Gender Dysphoria as an Autistic person

okay i know i only have uh 10 or 15 minutes to um chat to you i wish i were at the conference and unfortunately that's not possible but um um i'm just going to share with you bits from my story as an autistic adult and discovering in fact i was a trans person so that meant i was born female and grew up for many many years as a woman i married i had children and i wasn't unhappy um but i was never whole i never felt complete i have a history of being misdiagnosed as a teenage uh two-year-old with intellectual disability and then at 17 again misdiagnosed as being schizophrenic and none of those things were actually me but it took many many years um to discover who who i actually am finally at the age of 42 so that's 24 years ago now i was diagnosed uh with autism even though when i was very young i didn't talk until closer to my fifth birthday and everything about me was very delayed people just assumed that was my it was an intellectual difficulty when in fact it wasn't i also have lots of sensory um difficulties i guess i i need to wear earlier lenses i live with probably misophania which is just an issue with everything that gets close to me when noise-wise can really make me quite reactive so somebody eating it near me typing on a computer or all those sorts of noises i'm very uncomfortable um i need the radio and tv on very low so those sensory things that i was living with um didn't just end with my responses to the environment or to others it also affected how i responded to my own body so i assumed for many many years that not liking breasts and not um being comfortable with having a period not liking touch a whole heap of things were going on for me i assumed those things were because of my autism and it took many many years before i met others who had similar things happening for them and talked to me about gender dysphoria and said that you know it's pretty common uh for people who who feel disassociated from their body like you do that in fact they are not at home in the cisgender the gender they were assigned with at birth um and this was quite a surprise to me i knew i was um attracted to women my my my wife and partner of now 34 years in my i love and adore and when i did marry this man i was very uncomfortable and couldn't work out what it was and that not being able to make connections to things i think might be more common for those of us on the spectrum i don't know if you've heard of something called object permanence this is an understanding that something can still exist even when we can't see it and for children that can be toys and things in autism even if mummy isn't in view uh it can seem like she's she's gone forever and things like metaphor and having things explained to us we need those gaps filled in so i thought that the things i was experiencing were because of things like i had poor object permanence i had a poor connection or understanding to to self and to other um and i thought that i'm attracted to women i am a woman therefore i must be lesbian and i must be a butch lesbian eventually i came to understand that that term was in fact tying me keeping me tied to a gender identity as female that wasn't mine this is not the case for everybody i really believe there are a number of people who feel disassociated from their body who don't connect um to feeling hungry they may not connect to noticing pain or or when they're unwell etc as autistic people or they may overconnect and everything is heightened um and there may be some of this happening that could be seen as gender dysphoria if you like or could be thought of in that way when in fact it isn't so we absolutely need to make sure that it isn't just our sensory feeling state that we're separated from if in fact we consider the possibility of gender dysphoria it is a much bigger story it's it when i came to understand that it's in my thinking that my perception in my mind was also very male that that this was one of the those light bulb moments the moment when things made sense for me so the dysphoria was was all the way through my life story and all the way through my thinking and my processing now for some young people and older people too um there is a sense that uh their disconnection from self and from other can be mistaken for for a gender issue there are those who really are genuinely living with a gender separation in ourselves our minds and bodies do not agree then there are those who are very happily living as non-binary people they don't really feel um that they are male or female and in fact i think perhaps lots of females on the spectrum because of a whole heap of reasons maybe because of late diagnosis and they've had years of living and being socialized as girls and women maybe because um they don't have enough female role models and other women to relate to but typical non-autistic females don't hold an alert or they don't they don't portray who we are as autistic people we don't fit in quite often autistic females typical females sometimes really just don't share the same thinking processing styles um comfort zones or anything and then of course you'll get autistic females like my two granddaughters who are very girly and appear to be well at home very much at home amongst and with other girls so everybody's story is different but we certainly need to be listening when it comes to gender because there is no one size fits all that's for sure and to be non-binary not to feel at home in either gender is absolutely fine this might be absolutely who you are you're just you and for many many years that was it for me i felt well i'm just me and i must be middlesex i must be somewhere else that isn't typical typically seen as male or female and i lived like that for many many years i was 61 years old before i had my confirmed diagnostic assessment that that said you are in fact living with gender dysphoria this the sense that my identity my knowing and believing of who i am was male but my body was saying i was female so you know i took steps to then change my body to conform to my gender identities a lot easier you can't currently change your brain um you certainly can change your body um in the uk there are gender clinics for for assessments there are places we can go to attain an understanding of what's happening for us but this is hard in autism because first of all you've got to have a concept of who you are as a person you've got to know what it is you're feeling you've got to know what it is you're thinking and this can take times we really do need to be patient with ourselves i know some autistic young people who are very clear they are not the body they were born into i know others who haven't even given it any thought they're just themselves and sometimes they may be more boyish sometimes they're more girlish and that's just life for them then there are others who are very very clear they are the body they were born and fit all those stereotypes and because everybody is so different and because autism can complicate this issue we need to make sure that we're checking in on those things that could be a factor that's impacting on our identity is it a sensory issue am i just is it a body dysphoria that's more to do with autism not gender or is it a way about beyond body and goes on into my thinking and how i relate what i'm at home in you know walking into a shop and going to the ladies section to buy underwear i was waiting for someone to come up and say hey what are you doing this isn't where you belong because i didn't feel like i belong now that's not a just a dis a separation from my body that's much more within my thinking using ladies toilets i never felt comfortable in and again just being around women and women's things this wasn't my home but it was more than just a non-binary statement it's it was more than just role models i have plenty of role models it's more than an association and being connected to a self-concept it was much much bigger than this it but it's taken a very long time to sort those things out and it's so important that we do our our intimate selves in comparison and relating in relationship to other will take us longer as autistic people to work out and i still have sensory things i still those things haven't really changed for me i still can't bear it if my wife gets too close to my ears or if tv's too loud i still need to wear glasses that will help with judging not just the print on a page because i'm dyslexic but also distance um i'm not quite as clumsy i'm still pretty clumsy we're not quite as bad as i used to be as long as i wear my glasses um there is now no part of my body that is out of bounds to my wife whereas before i couldn't bear her close to to breasts for example i'm i'm more connected it's really hard to explain but having come to understand who i am and where i fit which is with me um i am a more whole and complete person i'm home which i'd never experienced before now that won't be the case for every single person on the spectrum who feels a sense of separation because their body separation might just simply be an autism sensory issue and that's quite a different thing but we still need to explore it so i guess i'll end this video video here i hope you're all having a brilliant time at that conference and really wish i could be there but anyway um signing out oh i should just say webpage www.when we n lawson lawson.com there's lots more information video things to watch and listen to and so on and my email address should you feel inclined to get in touch and jessica kingsley has some terrific books on issues around gender and autism bye

Channel: Wenn Lawson

Views: 4,031

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Id: jTDF3oHsxI8

Length: 13min 10sec (790 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 13 2020