I had to sort of “fast-read” through this one but it’s still very good information. I can see how an undiagnosed autistic girl would have a lot of problems upon puberty and keeping up developmentally with other girls who are using sarcasm & metaphors that are hard for autistics to understand.
In my own case I do remember having a lot of the same traits and issues you had due to my lack of actual support. There was also a time where I felt closer emotionally to the girls more so than the boys. So autistic boys, while having some differences emotionally and culturally often end up having similar experiences.
You also talked a lot about everyone having a “pre-programmed socialization system that automatically receives updates”, and that gave me an idea. If trans groups are able to systemize “how to pass as a boy/girl”, then we should write an actual book teaching autistic people how to socialize or “behave” as your actual sex with different parts or versions depending on age or stage of development. We can use language that the most autistic people can understand. Something like that would help a lot.
I think you should write a parallel essay to mine about the experience of the improperly supported but early diagnosed autistic boy to show the endemic issues with many of these institutional supports, and to show where there are parallels. Maybe if it’s easier, do a long form video about it.
That definitely sounds like a good idea. I’ll use whichever of your sources apply to early diagnosed autistic boys alongside whatever other studies I can find.
I think a book is a fantastic idea. There is so much trans instruction out there in the form of graphic novels. Autistic kids need to see another point of view in a format they would be willing to read.
The truth is, that the draw of transition is not an ideological one. Rather, it’s emotional in nature. Those emotional needs can be addressed in a variety of ways, but no kid who is miserable in their skin is going to be persuaded by the notion that they should just stay as they are because developmentally they can’t project themselves into the future. That said, I’m very pro making autistic self-awareness a social trend lol
Your kid doesn’t need more information, but rather very strategic parenting which facilitates the development of self-awareness through skill improvement. All of us kids got here by intellectualizing our development rather than engaging in it as embodied individuals. I don’t know what age your kid is or anything about them, but when I do have a lot of information about each kid and family, I’m able to give really targeted recommendations to families in a consulting or coaching capacity. If this is of interest, feel free to reach out via DMs.
Yeah, I see what you're saying. Maybe the key is to focus more on the autistic self-awareness so there is another explanation, or another option for the way they feel. I'm just frustrated because you and others are providing such great explanations for parents but kids are only seeing the pro-trans activist crap. And I know that showing your writings to my kid won't help.
Excellent, Maia. Your honesty gives such an insight. I was particularly struck when you said that clinicians are trained to treat the mask and not the face.
Thank you so much for commenting this. When that line came to me in the midst of a haze of exhaustion, I just knew I had to include it before falling asleep 😂
Thanks Maia - I think you have a unique gift for articulating the complicated asymmetry of being a girl with autistic traits. The ever shifting experience of growing up and missing or overshooting the targets your peers reliably hit- creates such confusion, and your insights about the ways girls deal with this confusion are very insightful Xx
If I can grasp for a single positive that might come from this whole "gender" catastrophe, it's that the complicated experiences of girls with autistic traits are being examined, described and (hopefully) understood through a new lens. I did not have gender confusion growing up- yet I had never before heard the details of my confusing experiences precisely described until I heard the stories of detransitioners. I wonder sometimes how many other women have had this experience. The empathy I feel for girls caught up in this is a full body experience.
OK, it took two evenings, but I have listened to the whole thing!
This is really good, and I think you make some excellent points. Transmasc really is the perfect honeypot for a struggling girl on the spectrum. It seems to explain so much.
I like the phrasing about the benefits being immediate but the costs showing up later. (Except you said it better.)
Realistically, while students with ‘low-functioning’ ASD seem to be more recognizable thus treated in school systems, high-er functioning ASD students — who tend to not exhibit the more overt, debilitating symptoms of autism — are more likely to be left to fend for themselves, except if their parents can finance specialized education.
... As a boy with an undiagnosed autism spectrum disorder, my public-school Grade 2 teacher was the first and most formidably abusive authority figure with whom I was terrifyingly trapped. Though there were other terrible teachers, for me she was uniquely traumatizing, especially when she wore her large, dark sunglasses when dealing with me.
Rather than tell anyone about my ordeal with her and consciously feel victimized, I instead felt some misplaced shame: I was a ‘difficult’ boy, therefore she likely perceived me as somehow ‘deserving it’. But not being mentally, let alone physically, abused within or by an educational system is definitely a moral right; I was simply unable to see this.
Perhaps schoolteachers should receive training in high-er functioning ASD, especially if the rate of autism diagnoses is increasing. There could also be an inclusion in standard high school curriculum of child-development science that would also teach students about the often-debilitating condition.
Neurodiversity lessons, while not overly complicated or extensive, might help reduce the incidence of chronic bullying against such vulnerable students. It would explain to students how, among other aspects of the condition, people with high-er functioning ASD are often deemed willfully ‘difficult’ and socially incongruent, when in fact such behavior is really not a ‘choice’.
It would also elucidate how “camouflaging” or “masking” causes their already high anxiety and depression levels to further increase. And that this exacerbation is reflected in the disproportionately elevated rate of suicide among them.
Knowledge/education is so key. ... My autism spectrum disorder is an obvious condition with which I greatly struggle(d) while unaware until I was a half-century old that its component dysfunctions had formal names. Then, again, had I been aware back in the 1970s and ’80s I likely would’ve kept it a secret nevertheless, especially at school, lest the A-word [autism] gets immediately followed by the F-word [freak].
... I cannot recall much of my half-century-plus life, and almost nothing positive, probably because I spend my ‘present’ anxious about my future and depressed over my past. For me, that includes a fear of how badly I will emotionally deal with the negative or horrible event — which usually doesn’t occur — and especially if I’ll also conclude that I'm at fault. It would therefore be great if there could be some valuable academic or clinical use from it all — to create or extract from it some practical positivity and purpose — so that all of the suffering will not have been in vain.
I relate to so much of this essay. I’m also an autistic woman in my mid twenties. I understood that I was female at a young age, but I never understood why I was supposed to behave and dress a certain way just because of my sex.
Yes. I’m behind in emotion regulation and social skills. When I was little, I only talked to my close family members because I didn’t know how to interact with the other kids. I also learned how to write later than the other kids, but I was reading early
Yeah, that’s one of the reasons why writing was a struggle. And I was always picked last in PE. I got pulled out of class for OT in my public elementary school even though my autism diagnosis happened later
I think if I were in a public school from k-4 I would have gotten diagnosed. I think being in a weird sort of alternative (but rigorous) school of 7-9 kids per class where we didn’t have grade levels and were educated in groups based on ability rather than age, where all the kids were either kids of successful immigrants or were functionally special needs basically just meant that no one would be recommended for any testing. They’d just be held back and the names of the classes would all be switched so they wouldn’t know 😂
Another very insightful and educational article, Maia. Masking is so nuanced, depending on the child, but you helped me understand how see the mask and parent better. 🙏🏻
I’m so glad my essay was insightful and helpful. I do feel the need to say as a disclaimer that though there are similarities between myself and many of the other autistic girls who go down this path, there are also significant individual and cultural differences to account for. I’m so so glad this essay has helped you to see your kid’s struggles and adaptations in a clearer way.
Maia, this is an excellent piece. Thank you for this work. My experience as a clinician is that most of what you say applies to boys as well as girls. It’s what I observe day in and out.
Hi Dr. Goldsmith, as someone with both the diagnosed and the male perspective, a lot of this was still relatable to me. Even though I was diagnosed before I turned two, I still went without real support and was instead exploited by the medical industry & school system. This contributed to my near-miss with trans identification, and I did often feel I fit in better with the girls. I also even developed a fixation with transgenderism even though I was not trans myself.
I have since founded the Autistic Freedom Network, an organization whose goal is to ensure the safety & well-being of autistic boys and girls as they grow up, and to make sure they get the support they actually need. I’ll be creating an Organization Substack before too long.
This is such a great article! My transmasc daughter is autistic but I didn’t see it as autism until she was nearly a teen (thought is was being extremely artistic/creative and just having a personality that was very different from me). Years ago I identified the connection between female autism and being trans, but never in the light of this article. I loved your description of masking - we all “mask”, but what I do and what an autistic girl (or boy) does is not the same as you so articulately described.
She’s an adult now, but if I could go back I’d treat the autism that I thought was no big deal - “she was fine and it was just a label we didn’t need” was what I thought at the time. I don’t think her current therapist touches on the autism much now either, and she doesn’t want any advice related to therapy/autism/transgenerism from me
You can try framing the advice you want to give in different ways so as to not trigger those schematic reactions. Every autist will need to learn how to manage their own condition, and at the root of it does seem to be sensory issues that each person must learn to mitigate
Thank you! Right now I mostly try not to give advice (so hard!!) because it does not come off right to her at all….I have not given up, just giving it a break and hoping to find ways to help her look at things differently that come across as loving and non-judgmental in small bits, slowly.
Thanks for this article, Maia. It seems to me that your 'puberty onset social confusion' hypothesis would apply equally well to young women calling themselves non-binary, or whatever other gender identity label they happen to settle on.
I can see the appeal of stereotypical masculinity to an autistic woman who doesn't want to talk about her feelings, spend hours per day adjusting her appearance, wear uncomfortable, sexualised clothing or watch romantic movies. However, it is a case of swapping one set of stereotypes for another. Even non-binary people are so rigidly stereotyped that they practically wear a uniform.
In the Western progressive communities that produce most of these novel identities, young women can now pursue male-dominated careers or marry their girlfriends. So, your hypothesis seems more credible to me than the sexism of 'the Patriarchy' driving these women to opt out of womanhood.
If the goal of transmasculinity was to escape the male gaze, as some feminists have theorised, why do some transmasculine women seek the (infeasible) sexual approval of gay men? I think it more likely that these women have been 'educated' to fear 'patriarchal' straight men but evaluate gay men positively, which is not a great dating strategy for a straight woman, of course.
Have you considered reaching out to academics working on autism, gender and sexuality to co-design a formal study which would test your hypothesis? I appreciate that a potential difficulty would be finding a research team in the modern academy which is willing to take an objective view on these subjects. As you have 'lived experience' on your side, I'd say it's worth a try.
I’ve been trying for a long time to find a processor or program that I could do this type of research in. Unfortunately, there’s one in the UK and they only take UK students. If by any chance you become aware of one, I would be really happy to connect with him or her. I’ve been developing an even more robust framework about this subject that I haven’t even shared with the world yet because I’m still researching the extent to which my intuitions can be borne out by pre-existing research. In the autism field, critically, lived experience outpaces formal research. I’m glad you find my hypothesis credible. Thank you for sharing.
In my day job, I'm currently carrying out independent sponsored research for a professional body which has links to an academic research group working in the same area.
That arrangement might be a more viable option for you, because in the current political climate, if you were to sign up as a graduate or postdoctoral researcher with a typical higher education institution, I believe there's a good chance your work would be frustrated by the actions of rival academics or student zealots.
Another benefit is that as a research student, you would normally have to pay the institution for their 'support', whereas a sponsored independent researcher can be paid for their time and expenses. In the latter case, you would still have the option of pursuing further degrees, of course.
I would suggest that you could start by asking Genspect or another suitable organisation to consider creating a formal gender research group, including those members who are already publishing research papers or are working towards that. Such a group may already exist. I believe that type of network could be more supportive to original research like yours than the average college which has a Gender Studies department.
While lived experience is now the dominant paradigm in social science, I think you'll gain more clout with the school of objectivity if you can devise a falsifiable hypothesis (in the meaning used by Karl Popper) and test it in your research. Then you might have a chance of reaching people who consider themselves to be on Team Science.
Thank you so much for sharing your personal experience and the insights that you have gained. I think that it will be an important component in people’s journeys to less distressing and more fulfilling lives.
Thank you so much for writing this essay. I have finally found answers to what has been happening with my daughter and her gender confusion over the last few months. I have hope that with your guidance I will be able to save her. I'm off to read all the rest of your content.
Maia, this essay is awesome. You have deep insights into your experiences and your ability to be introspective is just amazing.
I found this distinction particularly helpful:
“Code-switching is changing the settings on a device that already has a robust operating system with a toggle option. Masking is writing the operating system from scratch every time you turn it on, while the device is running, overheating from the overload of data, while pretending to everyone around you that it booted up instantly and without an issue.”
I find it extremely relatable when you talk about developing strategies to be liked to the point where people completely miss your struggles. My experience with that was different in nature but the same in the sense that people didn’t know I was struggling because I was likeable and smart. I don’t think most adults are good at reading people past the surface. I’ve come to learn that many people are highly unobservant. It takes a trainwreck to catch people’s attention. You literally have to either be destructive or dying for adults to notice something is wrong, and even then they’ll get it wrong most of the time because they tend to either brush off red flags or reframe them as intentional bad behavior. Anything that looks like opposition to how “society works” will get a child labeled as a problem if they’re the least bit intelligent. Television and movies have programmed people to see only one autistic “type” and if you don’t fit that it’s not going to cross their mind, so everything you do will be seen through a non-autistic lens. A lot of people oppose autism as a possibility as well so there's that.
Humans have a tendency to explain things away with Occam’s Razor… where the simplest explanation is probably the correct answer, but Occam’s Razor can’t account for the nuance of human experience and I see this dynamic at play everywhere. Occam’s Razor fails more than it fits. So many people don’t even want to consider “X” might be the problem. If they can write it off as something simple they will. Medical doctors do this as well with diagnostic and other medical errors and it kills hundreds of thousands of people every year.
Autistic girls are slipping through another crack that is kind of a tangent but related to how easily the signs are missed.
Maybe you already know about this but there’s a growing therapist-led opposition to diagnosing girls with autism, especially young adults. I don’t mean that girls are commonly skipped over by well-meaning therapists missing the signs who would screen for autism if it occurred to them (we’ve known this for a while), but there’s a literal movement of therapists (I don’t know how big) that refuse to diagnose autism even when a client meets the criteria. They won’t send them in for testing. When a client comes to them asking to be tested for autism, the therapist counts that as a sign against autism.
These therapists actively, intentionally, and unapologetically refuse to diagnose girls with autism based on subjective interpretations of their symptoms and the core belief that any female who asks to get tested, believes in masking (and explains how they mask), and can openly demonstrate how they stim is not autistic by default.
These therapists are opposed to the entire current ADHD and autism spectrum criteria. They’re mad that the criteria were expanded to include people who don’t fit the image of the classic nonverbal, hand-flapping autistic kid. They don’t believe in what was formerly ADD and think ADHD is completely bogus. They’re so against the expanded criteria that they refuse to diagnose anyone with autism who does not fit the classic image. They attribute signs of autistic traits to laziness, a bad diet, and mood swings. They also don’t believe in masking. They remain loyal to the original criteria only and they get mad when parents “therapist hop” until they get an autism diagnosis. When someone comes to them with knowledge of autism having done their "homework" that is another strike against them.
And these are gender-critical therapists who also do not support medical transition. So when they get a client who wants to transition, instead of signing off on medicalization or screening them for autism, they’re diagnosing them with Cluster B personality disorders. Mainly borderline personality disorder. They’ve also decided that clients who come in with a Bipolar II diagnosis are actually borderline on the basis that they do not believe in rapid cycling and believe bipolar II is just a polite way of watering down borderline, which in their eyes is the only real diagnosis.
When a female client goes to them and pushes hard to be screened for autism, they’re immediately red flagged as borderline. Just asking to be screened makes these therapists flag them as potentially borderline. In addition to the standard autism test (that has to be conducted by someone else, of course, since it’s a specialized test and they don't even believe in it) the therapist will ask their client questions about how they stim and other behaviors, and if their stimming doesn’t fit the therapist’s belief about what counts as valid stimming (classic unconscious flapping and head banging), they also use that information to diagnose them with borderline.
There’s real problem here and it’s all connected. You have to be very careful who you see for your therapist if you think you’re autistic. All that to say the world is dead set against anyone being autistic who doesn’t hand flap and grunt to communicate—even therapists.
Back to your essay!
It really does seem to me that the world men live in is just normal and standard, and it just makes sense. It’s plain, logical, and predictable. Girls tend to add all these extra layers of weirdness to play games and impress people, like you mentioned how your female peers started being sarcastic, the backhanded compliments, social hierarchies based on clothing, all the makeup, etc. That’s not normal. That’s adding layers of complexity to something that is inherently simple. It makes perfect sense to me why autistic girls would gravitate toward that.
I was just explaining to someone that I don’t believe it’s a deficit when autistic people fail to catch social cues since social cues are actually one the most inauthentic, contrived, manipulative aspects of society. It can hurt a person when they need to understand what’s going on, but let’s be clear here, it’s not the autistic person’s problem. They should be awarded medals for putting up with society’s nonsense. People who create these elaborate rituals that force you to go around in circles are the ones creating a problem that autistic people are just trying to navigate to survive. It’s exhausting.
They say boys mature more slowly than girls but I don’t believe that. What passes for "maturity" in girls is anything but. It's that girls learn how to play society's dumb games sooner and boys hold out because it's stupid. They get dragged into adulthood while girls dive head first into the social hierarchy games. Guys hold onto their innocence longer. Their natural way of being in the world. What adults see as immature is really just a prolonged innocence and a more carefree view of life. Simple things entertain boys for quite a long time. They just don’t develop the weird social complexities like most females. Society calls a person's ability to play those complex social games "maturity" and it's really just giving in to the desire to be part of the group and get approval from adults, which is something a lot of autistic people don't give a rip about. Boys also don't care about that until they're forced to care.
When your nervous system is already shot, being around females who want or expect you to join them in their reindeer games is exhausting on top of nonsensical. It sounds like it would be an easy life boat to board.
Regarding your exploration of PDA and how it might contribute to some autistic girls wanting to transition, that makes a LOT of sense.
“If an autistic girl experiences femininity not as a set of difficult social skills she hasn’t yet mastered, but as a category of never-ending demands to sacrifice her autonomy which her nervous system finds fundamentally impossible to comply with: pursuing gender transition becomes nearly indistinguishable from her previous demand-avoidant strategies.”
That’s an insightful connection. A lot of people who fit the PDA profile will go to extremes in whatever direction is required to distance themselves from the demand. In the absence of internet peer groups that support them, someone who moves toward transition as a PDA response will probably find their way back pretty fast. But having internet peers will just reinforce their direction.
That’s the thing about human nature. Most people don’t understand themselves well enough to even understand why they make the choices they make. You think you’re making decisions based on X, Y, Z, but then years later you realize it was something so different. And anyone who isn’t constantly challenging themselves and their own choices in life will never fully understand themselves. You could look at something five times and if you aren’t ready to see it you won’t see it. Ask people to try on various possibilities including possibilities that counter their current beliefs and most won't. That's why therapy works for those people who can't do it themselves and probably works even better for people who already are introspective. And if the therapist is good at asking the right questions.
“Despite all of my oddities and lack of close friends, I somehow managed to become extremely popular with my peers for reasons that I to this day, do not entirely understand.”
From my perspective it’s probably because you say what you mean and you mean what you say. That's an autistic trait but it's also a valuable way of being that is rare. You’re real. You aren’t playing games with people. That’s not only rare but people want to know they can count on their friends to be honest and transparent. That creates a level of stability and reliability for people. There’s something respectable about people who don’t hide their truth or their views. So many people in this world don’t know what it’s like to have real friends. People hide their true nature and you don’t know how they really feel until years later sometimes. You’re not the type to hold back, if you change your views it will be known, and I'm sure it makes people mad because how dare someone change their position or thoughts (lol) but you aren’t wishy washy about anything.
You’re direct and that probably pisses off a lot of people, but that’s not really your problem.
People recognize these qualities in others when they’ve been starved for authenticity and reliability their whole lives. Also, few people are introspective and understand themselves. When you at least have the capability of looking inward to understand your motivations, you’re highly magnetic. That goes both ways. When you have a habit of analyzing your own life and dismantling your inauthenticities, you attract and repel with equal force. People who lack that ability are repelled because your introspection forces them to consider the potential that maybe they don’t know themselves as well as they could, but they don’t want to look. It's a great example to set.
This is a really great essay and if I remember you said you did 100 hours of research for this and it shows! You’ve lived a highly specific experience and have done the inner work to understand that experience, and there’s no doubt in my mind that sharing it is going to make a difference for others who share a similar path!
You are a cute kid and I feel sorry that you had to struggle through all of this. The struggle has probably made you stronger and brought you to a better place.
This is an incredibly important piece of writing and contribution to our understanding of adolescent transitions and ASD. I have seen several young women like yourself that find a series of masculine signals to adopt to relieve their confusion and anxiety with identity due to autism. Thank you for your insights.
Thank you for this comment. I’ll add, that we can’t forget that adopting a series of masculine signals as a woman is also a way to signal things to other women
I had to sort of “fast-read” through this one but it’s still very good information. I can see how an undiagnosed autistic girl would have a lot of problems upon puberty and keeping up developmentally with other girls who are using sarcasm & metaphors that are hard for autistics to understand.
In my own case I do remember having a lot of the same traits and issues you had due to my lack of actual support. There was also a time where I felt closer emotionally to the girls more so than the boys. So autistic boys, while having some differences emotionally and culturally often end up having similar experiences.
You also talked a lot about everyone having a “pre-programmed socialization system that automatically receives updates”, and that gave me an idea. If trans groups are able to systemize “how to pass as a boy/girl”, then we should write an actual book teaching autistic people how to socialize or “behave” as your actual sex with different parts or versions depending on age or stage of development. We can use language that the most autistic people can understand. Something like that would help a lot.
I think you should write a parallel essay to mine about the experience of the improperly supported but early diagnosed autistic boy to show the endemic issues with many of these institutional supports, and to show where there are parallels. Maybe if it’s easier, do a long form video about it.
That definitely sounds like a good idea. I’ll use whichever of your sources apply to early diagnosed autistic boys alongside whatever other studies I can find.
I think a book is a fantastic idea. There is so much trans instruction out there in the form of graphic novels. Autistic kids need to see another point of view in a format they would be willing to read.
The truth is, that the draw of transition is not an ideological one. Rather, it’s emotional in nature. Those emotional needs can be addressed in a variety of ways, but no kid who is miserable in their skin is going to be persuaded by the notion that they should just stay as they are because developmentally they can’t project themselves into the future. That said, I’m very pro making autistic self-awareness a social trend lol
Your kid doesn’t need more information, but rather very strategic parenting which facilitates the development of self-awareness through skill improvement. All of us kids got here by intellectualizing our development rather than engaging in it as embodied individuals. I don’t know what age your kid is or anything about them, but when I do have a lot of information about each kid and family, I’m able to give really targeted recommendations to families in a consulting or coaching capacity. If this is of interest, feel free to reach out via DMs.
Yeah, I see what you're saying. Maybe the key is to focus more on the autistic self-awareness so there is another explanation, or another option for the way they feel. I'm just frustrated because you and others are providing such great explanations for parents but kids are only seeing the pro-trans activist crap. And I know that showing your writings to my kid won't help.
I love your ideas, Sven!
Excellent, Maia. Your honesty gives such an insight. I was particularly struck when you said that clinicians are trained to treat the mask and not the face.
Thank you so much for commenting this. When that line came to me in the midst of a haze of exhaustion, I just knew I had to include it before falling asleep 😂
Thanks Maia - I think you have a unique gift for articulating the complicated asymmetry of being a girl with autistic traits. The ever shifting experience of growing up and missing or overshooting the targets your peers reliably hit- creates such confusion, and your insights about the ways girls deal with this confusion are very insightful Xx
Precisely! It is the difference between someone’s high IQ and their poor social intuition that creates so much distress in this population.
If I can grasp for a single positive that might come from this whole "gender" catastrophe, it's that the complicated experiences of girls with autistic traits are being examined, described and (hopefully) understood through a new lens. I did not have gender confusion growing up- yet I had never before heard the details of my confusing experiences precisely described until I heard the stories of detransitioners. I wonder sometimes how many other women have had this experience. The empathy I feel for girls caught up in this is a full body experience.
OK, it took two evenings, but I have listened to the whole thing!
This is really good, and I think you make some excellent points. Transmasc really is the perfect honeypot for a struggling girl on the spectrum. It seems to explain so much.
I like the phrasing about the benefits being immediate but the costs showing up later. (Except you said it better.)
Thanks, Julia, for your comment! I’ll have to use “honeypot” more often.
Realistically, while students with ‘low-functioning’ ASD seem to be more recognizable thus treated in school systems, high-er functioning ASD students — who tend to not exhibit the more overt, debilitating symptoms of autism — are more likely to be left to fend for themselves, except if their parents can finance specialized education.
... As a boy with an undiagnosed autism spectrum disorder, my public-school Grade 2 teacher was the first and most formidably abusive authority figure with whom I was terrifyingly trapped. Though there were other terrible teachers, for me she was uniquely traumatizing, especially when she wore her large, dark sunglasses when dealing with me.
Rather than tell anyone about my ordeal with her and consciously feel victimized, I instead felt some misplaced shame: I was a ‘difficult’ boy, therefore she likely perceived me as somehow ‘deserving it’. But not being mentally, let alone physically, abused within or by an educational system is definitely a moral right; I was simply unable to see this.
Perhaps schoolteachers should receive training in high-er functioning ASD, especially if the rate of autism diagnoses is increasing. There could also be an inclusion in standard high school curriculum of child-development science that would also teach students about the often-debilitating condition.
Neurodiversity lessons, while not overly complicated or extensive, might help reduce the incidence of chronic bullying against such vulnerable students. It would explain to students how, among other aspects of the condition, people with high-er functioning ASD are often deemed willfully ‘difficult’ and socially incongruent, when in fact such behavior is really not a ‘choice’.
It would also elucidate how “camouflaging” or “masking” causes their already high anxiety and depression levels to further increase. And that this exacerbation is reflected in the disproportionately elevated rate of suicide among them.
This is very insightful. I think it sucks that autistic kids are basically educationally abused as a common experience
Having ASD level 1 is challenging because most people see us as “odd” and “annoying” instead of recognizing that we have a disability
Knowledge/education is so key. ... My autism spectrum disorder is an obvious condition with which I greatly struggle(d) while unaware until I was a half-century old that its component dysfunctions had formal names. Then, again, had I been aware back in the 1970s and ’80s I likely would’ve kept it a secret nevertheless, especially at school, lest the A-word [autism] gets immediately followed by the F-word [freak].
... I cannot recall much of my half-century-plus life, and almost nothing positive, probably because I spend my ‘present’ anxious about my future and depressed over my past. For me, that includes a fear of how badly I will emotionally deal with the negative or horrible event — which usually doesn’t occur — and especially if I’ll also conclude that I'm at fault. It would therefore be great if there could be some valuable academic or clinical use from it all — to create or extract from it some practical positivity and purpose — so that all of the suffering will not have been in vain.
I relate to so much of this essay. I’m also an autistic woman in my mid twenties. I understood that I was female at a young age, but I never understood why I was supposed to behave and dress a certain way just because of my sex.
I wonder if the difference between our experiences could be explained by developmental delays. Did you/ do you have any?
Yes. I’m behind in emotion regulation and social skills. When I was little, I only talked to my close family members because I didn’t know how to interact with the other kids. I also learned how to write later than the other kids, but I was reading early
Any motor skills issues?
Yeah, that’s one of the reasons why writing was a struggle. And I was always picked last in PE. I got pulled out of class for OT in my public elementary school even though my autism diagnosis happened later
I think if I were in a public school from k-4 I would have gotten diagnosed. I think being in a weird sort of alternative (but rigorous) school of 7-9 kids per class where we didn’t have grade levels and were educated in groups based on ability rather than age, where all the kids were either kids of successful immigrants or were functionally special needs basically just meant that no one would be recommended for any testing. They’d just be held back and the names of the classes would all be switched so they wouldn’t know 😂
This reminds me of a poem I once wrote
"To a Girl"
You've just discovered
There's no Santa
Life is boring
And you were lied to
Now you will wonder
Without magic
What's to live for?
Is it worth it?
And your family
Won't have answers
They can't protect you
Any longer
So you'll try sorrow
And you'll try anger
You'll try passion
Each will fail you
And you'll feel different
You'll feel anguish
You'll hate your body
And your parents
You'll go searching
For that magic
Those lost summers
Slaying dragons
But you'll be older
And much smart
Chasing daydreams
Gets much harder
Still, you'll chase them
Because you have to
Because without them
You feel hollow
You'll search for loopholes
That satisfy you
To keep the spark
Alive inside you
You'll find something
A new religion
A diagnosis
A rash decision
You will shop for
A world to live in
Filled with others
As lost as you've been
You'll rage against those
Who dare to warn you
Your great escape has
Tricked and trapped you
But your loopholes
Will get smaller
The gaps will seal up
The spark will falter
And when it hits you--
There's still no Santa
You're on the lap of
A cadaver
For you'd embalmed him
With strange logic
It made sense once
Now you've lost it
And there's no far country
You can fly to
Where you won't be there
For you to find you--
It will break you
Because it has to
This is the darkness
You must pass through
When I say this
You won't believe it
The only way there
Is to live it
All I ask is
If you can stand it
Don't burn bridges
That can't be mended
And maybe some day
You'll gain the wisdom
To see that magic's
Both fact and fiction
It's inside you
And all around you
It's in the small things
And the grandeur
But you must lose it
Before you find it
You have to give up
This is the secret
So keep these verses
In your pocket
Let them sleep in
Your subconscious
(and remember the caterpillar
liquefying in his chambers)
That poem is a fitting comment under my essay. Thank you for sharing.
Another very insightful and educational article, Maia. Masking is so nuanced, depending on the child, but you helped me understand how see the mask and parent better. 🙏🏻
I’m so glad my essay was insightful and helpful. I do feel the need to say as a disclaimer that though there are similarities between myself and many of the other autistic girls who go down this path, there are also significant individual and cultural differences to account for. I’m so so glad this essay has helped you to see your kid’s struggles and adaptations in a clearer way.
Maia, this is an excellent piece. Thank you for this work. My experience as a clinician is that most of what you say applies to boys as well as girls. It’s what I observe day in and out.
This is really good to know. Thank you for reading my essay and for engaging with my work. I always get excited when I see your comments
Hi Dr. Goldsmith, as someone with both the diagnosed and the male perspective, a lot of this was still relatable to me. Even though I was diagnosed before I turned two, I still went without real support and was instead exploited by the medical industry & school system. This contributed to my near-miss with trans identification, and I did often feel I fit in better with the girls. I also even developed a fixation with transgenderism even though I was not trans myself.
I have since founded the Autistic Freedom Network, an organization whose goal is to ensure the safety & well-being of autistic boys and girls as they grow up, and to make sure they get the support they actually need. I’ll be creating an Organization Substack before too long.
This is such a great article! My transmasc daughter is autistic but I didn’t see it as autism until she was nearly a teen (thought is was being extremely artistic/creative and just having a personality that was very different from me). Years ago I identified the connection between female autism and being trans, but never in the light of this article. I loved your description of masking - we all “mask”, but what I do and what an autistic girl (or boy) does is not the same as you so articulately described.
She’s an adult now, but if I could go back I’d treat the autism that I thought was no big deal - “she was fine and it was just a label we didn’t need” was what I thought at the time. I don’t think her current therapist touches on the autism much now either, and she doesn’t want any advice related to therapy/autism/transgenerism from me
At any rate - thanks for the great article!
Thanks for your comment and I’m glad you saw your daughter in this. How old is she?
She’s 21
You can try framing the advice you want to give in different ways so as to not trigger those schematic reactions. Every autist will need to learn how to manage their own condition, and at the root of it does seem to be sensory issues that each person must learn to mitigate
Thank you! Right now I mostly try not to give advice (so hard!!) because it does not come off right to her at all….I have not given up, just giving it a break and hoping to find ways to help her look at things differently that come across as loving and non-judgmental in small bits, slowly.
Thanks for this article, Maia. It seems to me that your 'puberty onset social confusion' hypothesis would apply equally well to young women calling themselves non-binary, or whatever other gender identity label they happen to settle on.
I can see the appeal of stereotypical masculinity to an autistic woman who doesn't want to talk about her feelings, spend hours per day adjusting her appearance, wear uncomfortable, sexualised clothing or watch romantic movies. However, it is a case of swapping one set of stereotypes for another. Even non-binary people are so rigidly stereotyped that they practically wear a uniform.
In the Western progressive communities that produce most of these novel identities, young women can now pursue male-dominated careers or marry their girlfriends. So, your hypothesis seems more credible to me than the sexism of 'the Patriarchy' driving these women to opt out of womanhood.
If the goal of transmasculinity was to escape the male gaze, as some feminists have theorised, why do some transmasculine women seek the (infeasible) sexual approval of gay men? I think it more likely that these women have been 'educated' to fear 'patriarchal' straight men but evaluate gay men positively, which is not a great dating strategy for a straight woman, of course.
Have you considered reaching out to academics working on autism, gender and sexuality to co-design a formal study which would test your hypothesis? I appreciate that a potential difficulty would be finding a research team in the modern academy which is willing to take an objective view on these subjects. As you have 'lived experience' on your side, I'd say it's worth a try.
I’ve sent you a DM :)
Hi Daniel,
I’ve been trying for a long time to find a processor or program that I could do this type of research in. Unfortunately, there’s one in the UK and they only take UK students. If by any chance you become aware of one, I would be really happy to connect with him or her. I’ve been developing an even more robust framework about this subject that I haven’t even shared with the world yet because I’m still researching the extent to which my intuitions can be borne out by pre-existing research. In the autism field, critically, lived experience outpaces formal research. I’m glad you find my hypothesis credible. Thank you for sharing.
In my day job, I'm currently carrying out independent sponsored research for a professional body which has links to an academic research group working in the same area.
That arrangement might be a more viable option for you, because in the current political climate, if you were to sign up as a graduate or postdoctoral researcher with a typical higher education institution, I believe there's a good chance your work would be frustrated by the actions of rival academics or student zealots.
Another benefit is that as a research student, you would normally have to pay the institution for their 'support', whereas a sponsored independent researcher can be paid for their time and expenses. In the latter case, you would still have the option of pursuing further degrees, of course.
I would suggest that you could start by asking Genspect or another suitable organisation to consider creating a formal gender research group, including those members who are already publishing research papers or are working towards that. Such a group may already exist. I believe that type of network could be more supportive to original research like yours than the average college which has a Gender Studies department.
While lived experience is now the dominant paradigm in social science, I think you'll gain more clout with the school of objectivity if you can devise a falsifiable hypothesis (in the meaning used by Karl Popper) and test it in your research. Then you might have a chance of reaching people who consider themselves to be on Team Science.
Thank you for this advice. I’ll consider this!
Thank you so much for sharing your personal experience and the insights that you have gained. I think that it will be an important component in people’s journeys to less distressing and more fulfilling lives.
I sincerely hope so. Thank you for your comment
Thank you so much for writing this essay. I have finally found answers to what has been happening with my daughter and her gender confusion over the last few months. I have hope that with your guidance I will be able to save her. I'm off to read all the rest of your content.
I’m so glad you feel this has been helpful for your understanding of your daughter! Feel free to DM me.
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Maia, this essay is awesome. You have deep insights into your experiences and your ability to be introspective is just amazing.
I found this distinction particularly helpful:
“Code-switching is changing the settings on a device that already has a robust operating system with a toggle option. Masking is writing the operating system from scratch every time you turn it on, while the device is running, overheating from the overload of data, while pretending to everyone around you that it booted up instantly and without an issue.”
I find it extremely relatable when you talk about developing strategies to be liked to the point where people completely miss your struggles. My experience with that was different in nature but the same in the sense that people didn’t know I was struggling because I was likeable and smart. I don’t think most adults are good at reading people past the surface. I’ve come to learn that many people are highly unobservant. It takes a trainwreck to catch people’s attention. You literally have to either be destructive or dying for adults to notice something is wrong, and even then they’ll get it wrong most of the time because they tend to either brush off red flags or reframe them as intentional bad behavior. Anything that looks like opposition to how “society works” will get a child labeled as a problem if they’re the least bit intelligent. Television and movies have programmed people to see only one autistic “type” and if you don’t fit that it’s not going to cross their mind, so everything you do will be seen through a non-autistic lens. A lot of people oppose autism as a possibility as well so there's that.
Humans have a tendency to explain things away with Occam’s Razor… where the simplest explanation is probably the correct answer, but Occam’s Razor can’t account for the nuance of human experience and I see this dynamic at play everywhere. Occam’s Razor fails more than it fits. So many people don’t even want to consider “X” might be the problem. If they can write it off as something simple they will. Medical doctors do this as well with diagnostic and other medical errors and it kills hundreds of thousands of people every year.
Autistic girls are slipping through another crack that is kind of a tangent but related to how easily the signs are missed.
Maybe you already know about this but there’s a growing therapist-led opposition to diagnosing girls with autism, especially young adults. I don’t mean that girls are commonly skipped over by well-meaning therapists missing the signs who would screen for autism if it occurred to them (we’ve known this for a while), but there’s a literal movement of therapists (I don’t know how big) that refuse to diagnose autism even when a client meets the criteria. They won’t send them in for testing. When a client comes to them asking to be tested for autism, the therapist counts that as a sign against autism.
These therapists actively, intentionally, and unapologetically refuse to diagnose girls with autism based on subjective interpretations of their symptoms and the core belief that any female who asks to get tested, believes in masking (and explains how they mask), and can openly demonstrate how they stim is not autistic by default.
These therapists are opposed to the entire current ADHD and autism spectrum criteria. They’re mad that the criteria were expanded to include people who don’t fit the image of the classic nonverbal, hand-flapping autistic kid. They don’t believe in what was formerly ADD and think ADHD is completely bogus. They’re so against the expanded criteria that they refuse to diagnose anyone with autism who does not fit the classic image. They attribute signs of autistic traits to laziness, a bad diet, and mood swings. They also don’t believe in masking. They remain loyal to the original criteria only and they get mad when parents “therapist hop” until they get an autism diagnosis. When someone comes to them with knowledge of autism having done their "homework" that is another strike against them.
And these are gender-critical therapists who also do not support medical transition. So when they get a client who wants to transition, instead of signing off on medicalization or screening them for autism, they’re diagnosing them with Cluster B personality disorders. Mainly borderline personality disorder. They’ve also decided that clients who come in with a Bipolar II diagnosis are actually borderline on the basis that they do not believe in rapid cycling and believe bipolar II is just a polite way of watering down borderline, which in their eyes is the only real diagnosis.
They're doing this to autistic girls...
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When a female client goes to them and pushes hard to be screened for autism, they’re immediately red flagged as borderline. Just asking to be screened makes these therapists flag them as potentially borderline. In addition to the standard autism test (that has to be conducted by someone else, of course, since it’s a specialized test and they don't even believe in it) the therapist will ask their client questions about how they stim and other behaviors, and if their stimming doesn’t fit the therapist’s belief about what counts as valid stimming (classic unconscious flapping and head banging), they also use that information to diagnose them with borderline.
There’s real problem here and it’s all connected. You have to be very careful who you see for your therapist if you think you’re autistic. All that to say the world is dead set against anyone being autistic who doesn’t hand flap and grunt to communicate—even therapists.
Back to your essay!
It really does seem to me that the world men live in is just normal and standard, and it just makes sense. It’s plain, logical, and predictable. Girls tend to add all these extra layers of weirdness to play games and impress people, like you mentioned how your female peers started being sarcastic, the backhanded compliments, social hierarchies based on clothing, all the makeup, etc. That’s not normal. That’s adding layers of complexity to something that is inherently simple. It makes perfect sense to me why autistic girls would gravitate toward that.
I was just explaining to someone that I don’t believe it’s a deficit when autistic people fail to catch social cues since social cues are actually one the most inauthentic, contrived, manipulative aspects of society. It can hurt a person when they need to understand what’s going on, but let’s be clear here, it’s not the autistic person’s problem. They should be awarded medals for putting up with society’s nonsense. People who create these elaborate rituals that force you to go around in circles are the ones creating a problem that autistic people are just trying to navigate to survive. It’s exhausting.
They say boys mature more slowly than girls but I don’t believe that. What passes for "maturity" in girls is anything but. It's that girls learn how to play society's dumb games sooner and boys hold out because it's stupid. They get dragged into adulthood while girls dive head first into the social hierarchy games. Guys hold onto their innocence longer. Their natural way of being in the world. What adults see as immature is really just a prolonged innocence and a more carefree view of life. Simple things entertain boys for quite a long time. They just don’t develop the weird social complexities like most females. Society calls a person's ability to play those complex social games "maturity" and it's really just giving in to the desire to be part of the group and get approval from adults, which is something a lot of autistic people don't give a rip about. Boys also don't care about that until they're forced to care.
When your nervous system is already shot, being around females who want or expect you to join them in their reindeer games is exhausting on top of nonsensical. It sounds like it would be an easy life boat to board.
Regarding your exploration of PDA and how it might contribute to some autistic girls wanting to transition, that makes a LOT of sense.
“If an autistic girl experiences femininity not as a set of difficult social skills she hasn’t yet mastered, but as a category of never-ending demands to sacrifice her autonomy which her nervous system finds fundamentally impossible to comply with: pursuing gender transition becomes nearly indistinguishable from her previous demand-avoidant strategies.”
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That’s an insightful connection. A lot of people who fit the PDA profile will go to extremes in whatever direction is required to distance themselves from the demand. In the absence of internet peer groups that support them, someone who moves toward transition as a PDA response will probably find their way back pretty fast. But having internet peers will just reinforce their direction.
That’s the thing about human nature. Most people don’t understand themselves well enough to even understand why they make the choices they make. You think you’re making decisions based on X, Y, Z, but then years later you realize it was something so different. And anyone who isn’t constantly challenging themselves and their own choices in life will never fully understand themselves. You could look at something five times and if you aren’t ready to see it you won’t see it. Ask people to try on various possibilities including possibilities that counter their current beliefs and most won't. That's why therapy works for those people who can't do it themselves and probably works even better for people who already are introspective. And if the therapist is good at asking the right questions.
“Despite all of my oddities and lack of close friends, I somehow managed to become extremely popular with my peers for reasons that I to this day, do not entirely understand.”
From my perspective it’s probably because you say what you mean and you mean what you say. That's an autistic trait but it's also a valuable way of being that is rare. You’re real. You aren’t playing games with people. That’s not only rare but people want to know they can count on their friends to be honest and transparent. That creates a level of stability and reliability for people. There’s something respectable about people who don’t hide their truth or their views. So many people in this world don’t know what it’s like to have real friends. People hide their true nature and you don’t know how they really feel until years later sometimes. You’re not the type to hold back, if you change your views it will be known, and I'm sure it makes people mad because how dare someone change their position or thoughts (lol) but you aren’t wishy washy about anything.
You’re direct and that probably pisses off a lot of people, but that’s not really your problem.
People recognize these qualities in others when they’ve been starved for authenticity and reliability their whole lives. Also, few people are introspective and understand themselves. When you at least have the capability of looking inward to understand your motivations, you’re highly magnetic. That goes both ways. When you have a habit of analyzing your own life and dismantling your inauthenticities, you attract and repel with equal force. People who lack that ability are repelled because your introspection forces them to consider the potential that maybe they don’t know themselves as well as they could, but they don’t want to look. It's a great example to set.
This is a really great essay and if I remember you said you did 100 hours of research for this and it shows! You’ve lived a highly specific experience and have done the inner work to understand that experience, and there’s no doubt in my mind that sharing it is going to make a difference for others who share a similar path!
Thank you so much, Ethan, for your support of my writing. Your reactions to this piece have really put some things into perspective for me
You are very welcome, I’m glad what I shared can help in some way. You always have great insights!
You are a cute kid and I feel sorry that you had to struggle through all of this. The struggle has probably made you stronger and brought you to a better place.
What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, as they say
This is an incredibly important piece of writing and contribution to our understanding of adolescent transitions and ASD. I have seen several young women like yourself that find a series of masculine signals to adopt to relieve their confusion and anxiety with identity due to autism. Thank you for your insights.
Thank you for this comment. I’ll add, that we can’t forget that adopting a series of masculine signals as a woman is also a way to signal things to other women