 'brainwashing’ terfs are accusing the trans community of inflicting on autistic folks would likely not even work if they tried.
b) the current binary definition of gender flies directly against embedded autistic modes of thinking to begin with.
you cannot brainwash someone into thinking something they already believe.
This essentially suggests that autistic people are likely to be NB because we are in fact resistant to the relevant brainwashing.
As an autistic person with a weird gender this lines up with my personal observation, which is that autistic people are not really prone to follow social norms that don’t make sense to them or provide them with any benefits just because.
There is an immense amount of cis allistic anxiety about this, because they like to think adhering to the gender binary is in the same natural-law category as “don’t kill someone for pissing you off” or whatever, and it completely isn’t, and our collective refusal to play ball makes something in them angry.
The typical allistic reaction to autists behaving unusually is to insist on controlling them, or treat their social “failures” as deficits of parental, workplace, partner, state, societal control. The idea that autistic people are “brainwashed” into being trans and nonbinary is in fact projection by people who want to brainwash autistic people to follow their stupid fucking rules, and are existentially terrified that they can’t seem to get it to work
“This essentially suggests that autistic people are likely to be NB because we are in fact resistant to the relevant brainwashing.”
Which pretty much reveals that they’re bullshitters.
They CLAIM to be “gender critical” and to want people to reject gender wholesale as a tool of social control.
Yet when ND people go “yep, that shit never made much sense, I’m something else” they suddenly weep for our lost femininity.
When we’re telling them we never had it.
We’re what they say they want, but they hate us.
Funny that.