Gender Critical Autistic Voices - Kay Interview
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Kay
USA
35-44 yrs
Female
ADHD, autism runs in family. Younger sister is high functioning like me and younger brother is severe/low-functioning
Suspected/Self diagnosed autistic
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?
When very young I was prone to meltdowns. When I got older I was very childish/arrested development compared to peers in high school. I spent a lot of time alone and mostly friendless. While I was outcasted I saw that as more of a failure of other people, not of myself. Also other people annoy me/I am highly introverted so the opinions of others did not carry as much weight. I do not relate to modern youth gender issues, I have never thought of myself as “too abnormal to be female”. I do believe they have a lot of peer pressure and messaging that warps their self-image. I don’t know what it’s like to have enough friends to feel peer pressured by them and online social media did not exist until I was in college, so it’s possible that in different circumstances I would have been susceptible.
Why do you think autistic people may struggle with identity issues, like Gender?
It’s a more reliable way to fit in and try to make sense of why they can’t navigate pointless unspoken social norms as women. It’s being force fed to autistic kids via the internet, which is their major source of social interaction
Do you think being undiagnosed autistic can lead people into searching for answers about themselves, and potentially stumbling into the wrong place for an answer? Growing up autistic and feeling different - how do you think this plays into believing you are trans?
Yes. I was always stubbornly myself and didn’t care what other people think, but if everyone on the planet told me that meant I had a “male personality” the gaslighting might make me start to wonder. I was lucky to have parents who were not obsessed with gender roles and were fine with a girl who didn’t want to wear makeup and be a social butterfly. I am sure autistic kids with parents who are less tolerant of deviations from the norm grow up believing they are deficient and are desperate for an answer to why they were “unworthy” of love and acceptance. Trans ideology is an easy sell to those people.
Do you FEEL like a man/woman? Is being male or female a ‘feeling’? Does being autistic affect how you feel about yourself or how others perceive you?
No. The only “female feelings” I experience are from my female body (periods, etc). I’m not a man in a woman’s body. If I was born a woman and born with this brain and personality then it’s a woman’s brain and personality that I possess. Duh. It’s really simple and logical to me, I think people have to be groomed and brainwashed to NOT think that way by default. I never had much respect for the nonsensical, convoluted ways many neurotypical people think and gender roles are one example of the stupid things they come up with. Trans ideology is just an obsession with gender roles taken to a criminally insane level.
Do you think searching for answers about yourself, and finding out you are autistic, is similar to the trans experience? Do you feel a kinship to trans experiences? What is the difference with our experiences? What age were you when you felt you had developed mentally and emotionally?
After age 25 I felt like who I was on the inside/mentally became more concrete. No kinship to the trans experience in any way that I can describe. Autism had been a conscious reality in my family from a very early age due to my low functioning brother so it was never some kind of mystery to me.
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?
They’re easy prey for people who make money off of their suffering. People hate girls who don’t conform, so no one protects them even when conformity means they hurt themselves.
How did you become Gender Critical?
Been technically gender critical my whole life. Nothing changed the first time I heard about trans issues. Like I mentioned previously this stuff never made sense and I wasn’t invested in trying to force it to make sense. I don’t care if something is “transphobic” or not because the term is abused to the point of being meaningless. Either it’s true or it’s not, feeling oppressed or offended by neutral facts is an odd perspective to me.
Have you ever had identity related distress, gender or otherwise?
No dysphoria or gender distress. I have always been aggressively myself and never gave it a second thought.
Have you lost friends, family, or a sense of community, since being critical of gender narratives? Is GC welcome or tolerated in Autism Spaces? How do you think this affects you, or people in the spaces?
I don’t socialize with people in general so it hasn’t been a struggle with friends. All the self-described autistic people I know are pro-trans and few I believe are actually autistic. People like to collect labels for attention these days so I don’t automatically assume their self-perception is accurate. Work is another story, I’ve had to be conscious about not getting into trouble. I mostly do that through avoidance.
Do you have confidence in the Autism Organisations?
I have never had confidence in autism organizations. To be honest a lot of them have an “inmates running the asylum” mentality. I think a lot of autistic people are not good at self-advocating, let alone advocating for the rest of us, because they are far too myopic. The few that I’ve found useful are focused on helping low functioning people like my brother and are largely run by medical professionals. I think we need more critical thinking and expertise, and less woke activism if autism orgs want to actually help anyone.
Do you think Gender Affirming Care is another form of Eugenics?
I’m not convinced it’s eugenics on purpose, but that seems to be the outcome regardless. I have known of people who are angry about science looking into any potential “cure” for autism, but as someone who has to watch a very low functioning autistic family member suffer, I’ve had problems with those kind of activists for a long time. Like I said in a previous answer, I find all these autism self-advocates to be too myopic to help anyone. They hurt the low functioning, and they’re too blind to see how transgender nonsense is sterilization for autistic kids.
Do you think the Autism Organisations need to acknowledge and take on board The Cass Report? Publicly? Do you find it professional, alarming or suspicious that they haven't?
Yes. I think it’s less suspicious or nefarious that they haven’t and more that they’re just full of self-important idiots ill-equipped to help anyone.
Should Gender Clinics be assessed for Autism if they note autistic traits in patients?
If there is a correlation between autism and getting more easily groomed into this destructive ideology, and it seems there very much is, then yes. It does need to be explicitly addressed in diagnostic criteria and autistic people (especially girls and women) given a counter-narrative and good solid advice on how to navigate it all.
Do you think it is invalidating to address a patient's possible Autism when in Gender Clinics?
People may feel invalidated by all sorts of things. Sometimes that’s necessary when they are not thinking clearly. If they don’t know their own motivations consciously or have the words to conceptualize and describe very complex feelings/trauma, sounds like any diagnosis they receive is not going to be very accurate. Inaccurate diagnoses equals worse outcomes for patients. There is absolutely an element of malpractice and poor standards put into psychological care for autistic people, yet another thing advocacy orgs always fail to address. Gender clinics need to be sued into non existence for having such abysmally low standards of care.
What topics are important to explore to help build understanding regarding Autism and Gender?
I can only offer a little insight on how to help avoid all that by strengthening autistic people’s self-esteem. What helped me was to not have a lot of narrow social roles or performative gender stuff forced onto me especially during adolescence. Acceptance of your genuine self from parents is a crucial foundation, since influence from friends and peers are typically where the worst ideas get discovered and internalized. I think a lot of autistic girls need to be taught healthy ways of building self esteem and exploring their individual identities so they don’t wander around feeling like a failure at life for being born different. They need time offline to pursue hobbies, sports, intellectual stimulation, creative outlets, etc. They need to be told that’s there’s no correct timeline for when to be interested in sex or romance, being gay or gender nonconforming is normal, and and they don’t have to follow anyone else’s expectations.
What do you think the effects of Gender Affirming Care are on people questioning their gender/distress?
Not much personal experience. I do see it as predatory in the sense that there is a strong financial motivation to fast track all these vulnerable people who won’t/can’t object into expensive “treatment”. A lot of people are seeking gender transition as the wrong solution to a misidentified problem. In some cases, a problem they are not equipped to identify in themselves and the gender clinics are certainly not going to.
Could Gender be just another Mask?
Gender is definitely a mask. The problem here is that autistic people are being told to become the mask, rather than just use it as a tool. I don’t think masks in general are a healthy coping mechanism because being too fake too often for too long will start to alienate you from yourself. Being disconnected from your natural body and mind with no sense of your baseline is where the problems start.
Do you think Trans belongs under the ND Umbrella?
The QT part of the LGBTQ community has been trying to force team a lot of things that have nothing to do with sexuality under some big ideological umbrella of social misfits who allegedly have common interests (we do not). It does not surprise me that trans activists would hijack “neurodiversity” as a concept for their own self-serving purposes. I think the idea of “my brain is x but my body is y” is self-contradictory and lends itself to magical thinking about how neurobiology actually works. That can be used to justify all sorts of unscientific beliefs.
Do you think Autism is losing its meaning because of Self Diagnosis?
I can’t preach too much about this because I did not seek an autism diagnosis. This is partially due to the fact that I’m high functioning enough, partially due to me not trusting therapists to help much due to all the issues outlined in this survey. I was diagnosed with adhd in my 20s and I believe that the amount of overlap between both conditions did not make any autistic traits particularly stand out. But I have intense special interests, flap/stim, have sensory aversion, lack interest in socializing, have trouble expressing or articulating emotions, I’m blunt, and avoided people in general to cope with exhausting social situations. In the overall context of my family’s genetic predisposition for autism it’s likely that I am somewhere on the spectrum. It’s not a core part of my identity and I would not be disappointed if it turns out I was incorrect.
Self-ID is not wrong when it’s based on a honest, thorough understanding of the signs. If someone uses it as a framework to better understand themselves and work around the challenges, I don’t have a problem with it. But it is true that the understanding of autism has been watered down in the social media age. Not everyone who feels validated by a TikTok video of “signs you maybe autistic” has autism, obviously. Like gender identity it can be an easy explanation to project onto past struggles while ignoring the real root of the problem, which may be too deeply repressed to access. People like that are more prone to make “being autistic” their entire personality and use the label as a way to seek validation from others. That behavior is when I will question the sincerity of a self-diagnosis. "
Do you think it's OK to allow children to transition? Do you think it's OK to allow adults to transition? Do you think pausing puberty is OK to do? Do you think children can consent? Do you think children are being told the truth?
No to all of these. It’s not even a debate, doing this to children is deeply unethical on every level.
If Autistic people are less conforming to social constructs, how come so many of us are wrapped up in Gender Ideology? Do you think there is a Social Contagion issue with Gender Ideology?
Gender identity is almost entirely a social contagion. Especially now that it’s been propagandized. Even people with body dysmorphia likely developed it through a mix of negative social messaging and trauma. I have noticed that self-reported autistic people are either extremely gullible when it comes to accepting explanations of social norms, or they can smell bullshit right away and refuse to indulge it on principle. Some of us can see that gender ID/gender roles are no less arbitrary and illogical than other social expectations. I think vulnerability is worse in kids/adolescents and young women, since they are more likely to have a drive to fit in and be liked.
What current Q&As, or common opinions, are out there that you think need challenging or reframing? (Such as "Autistic people are more likely to be trans" or "Born in the wrong body", "Trans is innate", "Gender is in the brain", "Gender is real", "Autigender", "Neurospicy" etc)
I do not believe in brain sex. The fact that your brain was born within your body means it belongs there by nature. No one is born in the “wrong” body, just a body they dislike for some reason. It’s worth exploring why they feel that way instead. Probably realizing that they were lied to and transitioning didn’t solve their problems
Do you think comedy is important when dealing with sensitive/hot topics like gender? Should Comedians be censored?
Yes, and no censorship is unhelpful
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