Having asperger's can definitely complicate your dysphoria and relation to gender, but it's not certainly the whole reason. I'm afab, have asperger's (officially diagnosed back in 2005) and been dysphoric all my life to some degree or another. I transitioned and ended up regretting top surgery but still happy about what T did for me. Cause I didn't understand myself well enough when I started and went through my transition.
Turns out some of my disconnect from other women has a lot to do with that I'm just naturally more androgynous as a person, and that I don't understand gendered social cues, which are likely due to my asperger. And me disconnecting from my body also has some to do with that. I have a more "male" thinking pattern, more logical than emotional, would rather have solutions than comfort, more visual than feeling, etc. Those are personality traits often considered "masculine" which also often comes along with autism spectrum disorders. Which I mistakenly took as a sign that my gender is male, when in fact it's not. Or, at least not entirely.
But for me there are more factors playing into how I've misunderstood my gender and my dysphoria over time:
- That I'm a lesbian makes me further disconnect from womanhood and traditional femininity. Cause attraction to men is considered a big aspect of femininity, according to society and its heteronormativity, and it's a huge aspect of "being a woman" that I completely fail to relate to in any sense.
- That I have a lot of past of traumatic experiences made me hate my female parts because they essentially felt dirty and badly sexualised. Although I was always aware of that aspect alongside my dysphoria, I had completely miscalculated how much of my dysphoria was just those trauma response feelings. Because I also hated those body parts because they were female and I unknowingly connected my traumas to being female.
- That I also have dissociative issues due to those traumas as well, makes me disconnect from my body and from being human even, quite a lot.
All of those aspect has made it more difficult for me to know which of my dysphoria is even related to gender/sex and can best be treated with medical transition. But basically there's only one way to find out: rule out everything else before pursuing medical transition, by which I mean get therapy and try to see if you can connect to your bio sex that way first. And if so, then you probably shouldn't get surgery or hrt, cause there's a risk of getting "reverse dysphoria" then. Like what happened to me.
Before and after
How it was for me is I used to think I was a trans man and was dysphoric about pretty much everything female about my body. I wanted to look completely male, have a flat chest, no curves, have a penis, facial hair, body hair, deep voice, etc.
How it turned out after having been healing and getting therapy on my many issues (only one of which was ASD related, but still) for about 2 years and still ongoing: I'm not a trans man but see myself as androgynous and somewhere along the lines of nonbinary, but also fine with seeing myself as a woman. I'm not dysphoric about having a vagina, curvy body or being female in general, but I would be dysphoric if my voice was high again, if I didn't have facial hair and lots of body hair, etc. I no longer want to look completely male but also don't wanna look completely female. In practice (as I'm post-T) I'm only dysphoric about my chest being flat.
Conclusion
So, because I didn't get therapy before transitioning, I ended up getting top surgery and regretting it. If I had healed my underlying issues first, I could have just gone on T and come out happy, not dysphoric and without regrets from my transition. So yeah, I'd advice you to look into your ASD first, preferably talking to a therapist who specialises in that area about your gender, dysphoria and transition goals; cause it's good to rule out everything else before embarking on a basically irreversible medical transition. Cause chances are you're still trans, but could be in a different way from what you think now, or it may not be. However, I'm just a cautionary tale, not a manual or an expert.
