Autism and Identity
As autistic people we often struggle with our identities as a whole. Whether this is a case of Who Am I? Why Am I Not Like Other Boys/Girls? Am I Gay/Straight? And even Am I Really Autistic? Am I a Fake Person? What’s Wrong With Me? Who Might I Be? We can really struggle with our sense of self and where we fit in in the world. We can also have comorbid mental health conditions like OCD, ADHD, PDA, Depression, Anxiety… Or we may have been misdiagnosed with other conditions meaning we don’t have our autism recognised. With overlapping mental health conditions we really have the odds stacked against us when it comes to having well defined and accepted identities in society. Through battling so much in life we can often develop eating disorders, self-harming behaviours and substance abuse issues as coping mechanisms.
Everybody can struggle in life and finding your place in the world, and finding your tribe of like minded people you can truly feel connected to. For autistic people, we have extra barriers to face than neurotypicals:
A common condition in autistic people is Alexithymia, which is described as Significant challenges in Recognising, Identifying and Describing one’s own emotions and feelings.
This can make it even harder for us to figure out our identities. If we struggle to understand and articulate to ourselves what we are experiencing, how can we begin to articulate it to others?
A second common condition in autistic people is Interoception which is described as Struggling to Recognise and Identify physical sensations in the body. Like, Is My Stomach Hurting? Do I Need the Toilet? Am I Thirsty? Am I cold? Why Am I Sweating: Am I Aroused or Am I Anxious?
Being autistic already means we often feel alienated from those around us as we have different ways of experiencing the world and different ways of connecting with others that are often less accepted in wider society. We stray from the norm in many ways. We don’t tend to conform to society’s roles. Neurotypical brains and autistic brains are quite different and this is evidenced in how we communicate and act behaviorally. We are already at a disadvantage, then add into it things like alexithymia and interoception and general non-conformity and we are appearing more and more alien at every stage compared to our neurotypical communities.
Autistic people don’t tend to automatically accept stereotypes and rules unless they make sense to us. Rules that say we can’t wear certain clothes because of our sex/gender just don’t feel right to us. Who made this rule? It’s a silly rule and makes no sense. What makes sense is to wear what is comfortable and what we like. You can’t tell us we can’t wear something based on someone else’s opinion about who should wear it. We don’t accept these ‘norms’ because we are not the norm.
During adolescence and puberty, we undergo dramatic changes to our physical bodies, hormones and brain development. At this same time, we are faced with societal changes in our peer groups. We learn about ourselves and others and start to develop understanding about people on a more personal, deeper level. These are confusing times for everyone and can feel like we need to figure out who we are and what categories and labels we fit into. This is where we start to figure out things like our sexuality, our personality, our style, our beliefs and our passions. This is where neurotypical people often advance quicker than us and we are suddenly at the most dramatic change in our lives yet left behind feeling like an unknown entity. We no longer fit in, we haven’t figured out who we are yet and we often don’t have the ability to articulate or describe what we are going through, whereas those around us seem to have it all under control and are free to explore with new identities.
We learn that certain behaviour styles and dress styles must mean you fit into particular categories and labels. If you are female and dress like a boy and like sports, you must be a lesbian for example. If you are a feminine boy and like to play house you must be gay for example. This is pretty standard and makes sense for neurotypical style thinking where certain ways of deviating from the norm generally results in certain labels. But what if you’re autistic? Autistics don’t fit that norm in the first place. And deviating from the norm and not conforming to it is a typical autism characteristic. We are not neurotypicals expressing ourselves in ways that differentiate from the norm. We are just expressing autism itself. Non conformity is a very autistic thing. We may also be gay, lesbian, bi, trans, straight, heterosexual, asexual etc. But the non conforming to gender stereotypes is just simply autism expression. Then sexuality is extra and separate from. Not conforming to stereotypes of how a girl or boy should behave doesn’t make us gay etc. Autism makes us not conform to these rules and standards, not our sexuality.
Where does autism expression end and gender expression begin? When is it an overlap? When are they separate?
Questions I often ponder:
If I wasn’t autistic would I still be asexual/non-sexual?
If I could understand the sensations in my body and understand the causes would I still be asexual? Or would I be straight/gay/bi?
If I felt more connected to my peers growing up and knew I was autistic at the time so they were more understanding of me (I’m late diagnosed) could I have found myself down a different path?
Did I feel rushed to figure out my sexuality and identity just like everybody else or were neurotypicals ready and able before me? Did this imbalance affect my exploration?
Did societies need to categorise and develop a sense of self and label it affect my ability to explore and discover at my own autistic pace?
Did my experience of having sexual encounters even though I felt asexual stop me from developing a truer sense of what I am because I suffered from the sexual experiences because I wasn’t ready for them yet, or because I really am asexual? If I’d had no sexual experiences until my 20’s would I still turn out asexual?
If I’d had an autism diagnosis and counselling to help me understand myself, who would I be now? At what points in my development of self would the changes, if any, have come?
Even at age 36 I still question my identity and many autistic people around me say the same. Back in my teens I was a regular in the old style chat rooms when the internet first came out, you’d find me desperately asking questions and never feeling I got the answers I was looking for. What’s Wrong With Me? Why Am I Different? Everyone Says I Must Be A Lesbian But I Don’t Think I Am! I still constantly ask myself these questions and the only thing that’s ever helped me was finally at age 36 getting diagnosed autistic. This is by far the most important and beneficial identity I have got. It is a category I feel truly inside of. It is a label I stick on my forehead in capital letters. I mean, I wish I wasn’t autistic but I cannot change it. At least I know the most fundamental thing about myself now and can work from there.
Are you struggling with identity issues and want to read more/talk about it? Join our diverse community Facebook group below !
Join the community and discuss topics relating to autism and identity. Ask questions, give answers, give feedback.
I’ve created the Facebook group (link below) to reach a wider audience in the autism community who are struggling with identity issues and might be finding themselves in a vacuum and struggling to find safe spaces to ask questions and talk to people about identity issues without having things they say or think policed and enforced. If anyone is interested in joining the group please read the description as it’s inclusive to everyone no matter if we disagree. It is fully inclusive and diverse in experience. It’s to help aid people having open minded discussions and being able to ask difficult but important questions relating to our identities in a safe way without judgement. It may be triggering for some people. It is a balanced and diverse group so you may come up against opposing views as well as views you align with. Treat it as a learning resource and a safe space to aid development of the mind and self, bouncing ideas off each other and being open to a world of experience where people come together and share.
Join the group below and Share insights and personal stories of how you figured out your identity or how you’re still exploring. Do you feel labels are helpful or a hindrance? Has your understanding of your identity changed since receiving an autism diagnosis? Does your identity make sense now you’ve found out you’re autistic? Are you neurotypical but feel that some of this has resonated with you? Are you confused as hell and just want to see what other people are saying?
https://www.facebook.com/groups/681835447213475
Thanks for reading!
For a related read on autism and gender clinics follow the link below:
https://auntieautism.wordpress.com/2024/01/18/gender-critical-autism/