Anyone else on the spectrum up in here? :icon_wave:
Don't have anything deep to say, just that the coercive nature of the medical complex kept me away from any sort of help or treatment for a long time. I chose to 'go it alone'.
Another thought, regarding representation of trans people in the media, I used to think I didn't relate to trans people in movies because I was aneurotypical or because I wasn't really trans. I'm only now realizing (at 36 years) that those were examples of non-trans people trying to guess what trans was like or impose their own ideas. Honestly I realized that from listening to all of you and realizing that we shared so many experiences in common.
You're not alone, I'm on the spectrum too. Trying desperately to get my life together enough that I'll be able to transition.
I got diagnosed Asperger's syndrome. But I believe I got wrong diagnosed. Just because professional diagnose you, it's not sure they are right. They might be wrong or they might be right. In many cases transgender people have been diagnosed wrong before they get the right diagnose.
Semi-officially diagnosed here. Hi :) nice to see someone who's both autistic and trans, makes me feel less lonely!
Quote from: AnxietyDisord3r on April 13, 2016, 10:01:48 AM
Another thought, regarding representation of trans people in the media, I used to think I didn't relate to trans people in movies because I was aneurotypical or because I wasn't really trans.
Even for people not on the spectrum the trans characters represented in mainstream media are hard to relate to. Nine times out of ten they have been a cis gender fantasy finger painting of what they think a trans person is, hardly representative. It is slowly starting to improve.
Totally agree with Ms Grace!
Sometimes, representations of trans people are negative, especially of trans women :-\ hopefully this will change soon.
And I've never seen a representation of a trans men :-\ some people probably aren't even aware of our existence and think that only trans women exist, which is funny and sad at the same time lol
Autistic people aren't represented very well, either. The most common representation is the stereotypical autistic kid that rocks back and forth and is a math genius, or has other savant skills. While some autistic people are like that, many others aren't. I suck at math, lol.
cool to find this thread, I wanted to discuss that but didn't know how to start
When it hit me three years ago that I'm in the autism spectrum, it took me about six months to recover and swallow the news. It was a shock :o much more than the revelation I had had 4 years earlier that I'm trans. I relived all my life, all the events screened one by one for 6 months and I saw them with these new glasses. It all explained... my lifelong struggle to fit the pack somehow.
I found out by myself, I didn't get any diagnostic and I'd need 1000$ for that which I don't have, but I have done a lot of reading, very specialized books, and all I could read, and Aspies and autism forums and Websites, and... I really read a lot and it makes no doubt I am. I feel I now know autism quite well, enough to identify anyone I fall on who is also in the spectrum, live or... on forums (takes a little longer on forums).
My thinking didn't stop there and it came to me that being trans, or feeling trans, may be in some way linked to autism, in my ways I always had to not knowing who I exactly am. I spend a lot of time inside of me, I always have (well guess why) trying to put all the pieces together, and... never could put it all together, swallow all the bite (of life). I was not able to define myself. No human models, stereotype, fit me, I was unique but... still couldn't say: this is what I am (I still don't know... hey, I'm autistic).
then I sent an email to my (gender I guess) therapist who I had not seen in a few years then but had kept contact with, and she answered: there are many cases of autism in transsexuals, and many transsexual cases in autism... or something like that. Well it came from a professional, she must know I told myself. So I wrote about that, I mixed all that in a novel I wrote, well writing (was refused so re-write)...
It's a very sensible subject, you can't just tell someone he or she is autistic. People freak out. They see it as impossible for the image they have of an autistic person is... all the symptoms put together in one ridiculous character they've seen or read... Anyways it was a shock to me so others too I guess. I didn't tell my siblings they are in the spectrum except one who had himself had this feeling and info a little before.
But it's a spectrum, some have this trait, others this one and this one... for some, the reaction to this is different, some are very attached to routine, they find safety there. For me, routine kills me, for it explains nothing, it has no meaning. Everything has to have a meaning, an explanation, otherwise it hangs there unsolved... Many in the spectrum don't look for answers long, and usually those also fit in some routine they fit in, or build for themselves (work at home...), but I'm the type who can't get a satisfactory answer, ever... to anything. So I roam in life and in my head...
I think it's important to know it when one is in the autism spectrum. If you don't know that you are, it's easy to get abused by neurotypicals (I see this everywhere). I wish I would have known...
It helps to be trans, the construction I need to do to understand the world now has foundations. Autistic foundations... But my thinking does not stop there. I see many similarities between XXY symptoms and autistic history... Maybe I'm XXY (will find out) and I guess if I am, that could explain my youth and the rest of my life (see Wikipedia on XXY), or maybe it could show that there is a link between the two, autism and XXY. And maybe autism is related also to hormonal unbalances of some sorts... For my therapist, there is no need to explain transsexualism, and linking it to autism may lead to a path like that so... She's not really interested in looking into it, all that counts if for the trans she meets to deal with their dysphoria, whatever the source. I can't be satisfied with that. Myself. So I'm searching. Would appreciate anyone's view, thinking or slice of life on this :)
I highly suspect I was an autistic child, but my parents refused to take me to any sort of doctor or medical specialist for any of my (many) childhood problems, and now I have a lot of those under control myself as an adult, so I guess I'll never know. I'm not going to bother a doctor now for a diagnosis, there's no point.
It took years and years to learn how to communicate effectively with people, but I feel I now can, although at times I can still be insensitive I suppose. Or some other people are over-sensitive... who knows. It's hard to know if it's the fact I don't fit into society well as a trans individual and I'm kind of oblivious to how the cis feel about me (or maybe I just don't care), or whether it's actually how I'm coming across and how I react to people. A bit of both, probably. I don't think I'm particularly "out there" with people. But if there's one thing I've realized since realizing I'm trans, it's that I haven't much clue how cis people's brains work, especially regards gender and relationships of all kinds, and that few people are as open-minded as I've had to be to get through life to this point.
Quote from: T.K.G.W. on April 13, 2016, 04:43:31 PM
I'm kind of oblivious to how the cis feel about me (or maybe I just don't care)
How? How do you do that? I wanna know :'(
I don't really care about people's opinions of me....they might call me whatever they want and I simply don't care, but it seems that the only thing that bothers me is trans-related....misgendering, considering me a woman, denying I'm a man, denying my identity as a trans man or refusing to do so, etc. All of this bothers me a lot, while I seem to be pretty indifferent to other criticisms (but I used to care, years ago).
Quote from: T.K.G.W. on April 13, 2016, 04:43:31 PM
I highly suspect I was an autistic child, but my parents refused to take me to any sort of doctor or medical specialist for any of my (many) childhood problems, and now I have a lot of those under control myself as an adult, so I guess I'll never know. I'm not going to bother a doctor now for a diagnosis, there's no point.
It took years and years to learn how to communicate effectively with people, but I feel I now can, although at times I can still be insensitive I suppose. Or some other people are over-sensitive... who knows. It's hard to know if it's the fact I don't fit into society well as a trans individual and I'm kind of oblivious to how the cis feel about me (or maybe I just don't care), or whether it's actually how I'm coming across and how I react to people. A bit of both, probably. I don't think I'm particularly "out there" with people. But if there's one thing I've realized since realizing I'm trans, it's that I haven't much clue how cis people's brains work, especially regards gender and relationships of all kinds, and that few people are as open-minded as I've had to be to get through life to this point.
I wasn't going to comment on this thread at all. I've considered at times that I might be somewhere on the spectrum, but I'm in my late 20's and managing life just fine. It would be more of a hassle than it's worth to drag a doctor into it just to get a diagnosis. But this comment really resonated with me, and I'm glad that you voiced it. I couldn't have described how I feel any better, and it's nice to see that it's not as uncommon as it feels.
Quote from: jossam on April 13, 2016, 05:12:40 PM
How? How do you do that? I wanna know :'(
I don't really care about people's opinions of me....they might call me whatever they want and I simply don't care, but it seems that the only thing that bothers me is trans-related....misgendering, considering me a woman, denying I'm a man, denying my identity as a trans man or refusing to do so, etc. All of this bothers me a lot, while I seem to be pretty indifferent to other criticisms (but I used to care, years ago).
I guess it's because I passed through an intensive period of questioning myself back in my younger years, and concluded that I didn't really
have a gender as such. My consciousness, I mean. My body has the wrong gender, my mind fits much better into the opposite gender to the body's but I couldn't really say that I
know what it feels like to be male. I only know that I would be more comfortable being treated as one, and the body of one seems right and comfortable as opposed to mine which feels wrong and discomforting, and so that's how I've come to identify for the convenience of the world outside my brain. So I feel calling myself "male" is an approximation of a matter almost too difficult to put into words; explaining it to people IRL has been oddly difficult, when I thought down the years I'd gotten quite good at explaining myself.
If other people don't like it, it bothers me a little, but only if they are people I would expect a more open-minded approach from, and people I care about, such as relatives or my partner. The average person that I don't know out there... I don't think it matters if they accept me or not, you know? They aren't really important to my life so their opinions don't carry much weight, and I don't expect high standards from them. If people are going to be insulting about it then sure, I'll get riled. But typically I won't ask them to consider me a man and just see what their own reaction is figuring it out themselves. By not committing myself and
asking them to treat me a certain way, thereby putting the ball in their court, I get to find out what their stance is without revealing anything potentially sensitive. I'm pre too, so at this point I don't feel it wise to ask people to address me as male until I look and sound the part. I feel that would be stretching the abilities and inclinations of many people out there. In fact I feel like asking people to and feeling deeply about it would almost certainly form weakness in the armor, in a way.
I haven't passed into the more testing phase of looking "in between" genders yet, and I fully expect to see lots of baffled faces and possibly a few insults or blanks at that point. But again, I deal with it because most people out there are not important to me. I'm lucky that the people who are important to me are at least acknowledging of my mental gender, if not chuffed about what I'm doing. I'm sure there'll be challenges ahead, but like always, I try not to rely on other people to validate me. I've been a bit of a social outcast/antisocial all my life, so I guess that means I've had a few decades' practice already, and I probably am not going to become super-social overnight with transition.
If someone calls me a woman (or a female insult) I laugh or find it amusing - because I know it's just ridiculous to my consciousness and that they just know... well, nothing really. Nothing about the real me. Maybe its just me but most casual interactions out there in the world seem quite throwaway, fake politeness and small talk and such, and I've never much valued that. I group that sort of assuming about my gender in with that stuff - in the mental box marked "whatever/forget", and shove it away into some dark corner of my brain. I guess I must be quite confident indeed in my masculinity if these things don't bother me at this point.
I will admit though that the female/male and female/female dynamic which I've been forced to experience in the body of a female has exhausted me in everyday interactions. I think this is why I don't socialize too much. I know that men are acting differently with me than they would if I was perceived a man and if they are attracted to me that also bothers me if it interferes with just getting along (I don't find it flattering) and the female/female dynamic is even more exhaustive and I rarely manage to maintain it for long. I don't feel like someone female should be confiding in me with female matters, and being treated like "one of the girls" makes me run a mile due to... well, lack of shared interests or sympathy really. I seem to get along with people in some kind of clunky neutral gear distance-maintaining mode unless I click with them on some mental-philosophical level, but that's proven to be rare.
was diagnose with anti-social personality disorder when i was very young and was also believe to be on the spectrum so to speak. But it is so not true, so so so not true yet that thing follows me everywhere because schools look at that and think you are a explosion waiting to happen. The only way i was able to escape that diagnoses was when i moved states.
Because apparently a 7-8 year old is develop enough to determine if you are a threat to the people around you and i think the doctor didn't realize what he was doing. Because i misread people and had personal space problem he said anti-social which Is far and away from what i am.
I read somewhere that there might be a correlation between autism and trans men. Since autism affects more boys than girls, and....you know how something in our trans brains is definitely male (otherwise we wouldn't be what we are lol so something happened to our brains), then maybe it explains why there are so many trans males on the spectrum, together with cis males. But my honest personal opinion is that it could be bs, because someone named Baron-Cohen made a theory called "extreme male brain theory of autism" that says that autistic brains are an extreme form of maleness and that autism is more common in males because of higher levels of testosterone. But what about trans men? Or.... maybe we really had a testosterone wash at some point in the womb that made our brain male after the body developed as female (or before that, who knows, sorry if I'm being ignorant about this, I don't know much about fetal development) - so we're at a higher risk to get autism just like cis males ??? Other studies consider the Baron-Cohen bs since it's heavily based on gender stereotypes, for example the stereotype that women empathize more and men systemize more (empathizing-systemizing theory), that women were "programmed" to have more empathy so they can take care of children, that men prefer scientific STEM stuff, etc. I agree these gender stereotypes are just stereotypes, and don't get me started on how much I hate evolutionary psychology (such a terrible thing, I swear, especially for trans people and cis women).
Quote from: roseyfox on April 13, 2016, 06:02:40 PM
was diagnose with anti-social personality disorder when i was very young and was also believe to be on the spectrum so to speak. But it is so not true, so so so not true yet that thing follows me everywhere because schools look at that and think you are a explosion waiting to happen. The only way i was able to escape that diagnoses was when i moved states.
Because apparently a 7-8 year old is develop enough to determine if you are a threat to the people around you and i think the doctor didn't realize what he was doing. Because i misread people and had personal space problem he said anti-social which Is far and away from what i am.
Anti-social? Woah. That's a tough diagnosis. Personality disorders can't be diagnosed until a person is 18. I'm very interested in anti-social personality disorder, so I'm really curious, sorry if I sound weird.
Some autistic traits and some anti-social traits might sound similar sometimes, so it is possible that the doctor considered your autistic traits as anti-social even though the two are totally different! Totally.
Quote from: jossam on April 13, 2016, 06:14:38 PM
I read somewhere that there might be a correlation between autism and trans men. Since autism affects more boys than girls, and....you know how something in our trans brains is definitely male (otherwise we wouldn't be what we are lol so something happened to our brains), then maybe it explains why there are so many trans males on the spectrum, together with cis males. But my honest personal opinion is that it could be bs, because someone named Baron-Cohen made a theory called "extreme male brain theory of autism" that says that autistic brains are an extreme form of maleness and that autism is more common in males because of higher levels of testosterone. But what about trans men? Or.... maybe we really had a testosterone wash at some point in the womb that made our brain male after the body developed as female (or before that, who knows, sorry if I'm being ignorant about this, I don't know much about fetal development) - so we're at a higher risk to get autism just like cis males ??? Other studies consider the Baron-Cohen bs since it's heavily based on gender stereotypes, for example the stereotype that women empathize more and men systemize more (empathizing-systemizing theory), that women were "programmed" to have more empathy so they can take care of children, that men prefer scientific STEM stuff, etc. I agree these gender stereotypes are just stereotypes, and don't get me started on how much I hate evolutionary psychology (such a terrible thing, I swear, especially for trans people and cis women).
Could be.
My mother seems to think she is autistic (true enough that she's non-empathetic and just totally into her work and not much else) so perhaps it's passed on genetically, perhaps amplified by the factors that cause transsexualism in the first place, or something else.
My own experience in life suggests to me that a person can develop autistic spectrum symptoms at any point, or that they vary in how visible they are. I think I started off with many autism symptoms, and then later I actually reversed some of them somehow. Such as empathy - as a kid I was notoriously unable to think about how others were feeling about my actions, and now I automatically tend to weigh this stuff up before I speak in real life. At one stage my ability to empathize became too much for me to handle - I was doing it far too much and feeling far too deeply about the situations of people I knew who were having problems, or even just from reading about people's situations on the other side of the planet. I've had to learn to control the empathy I developed but apparently wasn't born with. My mother on the other hand seems to have gone from someone I once knew that was much nicer to people and far more considerate to an isolationist who doesn't much care about the people she once did. That said, she did have an aneurysm 16 years ago that nearly killed her, caused her to develop dyslexia and apparently affected certain other brain functions, but not in a way that would be noticeable to others. Maybe that had something to do with it for her.
I think while some people may be born exhibiting behavior on various parts of the spectrum, these behaviors and abilities are not fixed and can be altered or changed. Our brains do adapt to things, and some research suggests even the way we think and the things we think about potentially rewire and 'reshape' our ways of thinking and doing, and even turn genes on and off in real time. This would explain how some of us end up changing our abilities and mental habits so dramatically, but not overnight of course.
Quote from: T.K.G.W. on April 13, 2016, 05:53:53 PM
I guess it's because I passed through an intensive period of questioning myself back in my younger years, and concluded that I didn't really have a gender as such. My consciousness, I mean. My body has the wrong gender, my mind fits much better into the opposite gender to the body's but I couldn't really say that I know what it feels like to be male. I only know that I would be more comfortable being treated as one, and the body of one seems right and comfortable as opposed to mine which feels wrong and discomforting, and so that's how I've come to identify for the convenience of the world outside my brain. So I feel calling myself "male" is an approximation of a matter almost too difficult to put into words; explaining it to people IRL has been oddly difficult, when I thought down the years I'd gotten quite good at explaining myself.
If other people don't like it, it bothers me a little, but only if they are people I would expect a more open-minded approach from, and people I care about, such as relatives or my partner. The average person that I don't know out there... I don't think it matters if they accept me or not, you know? They aren't really important to my life so their opinions don't carry much weight, and I don't expect high standards from them. If people are going to be insulting about it then sure, I'll get riled. But typically I won't ask them to consider me a man and just see what their own reaction is figuring it out themselves. By not committing myself and asking them to treat me a certain way, thereby putting the ball in their court, I get to find out what their stance is without revealing anything potentially sensitive. I'm pre too, so at this point I don't feel it wise to ask people to address me as male until I look and sound the part. I feel that would be stretching the abilities and inclinations of many people out there. In fact I feel like asking people to and feeling deeply about it would almost certainly form weakness in the armor, in a way.
I haven't passed into the more testing phase of looking "in between" genders yet, and I fully expect to see lots of baffled faces and possibly a few insults or blanks at that point. But again, I deal with it because most people out there are not important to me. I'm lucky that the people who are important to me are at least acknowledging of my mental gender, if not chuffed about what I'm doing. I'm sure there'll be challenges ahead, but like always, I try not to rely on other people to validate me. I've been a bit of a social outcast/antisocial all my life, so I guess that means I've had a few decades' practice already, and I probably am not going to become super-social overnight with transition.
If someone calls me a woman (or a female insult) I laugh or find it amusing - because I know it's just ridiculous to my consciousness and that they just know... well, nothing really. Nothing about the real me. Maybe its just me but most casual interactions out there in the world seem quite throwaway, fake politeness and small talk and such, and I've never much valued that. I group that sort of assuming about my gender in with that stuff - in the mental box marked "whatever/forget", and shove it away into some dark corner of my brain. I guess I must be quite confident indeed in my masculinity if these things don't bother me at this point.
I will admit though that the female/male and female/female dynamic which I've been forced to experience in the body of a female has exhausted me in everyday interactions. I think this is why I don't socialize too much. I know that men are acting differently with me than they would if I was perceived a man and if they are attracted to me that also bothers me if it interferes with just getting along (I don't find it flattering) and the female/female dynamic is even more exhaustive and I rarely manage to maintain it for long. I don't feel like someone female should be confiding in me with female matters, and being treated like "one of the girls" makes me run a mile due to... well, lack of shared interests or sympathy really. I seem to get along with people in some kind of clunky neutral gear distance-maintaining mode unless I click with them on some mental-philosophical level, but that's proven to be rare.
Oh well, I'm like that too. I get hurt (more like pissed) if people I care about (a few people, really) treat me as a woman or see me as one.
I find some of the things you said similar to what I think, in the sense that the opinions of total strangers don't bother me, but if a close person or someone with an open mind treats me the wrong way it bothers me. But I feel like I
know what it feels to be male, not physically yet because I'm pre everything so I don't experience certain things like facial hair growth, etc., but on a mental, psychological level, and it's a strong feeling of identifying with the male gender. I fully embrace it and I refuse every other label. Also, I don't think pre-everything trans guys shouldn't ask people to address them as male. We're still men, men who need to change our bodies in order to match what's inside, but men nonetheless....but well, maybe your experiences are different than mine, so I'm sorry if I assume the wrong things. I just don't feel like I have to feel bad just to accomodate other people, just because they don't have certain abilities. I have friends who do it and have no problem with it (sometimes they slip and use feminine pronouns but it's just an old habit, so I excuse them). Except for lack of facial hair and my naked body (which I hate), when I have my clothes on I don't look female - the only thing that causes issues is lack of facial hair, so I might look younger than I really am. Obviously T will get rid of this issue and many others (like my
teen-boy-who-didn't-complete-puberty voice). I pass as a teen cis male most of the time. No, not good, because I'm not a teen, and I don't want my body even if it makes me pass with clothes on. I just don't find it natural, no matter what others think. It's the wrong shell for the right mind.
My close friends all know who I am. My female friends don't treat me as one of them, otherwise they wouldn't be my friends anymore >:-) instead, they call me their brother and they tell me things like "can I have your opinion on this shirt/my butt/my jeans? I need the opinion of a guy", so I find this good for my self-esteem and it shows they take me seriously and validate me, so I'm happy to give them my opinions.
Oh, of course. I talked with other autistic people and they all agree that their traits became either less evident or more evident at some point. Even in my personal experience, I think I was "more autistic" as a child than I am now. Not saying autism can disappear, because it doesn't, it's just that we learn to adapt tp situations at some point, and learn new strategies that help us handle stuff. At least, that's what happened to me.
My mother is a pretty detached and asocial person. I wouldn't be surprised if she was considered on the spectrum too, since I've seen how sometimes autistic parents give birth to autistic kids.
Quote from: jossam on April 13, 2016, 06:47:46 PMAlso, I don't think pre-everything trans guys shouldn't ask people to address them as male. We're still men, men who need to change our bodies in order to match what's inside, but men nonetheless....but well, maybe your experiences are different than mine, so I'm sorry if I assume the wrong things.
No, it's cool. What I feel personally is that people should address each other with the intent to be courteous or at least civil; I see asking someone to address you as a gender they do not necessarily "see" yet as being little different in theory to asking someone to use a newly-changed surname after you just got married - should be no problem, right? People don't have a problem changing surnames and honorifics or titles when a person elevates in rank or whatever. From Captain to Major, or Mr. to Dr. etc.
But with gender I think there's this ingrained biological mechanism in people that is close to instinct. Once they perceive an initial gender, that then organizes how they view that person and their roles in society and relation to them right from the get-go. It's almost instantaneous in people and apparently hard to 'overwrite' once written in many people. I'm not saying you shouldn't ask them, I just think in my situation and for myself it's a waste of time telling or correcting people who are not close or important people as it'll be in some cases an endless stream of misunderstandings, or stubborn misgenderings, or unpleasant arguments. I have done it with the people that matter, people I'm going to encounter again and again; but I figure I'm just inviting frustration if I attempt to do it with the everyday encounters whilst not appearing explicitly male. I figure most people are going to tell me I'm telling them an apple is an orange and somesuch, and make it a point to disagree with it.
If you've had success with it, more power to you. Spread the education to those who do not know. I think I will just bide my time with the crowd for now.
Quote from: jossam on April 13, 2016, 06:14:38 PMdon't get me started on how much I hate evolutionary psychology (such a terrible thing, I swear, especially for trans people and cis women).
You hate evolutionary psychology? Can I ask why?
Personally I don't think evolutionary psychology is somehow insulting or invalidatory of trans people, like any true science - we exist, and are an observable phenomenon; no science can invalidate that. If anything, the people who go around claiming everything and its dog is a social construct is far more invalidating of us because it could always claim we are what we are and do what we do because of social constructs and human gullibility or desire to conform or social conditioning. I don't know about you, but I do not feel as though my mental state and biological plight is the fault of society or other people's opinions. It's a biological anomaly, potentially exacerbated by gender roles, yes... but gender roles and adaptations themselves apparently spring from the natural sexual dimorphism displayed by our species, which is not a social construct.
Evolutionary psychology is terrible to cis women? Are you saying... looking at the psychology of women through an evolutionary lens is sexist and/or oppressive? How, if it is done in a proper scientific way, is searching for biological facts terrible?
If evolutionary psychology claims, say... that women are designed more for crying because a) crying is taken more seriously by female and male peers when an adult woman cries than when an adult male cries, and they typically want to find out what she is upset about and go to her or comfort her or protect her - this behavior helps her, and probably helped all her female ancestors survive better in the past which is why it has become passed on as a trait in females, but not in males because it wouldn't have helped him survive if nobody is particularly going to respond to his crying. Studies have shown that adults pay more attention to a female child crying than a male child crying, and typically respond by giving the female child more attention than the male for crying. I mean this stuff is observable everywhere, any time, and social experiments have been done on it - women crying and looking distressed tends to illicit feelings and actions of protectiveness in onlookers of both sexes; men crying - not nearly as much and tends to be seen as a detrimental weakness in men. People on trans forums report that taking estrogen often helps them cry more, and people who take testosterone tend to lose the cry trigger, or at least find it diminished. There's a biological feedback loop here, occurring more often in one sex because it benefits them socially and less often in the other because it doesn't benefit them as much socially.
My point is, someone out there would probably react to that and claim it's sexist to say "women cry more" but it's quite observable in real life, and there is almost always a reason for why things are the way they are. I may not personally like the explanation evolutionary science might offer for why things are the way they are, or that women might use crying to their benefit, and I have the additional bias of not wanting to inhabit a woman's body, but I'd rather go with the idea that the reason we have these ancient traits are because they are the successful products of natural selection, than this idea that everyone is actually the same and men and women aren't really all that different psychologically. If I had to pick one fact that I learned about life from being myself, it's that men and women have psychological differences, on the whole. My whole life's experience screams it. I get that one life experience and the field of psychology are pretty lacking, yes; but then we could go with statistics gathered about the various behaviors and preferences of men and women and these do definitely point to differences between them. Psychology as a field is somewhat problematic in approach, imo, but if treated properly and experiments are done scientifically and of appropriate sample size, it's the best thing we have to explain these things. What's the alternative to science if you want rational answers...?
Some people seem to think that psychology itself is just evil because once upon a time 'psychologists' said gay people were mentally ill, etc. but we've moved on from that now and people are studying these things in much more appropriate ways. I still do think there is much work to be done on psychology, particularly in how trans people are viewed and treated by the medical profession, but at least they're on the right track instead of locking us up in asylums and using us to test the latest anti-deviance device.
I see no especial evil in evolutionary psychology, provided it follows the proper scientific method and remembers that theory does not equal fact, and that this is one branch of speculative science, like in some aspects of astronomy speculating what's out there in other galaxies or beyond the range of human sight, that we cannot have the definite and absolute answers for. Have bona fide evolutionary psychologists been out there telling people cis women and trans folk just suck or something? If so I haven't heard about it. But I would always expect idiots online or in the media to use whatever 'evidence' they might think they have to justify silly claims. That's a given. I understand that sure, a subject that posits that men and women have differences, or that there are differences between races, for example, is going to raise the hackles because we're in the midst of cultural forces remembering World War Two, and trying to crush the genders together and say
no, there are no differences (while sometimes being quite hypocritical about this assertion and not even realizing it), but ultimately the way forward has to be to explore these differences, not run from them. I mean they
are there. We wouldn't have a forum or a discussion to have, or the word transgender if there were not differences... and those biological and psychological differences came to be
somehow.
Unintentional text wall there. My bad. Anyway, my background is in science, so... yea. I'm interested to know why evolutionary psychology itself is a bad thing. Evolutionary science isn't seen as bad, psychology itself I wouldn't say is a bad thing compared to the taboo of analyzing one's own mental state that preceded the likes of Freud and therefore never explained various human behaviors. I mean if it wasn't for psychology and the initial advent of psychoanalysis, flawed as they are, I doubt that trans people would be in a position now to be heard, treated and integrated into society at all.
Quote from: Soli on April 13, 2016, 04:35:02 PM
But my thinking does not stop there. I see many similarities between XXY symptoms and autistic history... Maybe I'm XXY (will find out) and I guess if I am, that could explain my youth and the rest of my life (see Wikipedia on XXY), or maybe it could show that there is a link between the two, autism and XXY. And maybe autism is related also to hormonal unbalances of some sorts... For my therapist, there is no need to explain transsexualism, and linking it to autism may lead to a path like that so... She's not really interested in looking into it, all that counts if for the trans she meets to deal with their dysphoria, whatever the source. I can't be satisfied with that. Myself. So I'm searching. Would appreciate anyone's view, thinking or slice of life on this :)
That's interesting. Autism and sex is an interesting subject. It is much more frequently diagnosed in boys than in girls. It is also known to be underdiagnosed in women. It has also sometimes been described in the literature as a disorder of 'hyper-masculine' cognition. Whatever that means. The typical explanation I've heard is that females have a larger inter-hemisphere connection than males, which mitigates some of the disadvantages of autism, allowing the individual to function more successfully. But who knows? It could go a lot deeper than that.
Quote from: T.K.G.W. on April 13, 2016, 05:53:53 PM
I guess it's because I passed through an intensive period of questioning myself back in my younger years, and concluded that I didn't really have a gender as such. My consciousness, I mean. My body has the wrong gender, my mind fits much better into the opposite gender to the body's but I couldn't really say that I know what it feels like to be male. I only know that I would be more comfortable being treated as one, and the body of one seems right and comfortable as opposed to mine which feels wrong and discomforting, and so that's how I've come to identify for the convenience of the world outside my brain. So I feel calling myself "male" is an approximation of a matter almost too difficult to put into words; explaining it to people IRL has been oddly difficult, when I thought down the years I'd gotten quite good at explaining myself.
I feel the same way but I rarely attempt to tell anyone about it because they wouldn't understand. Who is "me"? Me doesn't have a gender. But dagnabit I want my body changed yesterday.
I guess all the social aspects of being a guy that some transmen obsess about online either bore or repulse me. But those aren't my kind of people, that isn't my life ... I have friends, I was hanging with them tonight, and they accept me even without 500 surgeries and a beard like a gorilla.
I can only live my life, not somebody else's.
Quote from: roseyfox on April 13, 2016, 06:02:40 PM
was diagnose with anti-social personality disorder when i was very young and was also believe to be on the spectrum so to speak. But it is so not true, so so so not true yet that thing follows me everywhere because schools look at that and think you are a explosion waiting to happen. The only way i was able to escape that diagnoses was when i moved states.
Because apparently a 7-8 year old is develop enough to determine if you are a threat to the people around you and i think the doctor didn't realize what he was doing. Because i misread people and had personal space problem he said anti-social which Is far and away from what i am.
FWIW whoever labeled you that way was in my opinion very unprofessional and frankly it should be against guidelines to label a child that way. Frankly, I'm not comfortable that they label teenagers this way. Teens' personalities are still malleable, they still have some child attributes. In the US they are basically setting you up to be labeled anti-social as an adult. (This diagnosis is the pre-requisite to adult personality disorder diag.) They literally don't care about addressing your problems so you can have a decent life. Okay, rant off.
Quote from: T.K.G.W. on April 13, 2016, 06:28:57 PM
My own experience in life suggests to me that a person can develop autistic spectrum symptoms at any point, or that they vary in how visible they are. I think I started off with many autism symptoms, and then later I actually reversed some of them somehow. Such as empathy - as a kid I was notoriously unable to think about how others were feeling about my actions, and now I automatically tend to weigh this stuff up before I speak in real life. At one stage my ability to empathize became too much for me to handle - I was doing it far too much and feeling far too deeply about the situations of people I knew who were having problems, or even just from reading about people's situations on the other side of the planet. I've had to learn to control the empathy I developed but apparently wasn't born with. My mother on the other hand seems to have gone from someone I once knew that was much nicer to people and far more considerate to an isolationist who doesn't much care about the people she once did. That said, she did have an aneurysm 16 years ago that nearly killed her, caused her to develop dyslexia and apparently affected certain other brain functions, but not in a way that would be noticeable to others. Maybe that had something to do with it for her.
Actually, it's a major misconception that people with ASD lack empathy.
What gets taken for a lack of empathy is actually the autistic child's sensory issues. These apparently can be overcome--I overcame mine. I learned to look people in the eye, and to tolerate skin-to-skin contact. I learned this stuff on my own-as a child I got yelled at a lot but never modified my behavior. I didn't change my behavior until I had some knowledge of what was going on with me.
I thought I had no empathy when I was 20 but I've found out that I have a great deal of empathy. Sometimes it's unbearable because there is so much suffering in the world.
Some other random data points:
Older father = increased risk the child will have autism
Father who is ftm and was previously on hormones = increased risk the child will have autism
(Don't know if this was controlled against ftm never on hormones parents.)
But one can read too much into this. Older mother = increased risk the child will have Down's Syndrome, but that (chromosomal) disorder is not considered to be sex linked in any way. Some effects are an accident that have nothing to do with the root cause.
Okay friends
Some off topic arguing had to be cleaned up a bit, please keep further responses on topic and avoid becoming embroiled in heated debate
Here is the original question poised by the OP:
Quote from: AnxietyDisord3r on April 13, 2016, 10:01:48 AM
Anyone else on the spectrum up in here? :icon_wave:
Topic reopened
Thank you
V M
I think so. Formal diagnosis and issues with socialising can't be wrong. I often get subconscious misunderstandings in conversation which wouldn't occur if I was "on the ball". Socialising just doesn't usually come to me naturally so I have to really concentrate which itself comes with issues, possibly due to ADHD, but I've had occasional conversations which were more relaxed and on autopilot.
One of my supervisors at my old workplace suspected a bit of autism, but my online friends don't think I have it. One or two have picked up on the fact I sometimes misunderstand them but they chalked it down to social anxiety, and they're likely on point - many of my social mishaps are rooted in anxiety. It's never a big enough issue I've had to raise it with university or future employers, but people interviewing for a job involving heavy interpersonal skills would find me unsuitable.
I wonder if these relatively benign symptoms would become non-issues if I dealt with the source of my anxiety, which I'm slowly addressing. I've started attending an ADHD clinic and I hope I don't reach a dead end (if they don't diagnose me, they can hopefully get to the root of my anxiety).
Quote from: Kimberley Beauregard on May 05, 2016, 10:49:53 AM
I think so. Formal diagnosis and issues with socialising can't be wrong. I often get subconscious misunderstandings in conversation which wouldn't occur if I was "on the ball". Socialising just doesn't usually come to me naturally so I have to really concentrate which itself comes with issues, possibly due to ADHD, but I've had occasional conversations which were more relaxed and on autopilot.
One of my supervisors at my old workplace suspected a bit of autism, but my don't think I have it. One or two have picked up on the fact I sometimes misunderstand them but they chalked it down to social anxiety, and they're likely on point - many of my social mishaps are rooted in anxiety. It's never a big enough issue I've had to raise it with university or future employers, but people interviewing for a job involving heavy interpersonal skills would find me unsuitable.
I wonder if these relatively benign symptoms would become non-issues if I dealt with the source of my anxiety, which I'm slowly addressing. I've started attending an ADHD clinic and I hope I don't reach a dead end (if they don't diagnose me, they can hopefully get to the root of my anxiety).
Similar situation here although I didn't have a formal diagnosis. Could you tell more about the misunderstanding part and examples of anxiety? I'm working with a therapist about my issues with anxiety, and sometimes I feel like I tend to misunderstand people even when what they say is pretty obvious, but I don't know what causes it.
Jossom, misunderstandings usually arise from not following the conversation properly. I misinterpreted a statement because the conversation moved on but I keep referring back. I'm not very good at following conversations, especially in group settings. Thankfully, people tend to find it funny rather than use it as an opportunity to insult me (I actively avoid the people who I think would).
Other misunderstandings arise when I'm not 100% sure a person is joking, and sarcasm doesn't always immediately register unless I know the person regularly uses it.
My anxiety is difficult to put into words. I always seem to be on edge (especially around people) and I'm frankly unsure why. CBT never helped me.
At one time I thought I may be on the spectrum but after a lot of research I now believe I am just an introvert. Never tried to have it diagnosed so I could be wrong.
Sent from my SM-S902L using Tapatalk
Quote from: Kimberley Beauregard on May 06, 2016, 06:03:02 PM
Jossom, misunderstandings usually arise from not following the conversation properly. I misinterpreted a statement because the conversation moved on but I keep referring back. I'm not very good at following conversations, especially in group settings. Thankfully, people tend to find it funny rather than use it as an opportunity to insult me (I actively avoid the people who I think would).
Other misunderstandings arise when I'm not 100% sure a person is joking, and sarcasm doesn't always immediately register unless I know the person regularly uses it.
My anxiety is difficult to put into words. I always seem to be on edge (especially around people) and I'm frankly unsure why. CBT never helped me.
Ok I see now. Same exact issues I have. The more I talk to people on the spectrum and see how much I relate, the more I get convinced my first therapist figured it all out.
I too tend to subconsciously ignore that the conversation moved on. My family laughs and says I get stuck and repeat the same things over and over, or that I focus too much on a detail of a conversation and ignore everything that comes after it.
Sometimes I can't focus on conversations and groups of people always make it harder unless I am very interested in that topic.
I tend to be good at spotting sarcasm, but I don't always realize when someone is subtly making fun of me, being serious or just joking around.
CBT is what is being used in my therapy but my therapist might change the approach if she see that one does not work. I try to be positive but I doubt I'll get significantly better.
I hope you make some progress, whether with CBT or another tried-and-tested method. I established with my GP because of my condition that CBT is ineffective for me. There might be other methods which help, but it's early days for me to work out what approach I need (let alone what approaches are available).
I'm on the spectrum dxed mid 30s as PDD-NOS (would have been Aspergers when younger).
Yes I do have problems following conversations in group setting too and even with one on one I sometimes have a delay in processing/recognising what has been said. Also misunderstanding what people have said and if there's subtext that is lost on me.
My psych asked me recently how does Austin/Aspergers affect the transgender experience. I said the one thing would be the resistance to change.
Quote from: Kimberley Beauregard on May 10, 2016, 04:56:02 AM
I hope you make some progress, whether with CBT or another tried-and-tested method. I established with my GP because of my condition that CBT is ineffective for me. There might be other methods which help, but it's early days for me to work out what approach I need (let alone what approaches are available).
Thank you. CBT is said to be effective to cure anxiety and I have anxiety issues too so maybe it will work for those. It's a little bit easier to be on the spectrum without the debilitating anxiety than being ASD and super anxious. Being trans and pre everything is an additional challenge for me. It makes things harder.
Hope you find something that works for you. I am not so positibe about myself.
Quote from: Sebby Michelango on April 13, 2016, 02:24:36 PM
I got diagnosed Asperger's syndrome. But I believe I got wrong diagnosed. Just because professional diagnose you, it's not sure they are right. They might be wrong or they might be right. In many cases transgender people have been diagnosed wrong before they get the right diagnose.
Same.
Love, Sarina!
Yep, on the spectrum and aspergers wasn't generally on the map when anyone would have been paying attention to the problems I had through my early years.
I worked through a period of acute depression in the '90s with the help of a therapist who was dead set against specific diagnoses. This wasn't a bad thing at the time and she was very good at getting me to register what was happening in the moment and to be an to connect to my emotions in the moment and to separate the reality of here and now from letting my life be ruled by past and self-limiting experiences -- there's a lot of that when coming from a history of abuse.
One of the key things was to learn not to filter other people's words through my negative past experiences and to communicate more effectively, listen better.This was also the time I came to terms with gender and to consider transition and I associated this with teaching myself to be more characteristically female, knowing that my learned behaviors make passing among women nearly impossible.
With a return of acute depression in late 2013 I made a couple of emergency visits to my first therapist while also seeking someone covered by insurance and quickly realized that she had not moved on and really didn't seem to hear the changes I had been through in the intervening 15 years; that it was still diminishing returns.
The psychiatrist I've been working with has been good for me and fortunately she also practices psychotherapy, as none of the SSRI / SSRI or NDRI drug approaches have worked well enough to justify the side effects.
I was the one who came up with asbergers as a possible behavior pattern. We did a formal evaluation and where I came out was 50:50. However as I answered the questions I was noticing that many of the responses would have been different before my earlier therapy and all the hard work I'd done to learn to value understanding other's feelings and the host of other behaviors I'd learned or re-learned.
What I've concluded is I'm on the spectrum and recognized that I tend to revert to strongly aspy behaviors when I'm stressed. I remain wary of clinical diagnosis in not wanting to narrow my experience by applying a set of limitations.
On the other hand I kind of wish my first therapist had offered the term autism spectrum 15+ years ago as having a model to understand myself better has been more liberating than limiting.