I don’t think that there are many people who hear about the concept of transgederism earlier than about the concept of gender non-conformity. The latter perfectly explains not liking beer and football as well.
I imagine that in a parallel reality where I somehow never heard about autism, but everyone talks about transsexuality all the time, it would make sense to take all divergence from stereotypical masculinity as evidence of being trans.
Personally, I’ve considered the possibility of myself being trans much earlier than being autistic. At some moment in my life I’ve dissolved the concept of gender for myself and thus I think that classifying myself as agender is a more accurate than calling myself a man. And yet the fact that I do not possess much appreciation for stereotypical masculinity is a sufficient evidence that I’m actually a woman, never seriously crossed my mind for obvious reasons that you’ve mentioned yourself:
And fail to notice that I do not have stereotypically female preferences and behavior either?
And yes, later, I figured out that I’m on the spectrum, which seems quite likely to be correlated with my agenderism. Doesn’t feel as if this revelation suddenly “made me a man” again.
Well, maybe I’m in a denial. Or maybe taking the right hormones is going to fix all of that.)
People could be seriously confused in a way you are talking about only if they do not hear about anything else at all other than binary transgenderism. So a huge political movement invalidating gender non-conformity, non-binarism and neurodivercity in favor of binary-transgenderism could be a potential problem. But this is absolutely not the way our world is as all these topics go hand in hand.
In general, all this scaremongering about “poor autistic children who are just caught in a fad” seems making very little sense, as soon as we actually think about it for a couple of minutes, instead of treating it in a pattern matching mode. As a social group, our kind is some of the least likely candidate to be swayed by pure social pressure.
In general, all this scaremongering about “poor autistic children who are just caught in a fad” seems making very little sense, as soon as we actually think about it for a couple of minutes
It’s an empirical question whether a bunch of poor autistic children are getting caught in a fad. I don’t think merely thinking about it can tell you whether it’s happening.
As a social group, our kind is some of the least likely candidate to be swayed by pure social pressure.
Perhaps so. On the other hand, perhaps our kind (a) already knows we’re weird, and (b) when given a possible explanation for why we’re weird, is inclined to accept it.
On the subject of whether people are pushing kids to think they’re the other gender before they understand autism as an alternative explanation (or before they understand much of anything)… This video contains a person describing ways of perceiving “gender messages” from children aged 1-2 years old, saying that one could be “misgendering” such children, that there can be a “pre-verbal communication about gender, and the message back should not be to negate any of those expressions, but to go with them, and see where they go”; and that “Children will know as early as the beginning of the second year of life”.
A well known subscriber to the “gender affirmative” approach to trans-identified children is Diane Ehrensaft, PhD., a clinical and developmental psychologist. Dr. Ehrensaft, author of The Gender Creative Child, plays a powerful role in the burgeoning field of pediatric transgenderism. She is director and chief psychologist for the University of California-San Francisco children’s hospital gender clinic, and is also an associate professor of pediatrics at UCSF. She sits on the Board of Directors of Gender Spectrum, a San Francisco Bay area organization which is heavily involved in matters pertaining to trans-identified children and youth.
In February, Dr. Ehrensaft, along with other pediatric transition specialists, including Joel Baum, MS (senior director of professional development and family services at Gender Spectrum), presented at a conference and continuing education event in Santa Cruz, California.
Of course, I don’t know how many people follow her advice.
I don’t think that there are many people who hear about the concept of transgederism earlier than about the concept of gender non-conformity. The latter perfectly explains not liking beer and football as well.
Personally, I’ve considered the possibility of myself being trans much earlier than being autistic. At some moment in my life I’ve dissolved the concept of gender for myself and thus I think that classifying myself as agender is a more accurate than calling myself a man. And yet the fact that I do not possess much appreciation for stereotypical masculinity is a sufficient evidence that I’m actually a woman, never seriously crossed my mind for obvious reasons that you’ve mentioned yourself:
And yes, later, I figured out that I’m on the spectrum, which seems quite likely to be correlated with my agenderism. Doesn’t feel as if this revelation suddenly “made me a man” again.
People could be seriously confused in a way you are talking about only if they do not hear about anything else at all other than binary transgenderism. So a huge political movement invalidating gender non-conformity, non-binarism and neurodivercity in favor of binary-transgenderism could be a potential problem. But this is absolutely not the way our world is as all these topics go hand in hand.
In general, all this scaremongering about “poor autistic children who are just caught in a fad” seems making very little sense, as soon as we actually think about it for a couple of minutes, instead of treating it in a pattern matching mode. As a social group, our kind is some of the least likely candidate to be swayed by pure social pressure.
It’s an empirical question whether a bunch of poor autistic children are getting caught in a fad. I don’t think merely thinking about it can tell you whether it’s happening.
Perhaps so. On the other hand, perhaps our kind (a) already knows we’re weird, and (b) when given a possible explanation for why we’re weird, is inclined to accept it.
On the subject of whether people are pushing kids to think they’re the other gender before they understand autism as an alternative explanation (or before they understand much of anything)… This video contains a person describing ways of perceiving “gender messages” from children aged 1-2 years old, saying that one could be “misgendering” such children, that there can be a “pre-verbal communication about gender, and the message back should not be to negate any of those expressions, but to go with them, and see where they go”; and that “Children will know as early as the beginning of the second year of life”.
The person is described as:
Of course, I don’t know how many people follow her advice.