Gender Critical Autistic Voices - Jess Thida Interview

Jess Thida

USA

35-44

Female

Diagnosed autistic

Androgynous lesbian, graduate education, professionally diagnosed with Level 1 autism in my 30s

What was your childhood and puberty like as an autistic person? Do you relate to today’s youth’s challenges or gender issues? If you grew up in today’s age, how do you think that would affect you and your sense of self? Do you think it’s easier or harder to be a child or adolescent in society today?

I grew up in a rural Midwestern (US) culture that was very Christian and patriarchal. Sports were highly valued among children and adults- only men's sports, of course. As a kid I internalized a kind of contempt for women and girls, but largely exempted myself from this contempt, thinking I was an exception and taking pride in challenging others' low expectations. I was very active, bold, and clever and prided myself in being first in virtually all pursuits - athletic, academic, artistic. But then puberty came along and disrupted this development. It was extremely difficult- I'm not sure how much autism factored into it as much as presenting a challenge to my own ""pre-queer"" sense-of-self. I was an athletic kid; a tomboy, and until that point I took pride in being able to keep up with the boys. Puberty's effects suddenly rocketed the boys head, athletically, while I started developing fat, and in all of the wrong places and found myself in an expanding, widening body, no longer being able to meaningfully compete. I never thought of myself as a boy, but I had always taken a kind of smug satisfaction in knowing that I could beat them at their own games. But then, with the onset of puberty, embodying a meaningful athletic opponent was suddenly no longer attainable and it challenged my self-worth; I felt this sudden and unexpected overwhelming cloud of inferiority. And other changes, like having a more shapely body and developing breasts, was starting to draw attention from men and boys I didn't want or understand- it felt repulsive. I also developed bad acne and had a very difficult time adjusting to menstruation, so I became miserable most of the time and tried to hide my changing body. I resisted wearing a bra for as long as possible - there was a psychological block as well as probably autistic-related sensory discomfort - and eventually wore only tight sports bras that flattened my chest as much as possible. Once bold and confident, I developed a hunched posture to try to hide my breasts and prevent them from swinging or jiggling with movement. I stopped wearing white tops altogether because I observed in other girls that bra straps were particularly visible under white shirts and I didn't want others to know that I was one of these pitiful creatures reduced to holding in her flabby skin with a bra. Around the same time I also started asking people to refer to me by the shortened, gender-neutral form of my feminine given name. I didn't want to be a boy, I wanted to be a neutral, asexual being who could float through society unnoticed. By 13 or so I was also beginning to feel the initial stirrings of same-sex attraction and a recognition that there were no equivalent feelings for boys - homosexuality WAS in the collective consciousness at the time, highly stigmatized and strictly forbidden in this small, religious community, and something I repressed at first but eventually realized could not be ignored. Yet I was very ashamed and frightened about the social and celestial consequences of coming out and remained determined, at least in the early years, to live asexually and take this big secret to my grave. Once open and curious, brash and confident, it was a dramatic change in personality from the child I had once been.

In some ways, my sexual awakening as a lesbian was much more difficult than I think many American children experience today because homosexuality and gender-nonconformity were so much more stigmatized then. Sometimes I get the impression that young people try on queer identities like fashion, discarding them when it's no longer fun or rewarding, whereas in my generation, where I grew up, no one who wasn't absolutely sure would have made it through that crucible of shame and fear. In other ways, I think it's more difficult to come of age today because there are fewer boundaries against which to test and compare oneself. I am actually very grateful that I came of age at a time before trans and non-binary identities were of the common parlance, because I'm pretty sure I would have adopted such an identity immediately and it would have been an identity that would have been very hard to extricate myself from later on. I have enough problems in my life- hedging my sense of self-worth on how others perceive my gender seems like an exhausting mental proposition to take on.

Why do you think autistic people may struggle with identity issues, like Gender?

The most likely explanation I'm aware of is that many female autistics tend to be "male-brained" and find it easier to identify with the countenance of men. I also think struggling with gender has become a red flag for mental health concerns, which a lot of autistics fall into just in struggle with the isolation and expectations of a world not designed for us.

Do you FEEL like a man/woman? Is being male or female a ‘feeling’?

Sometimes...it's highly contextually dependent. There is no situation in which I feel less "female," for example, than among a group of prototypical straight women; I feel like a completely different species. Other times I feel a kind of primal affiliation with my sex in circumstances of femicide or other female gender-based injustice. Most of the time, at home by myself, I'd say I feel like a rather neutral entity- I identify and empathize with both men and women and do not feel especially constrained by my sex. But how I feel about myself is less important, I believe, than the biological reality that I live in.

Do you think searching for answers about yourself, and finding out you are autistic, is similar to the trans experience? What age were you when you felt you had developed mentally and emotionally?

I think there are similarities in the sense of discovering a kind of ""truth"" about oneself. Where the experience diverges, though, is that I believe autism is a developmental disorder which can only be accurately diagnosed by a professional outside entity - a psychologist or (someday?) a genetic test - whereas ""transgender"" is an identity people self-select into. I do not believe in the validity of self-selection into autism.

At 37 I still feel like I'm developing mentally and emotionally.

Why do you think the cohort of patients in Gender Clinics has changed so dramatically in recent years and is now mostly young females? And many of them presenting with Autistic Traits?

Until gender variance gained wider mainstream awareness and acceptance, I think gender variant children, like same-sex attracted ones in my own experience, only made it through this crucible of ignorance and stigma by being really persistent in their cross-sex identification. Transgenderism used to be defined as persistent cross-sex identification from an early age - like, 3 or 4 - and that applied definition was and still is most prevalent among biological boys. I'm inclined to believe in the theory of social contagion, a form of mental illness, in a very different peer-driven social context that rewards uniqueness and victimhood, to explain delayed-onset cross-sex identification among primarily biological girls. We have lots of data showing that the teens are not doing well with their mental health, overall, and I think this phenomenon is largely one manifestation of that illness.

How did you become Gender Critical? How have you been affected by Gender Ideology? Did something specific cause you to think differently about this topic? How have your beliefs changed? Is Gender Critical Transphobic?

Becoming gender critical was a gradual process. I first encountered gender ideology in the early 00s in a progressive liberal arts college setting in my coursework as well as when the first self-identifying non-binary person asked me to use they/them pronouns. I still identified as an evangelical Christian at the time and I found the philosophical underpinnings of Queer Theory to be challenging and threatening to the worldview I identified with at the time; I had always had aspirations of assimilation for myself, not revolution, not deconstruction. I campaigned heavily for same-sex marriage, which was in line with my worldview, because I wanted to be (and be seen) as a normal Christian woman whose spouse just happened to be of the same sex- I wanted to wait for marriage until having sex, I wanted lifelong commitment, I wanted children, I wanted to show up with my family in church each Sunday, the white picket fence, and I kept my appearance feminine enough to pass as straight. Most of my energy was spent trying to convince Christians - and later mainstream society - how ""normal"" I was. ""Queer"" people, on the other hand, with their visible markers of non-conformity, often derided marriage as a heterosexual, patriarchal institution, celebrated sexual liberation and resisted the rigid sexual orientation labels I had fought so hard to claim for myself. I felt like an outsider both in the evangelical Christian community whose values I had internalized, as well as the queer community I supposedly belonged to.

Eventually the isolation and pushback from the evangelical community became too intense relative to an immutable sexual orientation, and I finally left Christianity my senior year of college. This began a new period of exploration of secular, queer values I had so far largely shunned, including a tentative embrace of gender critical ideology, though it was more nascent then (still 00s). I readily accepted - and still do - the idea that sex and gender are different constructs, that gender non-conformity is okay, and that sexual exploration outside of the bounds of marriage can be a good thing, that I don't care who I pee next to as long as I get my own stall. Trans people were largely marginalized even within the gay community (we called it the ""gay community"" then), and I felt pity for them; stood up for their right to self-determination and to be included. I endorsed the idea that gender could be opted into, and repeated the phrase ""trans women are women!"" (while secretly deriding my own hypocrisy that, as a lesbian, I wasn't attracted to trans women at all). When pronouns came onto the scene I thought it was harmless inclusivity and I gladly adopted the practice - still rare at that time - of introducing myself and my preferred pronouns and doing my best to adopt others' non intuitive pronouns into my lexicon.

I think this began to change somewhere around the late 2010s when trans people started becoming the focal point of queer activism and loudly demanding the erasure of any meaningful difference between the sexes which, as a lesbian, was hard for me to endorse. Trans people - as well as opportunistic cis men - of all identities began showing up in my W4W dating app searches with no way to filter them out; app developers would regularly send out messages affirming ""trans women are women"" (and trans men and non-binary people, despite disidentifying with womanhood, were inexplicably welcome here too) and there was nothing one could do about it. Trans women began joining women's sports teams, there was a sudden uptick in biological girls identifying with delayed-onset trans identities, and events that would most accurately be called ""transphobic"" were now being called ""anti-LGBTQ;"" throwing me in with a hodge-podge of identities and beliefs whose struggles were not mine. As I masculinized my appearance over the years, well-intentioned people began sweeping me up into this by asking me how I ""identified"" or ""they'ing"" me unasked, and rather than feeling ""seen,"" I began feeling pushed out of my right to womanhood. Mainstream backlash against these changes ensued, as part of the alphabet community, I was thrown into the mix, I began to grow resentful. Though I no longer identified with Christianity, I still ultimately supported an assimilationist agenda; I didn't want rainbows and pride parades and recognition everywhere I went - I just wanted to be normal, get married, live a quiet life with equal rights, go about my business.

Have you been through gender distress and are now gender critical? Have you ever had identity related distress, gender or otherwise? Have you ever been diagnosed/misdiagnosed with Gender Dysphoria, or any other condition?

Around my mid-20s I started developing an intense interest in top surgery without really understanding where it came from, other than acknowledging that I had always hated my breasts. Within a year I would go on to have top surgery, including nipple and areola removal, in Thailand (where they didn't gatekeep) in 2014. I had and have no interest in male hormones or further surgeries. For a short period before and after I considered adopting a non-binary identity - this was still a figment of the fringes of the internet at the time - but ultimately decided against it; the rest of my short and curvy body was undeniably female, I identified with womanhood and, in retrospect, I recognize what a burden it would have been to take on the task of social transition and I'm grateful I didn't.

It's been a decade since I made the decision to have top surgery and while it's led to some awkward encounters, I have absolutely no regrets; not having breasts (or nipples) has improved my quality of life immensely. When people ask now (and honestly, most don't even notice unless I'm shirtless in public), I tell them I'm a woman who never liked having breasts and loves her surgically-created topfreedom, which are both true. I wish that women didn't have to remove their breasts to enjoy topfreedom, but this is unfortunately the social paradigm we live in. I admire the brave women who defy convention and bare their breasts in public anyway, often at great social and legal risk to themselves.

Have you lost friends, family, or a sense of community, since being critical of gender narratives? How have people around you reacted to you being Gender Critical? Is GC welcome or tolerated in Autism Spaces? How do you think this affects you, or people in the spaces?

I definitely feel alienated from the mainstream alphabet community for my gender critical stance, including trying to date other cis women who, even though it's not relevant to our relationship, find my position ideologically off-putting. There's virtually no room for disagreement on this issue within the community in the United States, I'm guessing because we feel under pressure to unite from right-wing attacks. The "autism community" is generally a subcommunity of left-wing progressive identity politics, gatekeepers of language and ideologies, and generally tends to be no more open-minded, in my experience.

Do you struggle to find quality information on Autism and Gender that is not ideological?

I struggle to find quality, evidence-based information in most advocacy organizations -- autism just one among them -- because the purpose of their existence is persuasion, not explanation. Most qualitative research performed on autistic populations does not include (for self-evident reasons) lower-functioning individuals whose needs are very, very different from those of us operating at Level 1, yet conclusions derived from Level 1 samples are applied to "autistics" more broadly. Furthermore, the validity of this research is severely compromised when it includes self-diagnosed individuals in its data set, which unfortunately seems to be more common than not.

Do you think Gender Affirming Care is another form of Eugenics?

I think linking either genetic autism research or gender-affirming care to the eugenics movement is hyperbolic fear-mongering. I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt that their intentions are noble, perhaps to my detriment.

Do you think the Autism Organisations need to acknowledge and take on board The Cass Report?

Since the Cass Report does not directly implicate autism, I don't think there's any obligation for autism organizations to incorporate it in policy or discussion.

How important is an Autism diagnosis, and does it stop being important if someone is questioning their gender?

I believe adults have the right to self-determination; to identify however they wish, and live life in accordance with what they think will make them happy (but not to demand that others perceive them the same way they perceive themselves) without medical or psychological gatekeeping. Furthermore, I believe gender dysphoria and autism can co-exist.

If Transitioners find out they are autistic later down the line after transition, can/should the gender clinics be held accountable?

I don't believe medical transition procedures should be available to minors. Detransitioning adults who were medically treated as minors can and should hold gender clinics accountable in order to stop this practice.

But gender clinics should not be held responsible for regretful decisions made by competent adults to alter their bodies. Unless we have an intellectual disability, autistic adults are competent adults.

What do you think the effects of Gender Affirming Care are on people questioning their gender/distress?

I'm glad gender-affirming care exists as an option in the toolkit for treating individuals with gender dysphoria. But it should not be the only option - clinicians should be trained to recognize and set aside their own biases and approach each individual on a case-by-case basis with an open mind.

Considering what we know about Autistic Masking, is that taken into account when dealing with Gender Identities?

I think gender, distinct from sex, (does exist and) is essentially a performative act, a mask, for anyone, not just autistics. It's part of what irritates me about the movement to erase or prioritize gender over sex; it's a prioritization of performance over reality.

What do you think the future of autism politics looks like if you consider and compare “Self Diagnosis of Autism is Valid” & “Self Declaration/ID of Gender Identity”?

I think autism, like psychiatric diagnoses, has always had a validity problem because it's diagnosed based on behavioral expression or self-report alone; there are no identifiable biomarkers that would definitively identify or disidentify someone as such. Given this limitation, the best approach we have is differential evaluation by professionals whose clinical experience lends authority to accurate identification. Allowance of self-identification further degrades the confidence of the validity of the category and muddies research on autism when data from self-diagnosed individuals is included.

Did you receive autism-specific gender advice?

I have never received autism-specific gender advice, other than, while working with my psychologist on crafting a desirable online dating profile, encountering the tension inherent to the autistic drive to wanting to represent myself with transparency and accuracy while balancing the neurotypical world's expectation that I only share the most positive - on their terms - qualities about myself.

What information do you think Autistic people, who are caught up in Gender Ideology, need to help them see out of the ideological thinking?

I think gender critics should approach the push against gender ideology from a viewpoint of control. As a gay person, my aspirations have always ended with legal equality and safety, but my happiness is not contingent upon other people's affirmations; you can believe same-sex marriage is morally wrong, for example, and and that's fine; I do not begrudge you your judgments as long as it does not interfere with my right to marry. (""If you don't like same-sex marriage, don't marry the same sex."") Or if you're going to refer to my spouse as a ""friend"" or ""companion"" or other cutesy euphemism because in your value system, two women can't ever get married, that's hurtful to me, but necessarily tolerable.

Likewise, I think transgender adults should have similar protections - protections to identify and express themselves however they would like, freedom to self-fund medical transition procedures, protection from arbitrary discrimination in situations like housing or employment.

But the advocacy movement does not stop there, it demands control over other people's thoughts and perceptions by demanding we change how we think about them, perceive their sex and refer to them; elevating their self-identification over biological reality and pretend there's no meaningful difference between someone who is cis and trans. It demands that trans-identifying people, particularly men, who are, on average, bigger and stronger than women are, have unquestioned access to female-only spaces if they self-identify as such, and it's demanding fealty to the drive to socially affirm and even medically transition minors, convincing us that affirming delusional thinking and supporting irreversible medical procedures are the best and only option for treating children in poor mental health, sometimes in blatant disregard for evidence to the contrary. Someone who disagrees with any one or more of the movements in this paragraph is ""transphobic."" And not just transphobic, ""anti-LGBTQ,"" since LGBs are now indistinguishable as a category from trans people in common alphabet discourse. This is a form of coercion; of thought control.

What information do you think Autistic people, who are caught up in Gender Ideology, need to help them see out of the ideological thinking?

I hold contrarian opinions in multiple areas of identity politics, not just gender critical ones, and so no, I generally don't feel safe in "safe spaces," which are designed to filter out people with divergent opinions. I feel safest in spaces that prioritize the free and open flow of ideas, where differing views are expressed with sensitivity and nuance, speakers are given the benefit of the doubt of good intention, and rules of respect and decorum are upheld.

Do you attend Pride Events?

I generally don't attend Pride events because I don't feel a sense of solidarity with people who feel the need to announce their gender and sexual proclivities to the world; I would rather be treated like I'm normal than special. Normal people don't get parades, don't dress in sexualized outfits in public, don't demand recognition from others in order to feel good about themselves.

Do you think gender ideology frees people from gendered stereotypes or reinforces them?

I think gender ideology affirms delusional thinking and reinforces sex stereotypes by presenting male and female as categories people can opt into by adopting a certain appearance, pronoun or set of behaviors. In contrast, I believe sex is a fixed biological characteristic - that's the boundary of reality - but within that category is a whole spectrum of expressions; men can be feminine, women can be masculine- you can be you. You can identify as whatever you want to identify. But you still are what you are.

As a masculine woman, I find more and more (well-intentioned) people trying to deny me my womanhood in favor of some made-up category, and it feels like gaslighting.

Have you always been interested in Women's Matters or Feminism?

I've always been interested in people; which factors unite us in common humanity and which create conflict. I'm interested in different cultures, movements, ideologies, but generally always looking for the common denominator between them.

If we are opening up single sex spaces, could we be causing more opportunities for women and children to feel fearful and potentially call the police?

With some exceptions - like prisons or contact sports - I think segregating the sexes generates more social harm than good by creating allure around the unknown. I'm not a radical feminist because I don't think that in an educated, democratic, high-resource society we need to protect women, as a class, from men nor seek any sort of reparations or quotas in the interest of sexist laws that preceded our births or due to current (usually self-selected) lopsided gender representation in certain sectors of society. This is an unpopular opinion, but I believe the onus is on the frightened individual, even a formerly victimized one, to manage their fear and not project it onto innocent individuals who happen to belong to the same class as their abuser. And it is the responsibility of those with more power to abuse to develop the restraint and self-discipline not to abuse it. To create different rules for different classes of people not only denies their individuality, it creates group-based resentments that fester into tribal wars, and that includes relationships between the sexes.

Do you think Trans is a real thing, that Gender exists, or that it is Psychological or Mental Health Condition/Disorder or a Trauma Response? Or something else?

I think gender exists as a construct of the mind - real to the individual, but not empirically definable and thus not entitled to recognition by outside entities.

I think gender dysphoria is a mental health condition that is real and that some people obtain relief by living as a member of the opposite sex, as a person with no gender, or some fluid mix of the above, and that should be allowed and encouraged for adults to navigate their own journeys without demanding particular accommodations from anyone else (though others are welcome to affirm it if they also believe it). The choice to not transition as an adult with gender dysphoria should also be recognized and honored.

I also acknowledge that there are also a very small minority of trans-identifying men who are bad actors; who claim gender dysphoria in order to access spaces for vulnerable women. Laws around trans and cis integration should keep these actors in mind but not let them define an entire population.

Does your Sexual Orientation play into your past/present feelings towards Gender?

Was any of your gender distress related to your Sexual Orientation?

The painful experience of coming to terms with my own sexual orientation in a homophobic environment while I was growing up very much affects my relationship to the fluid orientations and identities usually expressed by the queer movement today. ""Lesbian"" was a hardwon label for me; as much as I tried to fight and deny it in the early years, I'm exclusively romantically and sexually attracted to women with no interest in repressing that desire and that hasn't changed in the 23 years of conscious, post-pubertal existence. This was a revelation which took many years to accept, first within myself, with my understanding of God, and then among my family and conservative community members and no man in a dress - like no preacher behind the pulpit - is going to change that, no matter how he identifies.

The queer movement insists we are all fluid - that queerness is simply a gender- and sexually liberated state-of-mind. Some Christian conservatives insist that sexual orientation doesn't exist- there is no identity, just behavior; we are fallen heterosexuals led to sin. Both would like to erase the categorical labels I fought so hard with myself and others to claim.

Do you worry about current or future relationships due to your Transition or Detransition?

Being a cis woman post top-surgery presents some challenges in the lesbian/bi dating arena. Most women like other women with breasts - myself included - and so figuring out when to disclose and how is often tricky, especially given my non-affinity with queer culture.

Do you think the Autism Spaces are ideological about gender and that is having an effect on people in the groups?

I think gender critical ideology has taken over places of progressive ideology in general, not just autism spaces. The autism movement has its roots in the Disability Rights movement, which is also firmly rooted in liberationist identity politics. I try to avoid groups like these because I know I will invariably clash with members who disagree with some of my basic beliefs of common humanity that form my liberal humanist worldview.

Are you concerned for Trans people who are not part of the ideology being tarnished by the movement? Do you think Trans Rights Activists (TRAs) speak for all trans people?

Yes, there are (a minority, it seems) of trans people who share the same concerns and limitations to the trans advocacy movement that I do and I do feel concern for them because they are caught in heavy cultural crossfire. It is frustrating for me as a lesbian to be grouped together with other "LGBTIQA" people as a single entity- to be trans yet unsupportive of, say, child medical transition or partial transition is a whole other level of within-group conflict. It must be very alienating and very lonely.

Were you/are you into Cosplay, Anime or Conventions etc? And what was your experience in these spaces?

No. I'm interested in living in reality.

Do you think comedy is important when dealing with sensitive/hot topics like gender?

It's hard to find a comedian who addresses sensitive identity topics and is also funny. I like Dave Chappelle and Ashley Gavin.

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