Research indicates that individuals with ASD are more likely to experience gender dysphoria, and vice versa.
Also connective tissue disorders
I’ve read about this. Yes, it’s truly notable how correlated both are.
One explanation I read that makes sense is that autistic people are generally less concerned about social definitions. Since we already are “weird” to the allistic society, we tend to consider things like gender in a different way:
“If society doesn’t have a way to explain how my mind works, how can it define my gender correctly? Maybe, its gender definition doesn’t apply to me”
So you start thinking that, indeed, maybe the society that can’t define your mind if not as “wrong”, can’t define your gender either. And turns out that you feel comfortable in something that, similar to how they explain your brain, is “weird” for them too.
This is a good way to describe the way moral reasoning works for a lot nd people succinctly. Now I will describe it much less succinctly lmao
There are possibly neurological bases for this as well
Mirror neuron system, for example, is thought to be a key factor in development of empathy and moral understanding. This is this system of neurons that give a shared neural activation in response to stimuli, eg we see someone in pain and it activates regions that activate when we experience pain directly
However, people with autism tend to have less active mirror neurons or differently organized system of mirror neurons (still somewhat poorly understood). This is one of the theorized mechanisms behind challenges with socialization and empathization in autism.
However people with autism can obviously still socialize and become empathic, right? I have spoken to many people with autism who if anything feel they are too empathetic.
One of the hypotheses here is that because of the above neurological difference there is a compensatory strategy. Essentially that instead of being able to naturally adapt neurologically people with autism create empathization, social and moral understanding, etc through higher level cognition. Analytical and cognitive based approaches. Trial and error, assessment and reflection, etc rather than instinctive and emotionally driven responses.
Thus far more thought is given to concepts and ideas that the general public simply does not consider. What is gender? What is a social construct? What is the point of social pragmatic language? What is the point of “business appropriate attire”? what is the point?
We recognize that many of these questions are simply tradition enforced by hierarchy balanced against us and can quickly fall apart with basic logic. We dissect these questions and potentially start to reach a state of postconventional moral development (read Kohlberg for more about this).
The thing about this is that you start to recognize a morality that supersedes the need for social order and start to maintain a personal sense of ethics and morality that is not dictated by external factors but empathization. You’re more likely to support civil disobedience now and also more likely to violate social norms but that’s because many social norms don’t make sense. Not surprisingly many adults don’t move to post conventional morality; they stay at a conventional morality in support of maintaining social order. Their morality is mostly dictated from external factors like law and religion.
Now to be clear this doesn’t mean that January 6 trump people have post conventional morality because they were practicing civil disobedience. Their violence was to arguably to protect social norms and to push to a society with extremely rigid social norms and they arguably have the moral development of a child (punishment and obedience stage, literally the first one, classic fascist shit). Where they stand in terms of moral development is an interesting debate but that’s a different post altogether
There’s a lot more to this like medial prefrontal cortex differences, temporo-parietal junction, VTA, reward system activation, etc. the neuroscience here is super interesting and of course it’s important to stress that people with autism approach moral reasoning differently and not that they can’t do it because if you don’t stress that dumb people associate autism with sociopathy and think all autistic people are elon musk
Interesting. As someone with autism I can definitely say that I don’t feel others pain directly like it was my own.
Is this actually what others feel? The concept of that makes no sense to me. Does it really feel exactly the same as if your own, the pain is not a concept?
My experience is that I empathize by understanding. I learn about different people’s experiences and am interested in philosophy and ethics. I have been through a lot of trauma myself.
I can then extrapolate all of that and empathize with how others feel, and the struggles they have. Often I find myself in situations where I am upset by people’s callousness but nobody else seems to care. It’s only when it affects them emotionally that they take interest, and then they seem to become unstable and act out in harmful ways that might not fit the situation.
My perspective does not feel like a robot high level logic. The empathy is immediately felt but there is an understanding behind it and separation from self. The sense of self is very weak if there at all. I often feel separated from my own physical pain and sensations.
Yes, I literally feel the pain of others. Not as though it happened to me but enough to wince if I see most animals get hurt (aside from insects).
I’m more sensitive than normal though. Hyper-awareness from abuse. It’s also isolating and lonely, even though I’m not on the spectrum.
This makes sense. Experiential understanding
But to clarify the logic doesn’t need to be super high level. “High level” in my post just meaning it’s a higher level process oriented to using logic at all, versus something more akin to a “going with your gut”, if that makes sense?
I do hope you can find people who will empathize with you in ways that are not so transactional though. Maybe that’s not possible. Life is give and take I suppose. Maybe instead it’s about finding people who have the right balance of that? I dunno but at a minimum you deserve to have people care about your frustration, at least sometimes.
No worries I understand what you meant. I should probably also clarify that I intended that part for other readers.
I know that there is a stereotype that autistic thinking is some kind of high level robotic empathy. It doesn’t feel like that for me at least. Instead of feeling a physical or emotional pain it’s an immediate pull and understanding towards kindness, fairness and easing suffering.
Did I understand your post correctly that people do feel a physical pain response to others suffering? Somehow I made it to middle aged and never realized that if so. Thanks for the post, definitely one of the best I have ever seen and gives me a missing piece to reflect on. Which I will probably use later on to empathize with others who process empathy differently lol.
Well that certainly boosts my ego, thanks
Wrt pain response it varies. Some people do describe actually “feeling” the pain of others, read on “empathetic distress” for more on this. It’s less common but is interesting; in some people when they empathize with someone experiencing something like physical pain there is activation of areas of the brain that process physical pain (insula and anterior cingulate cortex) in addition to showing physiological response consistent with pain (tachycardia, perspiration, wincing, etc)
It could be performative but the neurological activation can’t really be faked and the physiological responses can be challenging to fake. Additionally there is variability in response and behavioral indicators like attempting to render aid which are somewhat inconsistent with performative acts (though not definitively so)
This is a really good write up. It reflects my experience and understanding well.
If I can offer my opinion on the J6 types, I think we have to be careful not to present them as antithetical to the autistic way of thinking, because a lot of autistic people end up in those spaces. For some, the world and its norms become so inscrutable that they seek other sources of order. Religion and strictly defined politics can become a comfort, as illusory as they are.
So it may seem contradictory, but autistic people can swing hard away from social norms, but they can also swing hard into it. Because it’s a spectrum, defined by divergence, which can happen in any direction.
I agree but to clarify:
Autistic people do not inherently develop post conventional morality and the j6 types are not presented here as a counter to “autism” but as a counter to “post conventional morality”
There are many autistic people who are stuck in the early more stages focused on discipline and punishment. Many neurotypical ppl as well. These people are extremely susceptible to fascism because it appeals to simplistic morals based on “things need to go my way and if they don’t you need to get severe punishment”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Kohlberg’s_stages_of_moral_development
_These people would literally be in the first stage of the Heinz dilemma
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinz_dilemma
Kohlbergs stages have valid criticisms (like they ignore the entire concept of collectivist cultures, for one) but they’re still a decent framework
I would also suggest, based on the autistic people in my own family, that autistic people generally have a much more solid and developed sense of self than neurotypical people. So where a neurotypical person might think, “maybe I’m a woman, not a man, but could that be true? Should I tell the world?” an autistic person will think, “I am a woman. If you tell me I’m not a woman, you’re lying.”
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I don’t mean a sense of identity in terms of culture, I mean in terms of core identity. Who you are at your very core self.
Good reading. Thanks.
My shrink mentioned this to me and I had to go look it up. It’s very interesting indeed.
RCCX!
The entire cluster (ADHD/Hypermobility/Autoimmune/MCAS/etc) is theorised to originate there.
What repoir does the wiki have? It seems well written enough, but I don’t trust these kinds of things unless a person with something to lose backs them.
Follow the links through
That guy bothers me, I don’t think medical professionals should cultivate personality cults. Then again I don’t really think politicians should either, and that’s basically the definition of politics.
Who cares about that guy just using him to point out the cluster has been spotted independently.
There was an interesting NatGeo article recently about something similar - the links between hypermobility, GI issues, long COVID and long COVID-like illnesses like MECFS, MCAS, etc. The links you provided are really fascinating and suggest maybe even a larger clustering of symptoms unified in a single genetic process.
Ok this is super interesting. I’ll have to read more about this. Thanks.
From myself I see it as a sensory sensitivity. Like cheap sweatpants that have the fizzy stuff on the inside I can’t stand, but others are just like ehh, it’s not great. So while someone else is ehh about dysphoria, it was overwhelming to me.
Gender isn’t real anyway so 🤷🏻♀️
Gender is real, it’s just a human construct. But that doesn’t make it any less real than, say, Italian is real despite it being a human construct.
Italian’s a dressing, dude. I have some in my fridge.
Salad dressing is also a human construct.
In nature salad just prances around naked!
I’ve never seen salad prance before. Is this a shroom thing, or am I just not looking in the right spot?
Just need the right amount of wind!
Itslian is a sausage and I enjoy it on pizza.
I firmly believe that ohio is just a hole
But like pre-nation of Italy Italian it can have fairly different interpretations based on regionality
Absolutely, but that does not make it less real to the particular society a person might be in.
The idea of gender is just stupid and has to go, regardless if people consider it real or not, it’s a social construct that must go
Well that’s what Trump is trying to do so.
I guess you and the fascist are getting your wish.
Seriously though, gender is older than Homo sapiens. It’s about division of reproductive labor and the classes that humans form around that
The gender binary needs to go. Gender inequality needs to go. But people are going to have gender as long as we have class distinctions and we are a long way from outgrowing that.
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Like 80% of teens could now be evaluated as being on some spectrum of autism. But imagine if mental health professionals made up some word for everyone that got tattoos, saying they had skin dysphoria. Or imagine if they actually did their job & identified most Christians in America as mentally ill & prone to delusions.
Source? and … what?
Maybe don’t use mental health to attack people you disapprove of? The point of mental health is to help people, not to attack them.
Saying trans people have autism is ridiculous.
And that’s not what the article says. It says that there is a correlation between the two.
I’m trans and not autistic. But I do see that correlation in a number of my trans and autistic peers. Up thread there were some very good comments on why this might be from posters that I assume are both trans and autistic.
And your psychology degree is from where?
Facebook university.
Of course you’re from lemmy.world
Like 80% of teens could now be evaluated as being on some spectrum of autism.
You dont get to talk about autism unless you are autistic, bigot. (Even then you would only get to talk about YOUR autism. Stop spreading these baseless, cookie cutter right wing talking points that dont help anyone.
But imagine if mental health professionals made up some word for everyone that got tattoos, saying they had skin dysphoria.
Imagine you shutting your face about other people‘s skin, identity, mental health and decisions. Typical right wing obsession with overstepping other people‘s boundaries. I understand you have never learned them and grew up in a world where you were told your and other‘s boundaries dont matter. That does not give you the right to do it to others.
Or imagine if they actually did their job & identified most Christians in America as mentally ill & prone to delusions.
Classical false equivalence used to drive misinformation and abusive speech. Religious people around the world are not your enemy. It is their choice to believe in what they want. As you show well, being religious and an overstepping abusive dick is not connected.
You can talk about whatever you want. Don’t let people bully you into thinking otherwise.
Yeah, no. Every minority will rip you a new one if you spread misinformation about them. And for good reasons. Its hard enough to live with systemic discrimination. You dont get to discriminate us further.
You dont get to talk about autism unless you are autistic, bigot
TIL 100% of the Psychiatry profession is autistic.
Right? What an insane take.
Guess I’m not allowed to help children on the spectrum learn daily living skills, or teach language skills to kids who communicate by injuring themselves.
Ngl I really wish more psychological “professionals” would just shut up be stop encouraging people to abuse autists
They’re still infinitely qualified to talk about it than randos on lemmy tho
Another bigot. Thanks for showing yourself. Blocked.
Of course academics make research but anyone in good faith knows that this was not about research but a bigot trying to dump on people finally finding out about themselves.
You dont get to talk about autism unless you are autistic, bigot. (Even then you would only get to talk about YOUR autism. Stop spreading these baseless, cookie cutter right wing talking points that dont help anyone.
You’re calling me a bigot for what? Because I said trans people don’t have a mental disorder?? Are you really suggesting now that saying trans people have gender dysphoria because of autism, and that is somehow non-bigoted? You have no clue what my experience is with autism, but I know that having autism doesn’t make people trans.
Imagine you shutting your face about other people‘s skin, identity, mental health and decisions. Typical right wing obsession with overstepping other people‘s boundaries. I understand you have never learned them and grew up in a world where you were told your and other‘s boundaries dont matter. That does not give you the right to do it to others.
Imagine you’re so clueless that you think me saying that the ones claiming gender dysphoria is linked to autism are wrong, and that those claims are absurd. Right wingers are happy to support circumcision & have no prob with tattoos. The point was that they ARE overstepping & hypocritical, but somehow you think I should shut up cause in your mind it helps trans people if a baseless study says they all have autism.
Classical false equivalence used to drive misinformation and abusive speech. Religious people around the world are not your enemy. It is their choice to believe in what they want. As you show well, being religious and an overstepping abusive dick is not connected.
90% of the hate towards trans people comes from people that believe in fairy tales, predominantly Christianity & Islam. But go ahead & think they’re all your friends and that believing in fairy tales is totally healthy & normal, especially the ones where they don’t think trans people should be allowed to exist. You severely lack any intelligence on this subject. I’m left wondering if you’re the right-wing plant.
