Autism and gender

Among the autistic people I talk to, there seems to be a general shared disdain for unspoken gender roles, just like any social rules that we struggle and fail to notice, understand, and live up to.

I'm assigned as female, gender-uncaring (but fine if referred to as a woman), bi-/pansexual, greyromantic, and not masculine or feminine. (As an aside, I think this is the first time I've typed all that out!) An autistic person, like anyone who lives in a place in which they are free to be who they are, can be any combination of things in these categories. For example, someone can be:

- intersex, raised as a man, gay, aromantic, and moderately masculine; or
- assigned as female, nonbinary, asexual, heteroromantic, and somewhat feminine; or
- assigned as male, a cis man, heterosexual, heteroromantic, and very masculine

or anything else. I don't find any of these categories to be simple, eternal, or even on a linear spectrum. Sure, that makes identity confusing, but chaos is fun.

There can be, however, a lot of comfort in clear, explicit gender roles for autistic people - ways in which we can feel secure in our own identities, and control how other people see us. It really just comes down to personal preference.

A term that appears sometimes is "autigender" to describe an autistic person's relationship to our gender identity. What autigender is not is the idea that autism is your gender, or that identifying as autigender means you must be trans, or that identifying as autigender means you are an obnoxious and self-obsessed person. (Seeing virulent arguments about these points is why I have deleted most of my social media accounts.)

Autigender seems to refer to a few distinct ideas:

- That autism, and the lack of awareness and adherence to social rules, leads to confusion about gender identity

- That gender is undefinable and transient, and it is best to identify gender as someone's personal experience of it, and in autistic people, autism is a part of that experience

- That an autistic person can feel secure in their gender identity (or agender identity), but that being autistic will always influence how they see their gender

There does seem to be an agreement that there is no "typical autistic gender experience". I also believe that autistic people experience gender in myriad ways, and that labels - while helpful for individuals and smaller communities among autistic people - are not to be applied to autistic people in general.

The double rainbow

Autistic people who also experience gender, sexuality, and romanticism in different ways can be said to "fall under the double rainbow", referring to the common symbolism of a rainbow for both autistic and LGBTQIA+ (here, referred to as queer) people. Autistic people can have specific difficulties with the ambiguous and ever-changing labels of gender, sexuality, and romanticism - or we can be drawn to the labels, definitions, lists, and people who identify as queer in some way. Again, it depends on personal preference, and it is impossible to generalize for all autistic people.

My identifications as being autistic and queer have been two separate, but parallel, factors in my life. The differences in my own life have been related to "coming out", a process that both late-diagnosed autistic and queer people can do with their families, friends, employers, and other people and communities.

Being late-diagnosed autistic, I have had to "come out" to people who knew me intimately before and after my diagnosis. For me, these have been conversations, sometimes over food; and most so far have gone more or less alright. I remember people being mildly surprised, saying they had suspected something was "going on", though they didn't know it was autism. They sometimes have said things like, "I didn't think you were autistic, because you seem to be empathetic..." but they allowed me to correct and clarify these things. They let me talk about what autism is for me, and how different it can look in different people. They let me talk about how much I was struggling to understand what I discovered were "basic" social conventions. They accepted that I am still a person, even if I am also an autistic person. And they let me know that they were here for me, both for emotional and practical concerns. Positive coming-out experiences like these make me feel like I've surrounded myself with good people.

I have had a few disastrous autistic comings-out as well, but I'm not inclined to discuss them in public. Even if I still quite resent how I was treated, I'm trying not to hold it against any individual, since their biases and poor treatment probably came from their ignorance.

As for being bi-/pansexual; I never felt like I had to come out. My serious, public relationships so far have been hetero, more or less coincidentally; though it is a small sample size (I don't exactly get around!). Also, I've not felt that my sexuality is relevant to anyone but my current partner and close friends. Finally, it has been obvious to my partner and close friends that I am not strictly hetero; so obvious that none of us felt like I could come out at all, since I was already out. I'm lucky to live in a place and time in which I can be casual and open about sexuality.

By greyromantic, I mean that I don't seem to feel romance as intensely, as enjoyably, or as often as other people, though I don't have a way of definitively confirming this. My perceived emotional blunting could be from alexithymia, depression, personality, or a misconception of what romance is. In any case, my partner knows, understands, and accepts this.

I have not discussed my gender extensively with anyone. I feel that I don't care much about my gender or which pronouns people use. I know what I'm not, but not what I am, and I don't really mind if I never sort out the ambiguity. People whose gender is very important to them - whether they're cis or queer - are interesting to me.

Both my autistic coming out experiences, and my queer coming out non-experiences, have been generally very fortunate, and I understand that many people have a much more difficult time when coming out. Being both autistic and queer can make life very complicated.

"Gendered autism"

I put "female autism" in quotes because I don't support that theory. (Here, I'm defining "female autism" as the idea that people assigned female at birth have a different "type" of autism as a rule.) Nor do I support the theory that autism is caused by an "extreme male brain" that prioritizes systematizing more than empathy.

In my experience, I don't find empathy particularly female or systematizing particularly male - there may or may not be some evolutionary theory about hunting and gathering that certain theorists can claim explains a perceived difference in empathy and systematizing between males and females. More studies will have to be done in order to answer the question of whether the evidence for "extreme male brain" theory is, in fact, better explained by scientific research's general bias towards college-educated people in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), a category that, if autistic, is usually best described as high-functioning, systematizing, and frequently male.

Gender socialization

Our collective understanding of gender is becoming more nuanced and complicated. In a parallel, our understanding of the autism spectrum is constantly changing and becoming more inclusive, I hope. I don't find it useful to think of either them as clear and linear issues.

How gender affects autism seems to be through socialization. This depends on, among other factors, ethnicity, religion, socioeconomic status, and parental whim. In this regard, I can only really speak from my own perspective.

I was socialized as a white (here, meaning I was surrounded by European-origin white Americans, despite being adopted from China), Catholic female. I went to a quite restrictive all-girls' school, where gender binary (and heterosexual normativity) were explicit and hard rules. I was seen as more of a "young lady" than a girl. I crossed my legs when I sat; fidgeting was not permitted. I learned how to set the dinner table (forks on the left). I learned how to support my future husband. I learned how to raise my future children. If I had problems, I was told to trust a priest. If I had to cry, I could take it to the bathroom. I was taught to thank God for both the blessings and the hardships in my life.

I chafed against the restrictions, like any preteen, and quickly outgrew the conservatism and religious beliefs by high school. I think the explicit rules of this type of religiosity and femininity could have been an anchor for my autistic self as my body, friendships, and family relationships all changed. I could have had routines and regularity. I had the option to feel secure in my female place in society. But I rejected the feminine role.

I studied gender norms, though, and I borrowed what I liked and needed from the femininity and masculinity around me. From femininity, I borrowed scripts. Feminine scripts have helped me endure social scenarios that I do not otherwise understand. For social interactions, I could call upon the words and smiles lent to me by my mother, the nuns who taught me, and the housewives from sitcoms and commericals. These are the niceties that communicate noverbally that I will be submissive and amenable - I understand that now, but it felt like guesswork when I was younger. I only noticed that if I modulated my voice, and copied what people called "cheery", "feminine", and "cute", people stopped looking at me weirdly.

From what I saw in feminine people, I also borrowed signs of empathy. Autistic people often feel empathy (though some don't); we just don't often recognize it all the time or show it in ways that make sense to allistic people. But I was called inhuman, cold, and robotic enough to be able to tell that something was wrong. I borrowed empathy language - phrases like "oh my god, that's terrible. I am so sorry." I borrowed plenty of facial expressions and intonations from Ru Paul's Drag Race - female impersonators. (I related to the idea of a non-woman performing as a woman. I borrowed the ways I do makeup from Drag Race, too.)

Anything I did that I thought of as feminine felt fake. I felt embarrassed that I had to pretend to be someone I was supposed to genuinely be.

I borrowed plenty from masculinity as I observed it, too. These are mostly peer-to-peer exchange methods that I discovered worked as social lubrication in ways slightly more intuitively than what I saw the girls doing. A lower, matter-of-fact voice, a bit of pretend toughness, and a competitive streak are what come to mind - all traits I may have naturally. My sense of humor is definitely still like that of the noisy boys' table in the cafeteria at lunch. It felt great to have a shared language with anyone, and when I learned the boys' social language in high school, they took me in.

I felt far more comfortable with them than with girls or mixed tables. Maybe it was my bad luck, but the girls I grew up with were especially socially challenging. It didn't help that a lot of them were quite pretty, and I was very self-conscious about attraction to girls back then.

I didn't have any queer authorities growing up, and I hadn't met many openly queer peers until college. Much of what I learned about queerness has been through college and the internet. I call myself a person, a woman for convenience's sake, and I think that's pretty accurate and comfortable to me. Knowing how other people see me requires an understanding of gender roles - regardless of whether I like it or am aware of it, many people consider me feminine. And femininity, for each person and for certain groups of people, is different.

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